The Tour de France

by Paul Hansford

  When the continent finally stabilised enough to start the Tour again in 1947, Europe had been forever changed — but the race gave the French people a small amount of normalcy and pleasure amidst all the hardship. Some scars were too deep to have healed so quickly, though, and 1947 saw no German riders invited and the Italian duo of Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi preferring not to attend. Battle lines were drawn between France and Italy in that first race, as Frenchman Jean Robic ignored the unwritten rule of not attacking on the final stage into Paris and snatched the yellow jersey from Italian Pierre Brambilla. Brambilla was said to be so gutted about losing the race that he buried his bike in his garden.

  The last two races of the decade were all about the Italians. In 1948, Gino Bartali came from nowhere to win three mountain stages in a row and overcome a twenty-one-minute deficit to win his second Tour. (The extra motivation was provided by a phone call from the Italian prime minister asking Bartali to win the Tour in order to distract a politically agitated populace back home.) The ten-year gap between Bartali’s first and second wins is still the largest on record, and serves to highlight how many other Grand Tours he might have won if not for the war. The following year, Fausto Coppi — already winner of three Giri and three Milan–San Remos — burst onto the Tour de France scene and won on his first attempt, finally asserting his supremacy over Bartali and becoming the first cyclist to complete the Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double.

  With Europe rebuilding and its citizens still struggling to come to terms with the post-war climate, few could have predicted that cycling was about to enter its golden age.

  1950s

  The 1950s aren’t known as the ‘Golden Age of Cycling’ for nothing. The riders, the stages, the attacks, the personalities; they all seemed to be a little more iconic in the ’50s. From Hugo Koblet combing his hair on the finish line to Federico Bahamontes eating an ice-cream at the top of a mountain, there was a sense of style and theatre to the races during the period.

  It says much about the quality of the riders during the 1950s that only one man won the Tour more than once — Louison Bobet took out a trio of wins between 1953 and 1955 — while the list of other victors reads like a cycling Hall of Fame ballot: Ferdi Kübler, Hugo Koblet, Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Charly Gaul and Federico Bahamontes. Which makes the only other winner of the decade even more of a head-scratcher; no-one saw Frenchman Roger Walkowiak coming in 1956, especially as he didn’t win a single stage on the way to grabbing the yellow jersey. How his name is within such esteemed company is a mystery to this day (although it helped that no former winner competed that year).

  There were some pretty iconic moments played out over the decade, too: Hugo Koblet’s jaw-dropping 140-km solo ride from Brive to Agen; Wim van Est being pulled out of a ravine with a bunch of tied-together inner tubes; Coppi accepting Bartali’s wheel after he punctured, to ensure his second Tour victory; and Bobet’s Tour-winning ride amidst the carnage of Mont Ventoux in ’55. The list goes on.

  Myth-making aside, while he didn’t have the biggest name, Louison Bobet was undoubtedly the dominant Tour rider of the decade (albeit fortunate that his run came as some of the sport’s greats were fading). He was the pride of his nation and hailed as the greatest French rider ever — although it was an honour he didn’t hold on to for too long, thanks to a certain Jacques Anquetil.

  1960s

  After a decade of post-war success, due in no small part to the advent of live TV coverage and the unprecedented number of fans lining the routes, the Tour de France had firmly entrenched itself on the global sporting landscape by the 1960s. And as the rest of the world was dealing with the new phenomena of revolution, drugs and protests, so too was the Tour.

  The revolution came from Jacques Anquetil, who made history by becoming the first man to win five Tours. The calculating, almost scientific way in which he won, measuring the field and racing to his strengths, wasn’t to everyone’s liking but it certainly proved effective; in full flow, there were few who could match Anquetil aesthetically or physically. His memorable victory over Raymond Poulidor in 1964, especially the stage on the Puy de Dôme, helped make that Tour one of the best ever. Upon his retirement he fully deserved to be recognised as the greatest Tour de France rider ever, despite two big blots on his copybook: his win in 1963 was helped by a shady bike swap after fake mechanical problems, and he insisted that the Tour couldn’t be won on ‘just water’ (as in, he doped).

