Unfortunately, he said, ‘OK,’ and didn’t attempt to make me believe I could do it, even though we knew full well that if you have a rival on the ropes you have to take advantage and crush him without any second thoughts. But when you look at it with hindsight, what could have happened? At the summit of the Col de Porte I might have had about three minutes’ lead, but what then? Who could predict anything whatsoever? But in Aix-les-Bains, it was a small select group that fought out the finish: five of us, the best five in the Tour. On the banks of the beautiful Lac du Bourget, LeMond was by far the best in the sprint as he so often was in a situation like that. Just for the record, after we crossed the line that evening I went over to him and tapped him on the shoulder to congratulate him on the stage win. I meant it. I said to him: ‘It’s been a good fight.’ In my mind, it was all over. I’d won my third Tour de France.
There was just one thing. During that stage I’d felt a fairly sharp pain between my legs. That evening, it was clear. I had a sore spot in a very inconvenient place: just below the buttock, right where the saddle rubs on the shorts. There were only two stages left. One that would be for the sprinters, finishing at l’Isle d’Abeau and relatively short at 130 kilometres. And then there was Sunday’s time trial. Nothing much to worry about. And I wasn’t worrying. I should have been. The evening before the final road race stage it hurt so much that I couldn’t go and urinate at the dope control. Just moving was a penance. Sitting down was horrendous. In extremis, because the entire caravan had to catch the TGV that evening to get up to Paris, the drug testers were kind enough to wait until we were in the train before collecting the sample.
Apart from Cyrille Guimard and the team doctor Armand Mégret, few people were in on the secret. During the journey I didn’t show my worries, although I was getting more and more concerned. And when we got off the train, there’s no point pretending what kind of mood I was in. When we arrived at Gare de Lyon, we were mobbed. There were dozens of photographers and dozens of cameramen: it was mind-bending. A Frenchman was on the point of winning the Tour – the first since Hinault in 1985 – and the day before the finish, which meant they all came mob-handed. We had hardly begun to move along the platform before someone bunged the usual camera under my nose and began throwing aggressive questions at me. It was Channel 5, who never ignored a possible scandal. I heard the words: ‘Why did you refuse to take the drugs test?’ As you can imagine, I didn’t want to answer such a dumb question. The test had taken place in the way it was meant to. I wasn’t happy about the allegation, but kept going along the platform in spite of the crush.
The journalist from Channel 5 kept on. Rather too much in my book. Worn out by the stressful ambience, I spat at a camera crew who were in the way. Just my luck: they were from a Spanish channel against whom I had no grievance at all. Afterwards, as soon as any news story about my arrival at the station was run, the images were played again and again. It wasn’t the best publicity.
At one point there was a scrum and a cameraman from Channel 5 knocked over Jérôme Simon, who happened to be next to me. I didn’t even think about what I was doing and shoved the cameraman. At the end of the year he filed suit against me for injuring him. Actually, he wanted to negotiate a settlement with my lawyer: I refused. In court, he claimed I’d hit him in the genitals and caused a hernia in the groin; he lost the case.
When I arrived at the hotel the night before the final stage I had just one thought: thank God there was only the time trial left. One more stage, and after that I would be completely unable to get on the bike. The injury was worse than we had thought. The pain was unbearable. The doctor kept putting on cream, then coming back and putting on some more: it achieved nothing. There wasn’t time. And no one suspected a thing, because we had imposed a media blackout.
That night, I barely slept. I felt sore even though I wasn’t moving. I was tired out, worried; I didn’t look my best the next morning. But that was kid’s stuff compared to the warm-up session: I got on the bike and did a U-turn straight away. I just couldn’t turn the pedals. It was completely impossible. Even so, I didn’t panic. I remember as if it were yesterday how I told myself: ‘Look, it’s not as bad as all that. All that’s left is a time trial. I’ve only got to do what I have to. I’ll hurt like hell but afterwards I’ll forget it.’
How could I ever forget what was about to happen?
How could I ever forget something that will last for ever in every cycling fan’s memory?
