We Were Young and Carefree (23 page)
Read We Were Young and Carefree Online
Authors: Laurent Fignon
As for me, thanks to my pride, my legs seemed to be functioning again, more or less. Then I lost my temper with those blasted pulse monitors: I handed mine back so that it wouldn’t tell me anything more. That seemed to work. The next day, at l’Alpe d’Huez, I came sixth and the day after I won a prestigious stage at La Plagne, even though I remember I was actually trying to save my strength. So perhaps I didn’t deserve to be completely shelled out of the back of the bunch on the Tour after all. Even though I felt pretty ropey, I still rode into Paris in seventh overall, with a deficit of eighteen minutes: more or less the total of what I had lost in the various time-trial stages. My consistency in the mountains did have some meaning. Two or three days after the Champs-Elysées, ensconced safely in my sofa, I began to question seriously whether I had the capacity to win the Tour again one day.
The end of the 1987 season brought some more answers which pushed me further into the depths. At the Tour of Catalonia Guimard lagged behind everyone when it came to getting the team organised, because we needed the charitable assistance of other teams to meet our equipment needs – the crowning glory for what was supposed to be ‘the best team in France’. Afterwards I suffered a memorable slap in the face at the Grand Prix des Nations, which I had carefully underlined in my year planner. It was the end of the season and just this once, as a means of plumbing new depths, I tested a new drug which was supposed to be ‘fantastic’. Other guys had tried it out with great success. I succumbed to temptation and took the easy way out. Fortunately I had an unbearable headache. I went nowhere, my legs simply wouldn’t move. I never tried it again. The moral is clear: the weaker you are mentally, the easier it is to show your weak side. I was no longer going down into the depths merely in a cycling sense: I was exploring the lowest dregs of my personality, my inner being.
Who on earth was I now? The more I bailed out, the more my personal boat seemed to take on water. I wasn’t really there any more: the talent I had been born with was no longer sufficient to fool anyone. I was vulnerable, at the mercy of any temptation. Let’s be serious, and honest. If I had not been called Laurent Fignon, if I hadn’t already won two Tours de France, if I had been less high-minded and had a weaker character, I could have descended into who knows what idiocy, and I could have sold my soul to some witch doctor peddling magic potions. I’ve known plenty of riders who have resorted to doping, drugs or alcohol and have ended up falling by the wayside and losing everything: dignity, self-respect, wife, children, family.
My friend Pascal Jules, on the other hand, would not have time to enjoy a full life, nor to take his foot from the accelerator. A car accident had cut him down in his prime, just after I had convinced Guimard that he needed to get him back in the fold. Julot had been to a charity soccer match. Everyone had had too much to drink. They were all well gone. Julot had said to me: ‘You’ll see, I’ll die young. I won’t get past thirty.’ It was such a dumb thing to say, but that night, he fell asleep at the wheel.
Guimard called me in the early hours. I went into shock. For years and years I thought of him every day, and I still often think of him. But since his funeral I’ve been unable to visit his grave. I simply don’t have the strength. I can’t do it.
The way every life ends is unique in itself, like the end of a little world. Death at twenty-six years of age is a notion that I find unbearable.
CHAPTER 24
PRIMEVAL YELL
You could call it the revenge of the damned. It was a sort of redemption, but I don’t know from what or who. Mostly, it was the slow, patient story of how I regained my powers, and I owe it mainly to Alain Gallopin.
As soon as 1987 drew to a close, Alain was the one who began drumming a single idea into my head: I might be able to win Milan–San Remo. To start with, to be honest, I found this idea a bit bonkers. Since the start of my career, apart from the Flèche Wallonne that I had already won, I had always felt that I had a decent chance one day of winning Liège–Bastogne–Liège or Paris–Roubaix (failing to win either of them, along with the world title, is the biggest regret I now have). But never, never in the slightest had I seen myself as a possible winner on the Italian Riviera. But Gallopin had begun to know me inside out, my strong points as well as my defects; he had thought it through completely and never stopped going on about it. He had all the arguments at his fingertips. For example, he knew as well as I did that it would take a long, long race for my stamina to be a real advantage. Milan–San Remo was 294km long at the time, the longest race on the calendar, and it called for above average endurance. In addition, a possible winner needed to be able to make several intense efforts in the final ten kilometres, when the race went over the Poggio climb, just before the finish. Gallopin kept repeating: ‘That race is made for you.’
