Rough Ride (32 page)

11:45. I stop to take on supplies at the feeding station in Briançon and a reporter from the local radio station requests an interview. At first, I think he's made the approach because he knows I'm an ex-pro – you can tell from my race number – but it's soon pretty obvious that he thinks I'm a donkey.

'How have you found it so far?' he asks.

'
Très, très dur,'
I reply.

'Is this your first time to ride the L'Etape?'

'Yes,' I laugh. 'And it's definitely my last.'

13:45. I stop and buy a cold can of Coke on the summit of the Col du Lauteret. I've always utterly detested this climb and my tank is almost empty. I chew an energy bar and finish the Coke and decide I've had enough. There is no way I will make it to the summit of L'Alpe d'Huez. The plan is to enjoy the long descent to Le Bourg-d'Oisans and climb off. I've got a wife and kids to consider. And it's not as if I've anything to prove. No, I'm climbing off, my race is run. And I can't say that I've enjoyed it.

14:45. I've reached the outskirts of Le Bourg-d'Oisans and I'm looking skyward towards the ski resort perched on top of the mountain: L'Alpe d'Huez, the Mecca of cycling. As a boy, on training rides after school to the Hill of Howth, I must have won the stage a million times in my head. As a pro, it was never quite as much fun but even when you were on your knees, the sight and sound of that crowd was always a buzz.

At the final watering zone at the bottom of the climb I stop and consider my options. I'm thinking 'It's only thirteen kilometres . . . that's an hour and a half at worst.' I climb back on my bike, glance at my watch and begin the ramp to the first hairpin with one thought in my head: 'You sad bastard.'

15:45. I've covered the first nine hairpins at a painfully slow crawl. It's thirty-seven degrees. I'm starting to hallucinate. 'Why is toilet roll always white?' 'Why are there no black riders in the Tour?' 'Have I just been passed by a guy with one leg?' I stop and rest in shade by the side of the road – the first time in my life I've ever stopped on a climb. There are bodies scattered everywhere; most sitting on the crash barriers, some lying exhausted by the side of the road.

I resume the climb after a ten-minute break. I'm thirsty. The heat is stifling. I'm wondering how much more I can take before having a heart attack. What a strange irony that would be. The press room would piss themselves. I pedal for another five hairpins and decide to rest again. At the village of Huez, with four kilometres to go, I stop for a third time. I can see the finish now, three hairpins over my head. One more push should do it.

16:45. Did it. I cross the line and a guy removes the timing strap from my ankle. Another hands me a medal and says well done. These are the statistics of my ride. It has taken me 1 hour 57 minutes and 12 seconds to climb L'Alpe d'Huez and 8 hours, 52 minutes and 9 seconds to cover the 187 kilometres. I have finished 907th in my category (40-49 years old) and set the 2,635th best time.

Alain Prost and Steven Rooks have beaten me by almost two hours. The winner, twenty-one-year-old Blaise Sonnery, was an hour quicker still. I collect my rucksack from the baggage truck and sit down to change my clothes. On the opposite side of the road, a guy who has just finished is spewing his guts all over the pavement. There are more, lying in the medical tents on drips. They wanted to ride a mountain stage of the Tour; they wanted to live the dream and experience how it feels. And now they know.

Spent the day surfing the web and catching up on the weekend papers on the long drive west to get back to the Tour at Pau. Two items caught my attention: the first was an interview with David Millar in the
Observer,
the second was a poll on the
Velonews
website. The
Observer
interview was classic Millar. Ten days ago, on his return to racing after a two-year ban for doping, Millar sat at a press conference in Strasbourg and insisted that the sport was 'moving in the right direction'. 'What's happened in Spain was fantastic,' he said. 'The organised schematic doping is being eradicated,' he said. 'We need to get rid of the doctors,' he said.

Ten days later, he reveals to the
Observer
that he has been 'receiving advice' from Dr Luigi Cecchini, whose former clients include Tyler Hamilton (banned for blood doping), Jan Ullrich (under investigation in Spain) and Ivan Basso (also under investigation in Spain). Take a bow, David. Actions, as they say, speak louder than words.

