Rough Ride

by Paul Kimmage

  Later in the month I had my first bad argument with Guy Mollet. I had taken a complete nine days' break from competition but on the tenth day, a Sunday morning, he stormed into the house and demanded that I ride the race later that day. I shouted back at him, replying that the professional contract he had been promising me since Bordeaux-Paris was long overdue. He assured me that he would fulfil his promise, but only on condition that I raced immediately. I raced and he was happy.

  At the end of July I rode the Tour of Poland for the Irish national team. It was probably the hardest amateur stage race I ever rode. Conditions were horrible, the hotel food was tasteless – the bare minimum – and it was impossible to buy supplements. The racing was pretty savage and we took a hiding for the first couple of days. On the seventh stage I broke clear twenty kilometres from the finish with a Polish rider who left me with a kilometre to go and won the stage. I was really disappointed with second place, but I learned a month later that the Pole had tested positive in dope control after the stage and I had been awarded the victory. But it wasn't the same. It was a prestigious addition to my list of victories, but I had been robbed of the pleasure of winning. The Pole had raised his hands to the huge crowd, he had milked their applause and kissed the pretty girl with the flowers. No, it wasn't the same.

  From Poland I returned to France and raced the Tour of Normandy again with the national squad. Peter Crinnion was our manager. Peter was an ex-pro and had helped Stephen Roche to go to France. I respected him greatly. Before the race he pulled me aside from the others in our team group and told me I could win the Normandy. I looked at him as if he had two heads, but then asked myself: 'Why not?' It was one of the best weeks of my career. I won a stage and finished second in two others and finished fifth overall. I would undoubtedly have finished higher, but in the race's only time trial I had the incredible misfortune to puncture twice in ten kilometres. I was flying.

  I returned to Wasquehal and rode a small race that Mollet insisted I ride. A five-man Mafia, a mix of Poles and French who toured France and split all prize money between them, were riding. Near the end of the race I broke clear in a five-man group with two Mafia men. One of them approached me on the last lap and offered me £50 if I did not sprint. Surprised, I thought about it but said, 'No'. He increased the bid to £100. I had become a bit hungry for money, so I agreed – but it bothered me. So I thought about it: 'Mollet would probably give me a bonus if I won, and another win would do my chances of a contract no harm.' I went back to the Mafia man and told him there was no deal. He spat in disgust, and I immediately felt pressure. If I won, I would justify my argument. If I lost, I'd be £100 poorer and the laughing stock of the Mafia. The sprint to the line was a desperately close thing, but I managed to edge him out. Mollet was delighted. He announced to the crowd at the prize ceremony that Kimmage would be riding the World Championships for Ireland one week later in Italy. But he also announced that Kimmage would soon be turning professional. I laughed, very pleased with myself, I liked winning. I had no idea that it was the last race I would ever win.

  The World Amateur Championships were in Montello, Italy. Even though it was very hot, I managed to pick up a bad head cold two days before the race. We rode the circuit in training: it had a hard hill, and I liked it and felt optimistic about my chances. Poland and Normandy had given me a new confidence. On race day, I was given a great boost when a note scribbled on a piece of paper was handed to me. It said: 'Compared with all you went through in Bordeaux-Paris this will be nothing. Good luck. Raphael.' The note gave me great heart and I started the race, tense but incredibly determined. I was content to just follow the others for the first half of the race and didn't feel too good.

  To please the Irish supporters on the circuit, I attacked on the climb at half-way, but I didn't get very far and instantly regretted my foolishness. The World Championships were a gradual process of elimination. Over 200 had started, but with just one lap to go there were just twenty-six men in front and I was one of them. Just before we entered the finishing straight I noticed that my rear tyre was deflating ever so slowly. There was no question of changing a wheel so close to the finish, so I carried on. I started the sprint early to avoid being boxed in; the tyre was softening but holding. The Polish rider Lech Piasecki passed me like a bomb but as the line approached, no one else arrived and I thought: 'Christ I'm going to get a medal.' But then a Danish rider, Weltz, passed, then a Belgian, another Dane and an Italian, Maurizio Fondriest. I crossed the line and counted. Six. Sixth in the world. The sixth best amateur in the whole fucking world. I was overjoyed. It was the summit of my career.

