This interview mirrors one that Bradley Wiggins gave to me for the Observer at the start of 2005, when he expressed pretty much the same feelings about David Millar as he did about Landis. As I said in the piece, the reason to keep faith in the sport was because of those riders who had openly turned their backs on doping – and because there were others, one assumes, who had done the same but kept quiet about it.
The third time of crossing
2 July 2007
The roots of the Tour de France’s visit to England this summer probably lie in a chance encounter in the spring of 1966. An obscure French professional cyclist, in his first season, is sitting on a seat in the sunshine pinning on his race number. The current world champion, an Englishman, sits beside him as they wait for the race to start. In accented French he fires out questions calculated to put the nervous novice at his ease: Who are you? What are you called? What have you won?
Thirty-five years later the Tour de France organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc – our youthful obscurity – was still overwhelmed by the charisma of the then world champion, Tommy Simpson. The encounter remained fresh in his mind: he still could not believe that a rider of Simpson’s stature could take notice of a nonentity such as he, Leblanc, then was.
Leblanc’s partiality for English cycling and English cyclists started then and continues to this day. He will be there in London on July 7–8, burly, genial and perhaps a little less lined in the face than of late because in 2005 he retired as organiser of the world’s greatest bike race after 16 years.
The Tour’s visit to London may seem like an anachronism for an event which is quintessentially French and has never been won by a cyclist from this country. Cyclists in England, after all, run red lights and get in the way of cars. Whatever the recent success of our track cycling team at the Olympics, Britain cannot be described as a heartland of the sport.
That may be true but it is to ignore the fact that in the 70 years since two British cyclists, Bill Burl and Charles Holland, became the first Britanniques to start the great race, a rich heritage has accrued, reflected in Leblanc’s experiences since his meeting with Simpson.
He rode his first Tour, 1968, with the last Great Britain team to ride the event; never a star, he remembers sharing the last place in the bunch with John Clarey, who finished in Paris as lanterne rouge, last man in the pack. As a journalist with the newspaper L’Equipe, Leblanc was a rare English speaker and he moonlighted for an English cycling magazine. He was a big fan of the talented Mancunian Graham Jones, who reminded him of Simpson with his chequered Peugeot jersey and his roman nose.
“Mon favori” he still calls Jones, who works on the Tour for Radio Five Live. He looked on as Robert Millar challenged for the King of the Mountains prize in the 1984 race and admired the Scot’s colossal talent, even if he found him the devil to interview.
With a confirmed Anglophile at the helm, it was no surprise that as soon as the Channel Tunnel made it practicable for the Tour to visit England, Leblanc brought the race over, making the decision three years after being appointed organiser in 1989. An earlier visit, to Plymouth in 1974, had been blighted by delays at Exeter airport as the riders transferred back to France. The experiment was not popular and made the organisers aware that the travel had to be impeccably organised.
The Channel Tunnel was not actually open to the public when the riders and cars piled into the shuttle wagons – in many cases after a lengthy wait, because the tunnel still had teething problems – for the two stages of Le Tour en Angleterre in 1994. And here it was legitimate to ask the question: would the public turn out?
By then, 57 years after Burl and Holland had boarded the Golden Arrow to head for Paris, the Tour had its place in the national consciousness. The process had been slow, however. Simpson made headlines in the 1960s but for the wrong reasons, dying in tragic and controversial circumstances having overdosed on amphetamines. The sprinter Barry Hoban won eight Tour stages in the 1960s and 1970s but complained bitterly that no one in his native land knew who he was, even though he was a popular figure in Ghent.
The broadsheets began to look across the Channel in the late 1970s but the breakthrough was the inception of a new television channel with a brief to think outside the broadcasting box. With Robert Millar and the Irish stars Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche as the points d’appui, Channel Four began showing nightly highlights in 1986 and remains synonymous with the Tour in many minds, even though it has long given up the race, initially in favour of cricket.