  Drugs and protests also came to the fore in ’60s cycling. The Tour introduced mandatory drug tests for the first time in 1966, with the riders — led by Anquetil — dismounting from their bikes on one stage in protest. The following year, the seriousness of the doping issue in the sport became apparent as English rider Tom Simpson collapsed and died on Mont Ventoux, a cocktail of amphetamines and alcohol later found to be a major contributor to his death. Unfortunately it was the first of many doping scandals to blight the Tour for the next forty years.

  By 1969 there was a new kid on the block who delivered a knockout blow to his opponents that sent reverberations well into the next decade. Twenty-four-year-old Belgian Eddy Merckx not only won the Tour on his first attempt, but he took out all three classifications — general, mountains and points — for good measure. If Anquetil earned his nickname ‘Maitre’ — ‘master’ — for his utter dominance of the peloton in the early ’60s, then Merckx was about to show his rivals why he was known as ‘The Cannibal’.

  1970s

  The 1970s were bookended by two legendary riders, with a couple of well-deserved winners and a drug cheat in between.

  Eddy Merckx continued where he left off in 1969 by taking four of the first five Tours of the decade. ‘The Cannibal’ devoured his rivals in a manner that wasn’t supposed to win Grand Tours — rather than conserve energy and push hard when necessary, he rode from the front, attacking at every opportunity to take big chunks of time out of any threat. The nearest anyone came to beating him was in 1974, when second place was 8:04 behind, and he might have easily won six in a row if he hadn’t pulled out in 1973 to concentrate on winning the only Grand Tour not on his palmarès, the Vuelta a España (which he won).

  Merckx’s performances were part of a Belgian renaissance in the early ’70s, as the lowlanders dominated in a fashion not seen since the 1920s. Belgian riders won every points classification from 1969 to 1972, and eight of the ten green jerseys on offer, as well as the yellow jersey in 1976 (by Lucien Van Impe). In the decade’s first seven races only Spaniard Luis Ocaña — who came so close to beating Merckx in 1971 — and France’s Bernard Thévenet could break the Belgian dominance by winning the GC.

  Thévenet’s two wins in 1975 and 1977 finally gave French fans something to cheer about, but after the latter he admitted to taking cortisone and the French public never forgave him. In fact, it was a dark period for doping on the Tour, with top riders such as Joop Zoetemelk and Luis Ocaña testing positive for banned substances in 1977 and Belgian Michel Pollentier caught quite literally taking the piss at a drug test when a contraption filled with urine was found strapped to his chest at the end of stage 16 in 1978.

  Out of the darkness came a star in the form of Bernard Hinault. ‘Le Blaireau’ — ‘The Badger’ — was a leader and a winner from the off: on his debut Tour in 1978, he found time to lead a protest by riders as well as win the yellow jersey. In 1979, he won again, with nearest rival Joop Zoetemelk — second to Hinault in both races — saying, ‘No regrets. Hinault is stronger than me … If he carries on improving like this, he could match Merckx.’ How prophetic that proved to be.

  1980s

  The age of day-glo, Rubik’s cubes and synth pop saw French riders dominate the early going before the Anglophones announced their arrival at the end of the decade, winning three of the last four ’80s Tours.

  Joop Zoetemelk won one for the sentimentalists in 1980 — he had come second four times since 1970 — before Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon battled it out to see who had
the biggest, erm … saddle. Hinault struck first with wins in 1981 and 1982 — the latter seeing him match Coppi, Anquetil and Merckx as the only riders to win the Giro/Tour double — before the young pretender Fignon won the following two. ‘The Professor’ looked to have assumed Hinault’s mantle as the next dominant French rider, but injury and loss of form put paid to those notions, and ‘Le Blaireau’ secured his place in history with a fifth Tour in 1985. Hinault retired after the 1986 Tour, second in popularity to only Jacques Anquetil amongst his compatriots; little did they know that Hinault’s 1985 win would be the last French Tour win to date.