I had to force myself to be cheerful even though I wasn’t exactly in the finest fettle. But I did have something on my side: the fifty-second gap on LeMond. I was convinced deep inside that I could not lose. According to my calculations, I knew that it should take the American about 50km to regain more than a minute on me, not the 24.5km between Versailles and the Champs-Elysées.
I could not see how it could happen. It was not feasible. It wasn’t just me who thought this way: many of the journalists on the race had already typed up their final pieces, I learned later. It was written that I would win.
This time I had to get on the bike. For real. For the final spell on the rack. But the end of the agony, which was ferocious from the moment I began to spin the pedals, would set me free from it all; I would be a proud man, a winner at last on the roads of France after five lean years. The pain didn’t have any meaning: it was nothing more than a normal hurt which would have its way.
It was down to LeMond and me. We pedalled slowly round the start area, fully kitted out, warming up in the closed space. He had no idea that I was under the weather. He didn’t look at me once. The suspense reached a climax.
The American was definitely stretching the rules by using his celebrated triathlon handlebars, which gave him quite an advantage. I shouldn’t have lost two seconds per kilometre to him. But as soon as Guimard began to give me time checks, that was exactly what I was losing: two seconds per kilometre. I put all my strength into it, gritting my teeth, trying everything I could to concentrate on the effort I had to make and forget that pain shooting through me. But it was like being stabbed with a knife; every part of my body felt it, even my brain.
After a little while, Guimard stopped telling me anything. I had no idea what was happening, no time checks. It was a bad sign. But the race took over everything, and I put that to one side. All I did was go flat out, but flat out as I was, I could go no faster. I don’t know what my pulse rate was, but my lungs, on the other hand, were beyond my control and were doing their own thing as best they could. I was asphyxiating.
Everyone has seen the pictures at least once in their lives. I cross the finish line and collapse. Simply to get my breath back. A bit of air, please. Just a bit of air, if I may. At that precise moment, I don’t know what is going on. I’m gasping ‘Well?’ again and again, to the people who flutter around me. There’s no answer. I ask again. Still no answer. No one dares to look me in the eye and show me reality. The reality of which everyone is now aware apart from me: I’ve lost. By eight seconds. Eight seconds in Hell. The American has taken fifty-eight seconds out of me in 24.5km. In the chaos, someone finally brings me up to date by admitting: ‘You’ve lost Laurent.’ I can’t get a grip on what he is saying. I don’t believe it. More precisely, I can’t manage to believe it. I hadn’t believed it could happen.
‘It’s not true,’ I tell myself inside.
It’s as if the information simply can’t get through the door to be let into my imagination.
For a long time, the defeat remains external.
It can’t get inside me.
I go into shock.
I walk like a boxer who’s concussed, in an improbable world of furious noise. The steps I take are robotic and aren’t directed at anything. I’ve no idea where I am going and who is making me go there. I feel arms supporting me, helping me to stand up. People make noise around me. Some shout. Some look haggard, groggy, wiped out. Others are celebrating. That’s it, they’re celebrating. It’s easier to make out now, they are lo
oking at me with a kind of happy hatred, as if it’s a pleasure to see me lose. What’s so good about it? I can’t get a grip on it. I’ve lost. They’ve won. But who are they?
I wandered for a while. I don’t remember quite how I behaved. I had no idea about anything, who I was or where I was. Then the shock began to take shape, to become real, to get some kind of direction in my brain. When I came out of the coma, I was already on my way to the anti-doping control. There, I recognised my teammate Thierry Marie. Without thinking, he threw himself at me and burst into tears.
In those welcoming arms I wailed like a child. Long, long sobs. It had never happened in public before.
I remember vaguely that afterwards I didn’t want to go on the podium. The very idea made me feel sick. But you have to do what’s expected of you. LeMond tried to make me feel better: ‘You won the Giro d’Italia, Laurent,’ he whispered clumsily.
I answered, ‘I don’t give a toss about the Giro.’