To set the seal on Le Tour en Angleterre, a British hero appeared in the form of Chris Boardman, who had come from nowhere to wear the yellow jersey a few days earlier, although unfortunately he was relieved of it a few hours before crossing the Channel. The scenes were unforgettable: a swath of southern England transformed for the day into a passable replica of la France profonde, with an entire population taking the day off work to set up camping chairs and roadside barbecues as the show travelled past.
And having seen two million people on the roadsides of Hampshire, Kent and Sussex, Leblanc declared he would bring his Tour back as soon as was practicable. He has been as good as his word. All it needs now is for Bradley Wiggins or David Millar to emulate Boardman but this time to carry le maillot jaune into Kent.
The London départ saw two key debuts by British cyclists in the Tour: Mark Cavendish and the future double Olympic gold medallist Geraint Thomas. The following piece was the first large profile of Cavendish the Guardian ran, although we had pinpointed him as a man to watch back in 2005.
Rookie Cavendish dreams of leaving England in yellow
6 July 2007
If all British eyes will be on Bradley Wiggins and David Millar tomorrow when the Tour de France’s prologue time-trial comes to a climax in Whitehall, on Sunday as the sprinters jockey for position on Canterbury’s Rheims Way the figure to look for will be the diminutive, pink-clad Mark Cavendish, the first British fastman to start the Tour in 19 years.
With six wins under his belt in his first professional year “Cav”, inevitably, will be tipped as a possible stage winner for T-Mobile, and if he gets an opening the dream finish may indeed happen, but these are uncharted waters for the 22-year-old, as he acknowledges. “The Tour is a lot faster than any other race,” he says. “I’ve heard everything – uphill, downhill, the finish sprints – is three to five kilometres per hour [2–3mph] faster than other races. I’ve no apprehension at all about the finishes, only getting to the finish.”
The bunch sprints that decide most of the early flat stages are the Tour’s most spectacular and dangerous side, a maelstrom of bodies and bikes heading for the line at 40mph. Crashes are inevitable, so too physical contact, be it merely brushing shoulders – scary enough at that speed – or butting, pushing and, on one memorable occasion in 1997, bottle-throwing.
No sprinter admits to nerves, and Cavendish says simply: “It doesn’t bother me a bit. I love it. Since I was young I’ve loved watching sprints on television. If anything I think the smaller races can be more dangerous than the big races – you can have 150 guys going for the win in a small race, but maybe 30 sprinters in the Tour. It looks worse on television than it actually is. I hate people shouting and as long as people ride cleanly that’s fine, but if they flick you deliberately, that’s different.”
Only a handful of British sprinters have figured in the Tour’s results: most recently Malcolm Elliott, but that was in 1987 and 1988 and the Sheffield flyer never won a stage. Before Elliott, the best known is Barry Hoban, winner of eight stages, the British record, in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I wrote a career plan when I was young, and I thought then the Tour was coming to London in 2009,” says Cavendish. “It came two years earlier than I expected so I thought it would never happen again in my lifetime and I’d miss out. It makes it extra special. I just hope people who aren’t into cycling come and appreciate how beautiful the sport is.”
Cavendish is the first Isle of Man cyclist to start the
Tour and is the best in a long and distinguished line of riders from the island, the product of a rich, close-knit two-wheel culture born of the now defunct Cycling Week of races, notably on the TT circuit. The island produced a Commonwealth champion in the 60s in the late Peter Buckley, and another notable sprinter in the 80s, “Pocket Rocket” Steve Joughin. Another former Manx cycling star, Mike Doyle, trains Cavendish when he returns to visit family.
Thanks also to the fact that it competes as a separate entity in the Commonwealth Games – where Cavendish won a gold medal last year – the island is currently punching above its weight on two wheels, with Jonny Bellis earning selection for the world track championships this year at only 19, and Pete Kennaugh, “another possible Cavendish” in the view of Rod Ellingworth, head of British cycling’s under-23 academy programme. Cavendish pays tribute to Ellingworth, whose academy has produced another Tour debutant this year, Geraint Thomas. “He turned me from a fat wanker to a world champion in 15 months. The best thing he did was teach me the ethics of hard work.”
