Rough Ride (21 page)

The last stage was a seventy-mile loop around the streets of Dublin, to be televised live by RTE. The stage passed five miles from Coolock, where I had grown up as a kid, and the highlight of the day was the three laps around the beautiful Howth Head. I have always loved Howth Head. When I was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy with a head full of dreams I would train around it three times a week with my pal, Martin Earley. We dreamed on that hill. It was the Alpe d'Huez or the Galibier or the Tourmalet and we were Merckx and Thevenet and Van Impe. As we lined up for the start, Martin turned to Kelly and said, 'Watch Kimmage today.' The flag dropped and I had but one aim: no one, but no one, was going to beat me over Howth Head.

Because of the live television coverage, attacks started from the gun and the first loop in south side Dublin was really fast. By the time we crossed the Liffey the first selection had already been made and I was part of a forty-man leading group. I knew something was going to give as we dashed out along the seafront at Clontarf – it was just a matter of choosing the right attack. When Allan Peiper took off with Pascal Poisson, I didn't hesitate. These were two drivers, two strong men. I jumped across. We rode really hard, and I had a lead of about a minute approaching Howth harbour. We swung left up through the village and started the climb. There was a great crowd all the way up and I was cheered like I had never been cheered in my life. The cheers sent goose-pimples all over my body, and I didn't feel the pedals. I went to the front at the bottom and stayed there until we reached the summit. I was first over the Head. Vallet drove up alongside for the first time on the descent. He told me I was doing too much work and should ease up. I nodded in agreement but immediately forgot his orders. He was absolutely right. I was riding too hard, but he didn't understand. This was Howth. This was part of me. Nothing else mattered.

We completed three laps of the Head and headed east, and then south towards the finish in the city centre. I started to feel the pinch with twenty miles to go. We were joined by two Fagor riders, Sean Yates and John Carlsen. They were riding like trains, and immediately I knew there was no way we could be caught. On the run into the city centre Vallet drove up and told me to do some 'talking' to try and win the stage. I approached Sean, who was a good friend, and asked him if he was interested in doing a deal. He never answered me, so I understood that to mean 'No'. I wasn't surprised. Yates and Peiper were great mates. I knew they would be working together so I didn't bother talking to Carlsen or Poisson. I was knackered when we got on to the circuit. Peiper broke clear and won on his own. I was fifth, but the television exposure had made me a hero. I was interviewed after the stage and next day on a popular radio programme.

Dublin was my last race for RMO. Of my three years with the team the first two under Thevenet are the ones I will remember most. If Stephen hadn't rescued me I'm sure I'd have left the sport very, very, bitter; but joining a new team, Fagor, changed all that, and I could afford to be nostalgic.

It had always been my ambition to ride for at least one year on the same team as Kelly or Roche. By finding a place for me at Fagor, Stephen had saved my career. But I would never have accepted a place if I hadn't believed that I could be of some service to him. I wanted to survive on my own merit and didn't want to spend the rest of my cycling days feeding off Roche's generosity. To succeed I needed a good winter and I spent it in France. I was determined not to make the mistakes of the previous year, so I set myself a strict training schedule involving diet, weights, jogging and mountain biking. Ann and I returned to Dublin for two weeks at Christmas. I was careful not to eat too much and continued to train hard. During our two-week stay I met the editor of the
Sunday Tribune,
Vincent Browne. To my great surprise, he offered me a job with the paper. I tried not to show it, but I was secretly delighted. I had to refuse, however. I just didn't have the confidence to write full time and I wanted to devote just one last year completely to the bike. But I was delighted he had asked me. The thought of one day going into journalism excited me. At last I had an escape route. It would be easier now to accept the hardship and suffering, knowing that at the end of it all I could find a good job. I returned to France very pleased.

I trained hard in January. One morning I was out early in the suburbs of Grenoble. There was an icy fog and it was freezing cold. I came across a Ford transit van driving slowly in the opposite direction. It was painted black and had black glass on its two sides. It took a few seconds for me to realise it was a hearse. There was a coffin inside and two people followed behind in a car. The scene chilled me to the bones. I decided there and then to leave the country as soon as my career as a bike rider was over. I didn't want to die in this place, to be brought to my resting place in a clapped-out old Ford with just two people crying over me. My family and friends were in Ireland. As soon as it was over I would return there.

