Spain’s colossus of roads
23 July 1995
Unless the unthinkable happens in the shape of yet another of the crashes which have marred this Tour de France, Miguel Indurain will today become the first man to win the greatest bike race on earth five years in succession. This feat eluded the three other five-times champions: Jacques Anquetil of France (who took from 1957 to 1963), Eddy Merckx of Belgium (1969–74), and another Frenchman, Bernard Hinault (1978–85).
Indurain’s is a unique record of domination in an event as testing as the Tour. It reflects his absolute dedication to one task. The idea of Indurain missing the Tour in order to ride the Tour of Spain, as Merckx did in 1973 after winning four Tours on the trot, is ludicrous. Indeed, Indurain has missed his home event three times in order to prepare for the Tour. He has faced huge criticism in Spain each time, although once the Tour has been won the critics have shut up.
Just as Anquetil, Merckx and Hinault dominated their respective eras, so Indurain bestrides his, a genial, tanned colossus, who has grown in confidence and stature since his first Tour win in 1991. So tough and specialised is the Tour that no rider has finished second to Indurain more than once, and the men who were runners-up in 1992, 1993 and 1994 all failed either to start or finish the next year. The Spaniard stands alone.
Like Merckx, Hinault and Anquetil before him, Indurain has become the point of reference for all cycling’s major stage races. When another rider wins the Tour of Spain or Italy the debate begins about whether he can take on Indurain in the Tour. Indurain’s hegemony through his time-trialling ability has sparked debate about whether the route should be more mountainous, and whether time bonuses (seconds deducted from a rider’s overall time) might be awarded on the major mountains to encourage the climbers, who spend each Tour trying to claw back the time Indurain gains in the time-trials.
For all his domination of the Tour, Indurain has never achieved the status of patron, cycling’s equivalent of senior mobster, who controls the day-to-day activities of the rest with an iron hand. Hinault, the “badger”, was the most extreme example of a “patron” – if the field began riding aggressively when he was not feeling good, they would be reminded that at some point he would be in a position to make them suffer, and often they would stop. The “badger” used to protest that it was for their own good, but that had all the veracity of a gangster extolling the virtues of protection. Merckx and Anquetil would rarely step in directly, but resorted to displays of team strength to make the point.
Indurain carries no such clout. Getting heavy is not his style. Whereas on occasion Hinault was seen punching demonstrators who blocked race routes, the number of times Indurain has been seen to lose his temper can be counted on the fingers of one hand. He only races seriously in the Tour and the events leading up to it. The rest of the year he is relatively anonymous, if unmissable due to his size and perfect style.
The difference is also in his attitude to racing. Pierre Chany, a journalist who has followed 49 Tours de France, says: “Indurain is best compared to Anquetil in the way he races. Like Anquetil, he is calculating, saves energy and bases his Tour de France around the time-trials. The other two were more unpredictable: they could come to the fore at any moment when you weren’t expecting it.”
Of the four, Indurain is by far the most conservative. Merckx holds the record for stage wins in the Tour, 34 in seven appearances, and he is followed by Hinault with 28. Indurain has won just 10, and during his four previous Tour wins, and the fifth which is expected today, he has restricted himself to taking victories in the time-trials, which is where it really matters. For Hinault, taking a Tour without winning a stage was an affront, to avoid which in 1982 he risked losing the Tour itself in order to fight the sprinters on the final stage to Paris.
While he never reached the extremes of Merckx, who won one Tour with a lone break of over 100 kilometres through the mountains, even the calculating Anquetil won stages in the Pyrenees and the Alps on the way to his victory in 1963. Indurain would view such a success as a distraction from the job in hand, which is winning the race when it ends in Paris.
No one doubts that he is capable of winning mountain stages – in 1989 and 1990, before he reached the height of his powers, Indurain took convincing victories in the Pyrenees. He says of his reliance on the tactically vital but emotionally unappealing time-trial: “I would be stupid not to use my strongest weapon, but I can understand people not liking it.”
Indurain’s conservatism extends beyond his style in the Tour to his approach to the whole season. Whereas Merckx, Hinault and Anquetil all notched up victories in one-day classics on a regular basis Indurain has never even started some of the greatest one-day events as he might fall off and wreck his preparation for the Tour. It has worked for him, but it has only contributed to the Tour’s disproportionate importance. Merckx, known for his insatiable desire for victory anywhere, says, with some frustration at Indurain’s incredible strength: “He’s too limited in what he does to satisfy me totally.”
It is a question of priorities. Indurain lacks the overweening pride of a Merckx or Hinault, although when unleashed as he was this year on the stages to Liège and La Plagne, he is equally awe-inspiring. A practical man, who was happier on the family farm than at school, he does not deal in abstracts: “Nothing concrete comes out of victory,” he once said. “A man who makes furniture makes something concrete.” His horizons may not be broad, but the result of his total focus is utterly impressive. His manager José Miguel Echavarri, who raced with Anquetil, says: “Of the four, Indurain is the best all-rounder.” After a moment’s reflection he adds, tellingly, “For the Tour.”
