Racing Hard

by William Fotheringham

  Armstrong’s asking fee last night was said to be about $12,000 for a two-and-a-half-hour race and a five-hour drive from Paris. This morning at nine o’clock he flies south from Brussels to Switzerland for the Across Lausanne race. Tomorrow he is back in Holland, at the Acht van Chaam, near Breda. Meanwhile, many of the Frenchmen who rubbed shoulders with Armstrong for the last three weeks were racing last night at Lisieux in Normandy. Tomorrow they are in Brittany, at Callac.

  August is a demanding but lucrative month, when villages around Europe go en fete to welcome the stars of the Tour in a more intimate, family environment. Last night Armstrong and his fellows rode 100 kilometres on the brick setts that make up most of Boxmeer’s streets, in between the Amstel Beer bus and the candyfloss stands, past the bouncy castle and the jerry-built grandstands, finishing at 11pm.

  The whole show was put on the road by the “King” of the Dutch criterium circuit, Gerry Van Gerwen, with each rider receiving a start fee in proportion to his racing record.

  The speed was high, but not too high. Criteriums are as much exhibition as competition, and the small peloton knows it should ride in a strung-out line so that fans can see the heroes of the Tour de France in front of them. The riders are well aware of what the public expects to see, so it is not uncommon for a Tour star to win, with a local hero putting up a plucky fight in second place.

  More than 35,000 people were expected here last night, swelling the population several times over. High wire barriers were erected at every street where there was access to the circuit, channelling fans into turnstiles where old men took 15 guilders (£5) and stamped their hands as if welcoming them to a rock festival. To match the mood, Marillion blared from the sound system in the evening sun.

  Old ladies sat eating their dinner in picnic chairs outside their front doors on the trim, narrow streets while the oompah band thumped and parped. The warm-up acts included a women’s race, a cavalcade of vehicles of every kind from the local fire engine to a dustcart, and a parade of well-kept dogs walked on leads by well-kept local ladies. Girlfriends, who are usually not welcome at major races, checked tyre pressures.

  Cyclists’ trainers do not approve of their riding too many criteriums. The hectic mix of travelling and racing and the irregular hours wreak havoc with their systems and means that for many French professionals, the season ends in August. Not surprisingly given the mix of driving and competition, there have been many accounts of drugs, principally amphetamines, being used in the criteriums, where tests are a rarity.

  While Armstrong marched on to a second Tour victory in 2000, that year’s Tour was marked by Pantani’s comeback to win two stages after he had taken almost a year out of the sport. Whatever the background, it was impossible to ignore his sheer guts as he took on Armstrong on Mont Ventoux that year.

  Bald mountain falls to Pantani

  14 July 2000

  Among Mont Ventoux’s many nicknames is la montagne chauve (the bald mountain) and yesterday, fittingly, it was conquered by the Tour’s bald man, Marco Pantani, who has made a shaven scalp one of his trademarks. His bronzed bonce glistened with sweat, the veins above his skinny neck pulsated with the effort, and the 1998 Tour winner rode what was perhaps the most courageous race of his career.

  Yet the little Italian was not the strongest man on the mountain. Lance Armstrong, as outrageously dominant as he was on Monday at the Hautacam finish, might as well have waved him across the line with a regal hand for all the effort he made to win. But courage and bloody-minded persistence made Pantani a worthy addition to those who have conquered this fearsome summit, other great climbers such as Charly Gaul and Julio Jimenez, nonpareils such as Eddy Merckx and Raymond Poulidor, and, farcically, the non-climber Eros Poli who led over the top when the route crossed the Ventoux in 1994.

  In Mythologies, the writer Roland Barthes described the 6,000ft summit, which looms in a single white-topped ridge above the Vaucluse vineyards, as “a god of evil to whom sacrifice must be made”. Pantani’s offering was painful to watch, and it will be seen in the cycling world as a form of atonement for what he calls his “vicissitudes”: the past year’s drug scandals and black depression. It remains to be seen, though, whether this view will be taken by the Italian judge who will try him in October on charges of sporting fraud – falsifying results by the use of banned drugs.

