We Were Young and Carefree (29 page)

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Authors: Laurent Fignon

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Guimard obviously had more access than I did to the other riders in the team. Given the dominant position he enjoyed I can barely imagine what he might have said about me during this difficult period. My teammates’ first thought was for the future of their careers, which was understandable. I felt more isolated than ever and I had neither the desire nor the appetite for conspiring against Guimard. That was the price I paid for being straight. Apart from the fact that it wouldn’t have been very honourable, doing the dirty on Guimard with whoever it happened to be held no interest for me. I had other things to do. I had no feelings of nostalgia for the past. The combative side of my character lent me the perspective of a mature man who knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. I was neither sad nor happy, peaceful or comfortable. I was feeling my way through a fairly tricky transition. I was the ‘historic’ leader but my position was threatened both by my lack of results and by the team manager who had overseen my career. With all these sources of pressure, I needed to be very resilient to keep my head above water. My result in the prologue time trial was not exactly delightful: I was sixty-fourth, 22sec behind the winner, my teammate Thierry Marie, and 20sec behind Breukink, 19sec behind LeMond.
To tell the truth the difficult circumstances had spurred me on in a way. Better still, I had done away with the notion of toning down my ambitions when I was racing, even though it might have crossed my mind now and then during the months before the Tour. I had gone through the same process with the temptation to quit cycling. I knew now that it was difficult to end your career once you were over thirty and had entered a time of life that was difficult for all sportsmen. Let’s just say that I didn’t see things the same way and was less sure about everything. Of course, I had seen the example set by Bernard Hinault, a determined Breton who had appointed a time limit and had stuck to it. That wasn’t how I was. How did you end a career on a high point and when? Should I have given it all up in 1989 while I was still young? But back then I had been certain that the season that was coming up would be as rewarding as the previous one. On the other hand, how could you call time after something had gone wrong? That wasn’t my style, not my way of doing things. I wanted to stop myself going downhill. And I was aware that there was a financial side to the debate: I loved this profession more than anything else and I was not capable of doing anything else to earn money, a lot of money. I didn’t have any idea what the concept of ‘a season too many’ was. I hadn’t catered for that eventuality.
During the second stage, a team time trial over 36.5km between Bron and Chassieu in the Lyon suburbs, I played a full part in a decent performance by Castorama, second to the Italian team Ariostea by a mere eight seconds. That figure had a few resonances. Apart from Luc Leblanc, who was making my life hell, the team included Christophe Lavainne, Dominique Arnould, Jean-Claude Bagot, Bjarne Riis, Pascal Simon, Frédéric Vichot. There was also Thierry Marie, who delighted us all by taking a prestigious win in the sixth stage, between Arras and Le Havre, after a lone escape of historic length: 234km.
Any illusions I may have had didn’t last long. I finished only sixteenth in the long individual time trial of 73km between Argentan and Alençon, 3 min 39sec behind Miguel Indurain who was unaware that he was beginning a long spell of dominance in the Tour. As for me, I had no idea what to make of my state because paradoxically I didn’t feel short of form or mentally out of the race. I was far from out of it, as the future was to prove, but the stages through the Pyrénées completely changed the balance of power.
Between Pau and Jaca, Luc Leblanc got into the winning break together with Charly Mottet and pulled on the yellow jersey. Guimard was beside himself with delight. Not only had his latest protégé pulled off one of the little conjuring tricks that were to be his secret weapon all through his career, he had also cornered me into playing a team role. How could you not work for the rider wearing the yellow jersey? So during the great Pyrenean stage between Jaca and Val-Louron, over the Aubisque, Tourmalet and Aspin, I took on as honestly as I could the role of teammate and protector to a bloke who was not on my side. Well, I did it to a certain extent anyway. After struggling slightly on the Tourmalet and then making up on the descent, I managed to stay with the best riders on the Aspin. There, Bugno attacked, Mottet countered, and I marked them immediately to protect Leblanc. But he was not able to keep up. In spite of being in perfect form he showed what his limitations were. A group formed including all the leaders such as Claudio Chiappucci, Bugno and Miguel Indurain, and I moved back ahead of Leblanc in the overall standings in fourth place.
