by Freya North
Then what happened? To be suddenly staring at the still mass of blue sky after concentrating for so long on the multicoloured movement of the peloton was momentarily disconcerting and dazzling. It was not Lucky Luca who found himself all but sitting directly on top of JaJa. The famous Frenchman Laurent Jalabert had Fucking Luca Jones sprawled over the top of him.
‘Merde!’ Jalabert swore as he and Luca extricated themselves amicably enough from one another.
‘Wank,’ said Luca, seeing blood on his shin and wondering where his bike was.
‘Ça va?’ someone asked.
‘Oui,’ Luca muttered, ‘wank.’
There’s my bike. There goes Jalabert. Skill. How come I’m bleeding? Do I hurt? I don’t think so.
Riders were picking their way cautiously around Luca and a few other floored men. Luca was aware of the thrum of the TV helicopter overhead, of the whirr of press cameras near by, of the yellow-clad Mavic neutral service personnel swarming around like helpful worker bees. After so long in the saddle, to stand upright felt a little odd. To the French family previously enjoying their annual institution of picnic and peloton, the stooped Luca looked injured enough even before they saw his ripped shorts. It was time to do their bit; what an honour, what a conversation piece. Luca was bent over with hands on knees, collecting himself and his Oakleys, when someone put an arm around his shoulders.
‘Monsieur?’
Fuck, look at my shorts. Where is the blood on my leg coming from?
‘Monsieur – ici.’
Luca was gazing at the sky again.
I’m lying on a picnic table. I’m being photographed.
He sat up. On the road, riders were remounting. He looked to his right and stared blankly at he photographer. He looked to his left and a small child stared at him whilst sucking hard on a straw in an empty bottle of Coke. He looked down and regarded a pile of picnic victuals hastily dumped on a chair. He looked at his left thigh and observed slivers of baguette crust speckling his skin with shards of gravel.
‘Ça va?’ a photographer said perfunctorily, looking around for another photo opportunity.
Luca shrugged, got to his feet, set his bike upright, spun a wheel and grinned through 180 degrees. ‘Yeah – I’m fine.’ He saluted the family who nodded humbly. Off he went, shorts in shreds, left hip stinging, reputation intact, popularity increased.
‘It’s not your blood,’ said his soigneur, sponging Luca down at the team car when he arrived an hour or so later.
‘Huh?’
‘Not yours,’ the soigneur said, almost accusatorially.
‘Jeez, must be Jalabert’s,’ Luca muttered as if he ought to return it.
‘Great butt,’ Hunter laughed, raising his eyebrows at Luca’s flank on view through his tattered shorts.
‘You want to change?’ his soigneur asked.
Luca nodded initially but then said, ‘Nah.’ Narrowing his eyes, he correctly deduced that the three girls hovering would prefer him this way.
‘From Denmark,’ said one, holding out her T-shirt for an autograph and exchanging three kisses.
‘Me too,’ said the other, proffering a felt tip and her forearm for signing and her lips for direct osculation.
‘And me,’ the third said, offering Luca her autograph book and a respectful if solemn handshake.
I feel better already. Bye bye girls, come again. Oh look, there’s that girl from the press conference. Come and ask me how I am. Don’t just mouth ‘You OK?’ Come nearer. I don’t bite – unless you like. How about I give a shrug and look blue? Yes!
‘Hullo,’ the girl from the press conference said, ‘are you hurt?’
Luca responded with his heroic shrug.
‘What happened?’ she asked, pen poised, eyes concerned.
‘One minute I’m sitting on the bike,’ Luca drawled, staring at her steadily, ‘next I’m sitting on Jalabert. Hey, but we both live to ride another day!’
‘Hullo, Catriona journaliste McCabe,’ said Luca’s doctor, suddenly at his side.
‘Oh, hi,’ said the girl with a swift but sweet smile. Luca’s doctor looked hard at her, Luca gazed at her almost imploringly. ‘Just checking the wounded soldier is all right,’ she said.
‘Er, that’s my job,’ his doctor teased.
‘Yes, of course,’ the journaliste said ingenuously. She tipped her head and regarded the rider. ‘Glad you’re OK – good luck tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, Catriona,’ Luca Jones replied, rolling his ‘r’s and disjoining her name with strange emphases.
