We Were Young and Carefree (6 page)
Read We Were Young and Carefree Online
Authors: Laurent Fignon
It was a time of teenage triumphs and teenage mistakes. For a few months in 1977, my first year as a junior, I took myself for an expert bike mechanic. I made a stupid bet with Scolaro: the winner was the one with the cleanest, loveliest, shiningest bike. So every Saturday I would take my bike apart from top to bottom, item by item, before putting it back together. The only trouble was I was no mechanic and I never have been. As a result, in each of my next ten or eleven races I broke something, every time. The chain, a brake or gear cable, a pedal, a spoke . . . Without realising it, I was actually a danger to myself. To make me stop, my father had to lose his temper and ban any bike repairs. He was right. I won the next race without a single problem. My only win of the year.
I must admit that back then I had no idea how to ride a bike. I often fell off. I raced any old how. I never saw anything coming and I couldn’t predict how a race would turn out. I was serving my apprenticeship, without understanding that this was to be my profession. I loved it. Sometimes when I was physically at my best I could sense moments of utter ecstasy, those rare fleeting times when you are in total harmony with yourself and the elements around you: nature, the noise of the wind, the smells. Let’s not get carried away. But I have to confess: I was happy.
You aren’t serious at seventeen. But every time I paid a little attention I would win easily. I can’t explain why it was so easy, but that’s how it was.
In 1978 I have a clear memory of the Ile-de-France team time trial championship over forty-two kilometres. For almost the entire race, at least twenty-five kilometres, no one was capable of coming alongside me to do a pull at the front. I was flying. But that day, in contrast to what you might believe, I had absolutely no sense that this might be my future. I had no notion that cycling might hold any prospects in the long term, but youthful passion is always the driving force for most cyclists. Cycling would turn my heart inside out and my competitive instinct would always be the winner.
I was completely transformed. Something allowed my soul and my guts to function as one. Out training one day I had a marvellous and completely disconcerting feeling. Looking at the other guys around me, I thought: ‘I’m better than they are.’ I’ve no idea why. But it was there, inside me. I had no doubts. And that conviction fuelled my urge to progress as quickly as I possibly could.
In 1978 I started about forty races and won eighteen. I raised my arms to the sky in one victory salute after another and took pleasure in what fate was providing. Everything worked. I won in sprint finishes, on my own, on the flat, in the hills. However the race panned out, I attacked, and I won. One day, a trainer muttered: ‘You have a gift.’ I’d just won five races in a row.
But fortunately, I had no dreams of greater glory. I never said I wanted to ‘have a career’ or ‘turn pro’ or anything else. I was protected by my lust for life.
CHAPTER 3
HAPPY SCHOOLDAYS
Clever men rarely make good sportsmen; does that mean that sportsmen are stupid?
Right up to the end of my adolescence being shy was my Achilles heel. It took a mere nothing to make me blush. I withdrew into my shell. For a long time I struggled to contain my feelings but over time sport and celebrity cured me and instilled a simple equation in my mind: to defeat shyness you have to take risks. And isn’t taking risks an essential quality for a sportsman who wants to achieve great things?
I knew nothing about cycling history. My father wasn’t very interested in sport and he didn’t read newspapers. At home, the television was just another bit of furniture as I saw it; I hardly ever watched it and it would never have occurred to me to turn it on if I could go outside. And let’s not forget, in that prehistoric era there were only two channels.
Even the Tour de France barely aroused my attention, let alone any dreams. I have only two boyhood memories of
La Grande Boucle
. The first is from 15 July 1969. I was in the car with my parents, the radio was crackling in the dashboard and a commentator whose name I didn’t know was reporting live on Eddy Merckx’s first great exploit, the solo stage win through the Pyrenees between Luchon and Mourenx. The guy was yelling into the microphone, shouting about a ‘phenomenal Belgian’, and the sound of his voice made a huge impression, even if as a small boy aged only nine I wondered how anyone could be so worked up about a sporting achievement which wouldn’t actually change the world. I was young and didn’t understand how over the top people can be. Six days later Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon – which was a whole different level of achievement.
La Grande Boucle
. The first is from 15 July 1969. I was in the car with my parents, the radio was crackling in the dashboard and a commentator whose name I didn’t know was reporting live on Eddy Merckx’s first great exploit, the solo stage win through the Pyrenees between Luchon and Mourenx. The guy was yelling into the microphone, shouting about a ‘phenomenal Belgian’, and the sound of his voice made a huge impression, even if as a small boy aged only nine I wondered how anyone could be so worked up about a sporting achievement which wouldn’t actually change the world. I was young and didn’t understand how over the top people can be. Six days later Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon – which was a whole different level of achievement.
