We Were Young and Carefree

by Laurent Fignon

  At the Tour of Switzerland, everyone understood that I was not in my usual state. My moral was at a low ebb. I felt an insane desire to send everyone packing. All anyone wanted to discuss was my ‘positive’ test and I was undermined by the notion that anyone could believe I was a cheat. In addition, my wife was pregnant and I simply wanted to think about things other than bike racing. I felt a bit as if I didn’t want to be there and the way I behaved may have seemed strange to onlookers. I was irritated, and got worked up over nothing. I became provocative at the slightest opening. We were by now only a few days away from the start of the Tour de France and I was having grave doubts about my ability to return to the top of my sport.

  In Switzerland a ‘great’ journalist arranged an interview. I say ‘great’ because he was a national celebrity in his field and that is how he introduced himself to me. He had clearly never spent any time in a cycling team’s hotel and he had no notion of the routine that we stick to in the evening after a stage. My massage ran late and I was fifteen minutes behind schedule for the interview in one of the meeting rooms. He made it clear that he was not happy, even showed a certain amount of irritation. My attempts to explain what had happened were not good enough. Then he began the interview. It was surreal. ‘What are you called?’ he began. I was dumbstruck. Then he continued: ‘What is your date of birth?’ And then: ‘What big races have you won?’

  I had no option but to bring this session to an end, rather abruptly. I said, ‘Stop. We can’t go on with this. If you don’t even know the basic minimum about the person you are interviewing you have no business with me.’

  He yelled ‘I’m one of the most important journalists in Switzerland, and just wait till you see what I write about you.’

  He thought I might be intimidated. I leant towards him, pointed my finger at him, and said: ‘I don’t give a monkey’s, you can write what you like.’ And I turned on my heel.

  The guy was beside himself, and who knows what he yelled at me as I walked out. It was an incredible spectacle.

  I’ve totally forgotten the name of this journalist and I never actually read his article. No doubt he took great pleasure in taking my character apart, and he probably demonstrated immense writing skill.

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  THE END OF A LITTLE WORLD

  At the height of my glory in 1984, with the dumb confidence of a man who knows just how good he is, I had declared: ‘I’ll race until I’m thirty and then I’ll live off my winnings.’ It was said in total sincerity and was typical of the way I could behave. But the passing of time takes no account of our expectations. I had not the slightest inkling that I might be injured, nor that I might have a year out of cycling, nor what the physical consequences might be. I was now aware that it had been stupid to name a date in this way because saying this kind of thing can look like a commitment. Whenever I was asked about it I would display a genuine lack of certainty about how much time I now had in me. I could barely even see as far ahead as the 1987 Tour, even though it was now imminent, so a possible end of my adventures in the peloton was further than my imagination could stretch.

  I knew better than anyone that La Grande Boucle is an unforgiving arena. It even seemed to me that the whole of human life was written in the twists and turns of a single Tour de France. Great joy would give way to misery, and the wheel kept turning, turning. I had believed that I was hugely strong – not invincible – but fate had brought me brutally back to reality. I have to confess that in that summer of 1987 my situation was a dire one. I had been riding like a shadow of myself for two years now. It’s hard to put my feelings into words but I could feel what was coming, like a wild animal senses an approaching storm. Do people actually understand just how difficult bike racing is? Have they ever wondered why it is that the greatest minds of the twentieth century have always compared cycling to boxing, putting these two sports above all others for their sheer toughness?

  When the Tour came, once again I would learn where I stood, even if I was afraid of what the answer might be. I arrived at the start in a lousy mental state. From what I could see my form was uncertain and I was still desperately seeking the psychological turning point that would enable me to bury my doubts and get rid of everyone else’s worries at the same time. And what’s more, the problems within the team were becoming more and more poisonous. The atmosphere was difficult, tense. Our system was disintegrating. In theory, Guimard was in charge, but Guimard wasn’t a natural boss. Insidiously, perhaps without even formulating the thought in our minds, we were each beginning to have our doubts about the other. He wasn’t sure I could return to the top, I wasn’t convinced of his ability as an administrator. That didn’t help at all.

