We Were Young and Carefree (9 page)

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Authors: Laurent Fignon

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Pascal Jules and I used to talk about it a lot. We wanted to break through the secrecy, understand the mysteries, particularly because the two of us were not used to holding anything back. We wanted to be straightforward in dealing with our fellow human beings. We thought it was all a bit silly, as far as we could see. At the same time, we wanted to show what we were worth. It was an apprenticeship like any other, something that we had to go through like everyone else. We were barbarians and we had to be educated, brought into the fold, progressively, patiently. It was just that it was not long before the impatience Julot and I felt turned into a desire to get it all out in the open: we wanted to break down the doors, make our education happen faster. We wanted to know everything. We were avid to be brought into the inner circle.
Bernard Hinault had his ways: he had his own hierarchy in dealing with other people, but was direct. Of course, there were times when he would shut us out of his room, as all the older guys did, but he never held back when he was asked for advice. Having said that, we never dared ask him in detail about his training methods. We’d have been afraid he would take against us. Sometimes he was just as closed as everyone else. He was impressive in more than one way as both a native Breton and a superstar.
Often we would catch little bits of conversation. On the lips of the support staff: masseurs, physios, Guimard’s assistants, we would hear the miracle word of the time: ‘preparation’. Or sometimes: ‘That guy really does the job right’.
Faire le metiér
– how many times in my life have I heard that catch-all expression which means everything and its opposite? Preparation. Pascal Jules and I kept discussing it. To start with we didn’t really know what this enigmatic word meant. Whether or not you believe me today, it’s true: we didn’t think ‘drug taking’ when we heard the word ‘preparation’. Was it because we were young? Or was it that convention meant that there were certain words that did not convey the correct meaning? It makes no odds. I would have found out sooner or later that ‘preparation’ is a whole range of things and that the drug side has a very secondary place within that. When you look at what cycling was to become a little later on, it’s clear that this was a totally different world.
Because we didn’t have access to everything, we were desperate for the smallest bits of information. We nosed out the tiniest code words and devoted hours of patience and oceans of thought to decoding the meaning of what might have been said. But even so, the process of fitting in went well. We were disciplined in our work, when we were training. Cycling is simple: if you keep a healthy respect for what the other guys are doing, you find your slot quickly enough. And as we got more confident we dared ask about certain things. But the old guys would always fob us off ‘until next time’.
Everything needed to be clarified. With hindsight I feel it was good in one way, because you have to protect young riders, but at the same time this unwillingness to explain things was dangerous. Because when you don’t get an explanation, you understand what you want to: you fantasise. At least when you are told honestly about something you can think it through and make a choice in total knowledge of what is involved.
Let’s ask a question which is on everyone’s lips. When my career was over, there were journalists who told me that it was widely talked about. I’ve heard it said that drug taking was a common thing in Guimard’s teams and that he himself incited the riders to do it. It’s completely untrue. It’s a pathetic thing to say. Saying that everyone took anything and everything is ridiculous. It is so far removed from what I saw people doing that I am ashamed people can sum up an era so naively. The more so because in our day – and I have to be clear about this – most of the drugs that were ‘on the market’ for sportsmen (not just cyclists) were detectable in drug tests and there were enough positive tests to prove it. It was only at the start of the 1990s that ‘miracle’ drugs such as erythropoietin – EPO – appeared in sport. Everyone who has dug around a bit knows that you can’t compare the two eras.
Here is the truth in two sentences:
In my day, doping methods were derisory and the riders’ exploits were massive.
For the last fifteen years or so, it has been the other way round: there is a huge number of ways in which riders can dope, and any exploits are derisory.