The 1996 race saw the end of the Indurain era, at the end of one of the most dramatic stages in the race’s history: this leg to Les Arcs. Johan Bruyneel, who made such a spectacular exit from the road, is now notorious as Lance Armstrong’s former directeur sportif, but was just another journeyman bike racer at this point.
The rain and pain of the long-distance cyclists
8 July 1996
It was the first of many sobering sights over the weekend: on Saturday morning most of the field scrambled for shelter from a torrential rain shower five minutes before the start of the 200-kilometre stage from Chambery to Les Arcs. They ran for trees, cars, the podium where they sign on each day: any port in this storm.
It must have struck each man that, if they thought the last week of crashes, torrential rain and stress had been hell, they had been kidding themselves. The road south from Hertogenbosch was merely purgatory: hell lay in the next 125 miles.
There had been stress and danger aplenty since the race left Holland six days earlier. Headwinds meant that stages scheduled to finish during television prime time ended when riders would normally be receiving massage or eating dinner. The wind led to fears of crashes as the rain battered down every day. “It has rained more in five days than in the last five Tours,” said Miguel Indurain’s manager José Miguel Echavarri.
Alex Zulle summed up the feelings: “I am getting to sleep at three in the morning, we are eating like pigs, as quick as we can every night, and just go to our rooms. I’m taking pills to sleep. There are rumours that the stages will finish later next year: if they do, I won’t be here.”
The stress mounted as the pile-ups happened, and fights broke out among the riders: the American Lance Armstrong had a close encounter with the Frenchman Gilles Bouvard, which he put down to “the nerves of the race”, while Andrei Tchmil of Russia and Peter Luttenberger of Austria – who could be this year’s surprise climber – came to blows over dangerous riding.
But all this was as nothing compared to Saturday’s epic. On Alpine climbs such as the Col de la Madeleine and Cormet de Roselend, suffering is prolonged in cold rain, while 60-miles-per-hour descents in blinding spray have taken on a new resonance since the death last year – on a fine dry day – of Fabio Casartelli.
It was no surprise then to see Zulle – one of the Tour�
��s more accident-prone riders – finish covered in grazes after two slips, one of which took him into a ditch. It was Zulle’s third smash in three days. Johan Bruyneel’s crash was heart-stopping: the Belgian went straight on at a left-hand bend, rode between a large rock and a crash barrier and flew into a ravine, followed by his bike. His fall was broken by a tree, and he clambered back up to finish 20th and in a state of shock.
There had been speculation over the long-term effects of the rain and stress, and they began to be seen on Saturday. Stéphane Heulot, the maillot jaune, was just one of many riders suffering from tendinitis caused by the wet and cold. In such weather the tiny tears in the musculature do not heal as quickly. In addition, when riders crash – and there are few who have not – the bruises and strains make them sit awkwardly on the bike, causing compensatory injuries.
Heulot’s tendinitis made itself felt as he climbed the Madeleine but his true calvaire came on the Cormet de Roselend, where the pain became so intense that he was forced to quit in tears. The last time a maillot jaune withdrew during a stage was in 1983, when Pascal Simon of France rode for several days with a fractured shoulder.
Chris Boardman and Laurent Jalabert also waved goodbye to their chances on the Roselend, as Boardman finished 29 minutes off the pace. “I have never been close to tears on the bike before,” he said, “but, when I saw the group go, that was it, all my chances of glory disappeared up the road.”
Jalabert suffered a similar fate, losing 12 minutes, but the biggest shock was Indurain’s demise just two miles from the top of the climb to the finish in Les Arcs. Indurain failed to eat or drink enough during the stage – an elementary mistake and a sign that he was probably in trouble from early on – and was reduced to begging for a bottle. That he was eventually fined and had 20 seconds added to his time for taking water from a rival team was entirely in the spirit of a thoroughly nasty opening week. Forty riders have left the Tour in seven days and more will follow if the heat arrives this week.
The 1996 Tour was a race of transition. Bjarne Riis and Telekom’s dominance raised eyebrows, as did the sudden emergence of the Festina team as a dominant force. In the absence of any evidence other than an uneasy feeling, they had to be taken at face value; it would only become apparent two years later that in that Tour they were doped up to the eyeballs. As the next chapter shows, this warning from Jean-Marie Leblanc was incredibly prescient.
Tour call for drugs clean-up
26 October 1996
The organiser of the Tour de France yesterday made an unprecedented call on cyclists and their team managers to combat doping.
Speaking at the presentation of the 1997 Tour de France route here yesterday, in the presence of the leading four finishers in this year’s race, Jean-Marie Leblanc called on leading cyclists to maintain “moral probity in the face of temptation”, to remember the example they set to children and warned that failure to do so could be “suicidal”. Only if the problem was solved, he said, could cycling champions remain “the giants of the road”.
The appeal, unprecedented in a gathering of this nature, follows the publication on Thursday of an open letter signed by Leblanc, Daniel Baal, the president of the French Cycling Federation, and Roger Legeay, Chris Boardman’s team manager at GAN. The letter called on the governing body, the International Cycling Union, the IOC and the French ministry of sport to take swift action in improving drug control.