  I began with a catastrophic ride in the prologue time trial in Berlin: seventy-second was shameful. I can no longer remember how I reacted, or how other people looked at me. And in the first few stages, it was as if I wasn’t there, and part of me was indeed somewhere else. My body was pedalling but my mind was wandering. Nothing was going right. My wife Nathalie was about to give birth; I thought a good deal about becoming a father, and taking part in the Tour at this important time seemed almost incongruous. That did not explain why I was performing so badly, however, but every time I met the slightest obstacle, I felt an almost tangible urge to run for home. It was like being in a dark tunnel. As soon as I found myself in a slightly tricky situation I would always tend to go into my shell, whereas before I had always managed to pull out a little bit extra.

  Guimard, who was always at the forefront of technical development, had made us wear some of the very first pulse monitors to hit the market. According to him, they would revolutionise the way we analysed the physical effects when we pushed our bodies hard. After tests the doctors had advised me that ‘165 beats per minute is your absolute limit. Above that you will blow up very soon.’ To begin with I didn’t take it that seriously but soon, the second I noticed my heart-rate monitor above 165, I would rein myself in. It became impossible to force myself to go that little bit harder.

  I worked out later that mentally I was not willing to go past a certain level of pain, but still, as a matter of course, and with as much enthusiasm as you could wish, I set to work for Charly Mottet, who was well placed overall. That made me a star turned team rider, but I had no trouble with my ego in this respect. On the contrary.

  On the other hand, I was beginning to know by heart just how painful defeat always feels. That ache had been ravaging me for so long, and so unfairly. The way people behaved towards me had changed radically. Since 1986 I had noticed that journalists were keeping away and there were fewer letters in the post. That all seemed reasonable to me, but none of us is ever ready for this kind of change. What did shock me on the other hand was the speed with which people forget what you have achieved. A rider who has won the Tour de France two years in a row should always be worth two Tours in other people’s eyes. But I ended up being completely undervalued. I couldn’t work out why. Even my appearance money was slipping downwards. I understood completely that there would be more interest in the riders who were making headlines, but I didn’t understand why race organisers didn’t want me at the same price as before. To be honest, that only happened in cycling. I remember falling out with the organisers of the Paris six-day race, who refused to meet what they termed my ‘financial pretensions’. They were having a laugh. They simply wanted to get me at a discount. I didn’t mind haggling if that was necessary, but going below the limit that I had set for myself would have been degrading. At a certain point I would believe wholeheartedly that I was worth so much and they could take it or leave it, and it didn’t matter if I started or not. I would rather not race than feel anything akin to humiliation.

  On that Tour de France, I felt I was suffocating, right up until the celebrated time trial stage up Mont Ventoux. It’s a legendary mountain, backdrop for all kinds of cycling feats. It’s a majestic theatre, a symbolic frontier between northern and southern Fra
nce and a sanctuary to Tom Simpson’s memory. That is where Jean-François Bernard achieved the feat that everyone knows about, collapsing in tears on the finish line in the arms of his guru Bernard Tapie. The boss, father and master, perhaps already totting up the rise in his share prize and drawing all the cameras towards him. The rider, seemingly the son but probably more a slave, reaching here, on the sacrificial altar, the climax of a career that already bore the genes of its own very premature downfall.

  On this mountain top, in front of a hysterical crowd, I had decided to give it my all, absolutely everything I had: motivation, concentration, will to win. Unfortunately nothing happened, nothing at all. All I had was the coup de pédale of a cycle tourist. There was emptiness, nothingness. Everything simply subsided at once: I’d had too much emotional turmoil, too many troubles to deal with. What else can I say, other than that it was all very real. My placing was sixty-fourth, more than ten minutes behind Jean-François Bernard. I was appalled by my performance.