At that precise moment, that was true. The winners of all three Tours were side by side on the podium; Delgado had won the Vuelta.
Then I was virtually frogmarched into a surreal press conference. I answered questions without giving answers. I just wanted to get out of there as quick as I could. A journalist asked: ‘Will you start the race next year?’ There was a mutter of disapproval in the room. This was hardly the time to ask such a stupid question. I gave a terse reply.
The evening’s celebrations had been organised a few days earlier and had a bitter taste. There were people there who barely dared look at me. I could see why they were embarrassed. So I played the part of the guy who feels he is above the whole event, who can put mere distractions to one side and apply himself to more fundamental things. It was only sport, when all was said and done.
It was easy to say. Then I had a drink. I had a lot to drink. I gobbled up what it took to stay awake.
I’d always felt that I could be beaten. Losing was never a problem. A cyclist who doesn’t know how to lose can’t become a champion. I was used to the fact. But losing like that, on the last day, by such a minute margin and primarily because of a handlebar that had not yet been permitted by the rules; no, all that was too much for just one man. I was nearly twenty-nine, and it wasn’t yet time to have lifelong regrets. I had only rarely been in such fine physical condition, which made this defeat feel particularly unfair. How on earth could it have happened?
I had already forgotten my crutch injury and it was now the matter of the handlebars that haunted me. From the very first minutes after the start – I was told later – you only had to look at LeMond to see the difference. His head was deep in his aerodynamic helmet, his hands glued to the bend of his triathlon handlebars; he was able to use all his power to push a gear that took him more than nine metres with each turn of the pedals. We had ridden 3257km for a final margin of eight seconds. Who could believe it? When it came down to the last time trial, the difference was about eighty-two metres. And the most incredible thing was that I had ridden the best time trial of my entire career. I had averaged more than 52kph, faster than I had managed in all my life.
Looking back at it you realise how much the handlebar helped LeMond, because he used it in all the Tour’s time trials. With that kit, in normal conditions, you can reasonably estimate that he would gain about one second per kilometre on me. In the 73km at Rennes, 39km at Orcières-Merlette and 26km in Paris, that means about 2min 18sec – for a final margin of eight seconds. There can be no argument: without the triathlon handlebar, LeMond could not have won the Tour.
So why did the referees not even look twice at these bars, which had not been approved for use in competition? Just for the record, one of our suppliers had offered us a handlebar of the same kind during the Tour, but Guimard and I did not want to go down that road. It wasn’t our way to mess with the rules; we had a zero-risk policy. Winning by ourselves without artificial aids was something we valued. And we had an unviolable principle in the biggest races: we would only use new equipment if it had been tested properly before the event. We had to make absolutely certain it was reliable, particularly for the Tour de France where we only ever rode trusty, solid kit that we knew how to use. Up until then, taking risks for minimal gain seemed ridiculous. But this time, were we just too careful? Because the attitude of the referees was mindbending. How on earth can you explain what happened a couple of months later at the Grand Prix Eddy Merckx when I turned up with a set of triathlon handlebars? Why did the referees’ committee forbid me from starting on a bike with the bars when they had allowed LeMond’s bike in the Tour? I can’t help thinking that I was swindled.
But knowing it didn’t help me to be reconciled to it. There was no room for rational thought. It wasn’t my way to feel I had been victimised. It was entirely my fault. The good parts and the bad.
The morning after the defeat of the day before was when the hardest bit began. I kept counting in my head: eight seconds, eight seconds. And the more I counted, the more I became aware of what a derisory amount of time it was. You can’t do anything in eight seconds!
I went home. Alone. Just sitting. Or wandering about with my eyes going nowhere, vaguely focused on nothing at all. I began to wake up to the fact that this was an event of national importance and the ‘Fignon tragedy’ was on the front page of every paper throughout France. But I don’t actually remember whether I even looked at a single one.
How could I have lost? How could I have allowed it to happen? For hours and hours I felt sorry for myself. It was the only thing in my head. There was no flavour in anything I ate. Just moving felt like an effort. It was like being in a coma. ‘Watch out for sorrow, it’s a bad habit,’ wrote Flaubert.