My second memory takes me back to the start of the 1970s, but I’d struggle to say the exact date. We were in the Vendée and the Tour was going through. It’s painful to confess it today, but I don’t remember any of the riders. I’m almost ashamed to think it now.
It was not until I took out a racing licence and won my first races as a schoolboy that I began to read the cycling press. But it got under my skin at once. I was a self-contained boy, already a great reader; it was my other way of escaping. I’ve always read a lot and that love has never left me. I became completely obsessed, in record time. I ended up devouring everything that I caught sight of; it all fascinated me.
L’Equipe
every morning,
Miroir du Cyclisme, Vélo
magazine, all the glossies. I didn’t just make up for lost time, in a few months I was transformed into a (small-time) specialist in the sport. Bit by bit the great cycling jigsaw puzzle pieced itself together in my mind and I came to understand that this sport was one of the oldest, one of the most coveted, one of the most respected and one of the most popular. I learned that the Tour de France was related to the history of France itself in the twentieth century. The stories of the nation and its bike race were interwoven. Sport could be rather more than just a result published in
L’Equipe
.
L’Equipe
every morning,
Miroir du Cyclisme, Vélo
magazine, all the glossies. I didn’t just make up for lost time, in a few months I was transformed into a (small-time) specialist in the sport. Bit by bit the great cycling jigsaw puzzle pieced itself together in my mind and I came to understand that this sport was one of the oldest, one of the most coveted, one of the most respected and one of the most popular. I learned that the Tour de France was related to the history of France itself in the twentieth century. The stories of the nation and its bike race were interwoven. Sport could be rather more than just a result published in
L’Equipe
.
Meanwhile, I had wended my way through school without ever being very serious. I ended up in the D stream. I hardly learned a thing. With all the over the top demands cycling made, the sport had turned my mind upside down. But at the same time, I wasn’t at all thoughtful about cycling. At the age of eighteen turning professional wasn’t an objective and I didn’t even think about it. I trained, I raced, I won races, I liked it and that was all. I was completely detached from any notion of a future in that area. That was probably just as well.
So I took my
baccalauréat
with the assumption that I was going to fail. In the final weeks I revised without really doing any revision and then I had the biggest stroke of luck in my life. Every topic was something that I knew about. In geography – the economy of Japan. I knew it to my fingertips and there was good reason, we’d done it in a mock exam. In physics, it was electricity: the only subject I had covered.
baccalauréat
with the assumption that I was going to fail. In the final weeks I revised without really doing any revision and then I had the biggest stroke of luck in my life. Every topic was something that I knew about. In geography – the economy of Japan. I knew it to my fingertips and there was good reason, we’d done it in a mock exam. In physics, it was electricity: the only subject I had covered.
As for Spanish, I had to take the oral exam last. The problem was that in the evening I had a race for the Saint Jean club. I overcame my shyness and went to see the examiners to explain how ‘dreadful’ it would be for my club if I couldn’t go to a race I had trained hard for, that personally it would be a ‘nasty setback’ for my burgeoning career and that it would cause me to be ‘dropped’ by the trainers. The teacher bought all my arguments and decided to put me through first. There was just one problem: I had no knowledge of the set text. Panic stations. But seeing how upset I was, the teacher was charitable and questioned me about Spanish and French cycling. I escaped, and got a pass in that one too.
The whole
bac
was like that: one fluke after another. With a pass in my pocket, summer beckoned. I could go off on my bike with a clear conscience.
bac
was like that: one fluke after another. With a pass in my pocket, summer beckoned. I could go off on my bike with a clear conscience.
The only snag was that my parents kept putting pressure on me. They had their minds on my future. ‘Your studies, your studies,’ came the clarion call. With a D-grade in my
bac
, I couldn’t do what I wanted. I needed a higher qualification, a DEUG (Diplôme d’études universitaires générales). But which one? Until my teenage years nature and animals had always intrigued me. Becoming a vet or an ornithologist was what I was aiming for but with only a D-grade there was no point thinking about it now. So as electricity fascinated me I began a DEUG in ‘structural and material science’. A pompous title which sounded impressive. It wasn’t.
bac
, I couldn’t do what I wanted. I needed a higher qualification, a DEUG (Diplôme d’études universitaires générales). But which one? Until my teenage years nature and animals had always intrigued me. Becoming a vet or an ornithologist was what I was aiming for but with only a D-grade there was no point thinking about it now. So as electricity fascinated me I began a DEUG in ‘structural and material science’. A pompous title which sounded impressive. It wasn’t.