‘Cat,’ the journaliste all but cautioned. Rider and doctor regarded her. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, brandishing her notepad. ‘Bye – see you.’ She walked away briskly, scribbling in her pad all the while.
‘Close your mouth,’ Ben said to Luca, who didn’t know his doctor had only just shut his. ‘Do you hurt?’
COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN ROUEN
For the first time in the history of the Tour de France, the yellow jersey and the first five places in Stage One went to English-speaking riders. Chris Boardman, losing only 2 seconds off his lead, keeps the golden fleece of his Prologue win. Stefano Sassetta of Zucca MV was relegated to the bottom of this first group for a flamboyant swerve dangerously close to his sworn rival, Système Vipère’s Jesper Lomers. Whether plain careless or downright malicious, Sassetta was not given the benefit of the doubt. In the city of Rouen, Sassetta should think himself lucky – Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake here in 1431.
Nice opening paragraph, Cat. But you’re reading it to yourself today. Wouldn’t Alex rather like your next sentence – ‘As Samson lost his strength when his hair was cut, so it appears the sprinters lose their memories once their legs are shorn’? Oh, Alex is sitting nowhere near you. Nor is Josh. You have a pungent Belgian journalist on one side and a hirsute Spaniard on the other. The salle de presse seems a little like the peloton itself as you describe it in your next paragraph, somewhat fresh and disorganized at this early stage. Where’s your Luca quote? Have you woven it in?
As in all wars, the innocent are frequently victims. Laurent Jalabert (O.N.C.E.), an elder statesman of the Tour peloton, and Luca Jones (Megapac), a virgin soldier, were amongst the casualties brought down when wheels touched ahead of them at the last sprint point. Jalabert recovered to finish with the main bunch, his fingers bloodied and his brow dark. Jones, whose major injury was dramatically ripped shorts, took time out prostrate on a spectator’s picnic table, much to the delight of the public. ‘One minute I’m sitting on the bike,’ he recalled, ‘the next I’m sitting on Jalabert.’
Good work, Cat.
The green jersey, worn by the rider with the most points accumulated en route and for finishing in the top 25, is on the broad shoulders of Mario Cipollini. The true contenders for overall victory were hardly seen today. Just as the villages along the route cluster around their omnipotent churches, so Vasily Jawlensky and Fabian Ducasse were flanked at all times by at least 3 devoted team-mates. Wisely, they kept well away from the broiling at the very front yet still finished with the same times as that group.
And so began the week-long campaign by the audacious pure sprinters to retain the top positions. Soon enough, the Pyrenees will rip the peloton apart.
Right, Cat, it’s gone nine in the evening and you’re only just leaving the salle de presse. Alone. You’ve positively slunk out, hoping no one’s noticed. Why? Didn’t you bond further with your colleagues last night whilst toasting Boardman’s superb win? He’s in yellow again today – isn’t that carte blanche for a celebratory evening tonight?
There are no plans for tonight. The only toast last night, literally, was the tough bread roll I ate by myself in my room. That’s my phone.
‘Hullo?’
‘Cat?’
‘Hey, Fen.’
‘Cat?’ she said. ‘You OK?’
‘Tired.’
‘Where are you? Geo
rge Hincapie is gorgeous! Did I pronounce that right?’
‘Spot on.’
Cat listened to her sister enthuse about the day’s Stage. She closed her eyes, wishing she was in Fen’s house, settling in for an evening of wine and wittering.
‘Pip and I watched it together at her flat this time. We spoke to Django during the adverts and then had a major three-way analysis when the programme ended. I love that nice smiley man from Channel 4 – Leggings.’
‘Liggett,’ said Cat with a little laugh.
‘Do you know him?’
‘No.’
‘Have you met him yet?’
‘Almost.’
‘What did you do today? I’m fascinated. I mean, we’re only granted half an hour’s summary of the whole day – how does it pan out for you?’
‘Oh –’ Cat said breezily, swiping the air nonchalantly with her hand, a gesture of course lost on her sister.
‘Cat?’ Fen asked again. ‘You OK?’