In the years when I raced, drug taking was not universal. There were still a lot of races being won ‘on mineral water’. What did ‘preparation’ mean? There were two definitions. Firstly, there was training, physical ability, diet, rest. Then there was drug taking, which you can’t even describe as scientific because it was so unproven and primitive. The riders came to it naturally, as soon as a rider was a new professional, and they would experiment by themselves to see what suited them and what didn’t. Of course, the
directeurs sportifs
would always ask the same question: ‘What are you doing at the moment?’ That meant: ‘What are you using?’ But it didn’t always refer to drug taking but also to vitamins, supplements to restore imbalances in this or that. But lying underneath there was always the question: ‘Are you preparing properly?’ There, they were definitely talking about stuff which made you go faster. If you wanted to be the best, you had to learn to improve in every area. And obviously drugs were part of the panoply. At the very least, the riders made sure they were informed. And then made a decision. That’s the ‘cycling way’. That’s what
faire le métier
means. Do the job the best way you can.
Pascal Jules and I tried to figure it all out; we wanted to know why the older guys shut themselves up in their rooms. We weren’t completely wet behind the ears. Riders would only have recourse to ‘preparation’ in the medical sense for the biggest races, as opposed to how it’s done today. Back then, the most frequently used banned drugs were known to everyone. There were amphetamines, which were widely used in races where there were no drug tests, but which were useful only for a short time and were unpredictable depending on the person involved. They were also used for ‘partying’, for example during the criterium season, when the festivities were a real tradition, a way of life. It was all a laugh: letting your hair down every day.
Anabolic steroids were barely used by the early 1980s, because they had been detectable for a long time in urine tests. And testosterone had not appeared yet, nor had growth hormone – they would come later – and there was no blood boosting (or not that I knew of), and no EPO.
However, the drug that dominated the scene was the anti-inflammatory cortisone, for one simple reason: it could not be detected. You have to understand that we didn’t feel as if we were cheating: each of us settled matters with his own conscience. And in any case, everyone did it. As for me, I never took any risks, physically or competitively. I worked within the system in my own way, but it never seemed shocking to me that guys ‘did the job right’. You have to keep in mind that every era has sportsmen who are sensible and others who have no idea what they are doing.
In all the teams at the start of the 1980s no one ever mentioned ‘doping’. Obviously, the word was banned, taboo. The only thing you talked about was ‘help’. A lot of vitamins were taken, in a systematic way, in particular B12, Pascal and I were determined rather than patient when it came to finding out what was going on. As soon as we saw one of the old guys nipping off on his own, we would go into their gaff, sit down on a bed and wait. The rider would be embarrassed, wouldn’t dare go out again or say a word. Then we would push a bit: ‘Come on, tell us.’ It really wound them up, but then we found the whole rigmarole just absurd. Pascal and I solemnly swore that we would never behave like this with young riders.
Luckily, Cyrille Guimard would try to keep it all on an even keel. He at least would talk a lot to the new professionals, would pass on huge amounts of info, would ask the riders about things, try to work out what they were thinking, find out how it was going – basically, he didn’t limit himself to driving the team car and propping up the bar in the evening. He for one felt that he was responsible for the riders and their health, both mental and physical.
To understand that different times in cycling cannot really be compared, you have to be aware that never, in my entire career, did anyone talk to me – or anyone near me – about ‘doping’. Occasionally someone would ask: ‘Have you taken something?’ But that was it. And most of the time, it was not viewed as cheating, which must now seem completely incredible. In the context of the time, where there were still riders whose careers started in the early 1970s like Bernard Thévenet or Joop Zoetemelk, it was an integral part of the system, totally assimilated. It must have seemed completely normal to some of the guys: an everyday matter, an integral part of the make-up of cycling.
In those days I only ever had recourse to one doctor, the team medic Armand Mégret. It would never have occurred to me to go and ask elsewhere in the way all the riders seemed to in later years. Mégret and his ilk were proper doctors, who looked after your health and nothing else. Certain deficiencies required certain vitamins. The riders would react to different treatments in different ways. Apart from when I was actually ill, I always hated medicine of any kind and my body didn’t accept it. Simple prescriptions for flu or a headache could make me even more poorly.