The
Velonews
poll was not unrelated. For a week now this American magazine has been running a poll on their website: 'Is this a clean Tour de France?' Readers were invited to tick one of four boxes:

1. Yes, they're too scared now.

2. It's mostly clean.

3. No, they're just careful.

4. Wait and see.

Now as a rule I never pay much attention to these polls, particularly where the subject of doping is concerned, but this one kind of tickled and I decided to click on the results so far. Five per cent chose 1; twenty-six per cent chose 2; fifty per cent chose 3 and seven ten per cent chose 4. How would I vote? Well, after the result of Saturday's time-trial, I'm undecided between 1 and 3 but if you put a gun to my head I'd definitely pick 4. The mountains will tell us more.

Bradley Wiggins is not easy to love. He rarely responds to your text messages. He rarely stops for a chat. Offer him a deal in February to write for your newspaper and you can be sure that in March he will sign for someone else. I don't understand him. I can't figure him out. But there's something about him I really admire. I think he has figured this sport out.

In many ways he reminds me of Chris Eubank, the former middleweight boxing champion. Eubank has a higher profile than Brad and a greater sense of theatre but they are kindred spirits in their attitude to the jobs. This game can break you up. Don't put your health in danger. Do the best you can with your ability. Get out while you're ahead. Of course, you're always going to ship some damage . . .

I waited for Brad at the finish in Pau this afternoon and couldn't help wondering if he will hold out to Paris. The first mountain stage of the Tour can hurt like a kick in the crotch and he sounded pretty battered after the 190 kilometres from Cambo-les-Bains. 'The first climb was just mind-blowing,' he said. 'There was one stage when I thought "What am I doing here?"'

But he hasn't seen anything yet. Tomorrow's ride – over the Tourmalet, the Aspin, the Peyresourde, the Portillon and finishing with the Val d'Aran – is even tougher. Oh, and next week they enter the Alps. On Monday, as I was climbing the Izoard, I spotted Wiggins' name painted beside a Union Jack close to the summit. Hope he survives to see it.

Another race, another doping scandal but the magic of the Tour continues to enchant; hundreds of thousands drawn each day to catch a ten-second glimpse at the side of the road; millions abandoning lakesides and beaches to watch the final hour on TV. What's the attraction? How do you explain it?

The second day in the Pyrenees today, and as the riders were edging towards the summit of the Col du Tourmalet, we decided to break our journey ahead of the race at a small hotel in the town of Bordères-Louron. We ordered coffee and took a seat in the deserted restaurant but were soon drawn by the hum of a TV playing in another room. Curious, I followed the hum to the kitchen where the chef/proprietor, Gill Marsalle, and his elderly neighbour, Robert Correge, were watching the Tour on a small TV. Monsieur Correge explained that he has been a fan of the Tour since childhood and has watched many of its great champions – Robic, Coppi, Bobet, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, LeMond – race by his door. Even in his eightieth year his enthusiasm hadn't dimmed. He lit a cigarette and explained what was happening: four riders had crested the summit of the Tourmalet and were being chased on the descent to the valley by the former French champion, Thomas Voeckler. M. Correge checked the names of the breakaways on a small cardboard list. 'Voeckler is going better today,' he observed. 'Yesterday he really suffered.'

'What about all of the scandals and the doping?' I asked. 'Hasn't it made you love the Tour less?'

'It's everywhere,' he says with a shrug. 'Before they used to race for the love of it but now it's this.' He rubs his right thumb against his index finger.

'But you still watch?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'It's the Tour,' he says.

We drove on to the summit finish at Val d'Aran. I watched from my usual position in the press pen as three riders – Denis Menchov, Levi Leipheimer and Floyd Landis – broke clear and sprinted across the line. One of the great joys of covering the Tour is access to the riders and I was so close to Landis, the new race leader, that I could actually touch him. A helper handed him a bottle of water; he pulled off the top, took a swig and poured the rest over his head. He removed his jersey and towelled his sweat-covered chest; every fibre of his body was twitching. His American coach embraced him with tears in his eyes. Five television camera crews and at least a hundred hacks were wrestling for a comment before he was taken away to the podium. I was more interested in how he looked than anything he had to say; I scanned his arms and his legs and the crack of his ass; I was looking for needle-pricks and bruising, the telltale signs of a guy who knows the game. I reached for my pen and scribbled the following note in my pad: 'I would kill to interview Floyd Landis. He is one of the toughest athletes in sport and his background is fascinating. I want to tell the world your story, Floyd. But how can I be sure that what I am seeing is real? How can I be sure that I won't be betrayed?'

