Read Rough Ride Online

Authors: Paul Kimmage

Rough Ride

BOOK: Rough Ride
12.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Table of Contents

ROUGH RIDE

Since writing
Rough Ride,
Paul Kimmage has gone on to become one of the UK and Ireland's most respected sports journalists. Currently chief interviewer for the
Sunday Times
sports section, he is also the author of Andy Townsend's autobiography, and of the highly acclaimed
Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino.

ROUGH RIDE

Behind the Wheel
with a Pro Cyclist

PAUL KIMMAGE

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 9781409078340

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Yellow Jersey Press 2007

4 6 8 10 9 7 5

Copyright © Paul Kimmage 1990, 1998, 2007

Paul Kimmage has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain in 1990 by
Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd.
An imprint of Random House UK

First published in 1998 by
Yellow Jersey Press

This edition published in 2007
by Yellow Jersey Press
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited
can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781409078340

Version 1.0

In memory of John Walsh (1982-95)
'Teacher? You said that Joseph and Mary
and the baby Jesus were poor, but . . . what
did they do with the gold from the
three wise men?'

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Sean Kelly and Martin Earley for good times in the peloton and support when
Rough Ride
was first published. To the ever brilliant David Walsh for showing (and continuing to show) me the way. To editors past and present, Vincent Browne, Aengus Fanning, Adhnamhán O'Sullivan, Alex Butler, Marion Paull, Rachel Cugnoni, and Tristan Jones. Thanks to 'Les Amis Français': Gérard and Muriel Torres, Marc Mingat and Pascale Budzyn, the great Andre Chappuis and Jean-Michel Rouet. Agus do mo cháirde: Micheál and Bríd O'Braonáin, Mary Walsh, Alan English, Gary and Sorcha O'Toole, Tony Cascarino, John and Canice Leonard, Ray and Annette Leonard, Christy and Marion Leonard, the Nolan brothers, Aidan Harrison, Fanny Sunesson, Iain Forsyth, Tom Humphries (Mozart), Gwen Knapp, Billy Stickland, Evelyn Bracken, Dermot Gilleece, Alan Hunter, Richard Stanton, Craig Brazil. We've lost Pat and Monny Nolan since the last edition was published but they are forever in my thoughts. The Kimmage mafia thankfully are still going strong: Christy (the Don), Angela, Raphael, Deborah, Kevin, Aileen, Christopher, Eilish. And finally thanks to my darling Ann and our children Evelyn, Eoin and Luke . . . I swear I once caddied for Nick Faldo!

Photographic and text permissions

For permission to reproduce copyright photographs, the author and publishers would like to thank the following: AllSport/Vandystadt; Paul Daly; J. P. Filatriau/La Voix du Nord; Inpho; Irish Press;
L'Equipe;
James Meehan; Photosport International; Presse-Sports; Billy Stickland; Muriel Vibert.

'He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' by W. B. Yeats is reproduced by permission of A. P. Watt on behalf of Michael Yeats.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

PREFACE TO THE 2007 EDITION
THE DEPARTED

For the last couple of months I've been at odds with Tristan Jones, my diligent editor at Yellow Jersey, over this new edition
of Rough Ride.
My idea of a suitable preface was a 10,000-word opus on Lance Armstrong: 'How Professional Cycling got the Champion it Deserved'. Tristan was adamant it needed to be shorter: 'Keep it tight and eloquent,' he advised, '150 words will be fine.' Confession: I couldn't write a note to the milkman in 150 words! And my prose has never been noted for its eloquence. We agreed to compromise with an email I received in September 2005:

Mr Kimmage,

I am an American professional cyclist who has just read
Rough Ride
and I want to write to thank you so much for the clear and concise work – I know it has done nothing to help your popularity in the world of cycling. The events as of late though seem to be increasingly vindicating a small but select group of cyclists who have been vocal about the magnitude of the drug problem in our beautiful sport for sometime.

It has taken me sometime (ten years plus) to realise how great the problem is and as I have decided to stop at the end of the year, I am able to reflect back on things I have seen and strange happenings in the sport with a greater degree of objectivity, and with youthful naivety and enthusiasm behind me I realise in retrospect the full magnitude of the problem. Are any of these observations scientifically unassailable? No, so of course an outsider could easily attack my beliefs about drugs on the grounds that they are merely rooted in jealousy and are lacking in any sort of evidence, but when one trains and competes with other athletes on a regular basis it becomes very clear what is taking place.