  This was, in any event, an epic fightback. Three times Pantani could not hold the pace on the steep initial ramps, as Armstrong’s team-mate Kevin Livingston set a searing rhythm through a rock cutting lined with cedar and fir trees. Three times he fought grimly back to the tail of the little group, finally sprinting up to the leaders as they took the steep hairpin at Chalet Renard, four miles from the top, where fans perched high on the bouldered slopes.

  Then, as the road kicked up steeply into the rocky wasteland leading to the summit, the little man in the Mercatone Uno pink attacked. He admits he is not in top form, and it took four attempts before there was daylight behind him. Inevitably, Armstrong was the only one able to get on terms, conscious that the only rider he now fears, Jan Ullrich, was floundering.

  Equally inevitably, the American closed the gap with almost contemptuous ease. With only the blue sky above, and the whole of Provence below, the chilly wind was only blowing with half the ferocity of Wednesday, when 80mph was registered, but the gusts still made standing up difficult.

  With the gale in their faces the pair slogged past the pile of tyres, feeding bottles, photographs and saddles left by fans at the memorial to Tommy Simpson, who paid the ultimate price for taking on the Ventoux 33 years before to the day.

  It was a muted finish, redolent of a bygone, more straightforward era. The inflatable banners and podium that mark the finish line had been left at the bottom – they would have been blown into oblivion – and Armstrong simply let Pantani ride across a white line on the tarmac for the seventh Tour stage win of his career.

  As the American saw it, the bargain was straightforward: Pantani did his share of the pacemaking and he himself increased his lead over Ullrich. “Victory in Paris is what counts,” he said simply. That is now a step closer: Armstrong leads Ullrich, who kept in contact until two miles from the top, by 4min 55sec. Given that no one is climbing more strongly than the Texan, this is a solid lead with two alpine stages over the weekend.

  No one quit on the mountain but Marcel Wust, the Vitre stage winner, did not take the start because of illness and eight stopped before the first slopes. They included Tom Steels, so imperious in the first two stage finishes but now stricken with stomach trouble.

  Thus the malignant mountain again took its toll of blood, sweat and pain. At least today is flat. Well, flattish.

  The Festina saga came to an end that autumn with the trial of Virenque, Voet and others in Lille. As legal theatre, the moment when the presiding judge, Daniel Delegove, coaxed a confession out of Virenque was unforgettable, although it simply confirmed what had been blindingly obvious to most people for over two years.

  Virenque confesses to using drugs

  25 October 2000

  The unthinkable has finally happened. Millions of ordinary French people who watch the Tour de France each summer now have to digest the fact that their idol Richard Virenque took banned drugs.

  Having remained in denial for two years and three months since he and his Festina team were thrown off the Tour, Virenque, France’s most popular cyclist and biggest Tour star of the 90s, created a sensation here yesterday morning when he finally admitted that he had used the blood-boosting hormone erythropoietin (EPO).

  At 9.15, immediately after the session opened, Virenque was called for questioning by the presiding magistrate Daniel Delegove, who had been advised by the rider’s lawyer that he wished to speak. “Do you accept this reality, that you took doping products?” asked Delegove. “Yes,” replied Virenque.

  Under further questioning, his voice, with its brittle meridional accent, cracked and he seemed close to tears as he described w
hy he used drugs. “It was a like a train going away from me and, if I didn’t get on it, I would be left behind. It was not cheating. I wanted to remain in the family.”

  His admission led to what will remain an enduring image of the trial, at the end of the morning session, when Virenque was reconciled with his former masseur Willy Voet, with whom he had had a “father-son” relationship that ended when Voet was caught by police. Both men were in tears as Voet clutched Virenque and told him that he had done the right thing; but almost simultaneously Voet’s wife Sylvie harangued the cyclist over his allegation that Voet was a drug dealer.

  For Virenque it is a bitter volte-face. During the 1998 scandal, as his team-mates confessed one by one to police that they had taken drugs, especially EPO, Virenque denied point blank that he had taken drugs, both to the police and, most memorably, in the face of a Paxmanesque interrogation live on French television.