I met up with Fagor for a training camp at the end of the month. It was a very weak team. Most of the good riders had left after disagreements with the team's management. My old RMO team-mates Regis Simon and Vincent Lavenu had also found jobs here so the ambience wasn't too bad. We rode six hours on our first spin and I was pretty knackered when it was over. Next day I was stuck to the road and turned home after just two hours. I felt drained and run-down. When I went for massage that night, the
soigneur
asked me if I wanted to take a B
₁₂
injection. I did. Silvano Davo was Italian. He had looked after Stephen at Carerra and had left with Stephen for Fagor. He was temperamental, as only Italians can be, but I liked him and was confident he would never give me any illegal medicaments or shit. Normally I would take my first vitamin injection three months into the season, but, damn it, I needed it. So I took it and next day felt much better. While at the training camp I roomed with Stephen. It was great. I enjoyed being Roche's man, and wanted to be at his side at all times. I was surprised he wasn't sharing a room with Eddy Schepers, his loyal lieutenant of three years. Eddy was a rider of class, in his own right, and he was very level-headed and straight. I liked him.

On the last evening of the training camp a group of Belgian tourists sat down at the table next to us. As soon as they realised they were sitting with Stephen Roche they started pestering us. One fellow in particular was obnoxious. He was drunk and smoking like a trooper. I couldn't understand Stephen talking to them all night. When he came up to the room I asked him about it.

'Why didn't you tell them to fuck off?'

And he laughed.

'Paul, you just can't turn round and tell people to fuck off. And anyway did you see the big tanned guy? That was the Mexican Pancho Rodriguez, a former world middleweight champ. He's the Belgians' bodyguard.'

'Jaysus, just as well I kept my mouth shut.'

Next day we drove to Aries for the first race of the season. We were staying in the same hotel as RMO, and instinctively I found myself going to their list pinned to the wall beside the lift and examining it to see who was sharing with who. Clavet was sharing with Ribeiro, Colotti was sharing with a new guy, Gilles Sanders. I paid a call to his room but as usual he was spaced out, his head up in the clouds, his mind already on the following day's race – Colotti loved racing. My first race with Fagor went off much better than I expected even though I didn't finish. It wasn't my fault: a bolt in my handlebars came loose near the finish and I was forced to stop. The second race was more disappointing. I relaxed too much near the end of it and got left behind when a crosswind split the bunch to bits.

After the second race, the team split into two. Half were to spend the month racing in the south of France, the others were returning to their homes for a week and then flying to Venezuela and Miami for a stage race, the Tour of the Americas. Stephen was crossing the Atlantic, and as I was now part of his baggage I too was selected to travel. Before leaving I had a week back in Grenoble. David phoned me from the
Sunday Tribune
and asked me how the opening races had gone. He suggested that I do a weekly diary for the paper over the whole season. I hesitated. If I had won the two opening races of the year, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have turned him down. But I had made more sacrifices at Christmas than in any other year, I had trained harder than in any other winter, I had even taken a vitamin injection in the run-up to the race. And for what? I had abandoned the two opening races of the season. The writing was on the wall for me. As a pro cyclist I was Mr Bloody Average. Also-rans were nothing in this game, they are nothing in this world. You don't see too many sporting greats in dole queues, but they are often full of queuing also-rans. Writing a weekly column might open a few doors in journalism. It might keep me from the dole queue. I agreed.

It didn't take me long to start questioning my commitment to writing a weekly column for the
Sunday Tribune.
The first 'diary' was a piece of cake, 500 words on the opening races in the south of France, which I sent back by reading it over the phone. It was more difficult in Venezuela. I had never been to South America and had, on just two occasions, been to countries where bidets and telephones were not ordinary instruments of daily life. Venezuela was ghastly. The capital, Caracas, exuded wealth, but ten miles into the suburbs I witnessed the most incredible poverty. The residential areas were acres of tin-roofed and, in some cases walled, sheds that a 'civilised' Western man would not use for a lavatory. I saw young kids with no clothing, just a piece of sack-cloth to cover them. It made me wonder about the morality of being paid to race a bicycle while people lived in squalor.

Riding a bike wasn't easy here. The streets were covered in oil, making them dirty and incredibly slippery in the wet. Petrol was cheaper than water, and it was more economical to let a leaking tank drip than to have it repaired. Election posters littered walls and shop windows. The candidates' names pushed their credibility to the limit. How can people seriously vote for a man called 'El Tigre'? There were dead dogs everywhere, and the vile smell of rotting carcasses choked the lungs and made me want to puke. The dreadful scenes moved me and I wanted to write about them. Writing about it wasn't a problem, but trying to send it home was a nightmare. Our hotel had no direct lines, so phoning it back was out of the question. Our team interpreter informed me there was a fax machine in the press room. I knew nothing about fax machines and was unsure that a handwritten document could be sent. But it was worth a try, so I gave him a copy and he sent it off.

