We Were Young and Carefree (32 page)

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Authors: Laurent Fignon

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So the day after I quit the Tour – and after a certain amount of thought – I still came to a conclusion which seemed perfectly obvious to me: I was simply not able to keep up the pace. You have to understand that my thought process at the time could only refer back to cycling in the 1980s and what had emerged from it. The idea that a drug could ‘create’ a champion or permit (almost) certain victory in a given race seemed completely far-fetched. I was convinced it was nonsense.
Some people will be astonished when they read these lines and will think: ‘He must have known what was going on.’ Let’s be clear: I understood certain things, let’s say the broad sweep of what was happening, but not the details. And my attitude was this: I didn’t give a monkey’s what the other guys were doing. It had no interest for me. The only things that mattered were how my form was building, the work I did, and my results. Nothing else.
Alain Gallopin certainly warned me. ‘You know, Laurent,’ he would say, ‘there’s some crazy stuff going on out there. The guys are going over the top. You cannot imagine what they are up to. Some of them have lost their minds and will do anything.’
There were certain facts that simply didn’t sink in: it was as if I had gone through a barrier and the rest of the peloton was on the other side. It was as if I was already elsewhere. The last few races I started were deeply dull and merely added to my feeling of being apart from it all. Racing was less fun, less alive, more tightly controlled. The guys were racing in ways which I simply did not understand. A lot of riders who weren’t very talented seemed to be playing lead roles: it wasn’t a game for me any more.
The period after the Tour was reasonably quiet. People gave me looks that were both compassionate and already indifferent. I had moved on and everyone began to be aware of it. I left the bike in the garage as the days went past and then one morning in August I went out training. Up to that day, thoughout my career I had always used the big ring to train: 53x16 or 53x15. That day I set off as usual, in tip-top form. And then, after I’d covered a few kilometres I felt worn out and put it on the little ring: 42x18. I said, ‘It’s over, Laurent.’ And that was it. I didn’t want to ride my bike any more. I had swept away the final few threads that still connected me to bike racing. I was no longer a cyclist. I had been prepared for this, but living through it in reality was bizarre.
To gear down for the following tax year and avoid paying too much, I didn’t ride a single criterium. Then I announced that my last race would be the Grand Prix de Plouay, in mid-August, and I set off for the start with a spring in my step. The atmosphere was special: before the start, people came to say ‘thanks’ and to wish me ‘a fair wind’. There I was. It was all about to end.
I desperately wanted to finish the race, but the speed was high and I was low on kilometres; I really couldn’t keep up. So I made my way to the front of the bunch to say ‘adieu’ to them all, with my voice cracking. Marc Madiot yelled, ‘Look everyone, make sure you look at this: this is the last time you will see Laurent Fignon on a bike.’
A great surge of emotion welled up inside me. There was a lump in my throat. My muscles stiffened up and I got off my bike. There is no going back once a new dawn has broken.
Gianluigi Stanga left me in peace. Not long afterwards the sponsor announced that they were ending their investment in cycling. My contract was watertight, so I leapt at the opportunity and said that actually I had wanted to go on for another year. It was a windfall: they paid my third and last year. So in 1994 I was paid as if I were a bike rider when I actually wasn’t. Why should I be ashamed about it? For two years I was their ambassador in France, I just did it for a third year but not on the bike.
That was the beginning of a period of intense reflection. I had been fully aware of what I was doing when I called time, and I had no regrets, but it wasn’t as straightforward as I had imagined. Whatever kind of cyclist you are, whether you were a great champion or an also-ran, when you turn the page the passion that has governed your life comes abruptly to an end. That is what had just happened to me. Being ready mentally wasn’t enough to soften the blow. For all of us, cycling is more than a mere profession: it’s an all-consuming mistress.