Until Milan–San Remo, the way I’d started the 1988 season hadn’t been particularly persuasive, whether it was Sicilian Week – where I was fifth – or Paris–Nice – fifth as well. I was still smarting at the departure of the Madiot brothers – and I blamed Guimard for being at the root of it – but no one was particularly aware that the logistical problems that had affected me so much the previous year were partway to being resolved. Following Alain’s advice we had hired his brother Guy, whose sole responsibility was to lighten the load on the organisational side. It was a miracle: we felt the effect immediately. He clearly had a special gift for getting everything ready for an army as it began a long campaign. He relieved us of any logistical issues. That helped a great deal.
At Paris–Nice I tied my hair into a ponytail for the first time. It drew plenty of mickey taking. I heard guys in the bunch yelling ‘girlie’. I thought it was hilarious.
But the real joke was my complete inability to go back to what I had been, and that one had gone stale long ago. So just after the ‘Race to the Sun’ had finished, Gallopin and I put a radical plan into operation. It was supercompensation, in which you go out to exhaust yourself three days before a major race. It was well thought out, as the future would prove.
There were exactly six days between the end of Paris–Nice and the Saturday of Milan–San Remo. Here is what I did. Monday and Tuesday were devoted to active recovery. I rode, but no more than necessary to turn the legs over and help me recover. Wednesday was the day for a massive session. I had to go to the very limit of my strength, until I was exhausted. The physiological principle was simple: on this day, your body burns up all its reserves, the glycogen that it stores up. Once your stores are empty, your organism overreacts and puts back more than it actually needs. It takes the body forty-eight hours to do that: three days later, usually, the process of supercompensation is at its height.
Let’s go back to that Wednesday. To dig as deep as I could I left Gallopin’s house in the Essonne in the morning for an initial training ride of about 120km. I made sure I ate only a little beforehand: a few cornflakes, a yoghurt. Back at Alain’s house, I remember well that I had just an orange juice and a bit of cake. And it was off for another 100km. He got on a Derny, with me behind him. We started off slowly, 40–45kph, no more. About halfway round he gradually began to go faster. Stuck on the back wheel, I began to struggle. Finally, the last 35km were flat out, and I finished with a full-on sprint. I couldn’t feel my legs. I remember that when I went for it, I was quicker than the motorbike.
I’d started to enjoy it again. Something was happening in my head. That evening I had a massage, ate a bowl of rice and went to bed. The next morning it was a little outing, about two hours, just a leg-stretcher.
I was absolutely determined to travel to Milan on the Thursday, because flying has never worked for me. I don’t know why, but the air pressure always seems to make my legs swell up, which is unpleasant for a cyclist. I had to lose my temper with Guimard before he would allow me to travel on the Thursday. He just didn’t want it. More surprisingly, he didn’t understand why suddenly I was making so much out of the first Classic of the season. He even ended up muttering: ‘Milan–San Remo, what use is that?’ He didn’t say I wouldn’t win, but he wasn’t far from it. He didn’t believe I could, and he proved it by putting out a team of just six, while I wanted a full team of nine. That was how Guimard was. I forced the issue: he gave in.
The day before the start in Milan it just so happened that I was the first rider to collect his race number. ‘Because I’m going to win,’ I smiled at the organisers. I was back in the permanently unstressed state which had been my trademark until 1985.