[In his autobiography Boy Racer, Cavendish states specifically that I misheard him when I scribbled down “fat wanker” rather than “fat banker” – a reference to the fact that he had worked in a bank before turning professional. I apologize for the misquote; such things can happen – if only very rarely – during telephone interviews. But the point he was making remains – his progress under Ellingworth was outstanding.]
“He’s got a boxer’s attitude, massive self-belief,” says Ellingworth, who remembers that when he first met Cavendish he saw “an 85-kilo lad – 15 kilos more than he is now – saying how quick he was, how he would never let me down. You go “Yeah yeah yeah” and accept it, a bit of lip service. But, looking back, he believed in himself and was already a winner.”
Ellingworth adds that Cavendish has incredible clarity of mind in the hectic final kilometre, as the sprinters fight for position, and he already has a team leader’s ability to “put an arm around someone, give them a bit of sympathy, get behind them, which is why he will be a success.
“And he’s not scared to say when he’s not good; he takes responsibility as the team’s sprinter. He’s not going to the Tour thinking “Great, I’m riding the Tour” – he’s thinking he’s absolutely cacking himself, he seriously doesn’t know what he’s getting into, he doesn’t take it lightly at all, and in the next breath he says he’s fast enough to win a stage.”
Kennaugh has since gone on to become a gold medallist at London 2012 and a hot prospect on the road; Bellis would win a bronze medal at the under-23 world championship that autumn, but his career was wrecked by a near-fatal scooter crash in 2009.
The 2007 Tour was a complicated, emotional race, probably the low point of all the post-1998 Tours as far as I was concerned, because it went from a magnificent beginning to an ignominious ending, offering a vision of what the sport could be with a gruesome reminder of what it was. It’s best read as a whole, via the Observer diary for the complete four weeks.
The Observer
Tour 2007
Wednesday 4 July
Driving into central London, the heart lifts as the first Tour posters are sighted – and the first notices warning that Westminster will be shut down on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. It finally hits home: the Grand Départ is actually happening and it’s happening here.
Something else hits home as, a little later, I drive into the race headquarters in the ExCel Centre: no matter what the attractions of the host city, the initial venue on any Tour is usually an anonymous barn – the ExCel Centre is actually more redolent of a giant logistics warehouse or airport freight terminal. On the plus side, it is neither a cattle market in Holland nor a ruined castle in the middle of nowhere, as has been the case at Grand Départs in the past.
Thursday 5 July
L’Equipe has stopped being pessimistic about doping for a day and looks at the weather. It has been raining. As their reporter apparently feels it often does in these parts. On the hunt for further cliche in central London, I take a taxi through the area where the Grand Départ is to be held. The driver, it seems, has not bought into Mayor Ken Livingstone’s culture of cycling in the capital just yet.
He will not be watching Wiggins, Millar et al. He hates cyclists. He hates them more than anything he can think of. Ninety per cent of them should not be on the road, because 90 per cent of them cannot ride their bikes. In the interests of equity, however, he approves of the 10 per cent who can, and he is not a fan of “90 per cent” of car drivers, either. Given the dodgy manoeuvres that are performed hourly by the four-wheeled Tour caravan, perhaps it is as well he is not going to view the race.
Friday 6 July
Most teams content themselves with a bland press conference at ExCel to present their squad for the Tour but T-Mobile, befitting the sponsor with the most interest in the British market, set their sights higher, inviting the press to breakfast at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen near Old Street. The relaxed ambience, accessible riders and positive talk about fighting doping is in contrast with the tense questioning of the previous evening when the Tour favourite Alexander Vinokourov met hacks at ExCel. If T-Mobile’s do is indeed what cycling might be like if the sport’s drug problem is tackled head on, it is a promising prospect. So promising that the head of the International Cycling Union, Pat McQuaid, makes a point of turning up to endorse the team in pink.