  In the opening session here on Monday Virenque maintained his denial. But Delegove pointedly asked the other two men at the centre of the case – Voet and the former Festina manager Bruno Roussel – if Virenque could have been doped without his knowledge. Both were adamant that it was impossible.

  Faced with this reality, Virenque decided to change his tactics on Monday evening. It is a decision that may well mean he is not found guilty of the charge he faces here, that of inciting his team-mates to take drugs, as he is now essentially in the same position as the rest of the team.

  However, his career may have ended with his 19th place in Saturday’s Tour of Lombardy. Although he won a stage of this year’s Tour, he is currently without a team – no sponsor wants to hire him until the outcome of the trial is known – and he faces a ban of between six months and a year, as a confession of drug use is regarded in the same light as a positive test. He said to Voet yesterday: “I’m unemployed now and I’m glad.”

  Adding to the impression that an entire sport is in the spotlight here, Lance Armstrong, who has won the last two Tours de France after coming back from testicular cancer, also came under fire. The former Festina trainer Antoine Vayer said: “Armstrong rides at an average speed of 54kph. I find this scandalous. It’s a nonsense. Indirectly, it proves he is on dope,” said Vayer.

  Vayer’s protege, Christophe Bassons, who quit the Tour de France in 1999 after riders ostracised him for his assertions that he would not use drugs, spoke under oath about how Armstrong told him to leave the race. “Armstrong said that I was very bad for cycling. He said I had better go home and that I had nothing to do on a bike.” Voet, who knows Bassons well, said that he did not consider Armstrong to have behaved well. “Bassons is a small rider and, when you have Armstrong’s class, you don’t need to say those things to a small rider. Armstrong is a classy guy but that is not a classy thing to do.”

  Vayer remains a prominent anti-doping campaigner, an erstwhile member of the group Change Cycling Now which met first in London in early December 2012 in the aftermath of the Lance Armstrong scandal and issued a manifesto for clean cycling.

  4. THE ARMSTRONG SAGA

  By 2001, Lance Armstrong was heading seamlessly for his Tour de France hat-trick; his dominance would last until July 2005 and would result in the entire event becoming increasingly centered on the Texan and his entourage. There was a 1ittle local difficulty, however, as his partnership with the notorious trainer Michele Ferrari was exposed in the Sunday Times by David Walsh. That was the first step in a gradual process which saw Armstrong steadily become more controversial, with increasing questions about his ethics, even as he became more and more successful. The Ferrari revelation was the first step in the 11-year process of exposure that would culminate in the explosive USADA report of October 2012.

  On a less serious note, my Tour de France diaries were begun in homage to the Observer’s late cycling correspondent and my personal role model, Geoffrey Nicholson, who used this as a model for his coverage of the race in the early 1990s. The diary format offers the writer the chance to look at the race obliquely, to pick up the many strands that unite Tours over the years and to poke a little fun at the obvious targets: Richard Virenque, the French on Bastille Day, Armstrong, the gifts that stage towns give the press.

  The diary also gives a sense of the Tour’s unique quality for a journalist: the fact that pretty much every day you end up somewhere different and see different things. Most importantly, for a Sunday paper, the whole week’s events could be encapsulated without it being too laborious. This one had to be included, running as it does the full gamut of experience you can have in just six days on the race.

  Tour 2001: week 4

  Luz Ardiden, Sunday 22 July

  Disaster: the bell rung by the Tour organisers to alert the non-cycling part of the caravan to the impending depart each morning is stolen at the start town of Tarbes. There is consternation about how to rouse the suiveurs from their morning coffee in the start village and make them take to their cars before the riders get going. A cloche is lent by the organisers of the Dauphiné Libéré, another French race; it is too puny. A town close to the finish, Argèles-Gazost, finds a bell, paints it in its colours and presents it to the organisers. It is no louder, and the Tour remains bell-less until Paris.