Other guys were different. In this ultra-medicalised little world where there were countless suitcases of remedies going the rounds, there was always the temptation to take something like a vitamin or a supplement, just to make sure. To ward off I don’t know what. Looking logically at it, there are times of the year – particularly when it’s cold – when you have to look after yourself if you’re going to ride a bike seriously. That is habit-forming, and those habits can degenerate. To do the job as well as you can, you can end up believing that medicine of all kinds is as integral to cycling as the bike itself. I’ve known riders who turned out that way and those are the ones who would go over the top.
Pascal and I still avoided going too far in winding up the older guys. We stuck to the basic rules of the team. But only the basics. You should have seen the faces of older riders like Maurice Le Guilloux and Hubert Arbes when we teased Hinault at the dinner table. They put their faces in their soupbowls. The shame they must have felt for us! But we couldn’t restrain ourselves. There was nothing particularly disrespectful about it, it was just a new atmosphere to get used to; we were taking the old order down a peg or two, shaking up the hierarchy. After all, I would go through it myself later on. You have to accept that a new world pushes out the old. The wheel turns.
That year Julot and I didn’t think twice. We were more interested in the fun we could get from racing than the tough bits. Fun was a moot point, however. During the first training camp at Rambouillet, in front of the entire team, riders and backup staff, Cyrille Guimard took the floor. He was even more solemn than usual. There was an impressive silence in the room. The boss of the team was about to say something, not the guy who was our friend and confidant. He came out with this jaw-dropping pronouncement: ‘Anyone caught with a bird in their room during a race will be kicked out,
tout de suite.’
Pascal and I caught each other’s eye at once: panic stations. Guimard wasn’t talking about us, as we were new to the team, but what shocked us was the idea: no sex. We figured out that one or two of the guys must have taken the piss the previous year and we looked round to see if anyone was blushing. But we were thinking mainly of ourselves, and the future. We were in cycle-racing paradise but what if the price to pay was that we couldn’t go near a woman? It seemed a bit steep.
Sex is another of cycling’s great taboos. But having sex never prevented me from winning a race, and feeling good about yourself helps keep you on an even keel. Nothing could be more obvious. But the point was that Guimard was out to make an impression as a disciplinarian, along the lines of Guy Roux, the trainer for the Auxerre football club.
We quickly worked out that, actually, Guimard had never sacked anyone because they had been found with a girl in their room. But he always had a fair idea of what was going on. He was just firing a warning shot so that no one went too far. Or so he thought. Julot and I soon forgot the threat and let our instincts go unchecked. When we wanted to meet up with a girl, we would always think of a way around the rule and we would cover each other’s backs. And the evening when Guimard had put the fear of God into us by issuing an ultimatum in public at least provided us with one handy bit of information, which had not gone unnoticed. If there had been hanky-panky the previous year, that meant there were opportunities to be had. Pascal whispered, ‘At least that means there is a bit of skirt out there.’ And he was right.
You had to ‘do the job right’. Absolutely. But not at the expense of all of life’s little pleasures.
CHAPTER 8
RIGHT AND PROPER PEOPLE
On two wheels people always have to show their true colours. You can never cheat the world for very long. Cycling is a way for men to find themselves and show what they are worth. It exposes their weaknesses and their hidden value and it allows huge appetites to be indulged. It is nothing to do with glory: it’s more a matter of fulfilment. Cycling allows us to mine the deepest recesses of our souls.
For me, the best example of this was a man I saw again and again. He was a captivating character and he had a big name: Bernard Hinault. In winter, he would train so little that when he came back to us for early training camps he looked like a man who had been on holiday for a year. He was overweight. Let’s just say he looked as if he had been inflated. You could tell the second you saw him. And if you were not well acquainted with the Badger – which included new pros like us, of course – you would seriously wonder how much time it would take for this man to get back to what he had been. But we were making a colossal mistake: Hinault the human being and Hinault the cyclist were one and the same person. As the start of the 1982 season was to prove.

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