Rough Ride

by Paul Kimmage

  Professional cycling races have, in recent times, become an easy target for the demonstrator looking for publicity for his cause. Paris-Nice, the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia, all have suffered at the protests of striking miners, of about to be laid off ship builders, of struggling farmers.

  The demonstrations are an accepted nuisance that an unlucky race organiser must face. He will listen, sympathise with their problems and do almost anything to get them off the road.

  When a bunch of students blocked the road three hundred metres from the start line at Maracay on the third day of the 'Tour de los Americas', nobody noticed. But then the fire started . . . The long finishing straight was adjoined by a huge field full of high grasses and scorched weeds. These weeds were only too accommodating as the students lit their matches and a huge fire rapidly spread.

  A fire engine arrived. The firemen started hosing down the flames and soon had the initial section under control. But when it came to reversing to follow the direction of the fire, the thirty-year-old truck broke down and we were treated to the ridiculous sight of the truck being pushed down the road by the embarrassed firemen and a handful of spectators.

  Race director Germain Blanco decided that the time had come to do a deal. The students were protesting about the death of a young Caracas student at the hands of the local police the day before. Signor Blanco assured them that their protest had been noted, then asked them to clear the road. The students thought about it. They decided to kidnap him.

  We had been standing on the start line for fifteen minutes. No one knew what was going on. The fire engine breaking down gave us all a great laugh, but there was no sign of a replacement and we watched as the huge orange flames grew closer and listened as the students' protests grew louder. And for the first time I started to feel uncomfortable.

  Stephen (Roche) was standing talking to Fabio Parra when one of the bikini-clad promotion girls walked by. He took out his feeding bottles and playfully squirted some water at her. He missed.

  There was a young police officer standing facing the crowd three feet in front of them. The cold water hit him on the back of the neck. The water hit a panic button in his brain that made him draw the four-foot-long butcher's knife he was wearing and turn to face his aggressor.

  Stephen saw the anger in the man's face and the sword in his hand. His mouth dropped. Parra, a Spanish-speaking Colombian, quickly gave an explanation to the confused cop. The bomb was defused but the tension remained . . . Most of the riders then abandoned the start line. Some climbed on to the roofs of their team cars to try and get a better view. The second fire engine still hadn't arrived as the flames blazed, rapidly approaching the large metal fence that separated the field from the road – and us.

  And then the rats started running.

  Out under the fence they ran, big ones, small ones, dirty ones. Their ship, a weedy field, was sinking and as is their great tradition they were deserting. Not all of them made it to safety. Some were crushed by cars, others had their heads stood on by amused spectators – hard men, these Venezuelans.

  And then the rocks started flying.

  The students pelted the line of riot police facing them with anything they could get their hands on. This was the final straw. The organisers, still minus their race director, cancelled the stage.

  We were ordered on our bikes and it was decided that we ride the fifty kilometres back to the hotel. So we left that place and the angry young men. They had won. But as I rode out of the town I wondered at the price they would have to pay.

  The peloton were in a jovial mood as we rode back to the hotel: 'It was good of those students to give us the day off.'

  One guy even suggested putting them on the flight to Miami so they could do the same there.

  All through the protest the jokes and wisecracks were flying. No one seemed to give a damn that the students were risking their lives 300 metres in front of them. This attitude disturbs me, for I too am guilty.

  And there was of course the ride back to the hotel. How many noticed the barefooted sackcloth-knickered kids that lined the road? How many give a damn? Do I? I don't know. All this disturbs me. I don't feel comfortable here, and all of a sudden bike racing seems so trivial, so wasteful. I will be happy to leave.

  Tomorrow we fly to Miami for two more races. Ah, Miami. Former Olympic champion Alexi Grewal calls it the sin capital of the world. It's full of rich people and lovely women and sandy beaches. I can't wait.

  I liked the piece. It gave me a huge buzz of satisfaction. Of having hit the button, done it right. It was definitely better than average and this is what pleased me most. Perhaps I did have a future in journalism.

  Miami was clean and sunny and lovely. There was a different smell here, money. Miami reeked of wealth. I hated it. It came too quickly after Venezuela, and the culture shock was too brutal for my conscience to bear.

  I returned to Europe in good physical condition, but was still left off the team for Paris-Nice. I didn't mind too much, and tried to train as hard as I could at home during the week-long race. My next race was to have been the French classic Mauleon-Moulin (a Grand Prix des Chaudières) but on the day before I was due to leave I received a most disturbing phone call. It was the team doctor, Monsieur Navarro. During Paris-Nice I had flown to Toulouse Hospital to do some medical tests for the team. Dr Navarro was ringing me with the results. They had found an abnormality in my heartbeat and prohibited me from racing at Mauleon.

  'It might be nothing at all or it might mean you have to give up cycling.'