Milan–San Remo is a special race. The course isn’t difficult but it’s long and stressful. The two vital qualities it takes to win it are patience and punch. You have to be able to attack once, flat out and in the right place. I’d worked out my tactic beforehand: keep hidden in the bunch as far as Alassio, 240km into the race, then move up into the first twenty in the bunch and make just one attack: on the Poggio, the gradual twisting climb just before the finish. I would have one opportunity, and it would either work or it wouldn’t. That was the law of Milan–San Remo. As I’d planned, I stayed away from the front all day, apart from on the Turchino pass, which takes the race away from the Lombardy plains and down to the outskirts of Genoa. The descent can be dangerous and there are often crashes. It felt sacrilegious keeping to the back of the peloton so I had to fight my natural instincts and keep a tight grip on myself. I hated having no idea of what was going on at the front of the race. It was counter-intuitive. After about two-thirds of the race I said to myself, ‘My God, I’m flying.’ It was fabulous: apart from on the Poggio my legs never hurt, the entire day. It hadn’t been that way for such a long time. On the Turchino I might as well have had a fag in my mouth. On the Capo Berta, where you can lose the race in a split-second, I climbed as if in a dream. It was such a feeling that I remember the thought coming into my mind, very strongly, ‘I’m going to win.’
The Dutch team PDM were an awesome outfit including Adri Van der Poel, Rául Alcalá, Steven Rooks, and Gert-Jan Theunisse. All four of them were up at the front. Then we came to the foot of the final climb, the Poggio, a sort of little hummock which rises up above the Italian Riviera. I was fairly well placed. Earlier in the race I’d said to my friend Sean Kelly, ‘I’m going to make a big attack on the Poggio. If it doesn’t work, I’ll lead you out in the sprint.’ Since 1983 or 1984 I’d had a close relationship with the Irishman, who was a straight-dealing individual who never held back when it was time to repay a debt of honour. We were good friends and we were happy to squash the smaller guys for the common cause. So in the first few hundred metres of the Poggio, Kelly came alongside and said, ‘You better move up, Laurent.’ I hadn’t asked him but the Irishman always felt that if a deal had been done, he had to stick to it. I didn’t think twice, but followed him. It was a good job I did. No sooner had I got to the front than the PDM team got rolling. They gave it everything they had. Kelly had saved my skin.
For about two miles we were all hurting like hell. I hung fire, but I wasn’t sure that my chance would come. Suddenly though, my legs stopped feeling sore: it was as if I’d only just got on the bike. At moments like that, I never panicked. I just waited, calmly. The speed was still high, so high that when we got to the place where the road got slightly steeper, and where I had decided beforehand that I would attack, I began to wonder whether I would be able to make my move. The window of opportunity was small, perhaps 150m of tarmac. But because this is the hardest part of the Poggio, Theunisse, who had been setting the pace, gradually began to weaken a little. It probably wouldn’t have been obvious to television viewers, but it was more than enough for me.
I didn’t think twice. I went through the little gap that had opened in front of me between the Dutchman and the wall by the roadside, and I stood on the pedals, putting in all the weight of all my time on the bike and the anger I felt at all the sacrifices I’d made in the last few years. I had been waiting impatiently for this one instant and I felt that this was a big, big attack. Kelly was on my wheel and kept his side of our bargain by letting a gap open. I was using 53x15, a colossal gear, and I was convinced I had left everyone gasping; to my surprise, however, I caught sight of Maurizio Fondriest, a mere youngster, just behind me. I had no idea how he had managed to get across to me. But he didn’t worry me for a second. I knew I could beat him. He had no chance. So on the descent I used a cunning old man’s trick; I swung wide out on the bends, pretending to be a poor descender. The idea was to let him come past so that he would make the pace on the straights. He fell for it like an amateur. On the television, the commentators didn’t have any idea what was going on: I was totally in charge and deliberately saving my strength and they said I was ‘struggling’. Idiots.
That year, the finish was 1km from the foot of the descent. One of us was going to win. In terms of natural ability, as the rest of his career would show, Fondriest was quicker than me in a sprint. But he was only young, and with almost 300km in my legs I knew exactly what I was capable of: in a one-to-one sprint I was almost unbeatable. Just like Hinault did at the finish of Paris–Roubaix in 1981, I kicked off the sprint a good distance from the finish. We were side by side until 100m out, and then he suddenly cracked. I was 20m in front by the time I hit the line.
My God. I’d done it. I don’t remember anything about it, but those who were there said I screamed with joy. It was a yell that came from back down the years. A sound that was almost ‘primeval’, said some. Gallopin had been right, right to convince me I could do it and right to go through with it. When you think that victory in San Remo always eluded a world champion and Classics specialist of the time like Moreno Argentin, it’s incredible to think I had managed it.
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