  It was then the sea change took place. The Anglophones had been showing signs of steady improvement since the early ’80s; Aussie rider Phil Anderson had pushed Bernard Hinault hard in 1981 and Sean Kelly had won a couple of green jerseys, but no English speaker had ever won the yellow jersey. That all changed in 1986 when, despite the best efforts of Hinault, Greg LeMond won the Tour de France. Then, suddenly unburdened by the weight of history, other Anglophones got in on the act: Ireland’s Stephen Roche won in 1987 and LeMond again in 1989. Both were feted as heroes in their home countries, helping to raise the profile of cycling to new heights around the globe.

  The last two years of the decade witnessed the highs and lows of the modern Tour. In 1988, Spain’s Pedro Delgado won the GC in hugely controversial fashion after the diuretic probenecid was found in his system mid-race. Although the steroid-masking agent was banned in Olympic competition, cycling had not yet gotten around to putting it on their blacklist. Refusing to pull out on the request of the organisers, Delgado rode into Paris as perhaps the most tainted winner in the history of the race (up to that point).

  As low as ’88 proved to be, 1989 took the Tour to new heights: two rejuvenated riders — Laurent Fignon returning from injury and Greg LeMond returning from being shot in the back while hunting — went back and forth all the way to the French capital in an exhilarating battle for yellow. Eight seconds was all that separated them at the finish (the smallest margin of victory in history), with LeMond taking his second Tour in a hugely dramatic time trial finale.

  1990s

  Despite crowning another five-time winner and seeing its first champions from Scandinavia and Germany, the Tour de France ended the 1990s on life support as doping scandals threatened to drag cycling’s flagship race into oblivion.

  The death of the Tour was inconceivable in 1990 as Greg LeMond triumphed for a third time. A 2:16 win over Claudio Chiappucci saw the American reach new heights of popularity, both at home and, more surprisingly considering his previous victory over Laurent Fignon, in France. The ‘Comeback Kid’ was back and he looked odds-on to take number four before cracking on the ride up the Tourmalet in 1991. Instead, the Tour witnessed the first of five consecutive victories by Spaniard Miguel Indurain, a monster of a physical specimen who was virtually untouchable during his reign as champion. Criticised in some quarters for being boring and uninspiring, his ‘win the time trials, defend in the mountains’ game plan proved devastatingly effective; riders knew what was going to happen when they rode against Indurain, but they could do nothing about it.

  After a record-setting run of wins, Indurain’s stranglehold on the Tour was finally loosened in 1996, only for it to fall into the clutches of something far more sinister: doping. That year’s Tour gave fans a taste of things to come for the next decade, as the top four riders were subsequently linked to drugs: winner Bjarne Riis later admitted taking EPO, second-place Jan Ullrich (also the 1997 winner) was suspended in 2006 after being caught in Operación Puerto (the blood-doping sting that centred around Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes and a group of riders who were indentified by codenames on blood bags and other documentation), and the third- and fourth-place riders — Richard Virenque and Laurent Dufaux — were both involved in the 1998 Festina scandal (more on that in a second). In fact, it would be another twelve years before the Tour de France winner was untainted by a positive test, a drug-taking admission or a sanction for doping.

  In 1998, a doping problem that had mainly been kept in-house suddenly gained global notoriety with what was dubbed the Festina scandal. Willy Voet, a soigneur for the number 1–ranked Festina team, was stopped by customs officials on the French–Belgian border and found with a smorgasbord of performance-enhancing drugs in his boot. The discovery of Voet’s stash sparked a scandal that saw midnight police raids, riders taken into custody and only ninety-six of the original 189-man field making it to Paris. The entire Festina team was booted off the Tour, and other teams fled the competition as they began to feel the heat. Dubbed the ‘Tour De Dopage’, at one point there were real concerns that the 1998 race would not reach the finish. Continue it did though, with Italian Marco Pantani taking the yellow jersey to muted celebration. Cycling had well and truly entered the EPO era, where now every solo break or rider coming from nowhere to win a stage raised an eyebrow of suspicion.

  The ’90s ended with a victory by a Texan who had fought his way back from a cancer diagnosis that had given him a 50 per cent chance of living. But even as heartwarming as his story was, the new climate of cycling raised questions as to where and how Lance Armstrong found the strength and endurance to win the Tour de France. It took a long time to answer those questions.