The tension within the team got worse and worse. Even so, it still hurt when I realised that none of the other riders could recall my racing record, or who I was, or what I had achieved. One evening, at Albi, I was the epicentre of a memorably fair and frank exchange of views which went like this. Principal actors: all the team. Subject of discussion: Luc Leblanc. Tone of discussion: angry. Protagonists who expressed their views most strongly: Cyrille Guimard and myself. We discovered yet again how unpleasant it was having to speak to each other: it was noisy mayhem. All that can be said is that we called each other all sorts of names. And I can still remember the despicable attitude of the rest of the team. They all cast looks at me that needed no interpretation. I was the only one who spoke in my defence; the only one who was willing to tell Guimard what I thought of his way of running the team, while making sure that everyone knew just what I thought of Luc Leblanc.
At l’Alpe d’Huez I had regained some of my old power and even if it was limited it was enough to drag me up to ninth on the stage. I was playing in the big boys’ playground again, even if I was doing so on the QT and a little bit behind the others. It did me the world of good. There was just one thing: the stage had been cut back to the bare minimum: 123km. It did not work to my advantage, but worse still it marked the definitive beginning of a ridiculous era when the toughness of professional races was systematically diminished. Far from restraining the growth of doping, this allowed ‘average’ riders to use artificial aids to get through stages that were limited in their demands and which were interspersed with recovery time. Speeds that the riders were able to maintain for 130 or 150km would have been unthinkable over stages of more than 200km, even with the aid of doping products. ‘Natural selection’ was reduced to next to nothing.
In road cycling you should never confuse endurance events with sprints. This change was to prove fatal for cycling. No one has faced up to that fact for the last twenty years, but who does it damage? Six months before the start of the 1991 Tour I had made precisely this point to Jean-Marie Leblanc, the race director, but clearly he didn’t share my point of view. I can remember that I even described to him exactly what the implications were for the way racing would develop. He didn’t want to listen.
I finished the 1991 Tour in sixth place just over eleven minutes behind Miguel Indurain, and behind Bugno, Chiappucci, Mottet and Leblanc, who had managed to nip back in front of me in the last few stages. It didn’t make a lot of difference. My performance had been more than honourable, the product of guts and experience. It didn’t go completely unnoticed.
Going back home, I felt as if I had got out of jail. I was free of Guimard and liberated from a team that was now hostile to me. I could be completely myself again, far from malevolent eyes.
It never seems to end prettily with Cyrille. There was no point in looking at the events of the previous few months with the conviction that I had been a victim, although it was still one of the toughest spells of my career on a personal level, because for the first time ever I did not have to make decisions about the team of which I was the co-owner. It was as if I no longer had a team at all, even though I had not ridden the Tour as an individual. But what I can say is that I raced that Tour without Cyrille, without his advice and his support. And I still managed to finish sixth. I had scrupulously respected team orders – particularly when Leblanc was wearing the yellow jersey – when they were to the team’s advantage.
But I have to tell the truth: sometimes, some of Guimard’s instructions were so grotesque and could have been so damaging for me that I could not blindly follow them. For example, on the stage through the Alps to Morzine, 100km from the finish, Guimard wanted me to make a long-range solo attack. I said, ‘No’. I believe he wanted to wear me out, and I wasn’t going to waste my energy for nothing. Thinking back, I was not prepared to tolerate what was going on during that Tour. After ten years of working closely with him, he should have let himself be guided by rather nobler feelings, a higher interest.
So I left him on pretty much the same terms as Bernard Hinault had done eight years earlier. That’s curious, isn’t it? Who would have expected it? But with Guimard, the end is never pretty. All partings are brutal, cruel, and even though I’m not going to pile all the blame on his back, I can now acknowledge my great mistake. To keep in tune with the cycle of my life, both in my mental needs and in the way I compete, I really should have changed team every four years.
