Read We Were Young and Carefree Online
Authors: Laurent Fignon
We Were Young and Carefree (14 page)
There you have it. It was signed and sealed by one of the great and the good. I had just plucked the most coveted flower in the garden of world cycling. It smelled so fine that it felt like a rose with no thorns. It was a rare privilege: like Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx and Hinault I had won the Tour at my first attempt. I had fulfilled the objectives I had set before the start: I’d won a stage, taken the white jersey of best young rider to Paris and finished in the first ten overall.
This was how far my youthful passion had driven me: to a glitttering place high among the legends. What a feeling.
CHAPTER 13
THE DARK SIDE
It’s part of human nature that you see the best in everything. But when reality turns out to be greater than you might have imagined, you run a serious risk: you can believe you are a master of the universe.
After the Champs-Elysées stage at the end of the 1983 Tour de France I went through a spell when I was completely over the top. I didn’t realise that the ecstatic feeling of being recognised for what you had achieved had a bad side as well as a good one. I never wondered about it. Anyway, there is no way to prepare a man of twenty-two for the effect of riding up the most beautiful avenue in the world crowned with the ‘triumph of triumphs’, after winning the event that is the dream of every cyclist in the world – not just the French. Cyrille Guimard could have advised me and put me on my guard. With a few simple, friendly words he could have kept me from a few little displays which were totally out of character for me. But apart from devising tactics and understanding a race, Guimard was not a confidant who could get under someone else’s skin. I would have to learn for myself: that was how I liked it anyway.
That evening, at Renault’s post-race party, Bernard Hinault turned up. The greatest French champion since Jacques Anquetil had not been able to show what he was capable of in the race and I was almost fearful of meeting him. But not once did I think I had ‘taken his place’ or ‘stolen’ anything from anyone. You don’t choose the circumstances in which you race. No one, in 1983, would have dreamed of trampling on Bernard Hinault; on the contrary. In 1980 he had abandoned at Pau while wearing the yellow jersey and that had not prevented him from coming back and riding as strongly as before. I myself was to go through a long lay-off due to an injury two years later, and Hinault would be the beneficiary. While we’re here, let’s ask the question: would he have won his fifth Tour in 1985 if I had been there? In the same way, would I have won the 1983 race if he had started?
On 24 July 1983, the Badger looked as if his suit was too small for him. He seemed distracted, his mind elsewhere, as if he was barely involved in the party. He looked distant, from the three-week race that had just taken place without him, and from cycling in a wider sense. He kept looking away, all the time. It was nothing to do with me; he was following Guimard’s every move, as if he was wary of him and wanted to keep out of his reach. Seeing him looking so unhappy – the four-times Tour winner, the man of granite celebrated for the strength of his character and the brute force of his deeds – I understood immediately that there was no prospect of what everyone feared, which was a fight between the pair of us for leadership of the team. Everything in his demeanour led me to believe that his and Guimard’s impending divorce was set in stone. He no longer looked like part of the Renault team. The Breton knew already that he was moving to another squad – but which one?
As soon as he saw me, his body language was warm. He came over to congratulate me as if he was my elder brother, coming out with words that perfectly suited the occasion. ‘I knew you could do it, you deserved it’ and so on. I can’t tell whether he was pleased that I had won – I wouldn’t presume to think that – but nothing in what he said or did made me believe the opposite. I’ve already said that, apart from a silly incident in that year’s Tour of Spain, Hinault had never had any reason to complain about me. In fact it was the other way round. He was well aware of this, and that showed in the hearty welcome he had just given me.
No, I could sense something else in Hinault: he was already looking ahead to the battles he would soon have on the road against Guimard’s riders. Not just riders in the Renault jersey, but the men who were trademarked ‘Guimard’. It was written all over his face: everything about him now rejected his old mentor. When he became aware that Guimard was in the room it was amazing to see how in a fraction of a second the Badger went back to being a tight-lipped, watchful Breton. His square jaw seemed to be chewing on his unhappiness. The pair of them clearly could no longer stand each other. I guessed that there must be a lot behind this: arguments, differences, altercations. I was light years away from imagining that one day I too would go through the same vicious process with Guimard.