  I was shocked and quite frightened. Three days later I returned to Toulouse for more tests. A tape recorder that monitored heartbeats was strapped to my chest for twenty-four hours, and the results were fed into a computer and analysed by the doctors. The result – nothing. They had made a mistake, there was nothing wrong with me. I was delighted: for more than a week I had been fully convinced I was going to snuff it prematurely. But then I became angry. I had not touched the bike for nine days, had not raced for three weeks and was not due to race for another two. I was back to square one. The sacrifices I had made all winter, the benefits I had acquired from racing hard in Venezuela, were now all for nothing. And all because some stupid doctor couldn't read a computer correctly. I could have cried. I did.

  I don't know how I kept my sanity as I struggled to regain good physical shape. My weekly articles for the Sunday Tribune certainly helped. So too did the encouragement of a phone call from Stephen. But the most helpful of all was my directeur sportif, Patrick Valke. Fagor, like most teams, had two directeurs sportifs. Pierre Bazzo, an ex-pro, was the principal directeur, while Patrick Valke was the assistant. Patrick and Stephen go back a long way. For seven years Patrick was his mechanic, but during the Giro of 1987 the roles changed. The wars with Visentini split the Carrera team into two camps. Stephen had just two men in his, Eddy Schepers and Patrick Valke. Eddy helped him on the road, but Patrick took over as directeur sportif of the two-man team and they won. When Fagor came looking for his signature later that year, one of the stipulations of the contract was that Patrick be made directeur sportif.

  Patrick's greatest fault in his new job was his lack of diplomacy. With Patrick, a spade was always a spade. But some of the management at Fagor didn't take kindly to being addressed as spades, and half-way through the year he was sacked. The man he had replaced, Pierre Bazzo, was brought back and the Roche-Valke tandem spent the last four months of the year trying to find a way out of their marriage with the Basque electrical appliance firm. Contracts are signed to be honoured. Stephen needed a team, and Fagor were unable to find a leader of Roche's calibre and both parties decided to bury the hatchet and try again in 1989. Patrick was reinstated as directeur, but this time as assistant to Bazzo. This created one major problem – they hated each other. Splitting the team into two at the start of the year was a blessing in disguise. Bazzo and Valke never saw each other, and for a while the union seemed to work.

  I started
the year under Bazzo with an open mind. It didn't last. After the 'heart' incident, I badly needed racing, but Bazzo didn't want to know. I formed the impression that he would have left me at home until the end of the season; that he didn't rate me and wasn't prepared to give me a fair trial. One of the team mechanics told me he used to insult me, and others on the team, behind our backs. True or not, the revelation turned me completely against him. After that, I never phoned him for information, and our conversations never extended beyond 'hello' and 'goodbye', and even that was an effort.

  Thank God I had Patrick. He arranged for me to race in Belgium and was very encouraging. My form was terribly slow in coming at first, but the racing got me going and gradually I started feeling better. The four days of Dunkirk were my first real stage race of the year. Stephen won a stage and finished third overall, and his form was so good he decided to have a go at the Tour of Italy. I had never ridden a 'Giro' before and asked Patrick for a place in the team; Italy would be make or break. A good performance would put me in the Tour team, a bad ride would mean the end. I wanted to push myself to the limits one more time to see if I could do it. On Friday 19 May we flew to Palermo, Sicily.

  20

  GIRO D'lTALIA

  Sunday, 21 May 1989

  Stage 1: Taormina to Catania (123 kilometres)

  Stage winner: Jean-Paul Van Poppel (Netherlands)

  Race leader: Jean-Paul Van Poppel

  The Tour of Italy, second biggest stage race in the world. Three weeks of racing, 3,709 kilometres of cycling. I was nervous before the start. This is not just another bike race: it's history, legendary. And I'm here, doing it, participating in history. Starting out from Taormina this morning, I felt as if I was heading out on a great adventure. God knows what lies ahead. God knows how far I will go.

  The first stage, a short one of 123 kilometres, was like all opening stages of big tours. Everyone was highly strung, and there were a lot of crashes. Everyone wanted to get to the front, to stay out of trouble, but also for another reason. The first stage is the only stage when any rider in the peloton can lead the Giro D'Italia. I was conscious of this as I took my place at the front. It's another tale for my grandchildren: 'the day Grandad led the Tour of Italy'. As a first stage it wasn't too bad, except for the finishing circuits, which were very fast. Some stupid Italian gregario (an Italian domestique) ran into me with three laps to go, and we both nearly fell. The bastard had the cheek to accuse me of swaying into him. He was short, dark, very ugly, and as I insisted on insulting him back we nearly came to blows. Typical Italian – they're gods in their own back garden.

  A journalist came up to me after the finish. My face was blackened from street dust, and sweaty. My lungs were still heaving from the effort of the final sprint. And he looked at me and said, cool as a breeze, 'Oh, I suppose today was only a gallop?'

  And I looked at him and thought seriously about telling him to fuck off. But I remembered what Roche had said and decided to be diplomatic: 'Yes I suppose it was, really.'