Saturday 7 July
Radio Monte Carlo call to get the views of an Anglais on the Grand Départ. After exploring traffic chaos (bad but normal for the Tour), les Britanniques in the race (five of them), the views (Buck House is a great backdrop) and cycle use in London (growing in spite of rabid taxi drivers) we turn to Wimbledon. The presenter points out, smugly, that the French are way better than the British. The reply is obvious: in the Tour this weekend, thanks to Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins there is more chance of a British stage win than a French one. Long live the old rivalry, says RMC, and signs off quickly.
Week two
Sunday 8 July, Canterbury
An unforgettable day in Kent, with a variety of surreal juxtapositions. To start, there is the sight of the Victoria memorial outside Buckingham Palace without a car nearby, with the road closed for the Tour. To celebrate, we do a few extra laps of the statue [in the Tour car]. Then we spend as much of the stage as possible driving on the right, simply because we can. Strangest of all is an invitation to provide an English voice from the Départ on French television, which offers an insight into how les rosbifs are seen on the other side of the Channel. With me on the chat show are a red phone box and two bulldogs.
To cap the weirdness, France 2 have dug up an ageing Beatles tribute band, but what is striking is how their singer manages a near-perfect John Lennon impersonation. The Tour offers its share of surreal moments, but none can match standing in Trafalgar Square playing the role of fifth Beatle next to four middle-aged moptops with guitars.
Monday 9 July, Ghent
Overnight, the decor changes: for warm bitter, brown Trappist beer; for roadside pubs, cafes with net curtains; for rolling hills and green hedges, first world war battlefields. And windswept fens where the occasional large wind farm is a big improvement on the natural scenery. To underline the lack of home-grown cycling stars in Kent, every community along the way has bred a Flandrian cycling star: Freddy Maertens in Nieuwpoort, double Tour winner Sylvere Maes in Gistel, a double world champion in the evocatively named Briek “Brick” Schotte in Tielt. The British connection comes at the finish, birthplace of Bradley Wiggins and former home of Tom Simpson.
Tuesday 10 July, Compiègne
Team managers, particularly from the French squads, have been advising their riders not to burn up all their energy in fruitless escapes in the opening week. Nicolas Vogondy and Matthieu Ladagnous, the day’s echappées, take the instructions to the letter and can be seen at various times during their 145-mile spell at the front during the race’s longest stage going at s
peeds that a decent amateur could manage out training. But, bizarrely, the bunch go slightly slower because they have no wish to catch the pair and prompt a resumption of hostilities. The result is a slow race that lasts six-and-a-half hours and mystifies many of the cyclists. The sight of everyone pedalling at tourist speed to preserve the status quo is unprecedented.
Wednesday 11 July, Joigny
A rapid spin south from Champagne vineyards to the land of Chablis, where bottles of the flinty white wine are handed out liberally at the finish at a groaning buffet de terroir régional. It is a literary excursion, too, starting in Villers-Cotterets, the birthplace of Alexandre Dumas, passing through La Ferté Milon, that of Jean Racine, and ending up in the town of Marcel Aymé, who wrote of one hero: “He believed that God was interested in bike races and of course he was right.” Deity of the day is none other than Thor, second name Hushovd, who flies over the line for his fifth Tour stage win.
Thursday 12 July, Autun
The hopes of Kazakhstan go tumbling with Alexandre Vinokourov when the leader of Team Borat, as Astana are affectionately known, comes a cropper in the Morvan massif, during an unusually hectic stage for the Tour’s first week. It is the fruit of a policy by Christian Prudhomme, the new Tour director, who wants to make greater use of France’s hills to liven up the opening phase. As a former head of sport at France Televisions, he is presumably happy with a 41 per cent share of the viewing audience, rising to 50 per cent as Vino’s desperate, unsuccessful attempt to regain the bunch reaches a climax.
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