But let’s go back to that fantastic, victorious evening. I have to confess one thing: the party at the Tour de l’Armor was small beer compared with what I experienced that night. ‘The worse for wear’ hardly does my state justice. A red-top writer might have scribbled ‘Laurent Fignon was totally out of it.’ What else was I going to do? After the final award ceremony, after the collective feeling of joy within the team and the accolades of the public, I drank, I danced and celebrated as much as my body could stand and we did everything we needed to ensure we didn’t slow down before bedtime.
The whole team ended up dancing on a pleasureboat in the Seine. I went through my first experience of ‘celebrity’. I was a bit drunk and without even noticing I ended up in the arms of a gorgeous girl during a slow dance. Of course, we’d never met before. Nothing special happened, except that the next morning on the front page of
France-Soir
the whole country saw a photo which immortalised the brief encounter, with the headline: ‘The winner of the Tour de France relaxes with his fiancée.’
France-Soir
the whole country saw a photo which immortalised the brief encounter, with the headline: ‘The winner of the Tour de France relaxes with his fiancée.’
The only thing was that we weren’t engaged. At the time, my fiancée was called Nathalie and she was to become my first wife. Nathalie worked for Radio France and we had kept our relationship a secret to avoid her having problems in her work. That was why she hadn’t been at the party. I hardly need to tell you that she woke me up with a phone call in which she screamed down the line, ‘Who was that tart?’ I barely even remember the dance, let alone the girl.
After that famous night, I barely had any time to savour my success, or to rest and reflect. A Tour de France winner, especially a French one, has a debt to his people and the cycling world was waiting expectantly for me in the criteriums. I think I rode twenty-five on the trot. Obviously, as the ‘rules’ stipulated, I won a fair few of them. And I earned a good deal in appearance money.
I liked the atmosphere. The criteriums were a sort of continuation of the after-Tour party which suddenly went on another month. You finished the race, and in the evening, as tradition demanded, you picked up where you had left the previous night’s festivities. It was stimulating but tiring. The ascetic life of a sportsman competing at the highest level doesn’t really fit in with letting it all hang out in nightclubs.
It took me a while to work out why there have been so few French world champions in cycling history. Back then the world title was run at the end of August or the start of September, and not at the end of September as it is now. After a month travelling from one criterium to another, barely sleeping and knocking back a drink or two to keep everyone company, the French riders – who were in greater demand for the criteriums than the foreigners – were worn out. After riding the criterium circuit I would be almost more tired than after the Tour, which is saying something.
In addition, I was faced with the dark side of glory, partly because of riding all these criteriums where the organisers make any successful riders feel even more like megastars. It was the shadowy face of the shining light. After the Champs-Elysées all that happened for several weeks was one long victory parade. For a long time I couldn’t see the difference between the winner of the Tour (the one that all the people wanted to glorify) and the Laurent Fignon who was somewhere inside him – the true me. While the Tour winner kept playing the part to the point of caricature, the Fignon ‘inside’ withdrew into a persona that was no longer anything like him.
I didn’t do anything serious, compared to how others have behaved in similar circumstances. Let’s just say it all went to my head. I began to behave like a guy who looks down a bit on everyone. You know, the sort of bloke who’s made it to the top and reminds everyone of it in every word and deed, in case they might have forgotten. I put ridiculous demands on people, said things I shouldn’t have said. I thought the world revolved around me, and I have to admit: you come to a point where you genuinely believe that. People kept asking me to do things, and I was ferried here there and everywhere. You are constantly made to feel you are the centre of things, so you begin to think that way.
It was ridiculous, it was vulgar, and it was lousy for my self-respect.
The way other people looked at me had changed as well. It was worrying. Everyone looked so appreciative. When I saw a cyclist looking at me, I knew he was jealous; when I caught a glance from a woman, I imagined she must fancy me. All I would have to do was snap my fingers. My feet were no longer on the ground: I had flipped over into a parallel universe. I could have stayed there.