When studies began again in autumn 1978 I enrolled at the university in Villetaneuse; it was a fair old trek from the far reaches of Seine-et-Marne to the back end of Seine-Saint-Denis. To be at lessons at 8 a.m., I had to leave Tournan-en-Brie at 6 a.m. It was an epic journey across the city. The only problem was that in that year a major conflict had broken out in the faculty: the ministry wanted to move the university. Often, when I arrived in the morning, lessons were cancelled. I was outraged. So I would turn on my heel and go all the way home without even waiting to find out if the professors were finally going to make it to the lecture halls. I was frustrated and a bit disenchanted.
It was the start of a difficult spell. I didn’t feel good, because the ‘soul’ of a university department, the way it works, its mechanics, didn’t suit me at all. I’ve always needed to have structure and direction otherwise nature comes rushing in and my instincts take over. I can hear freedom calling. If I’m not forced to work, I don’t work, and it’s as simple as that. At the
fac
, I had to structure my studies for myself. The professors made no demands on us. They gave lessons, which we could go to or not, and there was no follow-up, no checks on who was putting the work in and who wasn’t.
fac
, I had to structure my studies for myself. The professors made no demands on us. They gave lessons, which we could go to or not, and there was no follow-up, no checks on who was putting the work in and who wasn’t.
I cracked. Crashed and burned. If you want devastating evidence that the system was slack and risky, here it is. Overnight I decided I wouldn’t attend lessons any more, without telling anyone and yet not once did the university staff try to find out the reasons for my disappearance. I could have been sick or dead but it was all the same to them. I wasn’t even called in for the intermediate exams in February and received no warning for not attending. It was bizarre. You could go AWOL voluntarily or just go astray, but the university wasn’t watching in any case.
What next? I thought ‘cycling’. More and more. Every day the idea gained a stronger hold on me. Did my setback at university explain this inevitable transfer? Or was it that my passion for cycling had grown to a point where it had swept away everything else?
I thought about cycling from morning until night. And as soon as I woke up all I thought about was my bike. In the evening I went to sleep dreaming of being on my bike. Cycling. Nothing but cycling.
So I plucked up my courage. One evening, I dared to talk to my parents. I told them I was giving up my studies. They were stunned. I added: ‘At the end of the year I’m doing my military service.’ After a closely-fought argument they were bright enough to accept what I was suggesting. A whole world fell apart for them. You have to see it their way: they had always put studying above every other concern. My father said firmly: ‘All right, but if you don’t go to the army for any reason, you go out to work.’
It sounded like a judge delivering his verdict. I knew the terms of the deal now, and I was apprehensive. Right in front of me the door had opened into an unknown world. The most beautiful unknown of them all: life.
CHAPTER 4
BIKE OR WORK?
Highwaymen on the road of life. Robbers stealing fire. Time bandits. Pirates with open arms. We were all these things in that blessed age.
The world was frowning after the first oil crisis. France was getting used to mass unemployment but for some strange reason the younger generation – or the ones I knew, at least – were living through a time of few restraints. The slightest pretext would be seized on to gulp down mouthfuls of life. The tiniest event, the most insignificant day out with my mates, a faint whiff of skirt, anything was an adventure. We were springs loaded with a vital force.
The world had to be experienced to the full. You had to be everything. And all at the same time. It wasn’t a philosophy, it was a way of life.
And when I got on my bike, the call of the wild infected me with blasts of emotion. I had the feeling that I could conquer anything, and I would, even though I didn’t know how or why; I would be dragged along merely by the yearning for it, like an explorer in new territory. Our minds were probably less restrained than those of our children. Living in virtual worlds has become their daily bread. As for us, the state of things meant that we were rooted in real life. And that is the magic of cycling: the simple forward motion from the power in your legs treats you to great bursts of freedom. Your legs and nothing more. That’s the little miracle that is the bike, where man and machine conjoin. It’s a unique invention. The fusion of a man with himself.
It was a blessed era, particularly if you were a cyclist learning the
métier
. At the end of the 1970s clubs were churning out hordes of young riders and there were too many races in France to count, for all categories. At the height of the cycling season, France was like one big bike race. As for entering races, it couldn’t have been simpler: there were still selections by
départements
and
régions
. All that is gone now and it’s just down to the clubs, which is a shame. Because the way it was organised at the time might not have been perfect but it put everyone on an equal footing, no matter what club you came from, and it made it easier to mix up the different generations. What that meant was that you were racing against different riders more often. We were all in the melting pot. There was greater diversity.
métier
. At the end of the 1970s clubs were churning out hordes of young riders and there were too many races in France to count, for all categories. At the height of the cycling season, France was like one big bike race. As for entering races, it couldn’t have been simpler: there were still selections by
départements
and
régions
. All that is gone now and it’s just down to the clubs, which is a shame. Because the way it was organised at the time might not have been perfect but it put everyone on an equal footing, no matter what club you came from, and it made it easier to mix up the different generations. What that meant was that you were racing against different riders more often. We were all in the melting pot. There was greater diversity.
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