“We must do it for the future of the sport and the credibility and image of our champions,” Legeay said. Two of Legeay’s riders this year tested positive for steroids. “We must have a credible sport; we must give credibility to dope control.”
The latter is a reference to the bizarre situation whereby urine samples taken from riders after all major cycling events may be tested for steroids and amphetamines, but may not be used to find the synthetic performance-boosters erithropoetin and human-growth hormone. That has given rise to persistent warnings from riders and drug experts that both substances may be widely used in the sport.
The tour will be one of the most mountainous for years, with three stage finishes at high-altitude ski stations in the Pyrenees and Alps: Andorra, l’Alpe de Huez and Courchevel. The mountains are packed into the tour’s second half after a long run down France’s western side from the start at Rouen.
Lance Armstrong is mentioned briefly in the 1996 Tour piece [The rain and pain of the long-distance cyclists]; he made no impression on that Tour apart from that fight and quit before the race reached the Alps, complaining of poor form. Unbeknown to him, he was suffering from testicular cancer, which was announced to the world that October. The initial stage of his comeback to racing – his attempt to get a contract at the end of 1997 – was fraught. My belief is that the bitterness this engendered him coloured the rest of his career. His feelings can be measured simply: the interview which follows was written after Armstrong called me from the US – at his expense – and ranted about the iniquities of European teams for the best part of an hour. It is rare for any sportsman to call a journalist long distance and pay for the call.
Armstrong’s uphill ride at prejudice
27 September 1997
Lance Armstrong, America’s leading road rider, is out of work and angry. A double stage winner in the Tour de France and the 1993 world champion, he seems to have won a year-long battle against cancer but none of Europe’s professional team managers is willing to take a chance on him or pay him what he feels he is worth.
Armstrong, who turned professional after the Barcelona Olympics, plans to race again next season. He is negotiating with the American professional team sponsored by US Postal Service and has received offers from several European teams, but he describes their offers as “insulting” and “completely disrespectful”. He feels “very bitter” towards the continental cycling establishment.
His comeback would be certain to generate immense publicity for the team he joined, so Armstrong infers that managers are not prepared to gamble on a rider who could fall victim to cancer again. “People are unwilling to take the risk. I think the impression is that I am still sick and bald and weak. But I am nothing like a sick person.”
Early in October 1996 the Texan was diagnosed with testicular cancer, which looked life-threatening when it spread to his lungs and abdomen, but since he finished chemotherapy at the end of January he has been cancer-free and puts his chances of being permanently cured at “95 per cent”. He also believes that he can return to the level of fitness which gave him two one-day Classic wins in 1995 and 1996.
“Just getting rid of the cancer and all its effects on my body means that there is no reason why I couldn’t be better than before. I would have raced this year but the doctors felt strongly that I should take a year out.”
When Armstrong did not come back this year it was rumoured that he had fallen out with his team, sponsored by France’s biggest telephone credit company, Cofidis. They signed him last September, before cancer was diagnosed.
“Initially they were very supportive,” he said. “When I announced the cancer they said they would honour their commitment to me 100 per cent but two or three weeks later, when I began the fight against it, they began to waver on that and a couple of weeks later, when I was at the hardest stage, they tried to get out of all of it.”
Shortly before Armstrong announced that he was open to offers for next year he was released by the French team, who reportedly then offered to rehire him at less than one-tenth of his previous salary. The annual income of a fully fit rider of Armstrong’s quality and record would usually be in the half-a-million pound bracket.
Somewhat ingenuously, Armstrong insists that he is not in the sport for a few dollars more. “I don’t need to race a bike again for a lot of reasons,” he said. “I don’t need the money, the results or to be away all the time. But it means a lot to prove what I can do after what I went through, mentally and physically, with the chemotherapy. It was just so awful. To be competitive again would say a lot fo
r chemotherapy and the cancer community.”
His reasoning is that he has a certain price which he feels he is worth, if only out of regard for his past results. “It’s not like I have to earn the money. I feel I am worth a certain amount out of respect for everything I’ve done in the sport, the fact I was world champion and had the results I had.”
To some extent Armstrong’s experience mirrors that of America’s last cycling hero Greg LeMond, who won two Tours de France. He came close to death after losing a lot of blood in a shotgun accident in 1987, and ended his career embittered by contractual wrangles when he was diagnosed as suffering from lead poisoning. He has not visited the Tour de France since his retirement in 1994.
“I will never forget the experience of the last three or four weeks,” says Armstrong. “It’s very unfortunate and very sad that sport can treat one of its champions like I have been treated. I never understood why LeMond was so bitter but now I completely understand. To be forgotten about and pushed out without any support is an amazing feeling and it says a lot about cycling. It is a sport where you can replace anyone.”
His threat never to ride another race in Europe will evaporate if this weekend’s negotiations with US Postal go to plan but his bitterness against the European cycling world is certain to add frisson to what should in any case be an emotionally charged comeback.
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