‘It’s odd,’ Cat defined softly, ‘I’m finding it difficult. I’m fighting homesickness already. I was hopeful of a family atmosphere here. I think that was naïve. We didn’t even have a drink to celebrate Boardman’s win.’
‘It’s very early days,’ Fen said sensibly, ‘riders and everyone else finding their feet, surely. Anyway, I’m concerned that drink, or lack of, is the prime reason for your melancholy.’
Cat sighed. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she chastized her sister, ‘today I was sent flying in the finish-line scrum.’
‘God!’ Fen sympathised.
‘I was pushed and shoved, trodden on and ignored,’ Cat elaborated. ‘I don’t stand a chance. Now, I feel on the verge of floundering, of becoming lost amongst it all.’
‘Is it every man for himself, then?’ Fen asked.
Cat nodded and then said, ‘Yes.’
‘Who’s the gorgeous one who stopped off for a picnic?’ Fen probed.
Cat grinned and felt a softening of her tangled brow. ‘Luca Jones,’ she said, ‘and he gave me a super quote.’
‘There you go!’ Fen encouraged.
‘I know, I know,’ Cat conceded, ‘but I just feel a little, I don’t know – out on a limb. It’s only just started, I’m here for a long time – and yet this was supposed to be my fantasy incarnate and a world in which I’d find all the answers.’
‘You’ve only just arrived,’ Fen pointed out. ‘I bet you anything tomorrow will be fabulous.’
‘Fen, I feel too small and female.’
‘Bollocks, Cat,’ Fen said strongly. ‘Yes, you’re an anomaly out there – small and female – so you must be a breath of fresh air. I’d use it if I were you.’
Cat observed Josh and Alex turning the corner a hundred yards away.
‘Fen, I have to go. This must be costing you a fortune.’
‘Phone bill? You’re far more precious, stupid!’ said Fen, thinking herself to sound like a mother – a proper one, not one that had run off with a cowboy from Denver.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ said Cat.
‘Promise?’
‘Yes.’
Cat walked off briskly. Her ears, however, were peeled. She was listening for a half-hoped-for ‘Wait up, Cat,’ from Josh or Alex. And yet half of her hoped they had not seen her, that she could go and sit by herself in her hotel room and ruminate on her day.
Rachel McEwen’s room at Zucca MV’s Rouen hotel was cramped enough as it was, without the addition of three strapping riders and the veritable grocery shop Rachel set up each day. Her portable massage bench held domestique Pietro Calcaterra. He’d swerved to miss the knot of Luca Jones and Laurent Jalabert but had careered into Fernando Escartin instead. Now his knee was hurting. Massimo Lipari sat at the small table, softly humming his Giro pop song, helping himself to a huge bowl of cereal and arranging a diced banana artistically over the top. Gianni Fugallo, the team’s super domestique, lay on Rachel’s bed reading her Cosmopolitan magazine whilst listening to a Walkman.
Suddenly, Massimo exclaimed, ‘StefanoStefanoStefano!’ through a mouthful of cereal. ‘Big trouble,’ he declared, ‘very big trouble for Stefano.’
Though the riders discussed their errant team-mate’s aggressive swerve animatedly, Rachel did not comment. The directeur had already forewarned her that Stefano would be coming for his massage after a strict pep talk; consequently, the rider would be either deeply despondent or darkly defensive. It would be Rachel’s job to massage his psyche into fit shape for the next day’s Stage.
When she had finished Pietro, she asked Massimo if he had had enough to eat and pinged back the earphones on Gianni’s Walkman to ask him if he needed anything. Massimo had eaten sufficient but took another banana, slipping it down his tracksuit bottoms so it poked out like an erection. The first time Rachel had seen this, she hadn’t known where to look. The second time, she hadn’t known how to react. The third time, she’d laughed heartily. Now (and Massimo was in to double figures) she just ignored him. As did the other riders. Massimo still found himself thoroughly amusing. Gianni asked Rachel if he could borrow the Cosmopolitan,
‘What’s mine is yours, Gianni,’ Rachel said magnanimously, ‘you know that.’
Massimo grabbed the magazine, flipped through it with much exaggerated ogling, fingered his goatee lasciviously, performed some lewd pelvic thrusting until the banana slipped down his tracksuit and poked out at the side of his leg like some gruesomely broken bone.