A funny thing happened after the Etape on Monday. I was sitting on the terrace of a quaint restaurant near Grenoble, complaining to my wife about the miserable day I'd had, when I noticed these cheery Londoners sitting at an adjoining table. David Lewin and Simon Oliver had just completed the Etape and were reliving the adventure with Simon's father-in-law, John Baker.

I pulled up a chair and we got chatting for a while and it quickly transpired that we had something in common: we were all the same age, none of us had shaved our legs and we'd all climbed the 'Alp' in similar states of agony. We also agreed that we would never attempt it again. This morning David sent me an email.

'The agony of the last two hours spent on the Alp has been forgotten, permission from the wife for next year's Etape has been granted and planning a new training regime is about to begin. My God our memories are short. I swore to myself a million times struggling up that mountain – never again. What about you? Have you changed your mind yet?' I laughed. Sad bastards.

They say confession is good for the soul so here is mine: three weeks ago, I arrived on the Tour with no interest in the favourites or who was going to win but I've changed my mind. This race is starting to grab me. Today's twelfth stage – the longest of the race – was a draining 230 kilometre sweat-fest from Béziers to Montelimar. In a normal Tour, it should have been a day for the sprinters when nothing much happens, but this Tour hasn't been normal since we left Strasbourg.

First, the game's two superstars – Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso – are kicked out of the race after being implicated in Operation Puerto. Then, rumours of a second doping list begin to circulate; suddenly several of the 'kings' who survived the first cull are performing like drones.

We've had six different leaders since the start in Strasbourg and only two minutes separate the top five riders as we exit the Pyrenees. The French, who've been ridiculed and abused by the dopers for years, are suddenly winning stages and competing again. Is this a clean Tour de France? Certainly not but it's cleaner than it was and I like a lot of what I see.

The surprises continued this afternoon when Oscar Pereiro, a twenty-eight-year-old Spaniard who was forty-sixth this morning and a whopping twenty-eight minutes adrift of the leader, Floyd Landis, slipped into an early breakaway that forged a massive lead and became the seventh yellow jersey of the race. Every day brings a new twist. Crazy. Fascinating.

Two weeks ago, during the first stages of the race, I had a call from a friend in London. He had been reading
Rough Ride
and had just got to the diary I wrote about the Tour in 1986. 'I've reached stage fifteen in Nimes,' he said, 'and the bit where you sneak out of the hotel after dinner to buy an ice cream.'

'Remind me,' I replied.

'Okay, you're talking about your body sweating all the time and not being able to sleep . . . Then you say "After dinner I went out for an ice cream with Clavet, Castaing and Dede . . . It was good fun, but irritating to watch the holidaymakers enjoying themselves in the bars and cafes . . . . How many times have we cycled by lakeshores crammed with people enjoying themselves? . . . Is it worth it?"'

'Yes,' I said, 'I remember thinking that.'

'Do you think any of these guys feel the same?' he asked.

'Not at the moment,' I replied. 'The first week of the Tour is a massive buzz; it's only during the second week when the race reaches the mountains that reality starts to bite. Then the third week arrives and it's harder than anything you've ever experienced; your digestive system can't cope; your immune system breaks down. That's when you start thinking about ice cream and asking yourself questions.'

This evening, after another tough stage to Gap, I decided to check the list of the sick and mortally wounded as the race entered its final week:

(138) Verbrugghe (Cofidis team). Crashed after 141 kilometres; fracture of the left thigh; severe cuts and bruising; evacuated immediately to hospital in Gap.

(142) Canada (Saunier-Duval team). Crashed after 141 kilometres; fracture of the right collarbone; evacuated immediately to hospital in Gap.