  I watched the pros ride next day. I visited the pits after the race and received congratulations from Roche, Kelly and Earley. Kelly was the last to leave for his hotel. A man of few words, he turned to me just before getting into the team car, and said, 'De Gribaldy will be talking to you.' This was music to my ears and I returned to Wasquehal a happy man. I met 'de Gri' on the eve of the pro-am classic, the Grand Prix d'Isbergues, at the small hotel where his team was staying. He made me wait for half an hour but then sat down beside me at a table in the bar. He looked at me and said I would have to lose some weight and then asked me some details, including my age. I had expected him to produce a contract for me to sign and had already decided I would not sign for less than £600 a month – de Gri was a notoriously bad payer. But he produced no contract and made no promises. He just said we would meet again after the race, which I was riding with the Irish national team. Three-quarters of the way through I was following French pro Jacques Bossis down a narrow gravel-lined descent. There was a sharp right-hand bend at the bottom, which I failed to round and ran off the road. The front wheel dropped into a sharp dip in the ditch, throwing me over the handlebars, and I landed face down at the roadside. I don't remember much, just the pain from my back and left wrist and the sensation that someone had kicked me in the mouth. I spent five days in hospital in Béthune with a fractured vertebra and left wrist. I had expected de Gri to call at the hospital with my contract, but he never came. I left hospital dejected. Raphael packed my things and we went home to Ireland – to wait.

  The phone rang six weeks later. It was Mollet. He was sending me a professional contract with a new French team, RMO. I would be paid £700 a month and the contract was for two years. I put the phone down and danced a jig of joy. The struggling was over. All the sacrifices had paid off. I had made it.

  7

  BRAND-NEW ANORAK

  The first team meeting took place at a ski station at Grand Bornand, on the slopes of the Col de Colombier. RMO, a firm specialising in temporary employment, gathered together the eighteen cyclists who would wear their colours in the professional peloton for 1986. It was a mixed bunch of old-timers, established names and new pros, four of whom had been taken on. Two, Jean-Louis Peillon and Bruno Huger, were French. Per Pedersen was Danish and I was Irish. It was hard for Pedersen and me to integrate. He spoke no French, and shyness prevented me from using the bit that I knew. I spoke only when I was spoken to and tried to smile as much as possible. I wanted desperately to be accepted. I felt so awkward, so out of place, just like my first day in school.

  In the mornings we would ski cross-country. I had never skied before and spent the whole week slipping on my arse. This helped my integration as I was a source of constant amusement to the suave French, who had learned to ski in childhood. I tried to fall as little as possible, not because I was afraid of getting laughed at but because it was excruciatingly painful. The vertebra I had broken while riding my last amateur race three months earlier had not quite healed. No one knew I had cracked a vertebra, and I wasn't telling them. I had fought all my life for this pro contract and I feared that the revelation of a back problem might discourage my new sponsor from employing me. So I said nothing and secretly skied with a steel corset strapped to my back for support. In the afternoons we were free to do what we pleased. The French lads invited me for football, but fearing for my back
I hired a mountain bike and cycled to the top of the Colombier alone. I had never seen such an enormous climb and was so overawed by the view that I wandered off the road, plunged down a sharp incline and went over the bars, landing on the steel corset. I went numb with pain. Picking myself up, I quickly descended the Col and took refuge in a small tearoom in the village.

  I was half-way through a brioche chaude when one of the French guys came in. I tried to hide, as I was enjoying my solitude and was in no humour for making small talk; but he saw me and sat at my table. He ordered a cake and coffee and we chatted amiably. He liked the ambience in the team and said the absence of real stars would mean we would get on so much better. He paid for both of us, and as he walked out the door I tried to put a name to his face. It was Chappuis – Andre Chappuis. I immediately took a shine to him.