  My son had been born the day before. I almost went home. On the climb there were spectators who had found out who shouted, ‘Come on, dad!’ It was savage. I simply couldn’t move. It hurt all over. Such was Mont Ventoux.

  Climbing into the team minibus on the finish line I cracked. ‘I’m never going to make it,’ I thought. When I was well away from prying eyes, I wept for a long time.

  That evening, a journalist happened to meet me at the hotel and asked me: ‘Is Bernard your successor?’

  I answered: ‘Does that mean you’ve got me dead and buried already?’

  He said: ‘Maybe.’

  I replied: ‘Well, that’s yet another way of getting me to show you you are wrong.’

  I was raging mad. I had the very distinct impression that this was the end. This was no longer where I wanted to be. I noticed later that I definitely have to hit rock bottom before I can pick myself up. I have to go deep down into distress before climbing back out again.

  After the Ventoux, after these agonising episodes, there was now no question of quitting. I wanted to demonstrate to everyone that I could still spring the odd surprise. The very next day we had a look at the route map and we decided to ‘skip the ravito’ – race hard through the feeding station while the other guys slowed up to collect their rations. That put us back in the thick of the action. This was the day that Bernard lost the race, for good. His teammates wanted to get him up to the front at once but he was not concerned, and refused, saying they had plenty of time to get back on terms. It was a basic error because, up front, an imposing alliance of rival riders was coming together.

  As for me, thanks to my pride, my legs seemed to be functioning again, more or less. Then I lost my temper with those blasted pulse monitors: I handed mine back so that it wouldn’t tell me anything more. That seemed to work. The next day, at l’Alpe d’Huez, I came sixth and the day after I won a prestigious stage at La Plagne, even though I remember I was actually trying to save my strength. So perhaps I didn’t deserve to be completely shelled out of the back of the bunch on the Tour after all. Even though I felt pretty ropey, I still rode into Paris in seventh overall, with a deficit of eighteen minutes: more or less the total of what I had lost in the various time-trial stages. My consistency in the mountains did have some meaning. Two or three days after the Champs-Elysées, ensconced safely in my sofa, I began to question seriously whether I had the capacity to win the Tour again one day.

  The end of the 1987 season brought some more answers which pushed me further into the depths. At the Tour of Catalonia Guimard lagged behind everyone when it came to getting the team organised, because we needed the charitable assistance of other teams to meet our equipment needs – the crowning glory for what was supposed to be ‘the best team in France’. Afterwards I suffered a memorable slap in the face at the Grand Prix des Nations, which I had carefully underlined in my year planner. It was the end of the season and just this once, as a means of plumbing new depths, I tested a new drug which was supposed to be ‘fantastic’. Other guys had tried it out with great success. I succumbed to temptation and took the easy way out. Fortunately I had an unbearable headache. I went nowhere, my legs simply wouldn’t move. I never tried it again. The moral is clear: the weaker you are mentally, the easier it is to show your weak side. I was no longer going down into the depths merely in a cycling sense: I was exploring the lowest dregs of my personality, my inner being.

  Who on earth was I now? The more I bailed out, the more my personal boat seemed to take on water. I wasn’t really there any more: the talent I had been born with was no longer sufficient to fool anyone. I was vulnerable, at the mercy of any temptation. Let’s be serious, and honest. If I had not been called Laurent Fignon, if I hadn’t already won two Tours de France, if I had been less high-minded and had a weaker character, I could have descended into who knows what idiocy, and I could have sold my soul to some witch doctor peddling magic potions. I’ve known plenty of riders who have resorted to doping, drugs or alcohol and have ended up falling by the wayside and losing everything: dignity, self-respect, wife, children, family.

  My friend Pascal Jules, on the other hand, would not have time to enjoy a full life, nor to take his foot from the accelerator. A car accident had cut him down in his prime, just after I had convinced Guimard that he needed to get him back in the fold. Julot had been to a charity soccer match. Everyone had had too much to drink. They were all well gone. Julot had said to me: ‘You’ll see, I’ll die young. I won’t get past thirty.’ It was such a dumb thing to say, but that night, he fell asleep at the wheel.