It is as if one has to walk up a great number of stairs to arrive at a shut door that is doping. The masses of fans and club racers who have never even walked up the steps will not believe the few who have not stepped through the threshold and of course other professionals who have will not agree. This leaves a very small minority who sit at the top step trying to either convert the masses or make others repent.

Good luck with everything. It seems that your book was far, far of its time. I would imagine that with each fallen hero you feel a bit vindicated. I leave cycling not bitter, per se, but with a feeling that the whole thing is a bit of a sad farce when contrasted with what I had thought sport represented when I started off.

Best,

James Hibbard

I've never met or spoken to James but I'm sure we'd get on fine. He reminds me of a racer I once knew who hung up his bike after the thirteenth stage of the Tour de France in 1989 . . .

INTRODUCTION
ON THE NINTH DAY . . .

A few weeks ago, after a visit to the publisher in London, I sat down with all sorts of exciting plans for the re-birth of
Rough Ride.
The new edition would be completely re-edited. Its opening chapter would be scripted straight from the Raymond Chandler school of thriller writing ('When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun') and begin, not in 1962 with a baby boy and a kindly staff nurse at the Rotunda hospital in Dublin, but twenty-two years later when the boy arrives in Paris in search of fame and fortune. I even had an opening line worked out: 'A man with huge shovel-like hands, greying hair and a tanned, weather-beaten face was waiting at the airport.' OK, so it would take a couple of chapters before the gun was produced, but you get the drift. There would be other changes.
Rough Ride
was a book with too much truth and too little romance and the balance would be redressed second time around. Every chapter would be crafted with the writing that wins literary awards. The sweat would be dried, the rough edges made smooth.
Rough Ride II
would be a profound and important book.

A few days later, I took out my laptop and was tinkering with the text when an old friend, Peter Purfield, faxed me a message he had received on the Internet that afternoon. It read as follows:

Subject: Where's Paul??!!!
Date: Sun. 7 Dec 1997 17:15:45 EST
Organisation: AOL (http://www.aol.com)
To: [email protected]

Mr Purfield,

I am searching for information on Paul Kimmage. Where is he and why is there no mention anywhere about this man? I once owned a copy of his (and I hope this is not taboo) book
Rough Ride
and have lost it. As I am a racing cyclist in the US and am currently going through a drug recovery programme, his book is constantly on my mind. At the time I read it, I didn't realise the impact it would have on me years later. I guess I have only one question, maybe two: Where is that damn book? And how do I get another copy? Most book dealers have no idea. Where is Paul and how can I find him? I would appreciate any response and help you could offer.

Shaken by the coincidence and warmed by the interest, it struck me that maybe the original had not been too bad and I shelved my plan until I had re-read it. I say
re-read
it, but when I sat down with the book last week, it was a first – I'd never actually read the whole tiling through before. Eight years have passed since it was first published, eight years when I have occasionally plucked it from the bookshelf to scan the photographs before closing it again very quickly. If I could have my time again, I'd make sure there were a lot more photographs. I love the one from the Tour de France in 1987, where I'm riding out of Orleans with my boyhood idol Stephen Roche, all tanned and looking cool in my shades. I like the one from the Tour of Britain in 1983 where I'm heading for Halifax and the race lead with Sean Yates looking bolloxed as he tries to follow my pace. And I could study that shot where my face is caked with grime at the World Championships in Villach every day for the rest of my life. I enjoy studying the photographs because essentially they are a façade. Don't believe any of that rubbish about pictures painting thousands of words. I could look at these pictures all day because the pain, the anguish isn't there.

My story begins with my father, Christy. Da was a champion cyclist and from the day I first saw him race I wanted to be a champion too. When I was ten he gave me a racing bike and planted in my heart a love for cycling that would blossom in my teenage years. Cycling dominated my youth; when my friends were discovering the joys of dancing and music and girls, I was getting my kicks from the thrill of racing a bike. There was nothing to match it, especially when you did it well, and the genes I inherited from my father made sure of that. At the age of nineteen I was the Irish National Champion. By the time I was twenty-three I was the sixth best amateur in the world. And at the age of twenty-four I became a professional cyclist. It was the happiest day of my life, the fulfilment of a childhood dream. Within six months the dream had started to fade.