The first stage of the race was a long road stage from Valencia to Caracas. The second was a criterium up and down one of the principal boulevards of the capital and the third a circuit race in Maracay. The first two days went well: I was riding, dare I say it, averagely. The third stage was to have been a circuit race, but as we lined up waiting for the off I noticed a group of protesters blocking the road ahead. It was totally chaotic but the tense atmosphere provided the backbone for the piece I wrote for the
Sunday Tribune.

Professional cycling races have, in recent times, become an easy target for the demonstrator looking for publicity for his cause. Paris-Nice, the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia, all have suffered at the protests of striking miners, of about to be laid off ship builders, of struggling farmers.

The demonstrations are an accepted nuisance that an unlucky race organiser must face. He will listen, sympathise with their problems and do almost anything to get them off the road.

When a bunch of students blocked the road three hundred metres from the start line at Maracay on the third day of the 'Tour de los Americas', nobody noticed. But then the fire started . . . The long finishing straight was adjoined by a huge field full of high grasses and scorched weeds. These weeds were only too accommodating as the students lit their matches and a huge fire rapidly spread.

A fire engine arrived. The firemen started hosing down the flames and soon had the initial section under control. But when it came to reversing to follow the direction of the fire, the thirty-year-old truck broke down and we were treated to the ridiculous sight of the truck being pushed down the road by the embarrassed firemen and a handful of spectators.

Race director Germain Blanco decided that the time had come to do a deal. The students were protesting about the death of a young Caracas student at the hands of the local police the day before. Signor Blanco assured them that their protest had been noted, then asked them to clear the road. The students thought about it. They decided to kidnap him.

We had been standing on the start line for fifteen minutes. No one knew what was going on. The fire engine breaking down gave us all a great laugh, but there was no sign of a replacement and we watched as the huge orange flames grew closer and listened as the students' protests grew louder. And for the first time I started to feel uncomfortable.

Stephen (Roche) was standing talking to Fabio Parra when one of the bikini-clad promotion girls walked by. He took out his feeding bottles and playfully squirted some water at her. He missed.

There was a young police officer standing facing the crowd three feet in front of them. The cold water hit him on the back of the neck. The water hit a panic button in his brain that made him draw the four-foot-long butcher's knife he was wearing and turn to face his aggressor.

Stephen saw the anger in the man's face and the sword in his hand. His mouth dropped. Parra, a Spanish-speaking Colombian, quickly gave an explanation to the confused cop. The bomb was defused but the tension remained . . . Most of the riders then abandoned the start line. Some climbed on to the roofs of their team cars to try and get a better view. The second fire engine still hadn't arrived as the flames blazed, rapidly approaching the large metal fence that separated the field from the road – and us.

And then the rats started running.

Out under the fence they ran, big ones, small ones, dirty ones. Their ship, a weedy field, was sinking and as is their great tradition they were deserting. Not all of them made it to safety. Some were crushed by cars, others had their heads stood on by amused spectators – hard men, these Venezuelans.

And then the rocks started flying.

The students pelted the line of riot police facing them with anything they could get their hands on. This was the final straw. The organisers, still minus their race director, cancelled the stage.

We were ordered on our bikes and it was decided that we ride the fifty kilometres back to the hotel. So we left that place and the angry young men. They had won. But as I rode out of the town I wondered at the price they would have to pay.

The peloton were in a jovial mood as we rode back to the hotel: 'It was good of those students to give us the day off.'

One guy even suggested putting them on the flight to Miami so they could do the same there.

All through the protest the jokes and wisecracks were flying. No one seemed to give a damn that the students were risking their lives 300 metres in front of them. This attitude disturbs me, for I too am guilty.

And there was of course the ride back to the hotel. How many noticed the barefooted sackcloth-knickered kids that lined the road? How many give a damn? Do I? I don't know. All this disturbs me. I don't feel comfortable here, and all of a sudden bike racing seems so trivial, so wasteful. I will be happy to leave.