  Monday, 22 May

  Stage 2: Catania to Etna (132 kilometres)

  Stage winner: Acasio da Silva (Portugal)

  Race leader: Acasio da Silva

  Today the stage finished on the slopes of the famous volcano. It used to terrify me as a child, this fiery mountain. I imagined it erupting and the lava rolling across the seas to the doorstep of Kilmore Avenue. It was another short stage, just 132 kilometres, but it was hard, with the climb to Etna at the finish. I didn't drink enough during the stage and was dehydrated on the climb – which was a pity, as I was going quite well. I lost three minutes to stage winner Acacio da Silva and finished on my hands and knees, absolutely cooked. There were others much worse than me: Greg LeMond was miles back and going really badly. Before getting into the team car after the finish, I picked up a piece of volcanic rock as a souvenir. I will take it home to Kilmore Avenue and the childhood fantasy will come true.

  Tuesday, 23 May

  Stage 3: Villafranca to Messina (32.5 kilometres Team Time Trial)

  Stage winner: Ariostea (team)

  Race leader: Silvano Contini (Italy)

  Team time-trial day, a bit of a disaster for me. Didn't recover from the efforts of yesterday and spent most of the time sitting at the back. The lads rode quite well and we finished tenth. We showered and changed at a hotel beside the finish line which also housed the press room. The atmosphere of typewriters clacking and journalists scratching their heads intrigued me. Will I be one of them next year? As soon as we had changed, we left by car ferry for mainland Italy. I had expected an improvement, but if anything it's poorer and even more dirty.

  Wednesday, 24 May

  Stage 4: Scilla to Cosenza (204 kilometres)

  Stage winner: Rolf Jarmann (Switzerland)

  Race leader: Silvano Contini

  A great day, fifteenth on the stage, I'm really delighted with myself. It was up and down, up and down, all day – a really hard stage. I love it when it's like that. I was particularly strong near the finish, and able to close a lot of gaps for Stephen. I should have done better, really. I came out of the final hairpin in race leader da Silva's slipstream and he had two riders leading him out for the sprint. God, I couldn't believe it, I thought all my Christmases had come at once, an armchair ride to the line – this is it, I'm going to win. But then, 300 metres out, this six-foot Italian bastard from the Jolly team elbowed his way in on top of me and pushed me off da Silva's back wheel. I should have pushed him back, but we were doing sixty kilometres an hour and I hadn't got the bottle at that speed. As soon as I lost the wheel I got boxed in and started slipping back to fifteenth on the line. The Italian with the big elbows crashed as we crossed it, and ripped all the skin off his arse. Can't say I was sorry.

  Thursday, 25 May

  Stage 5: Cosenza to Potenza (275 kilometres)

  Stage winner: Stefano Giuliani (Italy)

  Race leader: Silvano Contini

  My flirtation with journalism is getting out of hand. I am not sure I have ever been this tired after a stage, and I can't even rest, as I'm typing out the final pages of this week's diary to fax it home tomorrow. But I'm totally knackered and it's a real strain. My eyes keep blurring and I have never made as many mistakes with the typing. We were up at six, for the longest stage of the race, 275 kilometres. But the race organiser, Vincente Torriani, got his sums wrong and the correct stage distance was 290 kilometres. After the stage we had an hour's drive to the hotel, where there was no hot water for showering. I think I can be excused for feeling a little hard done by tonight. We suffer like dogs, are treated like dogs – and all for few quid and some glory. Am I mad? I am continuing to ride well, and I hope it lasts. Morale in the team is great with Patrick as directeur sportif. I get on really well with him, although he can be a ruthless bastard at times.

  Friday, 26 May

  Stage 6: Potenza to Campobasso (223 kilometres)

  Stage winner: Stefan Joho (Switzerland)

  Race leader: Silvano Contini

  Some bastard Italian attacked from the gun today. The first five kilometres were up a mountain and the attack split the field to bits. Before I knew what was happening, the three cups of Colombian coffee, swallowed just before the off, were coming back up my throat. My muscles, sore and stiff from yesterday's marathon, took their time before responding and the climb was sheer hell. It was the ultimate in bad taste. This race is beginning to stink. Where was the Giro of legend, where riders laughed and joked for five hours and raced for two?

  Managed to get my fax away. Gave it to English journalist John Wilcockson who will send it tonight from the press room. It's a big weight off my shoulders, which is a bit ridiculous. I mean, I shouldn't be bothered with the hassle, and yet I am. It would kill me if I didn't get it away, and I am beginning to wonder if this has become a new motivation for finishing the race. I mean, if I'm not racing, then I can't write, and it's got to the stage now where I actually love writing.

  I didn't rid
e as well today and cracked a bit towards the end on a long crosswind section which split the peloton. I'm not really surprised, as the last two days were so demanding. I've been having regular vitamin injections from Silvano. One, sometimes two, a night. My arse is beginning to feel like a dartboard and I'm not happy about it. It bugs me to have to stick needles in myself every night just to survive.