  Guimard called me in the early hours. I went into shock. For years and years I thought of him every day, and I still often think of him. But since his funeral I’ve been unable to visit his grave. I simply don’t have the strength. I can’t do it.

  The way every life ends is unique in itself, like the end of a little world. Death at twenty-six years of age is a notion that I find unbearable.

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  PRIMEVAL YELL

  You could call it the revenge of the damned. It was a sort of redemption, but I don’t know from what or who. Mostly, it was the slow, patient story of how I regained my powers, and I owe it mainly to Alain Gallopin.

  As soon as 1987 drew to a close, Alain was the one who began drumming a single idea into my head: I might be able to win Milan–San Remo. To start with, to be honest, I found this idea a bit bonkers. Since the start of my career, apart from the Flèche Wallonne that I had already won, I had always felt that I had a decent chance one day of winning Liège–Bastogne–Liège or Paris–Roubaix (failing to win either of them, along with the world title, is the biggest regret I now have). But never, never in the slightest had I seen myself as a possible winner on the Italian Riviera. But Gallopin had begun to know me inside out, my strong points as well as my defects; he had thought it through completely and never stopped going on about it. He had all the arguments at his fingertips. For example, he knew as well as I did that it would take a long, long race for my stamina to be a real advantage. Milan–San Remo was 294km long at the time, the longest race on the calendar, and it called for above average endurance. In addition, a possible winner needed to be able to make several intense efforts in the final ten kilometres, when the race went over the Poggio climb, just before the finish. Gallopin kept repeating: ‘That race is made for you.’

  Until Milan–San Remo, the way I’d started the 1988 season hadn’t been particularly persuasive, whether it was Sicilian Week – where I was fifth – or Paris–Nice – fifth as well. I was still smarting at the departure of the Madiot brothers – and I blamed Guimard for being at the root of it – but no one was particularly aware that the logistical problems that had affected me so much the previous year were partway to being resolved. Following Alain’s advice we had hired his brother Guy, whose sole responsibility was to lighten the load on the organisational side. It was a miracle: we felt the effect immediately. He clearly had a special gift for
getting everything ready for an army as it began a long campaign. He relieved us of any logistical issues. That helped a great deal.

  At Paris–Nice I tied my hair into a ponytail for the first time. It drew plenty of mickey taking. I heard guys in the bunch yelling ‘girlie’. I thought it was hilarious.

  But the real joke was my complete inability to go back to what I had been, and that one had gone stale long ago. So just after the ‘Race to the Sun’ had finished, Gallopin and I put a radical plan into operation. It was supercompensation, in which you go out to exhaust yourself three days before a major race. It was well thought out, as the future would prove.

  There were exactly six days between the end of Paris–Nice and the Saturday of Milan–San Remo. Here is what I did. Monday and Tuesday were devoted to active recovery. I rode, but no more than necessary to turn the legs over and help me recover. Wednesday was the day for a massive session. I had to go to the very limit of my strength, until I was exhausted. The physiological principle was simple: on this day, your body burns up all its reserves, the glycogen that it stores up. Once your stores are empty, your organism overreacts and puts back more than it actually needs. It takes the body forty-eight hours to do that: three days later, usually, the process of supercompensation is at its height.

  Let’s go back to that Wednesday. To dig as deep as I could I left Gallopin’s house in the Essonne in the morning for an initial training ride of about 120km. I made sure I ate only a little beforehand: a few cornflakes, a yoghurt. Back at Alain’s house, I remember well that I had just an orange juice and a bit of cake. And it was off for another 100km. He got on a Derny, with me behind him. We started off slowly, 40–45kph, no more. About halfway round he gradually began to go faster. Stuck on the back wheel, I began to struggle. Finally, the last 35km were flat out, and I finished with a full-on sprint. I couldn’t feel my legs. I remember that when I went for it, I was quicker than the motorbike.