It was during my first Tour de France in July 1986 that I faced the dilemma which would scar my professional life. Although I had witnessed abuse of drugs on a number of occasions after joining the professionals, I tried to block out the fact that you could break the rules in this sport and get away with it. For six months I convinced myself that I could still reach the summit without recourse to a syringe, but everything changed during that first Tour de France. For eight days the race was everything I had envisaged in childhood: I was the best-placed rider on the team and performing better than at any other stage in my life. But then, on the ninth day, I was knackered. My batteries went completely flat. With fourteen stages still to race, I had a decision to make. A big decision. The biggest decision of my life. Did I want them re-charged?

It was a cruel moment, and one that many sportsmen face in many other sports. A moment of truth. What was Christy thinking that day when he invited me out on the bike? He never told me it would come to this. Where was my safety net? I didn't want to do drugs! I didn't want to break the rules! But where was my safety net? Where were the investigative reporters who would expose this scandal? What controls were in place to ensure crime didn't pay? On the Tour's ninth day, sport betrayed me. I wasn't prepared to take drugs to further my career in the sport. Why? I don't know. It would be nice to state that it was a matter of principle, but that might be dishonest. Maybe I was scared. Maybe, when it came to the crunch, I just didn't have the balls to take the final step. Not blessed with any great natural talent, for me it was always going to be a case of sink or swim. On the Tour's ninth day, I shelved my ambition and began to drown.

The next four years of my life in the professional
peloton
were all about survival. There were some good times and some bad times and it was undoubtedly during one of the latter that I had the idea of writing a book. The book would be my story. There would be no kissing and telling, no ratting on pals. The Union Cycliste International (UCI), the sport's governing body, would be my target. I would expose their nurturing of the cancer and ignite the drive for change.

Rough Ride
was published in May 1990, and although I had anticipated some controversy, I believed that once people read it in its entirety, they would agree that it was fair and inherently good. The first warning that a
fatwah was
in the post, that I was about to become the Salman Rushdie of the cycling world, came a week before the book was published when Peter Crinnion, who had once raced with my Da, phoned me. Crinnion, who was managing Stephen Roche at the time, told me he was concerned about some of the rumours he had been hearing and wanted me to assure him they weren't true. Well, to say that I was mildly peeved that he had already made up his mind was an understatement. I told him to expect the worst. But it was my appearance on
The Late Late Show
a few days later that really stoked the flames.

The Late Lute Show,
or
Late Late
as it is known, is Ireland's most popular TV chat show. Its presenter Gay Byrne, is Ireland's most respected and professional broadcaster. Byrne is an institution in Ireland and has been presenting the
Late Late
for so long (thirty-six years and counting) that you now read him like a book. When he likes his guests, he will almost cuddle them. When he doesn't . . . well, let's just say they know. Delighted with the opportunity to talk about the book, I was pretty sure I was in for a fair, if not an easy ride. Byrne was a big fan of the sport and had always treated me well during my career. But there was something about his body language that put me on my guard and we were a couple of minutes into the interview when Byrne started to get tough. 'The implications from what you've written,' he suggested, 'are that everyone is doing it . . .' I didn't need to be a mind-reader to guess what was coming next. Byrne had built his reputation by asking 'the obvious question' and I had anticipated before going on that he would put it to me. I had also given serious consideration to my answer.

'What about the lads?' he asked. 'What about Stephen [Roche] and Sean [Kelly]?'

'What about them,' I replied. 'This is my story. It has nothing to do with them.'

But that wasn't enough and he came after me again and for the first time I realised I wasn't about to be cuddled. Ireland's favourite broadcaster wasn't pleased. He had a look on his face that I would see many times over the next few weeks. A look that said, 'How dare you cast a shadow on our fairytale?' A look that said, 'How dare you poison our dreams?' He expected me to stand now before the good people of Ireland and reassure them only losers like myself got tangled in the drugs web and that the sport's heroes were clean. Byrne wasn't interested in the story of my betrayal. My dreams didn't count. He wanted me to distil 200 pages and five months of toil into simple clean or dirty. Black or white? Yes or no? Heroes or villains? But the book wasn't about heroes or villains and I wasn't prepared to compromise; not for Byrne, not for anyone. Kelly and Roche would understand.

The interview finished amicably enough and I thought no more about it until a week later at a book signing in Dublin when I was handed a copy of the
Evening Press.
One story dominated the front page on 26 May:
'ROCHE MAY SUE OVER LATE LATE':

Ireland's Tour de France hero is taking legal advice after watching a video of last week's
Late Late Show
where his friend and former cycling colleague, Paul Kimmage, spoke about drug-taking in the sport. Roche, Kelly and Martin Earley will this weekend meet to discuss the matter, when they come together for a cycling event in Canada, according to Roche's Irish manager.