With the three riders gone, the room seemed temporarily vast until Stefano entered without knocking and filled it entirely with the thunder that was swept about him like a cloak. In fact, it was a voluminous, somewhat incongruous peach towelling robe but his blazing eyes and the muscles in his cheeks twitching furiously deflected attention from it.
‘Never do I be speaked to as that!’ he spat, his command of English suffering in the clasp of his indignation.
‘Never have I been spoken to like that,’ Rachel placated, smoothing a fresh towel on the massage bench. Stefano stripped and stood before Rachel in his naked glory though she had ceased to see it long ago. She handed him a towel, which he slipped between his legs nappy-style once he’d climbed aboard the table.
‘Lomers!’ Stefano growled like an expletive directed at the vigour of Rachel’s massage. Rachel took her hands away from his body, wiped them and put them on her hips.
‘Stefano,’ she said, ‘shut up. It’s Lomers who should be spitting your name.’
‘It was my line,’ Stefano protested, sitting up and regarding Rachel squarely, ‘I rode it correctly. I did not flick him.’
‘On the life of your mother?’ Rachel challenged him. Predictably, Stefano, ever the dutiful Italian son, fell silent.
‘Take risks by all means,’ Rachel said, gently pushing the rider’s shoulder so he lay back down. She looked down on him, her hands on her hips again, ‘but don’t ride dangerously. You will either get hurt or disqualified. Then Lomers will wear the green jersey and you will be watching him from the TV in your apartment. And your mother will weep.’
‘Still, no one speaks to Stefano Sassetta like that,’ Stefano said petulantly, referring back to the directeur’s rebuke.
‘They will if you deserve it,’ Rachel said. She massaged him hard. He stared unflinchingly at the ceiling. ‘Beware,’ she said as she sent him on his way, down to supper, ‘rain is forecast for tomorrow. The roads could be hell.’
Cat sits in her hotel room, ruminating on her day.
Three elements have made her Stage I not such a good one. Disappointment. Bewilderment. Trepidation. She had not considered having to confront such emotions, not on the Tour de France. She’d only anticipated tiredness, stress and irritability at some point surely much later in the race.
I need to consider these new three before I’m allowed to go to sleep.
Start with Disappointment.
I did not see one wheel turn of cycling today – not live. We drove directly to Rouen, missing the route altogether. The i
tinéraire direct was 46 k. We did it in forty-five minutes. The boys did 195 k in just over four and a half hours.
Couldn’t you have suggested to Josh that you drove the route ahead of the race?
I did. He frowned and laughed. It was embarrassing.
Number two, Bewilderment?
I miss the ice rink. I miss little Delaunay Le Beau. I knew it well – five days there. The salle de pressé in Rouen is this 1950s clump of glass and concrete – civic and austere. Josh and Alex.
That’s not a sentence.
Didn’t save me a place.
Oh. But on purpose?
I mean – I only nipped to the loo. This hefty German journo pushed by me. He dumped his stuff by Alex.
So they had saved a place for you.
But they didn’t defend it. They just shrugged. I had to set up in the smaller press room. The only cycling I saw was one step removed, via the press TVs.
Cat, can you hear yourself?
I know. I’m feeble. In the finish-line scrum, I was just plain flimsy.
Is that number three, Trepidation?
Absolutely. An all English-speaking result – not only did I not get a word in or out, I didn’t even manage to get close to any of them. I stood on tiptoes near the swarm around Hincapie but learnt my lesson when some Bavarian brute sent me flying. Then I tried for O’Grady, but a wall of men was formed around him, not even a chink to wriggle my arm and dictaphone through. Alex had just left the Jay Sweet mêlée and looked straight through me. Seeing Josh having to barge for a soundbite from Travis Stanton decided me not to even attempt to approach. So then I wandered off and came across the lacerated Luca.
How can you be glum about that?
Because I was pretty shaken and didn’t come across as I wished I had. As I’d envisaged I’d be.
Good quote, though.
I suppose.
And a smile from Luca and his doctor.
I suppose. He’s strange, that bloke, Ben. I find him a bit unnerving.
Because he’s good-looking and direct?
OK, don’t answer.
Sleep well.