The whole thing is smoke and mirrors. I was never the centre of the world, but at most – and only for a few days – the centre of the cycling world. In the minds of some of those close to me, I must have become totally impossible for a while. One day, the Dutchman Gerrie Knetemann, who had been world champion in 1978, said to me: ‘After I took the title my head swelled, really swelled, believe me. It was perfectly understandable, but what is not normal is if your head stays like that.’
You are the best. The strongest. You can ask for things. Demand that things be done. Just for fun. You just have to want it.
When I began to pull my head out of the sand and open my eyes the whole thing horrified me. I felt truly pathetic. My pride had been completely misplaced. It had been the pride of a little upstart, a little twat. It was rubbish. I am ashamed to look back on it.
How long did it go on for? I’d say a month, not much more. For some guys, it lasts the rest of their lives: I escaped the worst at any rate. In my defence, I’d call in my close friends: the way I behaved towards them hadn’t budged a centimetre. Nothing whatsoever had changed between me and Julot, for example. He was my closest friend. I was happy; he was happy for me; and I was happy to feel that he was happy. Nothing and no one could spoil the way we felt.
There was a good side to winning the Tour: I now felt completely relaxed in the way I raced.
I had gone over a threshold and become a different sportsman. It was like being a lone sailor going round Cape Horn, or a top climber going over 25,000 feet without oxygen. It was obvious as soon as I began training again. It was a fabulous feeling. It was as if the aura of that victory had ended up instilling all its vital force in every pedal stroke I took. My physical confidence was so high that everything seemed straightforward. Just after the criteriums ended I won the third stage in the Tour du Limousin, just for fun. I had rediscovered the feeling of pleasure that cycling gave me. Racing for its own sake, for the hand-to-hand combat, the whiff of a fight. That’s the beauty of cycling: you have to be constantly up there. I could never have done athletics, or focused on being good every four years for the Olympics. An appalling notion.
And because I was back to my previous self, the Route du Berry gave me a nice chance to remind everyone I was still there. It was a race that no one took seriously. We would know every year that there was never any dope control; there’s no point saying that a lot of the boys were full of amphetamines and some pushed it too far. One of them was so wired and unaware of what he was doing that he kept jumping his bike onto the pavement without braking. He wasn’t the only one. That year, only twenty-one riders finished the race. I abandoned and as I got to the finish pretty early, with the help of a few other riders I made a fake notice that was fixed prominently to a local building: ‘
Controle Medicale
’.
Controle Medicale
’.
It was right after the finish, so when the riders crossed the line, they couldn’t miss it. It had the desired effect. It was quite a sight: the boys were completely spooked. It was panic all round. It was delicious. We giggled for hours.
CHAPTER 14
WEARING THE BOSS’S TROUSERS
There is no point in possessing a body at a peak of physical development, no use having muscles full of energy unless the whole unit is at one with the mind. Sometimes, the messages transmitted by your body are contradictory: you have to keep them to yourself. You can suffer in secret, in the same way that you can revel in absolute dominance without the slightest scream of triumph.
At the end of the 1983 season at the Montjuich hill climb in Barcelona, a cycle tourist coming the other way down the road ran straight into me. It was a head-on collision which could have cost me dearly. I broke my hand but still finished the race. Two weeks later I had already forgotten it. Pain is nothing if you accept it as something which is just there, rather than thinking about the implications.
At twenty-three, well able to make myself suffer and thirsty for new experiences, I began the 1984 season as team leader. Bernard Hinault had gone off to pastures new. Initially, however, close observers of the sport must have wondered what was going on. ‘What’s happened to the Tour winner?’ they must have asked. The cold weather, my worst enemy, had got the better of me again. I contracted a vicious sinusitis, forcing me to forget the Critérium International and to abandon in Milan–San Remo and Tirreno–Adriatico.
Other books
The Orion Plan by Mark Alpert
Tracking Time by Leslie Glass
Touch the Stars by Pamela Browning
Hugo! by Bart Jones
If My Heart Could See You by , Sherry Ewing
Betting My Bride: A Hotwife Novel by Lexi Archer
El origen perdido by Matilde Asensi
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Lethal Engagement (An Unbounded Novella) by Teyla Branton
Evacuee Boys by John E. Forbat