Kimmage, now a journalist, has told how he himself once took drugs, amphetamines – 'to fight the battle with the same arms as everyone else'. Interviewed by Gay Byrne, he revealed a serious problem of drug abuse in the sport and told how he had seen other riders injecting stimulants to improve race performances.

Now, it is understood, Stephen Roche is 'taking advice about legal action'. His manager Peter Crinnion, said that 'questions had been left in the air' on the
Late Late Show
and that 'some of the inferences were fairly serious'. However Kimmage, contacted by the
Evening Press,
insisted that he had 'made it clear' that he was not linking the three top Irish riders to drug-taking. 'This is my story, no one else's,' he said, referring to his soon-to-be published book
Rough Ride.

And Kimmage today won the backing of Sports Minister Frank Fahey. Mr Fahey praised the Ballymun man's honesty in admitting to drug-taking and said that he hoped it would help focus attention on the problem, and that that in itself was a step forward in combating the drug menace in international sport.

Criticism however came from friends and family of the top Irish riders and from a top cycling official. Sean Kelly's father-in-law, Dan Grant, criticised Kimmage for failing to state categorically if his three colleagues had been involved in drug-taking. 'He should have said yes or no,' said an angry Dan Grant.

A senior cycling official said that Kimmage had done Irish cycling no favours. 'He glossed over the fact that top riders like the three mentioned just wouldn't take any drugs because they are tested so often. Kelly was tested nearly every day in the last Tour de France – he just wouldn't risk it.'

The official admitted that drug-taking did go on, but claimed it was confined to a small group of second-rank professionals. He added that the image of cycling in this country would be tarnished by the affair, because the public could draw the wrong inferences from stories of drugs. 'The big guys just don't risk it and the amateurs wouldn't be bothered. It is just the second-string pros who are struggling to scrape a living who go in for it,' he said.

Frank Quinn, manager of Sean Kelly and Martin Earley said that while he didn't know if legal action was necessary, things were left unsaid on the
Late Late Show.

'The situation wasn't clarified,' he said. 'Paul Kimmage's story is depressing in a lot of places – he was professional for four years without winning a race.'

When I had finished reading, I was too stunned to be angry: not because the idiot who had written it had totally misrepresented the reason I had used amphetamines, not because the cowardly 'top' official had been allowed to spout his lies from behind a mask. I understood why Kelly's father-in-law was upset and why his manager had attempted to dismiss my story as that of a loser. What I didn't understand was the attitude of Stephen Roche. We were friends. We had always been friends. I had admired him since the age of twelve and had reflected that admiration in the book. I think my position with regard to Roche, Kelly and Martin Earley is clear enough, but let me restate it anyway. Nothing I wrote in this book should be read as an allegation against any of these riders. The reason I will not get into discussions about individuals is that, in what I am saying, it is not individuals who matter – what X or Y may have done – but the sport as a whole and the dangers it faces. Why should Stephen not understand this? Why hadn't he read it before racing off to his solicitor? What was he thinking of? Who was advising him?

Life was pretty tough over the next few weeks. Try as I did to leave the controversy behind me, there was no escape. It dominated my every day. It was a difficult period too for my family, but they never wavered in their support and there was no turning back. In July, my return to the Tour de France for the first time as a journalist loomed. I was dreading it.

A few weeks before the race, during the Criterium de Dauphine in June, Stephen Roche invited a journalist from
L'Equipe
into his bedroom one night, produced a copy of
Rough Ride
and began quoting selected excerpts. Had he opened the book on page one, I would have been delighted but Roche wasn't interested in the real story of the book. He couldn't seem to accept that the book was not about him. When I heard about this performance, I was more enraged than at any other time in my life. Because the book wasn't being published in France, I had relied on Roche to vouch for its integrity to my former team-mates. Instead, it looked as though he was putting the boot in. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it.

BOOK: Rough Ride
12.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Leader of the Pack by Francesca Hawley
Scorpio Invasion by Alan Burt Akers
Showers in Season by Beverly LaHaye
Rose In Bloom by Mia Michelle
Lily's Leap by Téa Cooper
Moth to a Flame by Antoinette, Ashley
Perception by Kim Harrington
Going the Distance by Julianna Keyes