  The evenings were taken up with team talks. Bernard Thevenet our team manager, or directeur sportif, gathered us round after dinner and explained the early season programme of racing, ironing out any problems we might have. I never had any. As far as I was concerned, it was all a game of survival. Two years spent as an amateur in France had taught me to keep my mouth closed and my ears open and to pedal as quickly as I could. I decided to adopt the same tactics as a professional, at least until I understood what it was all about.

  After the meetings we were free to do as we pleased. The French played cards among themselves, I chatted with Pedersen and, without realising it, two clans were formed. I returned to Dublin on 23 December with a jersey, a bag and a red anorak, all adorned with my sponsors' logo, RMO. I didn't dare ask them for the travelling expenses for the trip. I was afraid they might change their mind about hiring me – I was so naive. But I was a pro. The bag, the jersey and the red anorak said so. I wore them whenever the occasion presented itself, it was my way of saying: 'Look at me, I'm a pro, I've made it.'

  This was my first mistake.

  8

  SHATTERED DREAMS

  January was spent in Ireland, preparing. The broken wrist and vertebra had left me immobile for most of the winter and as a result my physical condition suffered. I trained most weekends with my brothers, Raphael and Kevin, and I was a little concerned as both of them were riding more strongly than I was. I trained twice with Martin Earley and Stephen Roche. Stephen had ridden with five of my team-mates, Gauthier, Claveyrolat, Le Bigaut, Simon and Vermote, the year before on the La Redoute team. He recommended Jean-Louis Gauthier as the most dependable, and praised him as being one of the best domestiques he had ever had. I made a mental note of this; for Stephen, a perfectionist who demanded perfection from everyone around him, did not distribute praise for others easily. This Gauthier must really be good.

  We talked of other things, of drugs. I was worried about the job I was going into. I had heard so many stories of professional cyclists taking drugs and was frightened that they might all be true. Now that I was a professional I felt I had the right to ask Stephen to enlighten me on the subject. He talked first of our two soigneurs. The verb soigner means 'to treat' or 'to take care of. A soigneur takes care of his riders by massaging their legs, listening to their problems, dressing wounds and giving vitamins and minerals. Stephen had worked with Claude Wery and Emile Thiery at La Redoute. He said that Claude was a bit lazy, he preferred Emile and told me he would ask him to take me under his wing. He said that professional cycling was not like amateur cycling – one had to take care of oneself. The racing was so hard and frequent that it was important to keep up the vitamin and mineral level in the body, and to do this vitamin B6 and B12 injections during the season were a necessity. I said nothing and just nodded my head, but inside I was horrified. In my mind a syringe was drugs, and to have to take injections meant having to take drugs. I returned home and talked to my father about my fears. He told me just to do the best that I could without getting caught up in it and I put it out of my mind.

  On Tuesday 4 February I made my professional debut at the Etoile de Bessèges stage race in the south of France. I arrived late the night before and was handed a new bike and all my equipment on the morning of the race. I was also handed my wages for January, a cheque for £700. I was shitting bricks before the start. The bike was all wrong, but there was no time to change and I raced the 100 kilometres feeling like an alien. It was strange to be riding alongside Fignon and Zootemelk. The previous five years I had been a star, a top amateur, recognised and admired. Now I was just another one in the bunch. Everything I had ever done now meant nothing and I was starting all over again at the bottom of the ladder. My two worries were crashing and bringing a star off, and getting dropped, and I managed to avoid both.

  Later in the evening I bumped into my team-mate Regis Simon while taking a leak in the bathroom. He was bent over the bathroom sink scrubbing the jersey and shorts made filthy by the wet roads earlier in the day. I almost laughed and asked him why he was washing his clothes by hand. 'Why, who else will wash them for me?' was his reply. I had always thought the gear would be washed for us – but no, we had to scrub it and dry it ourselves, so I borrowed his washing powder and set to work. It was the hardest part of the day.