  2000s

  There’s no other way to refer to the decade of the 2000s than as the lost years of the Tour de France. With the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to see how doping affected every year’s results in some shape or form, and it’s difficult to champion the achievements of those who cheated their way to the top, at least in the early years.

  The decade’s roll of shame is a lengthy one, including:

  – The first five Tours of the decade, which were won by Lance Armstrong, who later admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs during each of his victories.

  – The top four riders of 2005, who were all implicated in doping: Armstrong by USADA’s investigation, and Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich and Francisco Mancebo by association with the Operación Puerto investigation.

  – 2006 winner Floyd Landis, who was disqualified after illegal amounts of testosterone were found in a drug test.

  – 2007 Danish competitor Michael Rasmussen who, while leading the race, was sacked by Rabobank for lying about why he missed a drug test; the Astana and Cofidis teams, which withdrew from the race after riders tested positive.

  This all makes depressing reading now, so you can only imagine the turmoil it caused at the time. The Tour was on life support at the end of the decade, and the prognosis did not look good.

  That’s not to say there weren’t moments of great racing and drama during the decade, despite many of the participants’ tainted records: Armstrong’s famous cross-country detour into a field in 2003 to avoid a fallen Joseba Beloki; Tyler Hamilton riding the entire race in 2003 with a broken collarbone; Frenchman Thomas Voeckler’s ten days in yellow during 2004, raising the hopes of his nation; twenty-four-year-old sprinter Mark Cavendish winning six stages in 2009; and Aussies Robbie McEwen and Baden Cooke, who took out four green jerseys in five years.

  Alberto Contador continued the great Spanish tradition in the race by winning the 2007 and 2009 editions, while two future champions also made an impact in the final years of the decade: Cadel Evans came second twice (2007 and 2008) and Bradley Wiggins finished fourth in 2009, matching the best-ever finish for a British rider. If the Tour de France was going to survive the early years of its second century, maybe they were the riders who could lead the way?

  2010s

  In our current decade’s short history, it’s been more of the same for the Tour: high drama, controversy, historical firsts and drug scandals. The Tours’ first three winners of the decade were on different ends of the spectrum: one has already had their result vacated, while the other two sit firmly on the other side of the doping fence, riding clean and inspiring a new generation of riders in their homelands.

  The 2010 winner, Alberto Contado
r, was already the best stage racer of his generation, having won the complete set of Grand Tours by age twenty-six. But at the end of that year’s race, he tested positive for clenbuterol, and after a lengthy legal battle was stripped of the Tour win. Second place Andy Schleck was handed the title, although he was less than ecstatic about winning it retrospectively.

  Australian Cadel Evans, after coming second in consecutive years, looked as though his place in Tour history might be next to Eugène Christophe and Raymond Poulidor as one of the best riders never to win. Evans may have won only one stage in 2011, but with true Aussie grit and determination, he stayed in touch with the leaders throughout the race and took over yellow on the penultimate day with a strong time trial. At thirty-four, he became the oldest winner in the post-war era.

  With Contador banned and Andy Schleck missing through injury, the 2012 Tour was up for grabs. Cadel Evans, Bradley Wiggins and Vincenzo Nibali were all considered favourites, with the Brit in great form after winning several of the pre-Tour stage races. After a few nervous moments in the early stages, Team Sky took control of the race, guiding Wiggins into yellow by stage nine and keeping him in it all the way to Paris. Riding to pre-assigned power outputs and unwaveringly sticking to their plan, Wiggins’s win was the epitome of a team victory. Purists may have decried the lack of romance in the Sky tactics, but it’s hard to fault a team that so dominated the rest of the field on almost every stage. A master in the time trial and a lively press-conference participant, ‘Wiggo’ became an overnight sensation in England, further adding to his legend by winning the time-trial gold at the London Olympics a little more than a week later.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tour essentials

  Without knowledge of the basics, it’s impossible to appreciate the allure of the Tour de France. If you have no idea why Bradley Wiggins is wearing a yellow jersey instead of the usual black attire of Team Sky, a) we’ve got a lot of work to do, and b) you probably should have bought that fly-fishing book you flicked through in the bookstore instead.