  If it does not look slippy the bell will toll for the autobus, the group of non-climbers who fight their way to the finish together inside the day’s set limit, a percentage of the winner’s time; short mountain stages such as today’s, where the limit is tighter, are particularly feared. “We had 30 minutes to play with, and we were 18 behind at the bottom of Luz Ardiden, so we knew we could afford to lose another 12,” recalls the first-timer from New Zealand, Chris Jenner. “There was no celebration when we got there, we were too tired.”

  Pau, Monday 23 July

  For the first time, Lance Armstrong talks publicly about his relations with the controversial Doctor Ferrari. [The story broke on the first weekend of the Tour, over two weeks earlier.] As theatre, his prickly press conference is hard to match. David Walsh, who broke the Ferrari story, is greeted with a sarcastic, “Well David, I’m glad you showed up finally.” Armstrong pleads his good faith and that of the doctor’s.

  Later, Armstrong is said to have complained that the press kept looking at each other and making signs, as if in collusion. The press mutter the same about him and his advisers. His lawyer, Bill Stapleton, casts icy glares at Walsh, who asks a final question about a performance-enhancing device called a molecular sieve, which increases red-cell levels. “I guess I’ll have to check it out if you think it’s so important,” comes Armstrong’s implacable drawl.

  Lavaur, Tuesday 24 July

  Once, stage towns vied with each other to produce gifts for the press, from the surreal – a tennis ball on a plinth from Montlucon in 1992 – to the prosaic: a penknife from Superbesse in 1996. The Cathar stopping point, an intimate little jumble of half-timbers and sunbaked brick, outdoes its richer brethren with a goodie bag that shows a deep understanding of life on the Tour for the majority who travel on four wheels: suncream, smelly foot lotion and two bottles of wine.

  Sarran, Wednesday 25 July

  The Tour’s political affiliations are not hard to read: the organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc, likes to quote De Gaulle – visited by the entire peloton at his home in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises in 1960 – and the current President Jacques Chirac has visited the Tour seven times with great fanfare. Francois Mitterrand came just once, anonymously, to the roadside like any old fan. Today’s finish is next to the Chirac museum in his home village, where his wife Bernadette is the deputy mayor. Like all French women of a certain age, she cannot resist the lure of the polka dot climber’s jersey, and declares Laurent Jalabert her favourite.

  Eight miles from the finish the peloton passes the bar-tabac Chez Guillou. It looks anonymous, but has a minor place in cycling history. Three years ago, this is where the Festina team made a last-ditch attempt to start the race after being thrown out at the height of the drug scandal.

  Montluc
on, Thursday 26 July

  The farmers put in their annual appearance, protesting about factory farming early on and protesting about life in general on the run in to the finish. Probably to prevent them putting tractors in the way of the race, the organisers invite the agriculteurs to kill and roast a very large fatted calf for the caravan the following day. There is no mention of steak’s traditional use on the Tour: raw, interposed between bottom and shorts, as a cure for saddle sores.

  St-Amand-Montrond, Friday 27 July

  The Tour’s historian, Jacques Augendre, has described the intimacy between riders and press in the 1940s and 1950s, before the Tour turned into the mammoth event it is now, how he would pass riders bottles and pace them back to the bunch with his press car after punctures. Such complicity is a thing of the past, he says. Not quite. In the 38-mile time-trial, we follow Jacky Durand, a pugnacious French veteran popularly known as “Dudu”. For him this is merely a day to be got through before the last two days into Paris, when he will make the last of the hammed-up, do-or-die attacks that have won him the “combativity” award twice.

  He is not acting when his aerodynamic handlebars come loose soon after the start. He fiddles with the fixing, consults his support car, wobbles and stops, then starts again; cursing. We ask his car what is wrong: shamefacedly they confess they do not have the necessary allen key. A boy scout among us has a Swiss Army knife which is duly handed over, and passed to “Dudu”, who completes the repair by the roadside. Rescued by the British press, he finishes ninety-second and his mechanic at the Française des Jeux team can expect an earbashing that evening.