After the Tour I did as I liked, and I went where I wanted. All that was uncertain was my future. Everyone knew that I wanted to change teams, and in that, incredible as it may seem, I was on completely unknown territory. I believed, wholeheartedly, that my name and my racing record would get me what I wanted. I assumed that offers would come flooding in. Nothing could be more obvious, I thought. But there was nothing. Nothing at all. The phone didn’t ring. No one was interested in me. The silence was ferocious. I didn’t feel hard done by, I simply didn’t understand. But thinking it all over, I finally worked out that everyone was afraid of me. Beginning with the
directeurs sportifs
, who might have been ‘forewarned’ behind the scenes by Guimard.
One morning I said, ‘Oh, what the hell, I’ll end my career now.’ Then, faced with the prospect of passively letting it all finish, I relented and picked up the telephone. It didn’t feel humiliating in the slightest. I had to clear the minefield myself. I couldn’t just let myself be pushed out of the sport without doing anything about it. First of all I detected a good opening at Panasonic, but the money they were offering was below everyone else. To continue making the physical sacrifices that the sport demanded, I required a certain incentive. Then there was interest from an Italian team who wanted to make an impact on the French market. The contract was signed and sealed in no time at all. I was delighted.
The winter finally froze my relations with Guimard. We divided our business interests. He wanted to continue with the team, so he ended up with Maxi-Sports. As he owed me quite a lot of money and didn’t have a lot of ready cash I was allotted some property that belonged to the company. Everything was sorted out properly through our lawyers and I had no reason to complain about the division of our assets.
CHAPTER 31
RESPECT FOR THE
CAMPIONISSIMO
Getting old is a destabilising process for everybody. You don’t skip lightly down the path to being ‘old’, ‘wise’ or ‘experienced’.
When I set off to join my new team, I took Alain Gallopin with me: that was one of the conditions I’d agreed on with the Italians. And having him alongside me was essential to ensure the mental stability that would lead to good results. Although back in France my private life wasn’t getting any happier, as soon as I arrived in Italy I became aware of how much they admire the best cyclists, the
campionissimi
. It was a massive eyeopener for me. For the Italians a champion remains a champion and there is always colossal respect for anyone who has won the greatest races in the past. A sportsman who has once been considered great is always seen as a great. He draws admiring looks for ever. He matters as much when he is an older statesman of the sport as he did in his best days.
Before the season began, the owner of the team, an Italian multimillionaire, organised a stay in Venice, where he owned a
palazzo
, and then on his vast estate near Treviso. The mindset I discovered completely changed my way of seeing things. Sport mattered so much in Italy, and within the team everything around us helped us to race to the best of our ability. We were positively spoiled. There was no chance of any disruption due to problems with equipment. The organisation was tip-top. The sportsman was king. It was a different world.
Not only had I begun learning Italian during the winter – which rather impressed them – but I also came to this new team in a low-key way, without making any demands, even if it was out of the question for me to be viewed as a mere
gregario
or team worker. My contract stipulated that I would be the joint leader of the team together with Gianni Bugno. In reality, of course, Bugno not only had youth on his side and the support of an entire nation which was betting on him to win the Tour de France, but he had talent to burn and was in his prime. The
directeur sportif
Gianluigi Stanga was hoping that I would play the role of ‘
capitaine de route
’ for Bugno. I was to give him the benefit of my experience and race knowledge and make sure he had all the advice and support he needed. Bugno was a fragile being, and was continually teetering between dominance and disaster. He was a true superstar, but a vulnerable man.
Gianluigi Stanga and I had discussed all this at length in Milan at a key meeting well before I decided I would sign for them. He was quite astonished by all the questions I asked that day. He clearly believed that all I was going to talk about was money, but what I really wanted was assurances about the way the team was run. I wanted to know what the other riders thought about it, the role they really wanted me to play and so on. Unfortunately, the future was to prove that these fine people listened to me too infrequently for my taste.

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