So I was left in a hole. I had nothing concrete ready and waiting. I had no idea what to do with the days, or with the rest of my life. More worryingly I was incapable of pinpointing what I really wanted. Being idle isn’t my strongest suit: I needed to think fast. But I was incapable of it. In the months that followed my retirement my whole being was still that of a racing cyclist. My biorhythms, my habits, my way of being and even my reflexes: everything still reacted to daily life just as it had done for so long.
It took the passing of the winter for things to change. One morning at the start of 1994 I realised that the other cyclists, every single one of them, had begun training again, and were probably in camp. The first races were on the horizon. And what had I done? Nothing. I was just an ex-cyclist. This time, my body finally figured out that it wasn’t just on holiday, waiting to return to its prime function. The break was irreparable. The others had begun again, without me.
I can see myself now on one particular day. It was the day I panicked. I was sitting on a sofa at home and I felt a huge void in front of me. A sort of terror gripped me. An insidious fear that gnawed at my stomach and ran up and down my spine. I stood up, swaying in a gust of anguish, as if I needed to take a deep breath. I sat somewhere else. It all looked the same. I really couldn’t think straight. And the more ridiculous I thought I looked, the more the panic gained momentum.
I couldn’t let the chaos take over, so I thought in a logical way, taking things one at a time.
Money? I had no shortage, given that the previous year I had been sensible and paid off all my debts so that I would have no worries. At the end of my career I was paying 1.5 million francs in tax, about sixty per cent of my emoluments. At the end I had been earning 500,000 francs a month, so I wasn’t lacking cash. Back then I had about 2 million francs, to which should be added a few properties. Just a quick reminder: all this was nothing compared to what the best footballers, tennis players and golfers were earning.
What was I doing with my time? I was actually playing quite a lot of golf. It was a sport that gave me something to focus my mind and get to know another side of myself, which was rather disconcerting. I was also taking part in various adventurous activities which took me out of my comfort zone and helped me keep in decent physical form. And the journalist Patrick Chassé had called me in to commentate on races for Eurosport. I was keen on the idea, so I went for it. But I have to be honest: it wasn’t anything like building for the future. The more I reflected on it, the more I became aware that outside cycling I didn’t know how to do a great deal. Should I go into business? Why not. But what, exactly? Property? It didn’t turn me on. I finally realised that I had no other ‘specialist areas’. And, more worryingly, I didn’t have any particular desire to do anything.
Was I a victim, in my own way, of the inevitably stupefying nature of professional cycling? I had not stopped reading, I had kept informed and I had kept myself in touch with what was going on in the world. However, even for someone like me, in order to be a cyclist you are obliged to live in a bubble that floats above everyday reality. But I was clearly the sort of person who was inclined to be interested in things; even so, professional cycling consumes everything. It monopolises your life. Compared to a professional footballer, for example, being a cyclist takes up all your time and reduces to a strict minimum any chance of leisure interests. Training sessions are long and racing days are numerous.
In some ways, I regret the fact that those years were a bottomless pit. It had an effect on me later on: I was aware that I missed out on fifteen years of normal life. I was out of the mainstream, a long way from everything, my mind absorbed by cycling, rarely directed at the rest of the world. Real life passed me by. I was in a world of my own. I’m well aware that it was impossible to do it any other way: sport at the highest level demands a high level of concentration and calls for your exclusive attention. As I learned throughout my career, the second that I let daily life worry me at all, in particular issues stemming from my private life, my attention wandered and my results suffered. Living cycling one hundred per cent was an obligation. It was regrettable but there was no alternative.
It was when I emerged from this infernal spiral that I became fully aware that my cosy, closeted universe was actually like a prison, albeit a golden one. There was a sense in which you were locked into that bubble. That isolation is one of cycling’s great problems. You live on the margins, cosseted in your own little world, and you end up believing you are a superior being. You believe that the cycling world is the real world while in fact it is merely a distortion of real life. With hindsight I’m astonished to think of the day-to-day activities that I never did, or only rarely did. Just going out for a walk with your wife, browsing antique shops, window-shopping. Not recommended. Too tiring. There was always a good excuse.