And then on the third day, one morning like the other two, I was in the bathroom having a shower when I wiped the layer of steam off the mirror and saw my own face. There was a slightly hazy look in the back of the eyes. A pallid face, with appallingly haggard lines. The eyes looked transparent. It was the stuff of nightmares. It was as if my soul had escaped from the body that contained it. I was looking helplessly at a man who wasn’t me any more, who I didn’t recognise. It looked as if the trauma was getting on top of me. It was no use saying that I was practising one of the finest professions in the world, that I had already won two Tours de France and that I had no need to prove anything to anyone, let alone that I enjoyed a lifestyle that I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams. I simply couldn’t get rid of the pain that was eating me up.
It took me three days to get back on my feet. But when I write ‘get back on my feet’ that’s just a manner of speaking. Because you never stop grieving over an event like that; the best you can manage is to contain the effect it has on your mind. Even so, I was well aware that there were more serious things going on in life – and I had dreamed so much of coming back to the highest level to play a major role: I’d done that at least.
I looked in the mirror again. I knew that there were two answers. Either I could keep on mourning – and stop cycling. Or I could try to get over the agony and the injustice, and get back on the road. I was in good health. I was a lucky man, with a full life. OK, I hadn’t won the Tour again; so what? Was the world going to stop turning? Why inflict more pain on myself?
That very day, I picked up the telephone to call Alain Gallopin. He was worried about how I might be dealing with it. I said to him: ‘Come on, Alain, let’s get going. I’m going to prepare for the world championship.’
I heard him murmur: ‘That’s good, Laurent’.
Then I added: ‘I’m asking for one thing. We don’t talk about the Tour just yet. We’ll talk about it one day, but this isn’t the time.’
Because of my crutch injury I’d cancelled a few races where I was contracted to appear. So when I got back on the criterium circuit it was an event in itself. Just imagine: ‘there he is’; ‘that’s him’; ‘the loser’. There was a morbid curiosity in the looks. I tried to keep my self-respect. Seeing Greg LeMond with the yello
w jersey on his back – as is the custom in post-Tour circuit races – I gritted my teeth. My blood froze. I’d had a distinct dislike for him before, and it just grew now. I know feeling that way was unreasonable, but that is how it was.
On the roadside as I went past the crowds, I sometimes heard shouts of derision: ‘eight seconds’ or ‘you’re still eight seconds behind’. The pettiness of the words pierced my heart. It was all people ever asked me about. Sometimes they didn’t even realise it hurt. No one noticed that I didn’t want to talk about it, that the wound was still raw. As soon as I felt ill at ease I would turn my back and refuse to answer. To many people, I can’t have seemed a nice guy. But what was the point?
In this testing time, I don’t remember talking to Cyrille Guimard at all. Have I forgotten or had the great directeur sportif vanished into thin air? This was one of his problems: in trying circumstances, he didn’t know how to talk to people. He needed a little more insight.
But what could he have told me anyway? I know I’m not an easy person to deal with. To hammer home that particular point, a tactless selection committee awarded me the ‘lemon prize’ for being the least pleasant rider on the 1989 Tour. Well, at least I won something.
CHAPTER 2
* * *
WILD BUT GIFTED
My full name is Laurent Patrick Fignon and I was born one Friday in the middle of the Baby Boom. It was 12 August 1960, at 3.10 a.m., in the Bretonneau hospital at the foot of Montmartre. I was 3.2kg and 52cm: completely average.
Back then, in the streets of the great cities, everyone wanted to get places fast. It was a way of demonstrating personal freedom. Renault, Citroën and Peugeot all competed to produce new cars that would give ‘modern’ couples the thrill of the road, getting away from it all. You had to go quick, and then even quicker. My mother was also gripped by this need for speed and I arrived a month before the due date. I was supposed to appear in mid-September, it was mid-August. My parents didn’t know that the cycling calendar isn’t very full at that time of year.
We Were Young and Carefree Page 3