  Bessèges, being the first stage race of the year, was not too hard and I managed to finish in the bunch most days. It felt great to be encouraged in the time trial by Thevenet, a double Tour de France winner, whose photograph had adorned my bedroom wall when I was a child. The only real problem was the bitterly cold weather. The team rode well; Per was riding really strongly, and he took the race lead with one day to go. It would have been great publicity for a new team, RMO, to win the first race of the season; but his advance was slim and that night Thevenet was forced to telephone the other directeurs sportifs to try to do a deal. The idea was to offer money to a rival team, who did not have a man well placed overall, in return for help to defend a jersey. If the team accepted, then for the following stage RMO would defend the lead alone until they could no longer control it, and then it was time for the others to earn their money. This was no surprise to me, for as an amateur I had ridden stage races and seen leaders in trouble with no team-mates to control things, only for a rival team suddenly to intervene and restore order. I suppose it was just good business sense, for if there was one thing I was learning it was that pro cycling was a business. Before each race we were told how much of a bonus we would receive from the sponsor for winning, and how much of this bonus we could use to negotiate with other riders if we got into a winning position near the end of a race.

  All of our rival French teams had men well placed for overall victory and none were interested in doing a deal. The next option was to approach a Belgian or Dutch team, but this was dismissed. The Belgians, and especially the Dutch, were really mercenary bastards. They would do the job, but the price was always very high and for a small race like Bessèges it was not worth it. So the pressure was on us to defend Per's lead alone. I did what I could, but it was bitterly cold and I couldn't feel my legs at all. My drinking bottle froze solid and I abandoned the race when I was dropped, with forty kilometres to go. Per lost the lead but wasn't too disappointed, for it was a great debut for a new pro.

  The Tour of the Mediterranean was next. This was limited to eight riders per team and I was surprised when Thevenet announced the selection as I did not think I was worth my place on my Bessèges form. I wasn't; it was just the fact that Pedersen was riding so well. He spoke no French and Thevenet little English, so I was brought along as interpreter. It was during the Med that my problems really started. I was four kilos overweight and, as a result, suffering like a dog on the climbs. But I still managed to hang on, only to be left behind on the descents. The memory of my crash at Isbergues was still fresh in my mind and it scared me. I had lost my bottle. I wasn't too bad in the dry, but in the wet I was a complete disaster and I had to endure the insults from other riders as I let huge gaps open up and they were forced to come around me and close them. This depressed me, and my morale was really bad after two stages of being left behind.
On the night after the second stage Thevenet came into my room and asked me what my problem was. I explained to him about the crash, expecting to receive a bit of a bollocking. But no, he was kind and understanding. He too had had the same problem during his career, and he told me to relax more and it would sort itself out. He demanded more participation from me in helping the team. 'In professional races, the individual does not matter, it is the team that counts. This is now your job, so each time you race you must try and make some sort of contribution to the team. The best way is to win races but this is not always possible so you must contribute in other ways. It may be only a small thing like fetching a bottle or waiting for a colleague who has punctured; but it's important, for at the end of the day you can get off your bike and say, "Yes I did my work today."' His talk worked wonders on me and from the next day I was riding much better.

  It was strange, therefore, to get told off on a day when I felt I had made my biggest contribution. It was on the fourth stage, to Marseille. I was prominent in two early breakaway attempts and then, as we were caught, another group got away with two of our riders Regis Simon and Pierre Le Bigaut. I sat back in the bunch, delighted to have men in the front and the pressure off, but suddenly Thevenet came up in the team car and shouted that he was tired of seeing me at the back and that I was to move to the front to hinder the chasing attempts immediately. Our lads were eventually caught and that night I was given my first official bollocking. I was a bit pissed off, but had to accept it. I was made aware of the need not only to be at the front but to be seen to be at the front. It was another lesson learnt.