Having got these regrets off my chest, if I had to draw up an objective balance sheet, I would still consider that the cycling life had more good sides than bad. How could I regret it all? How could I suggest that it was anything other than joyful, ecstatic? We were free men. We could jump into a team car in the middle of the night to go and see a girl. We could drive two hundred kilometres just for a date and come back in the small hours then ride the next stage: do you think that’s an option today? It certainly wasn’t part of the general culture, but it was part of the life. I’ll make a confession here: where the diet side was concerned, I never really set many limits. I was careful, but that was all, except sometimes when certain major objectives were pending. That was because in the middle of the 1980s we were only just becoming aware of the importance of power to weight ratio. I had a few good blow-outs, although I didn’t take myself for Anquetil, who made living cycling his own way into what amounted to an obligation, a real way of life. Sometimes I went over the top, and there were times when I cracked and I probably should not have done. I was definitely not a child of diet and programming, and I’m glad of it.
That’s probably why I never had any aspirations to become a
directeur sportif
, which is a profession that demands conventions, traditions, compromises and accommodations. And no sponsor has ever suggested that I set up a team. Alain Gallopin and I had the notion once or twice. We suggested a simple project to the Caisse d’Epargne bank for example: we would unearth the next Frenchman who could win the Tour several times over. We know that the greats of the sport emerge in a cyclical way. Since Armstrong’s first retirement there has been a gap. Of course there is Alberto Contador, who has massive natural talent, but look at a rider like Carlos Sastre, winner of the Tour 2008: in terms of class, he barely reaches Contador’s knees. Searching for young French riders with a future, in a French team, for a French sponsor with a big name was a beautiful, ambitious project. And what did Caisse d’Epargne choose to do? They invested in a squad of Spaniards, and the most amazing thing about the whole story was that not an eyebrow was raised in France.
No one cried out that it was a scandal, although there was something disgusting about it. Whatever anyone else felt, it seemed that way to me. It was enough to make me sick of the whole idea.
CHAPTER 36
TAKING ON THE BIG BOYS
Doing stuff just for the sake of it – in other words, not doing very much – was out of the question. Cycling was still very much in my sights. There was no point turning my back on it: it would always bounce up in front of me again. There was no escaping it. After all, my specialist skills in cycling were beyond dispute. Who would dare contest my legitimacy? The more I thought about it, the more I realised that organising, in the greater sense of the term, was more and more tempting. So I formed a company: Laurent Fignon Organisation.
Initially I aimed low by dreaming up
cyclo-sportif
events. It was the bottom rung of the ladder but a popular art. I launched my first great innovation in 1996: the Isle de France Cyclotourist Trophy. It consisted initially of four touring events in four
départements
(Seine-et-Marne, Essonne, Yvelines, and Val d’Oise) and then a kind of grand final around Paris. The concept I dreamed up combined culture, family, sport and cycling. Each time we would assemble in a great chateau in the
département
. We would set up a gastronomic village with a senior chef in attendance and a catering college. There were three editions of the Trophée: 300 took part the first year, 1000 in the following years.
I said goodbye to rank and privilege. Alain and I did everything. We put out direction arrows, set up tables and unblocked the toilets. The first year we even erected the barriers ourselves in the small hours after working all night. Then I got on my bike to ride the first seventy kilometres with the field. I was wasted.
This was just the beginning. My crazy dream was entitled Paris–Nice. There were several reasons why I believed it was attainable. Firstly, the organiser, Josette Leulliot – daughter of the founder, Jean Leulliot, and the head of the Monde Six company – was getting towards the end of her time with the race. She was keen to sell it. Secondly, the ‘Race to the Sun’ was the last of the great stage races on the calendar to remain independent, rather than belonging to a major company such as the Société du Tour de France. Finally, Paris–Nice has always enjoyed international renown since its creation before the Second World War. Its long history is testimony to that.

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