Tomorrow we fly to Miami for two more races. Ah, Miami. Former Olympic champion Alexi Grewal calls it the sin capital of the world. It's full of rich people and lovely women and sandy beaches. I can't wait.

I liked the piece. It gave me a huge buzz of satisfaction. Of having hit the button, done it right. It was definitely better than average and this is what pleased me most. Perhaps I did have a future in journalism.

Miami was clean and sunny and lovely. There was a different smell here, money. Miami reeked of wealth. I hated it. It came too quickly after Venezuela, and the culture shock was too brutal for my conscience to bear.

I returned to Europe in good physical condition, but was still left off the team for Paris-Nice. I didn't mind too much, and tried to train as hard as I could at home during the week-long race. My next race was to have been the French classic Mauleon-Moulin (a Grand Prix des Chaudières) but on the day before I was due to leave I received a most disturbing phone call. It was the team doctor, Monsieur Navarro. During Paris-Nice I had flown to Toulouse Hospital to do some medical tests for the team. Dr Navarro was ringing me with the results. They had found an abnormality in my heartbeat and prohibited me from racing at Mauleon.

'It might be nothing at all or it might mean you have to give up cycling.'

I was shocked and quite frightened. Three days later I returned to Toulouse for more tests. A tape recorder that monitored heartbeats was strapped to my chest for twenty-four hours, and the results were fed into a computer and analysed by the doctors. The result – nothing. They had made a mistake, there was nothing wrong with me. I was delighted: for more than a week I had been fully convinced I was going to snuff it prematurely. But then I became angry. I had not touched the bike for nine days, had not raced for three weeks and was not due to race for another two. I was back to square one. The sacrifices I had made all winter, the benefits I had acquired from racing hard in Venezuela, were now all for nothing. And all because some stupid doctor couldn't read a computer correctly. I could have cried. I did.

I don't know how I kept my sanity as I struggled to regain good physical shape. My weekly articles for the
Sunday Tribune
certainly helped. So too did the encouragement of a phone call from Stephen. But the most helpful of all was my
directeur sportif,
Patrick Valke. Fagor, like most teams, had two
directeurs sportifs.
Pierre Bazzo, an ex-pro, was the principal
directeur,
while Patrick Valke was the assistant. Patrick and Stephen go back a long way. For seven years Patrick was his mechanic, but during the Giro of 1987 the roles changed. The wars with Visentini split the Carrera team into two camps. Stephen had just two men in his, Eddy Schepers and Patrick Valke. Eddy helped him on the road, but Patrick took over as
directeur sportif
of the two-man team and they won. When Fagor came looking for his signature later that year, one of the stipulations of the contract was that Patrick be made
directeur sportif.

Patrick's greatest fault in his new job was his lack of diplomacy. With Patrick, a spade was always a spade. But some of the management at Fagor didn't take kindly to being addressed as spades, and half-way through the year he was sacked. The man he had replaced, Pierre Bazzo, was brought back and the Roche-Valke tandem spent the last four months of the year trying to find a way out of their marriage with the Basque electrical appliance firm. Contracts are signed to be honoured. Stephen needed a team, and Fagor were unable to find a leader of Roche's calibre and both parties decided to bury the hatchet and try again in 1989. Patrick was reinstated as
directeur,
but this time as assistant to Bazzo. This created one major problem – they hated each other. Splitting the team into two at the start of the year was a blessing in disguise. Bazzo and Valke never saw each other, and for a while the union seemed to work.

I started the year under Bazzo with an open mind. It didn't last. After the 'heart' incident, I badly needed racing, but Bazzo didn't want to know. I formed the impression that he would have left me at home until the end of the season; that he didn't rate me and wasn't prepared to give me a fair trial. One of the team mechanics told me he used to insult me, and others on the team, behind our backs. True or not, the revelation turned me completely against him. After that, I never phoned him for information, and our conversations never extended beyond 'hello' and 'goodbye', and even that was an effort.

Thank God I had Patrick. He arranged for me to race in Belgium and was very encouraging. My form was terribly slow in coming at first, but the racing got me going and gradually I started feeling better. The four days of Dunkirk were my first real stage race of the year. Stephen won a stage and finished third overall, and his form was so good he decided to have a go at the Tour of Italy. I had never ridden a 'Giro' before and asked Patrick for a place in the team; Italy would be make or break. A good performance would put me in the Tour team, a bad ride would mean the end. I wanted to push myself to the limits one more time to see if I could do it. On Friday 19 May we flew to Palermo, Sicily.