The Tour de France

by Paul Hansford

  Greg LeMond & Laurent Fignon: 23 July 1989, Stage 21 Versailles to Paris [Champs-Élysées), 24.5 km

  The 1989 Tour de France was poised on a knife-edge entering the final individual time trial from Versailles to Paris. Laurent Fignon had rediscovered his mid-’80s form, having already won the Giro d’Italia earlier in the year, and Greg LeMond was looking to mount an amazing comeback just two years after being shot in the back on a hunting trip (someone should have told him the baseball cap with the fake deer antlers attached was a bad idea). In the early stages, the two riders swapped the yellow jersey like a couple of teenage girls trying on tops in a changing room, until an audacious assault on the climb at Saint-Nizier-du-Moucherotte saw Fignon take a fifty-second lead, which he held until the final stage. There was no way he could lose from this position in a time trial, right?

  The two riders struck quite a contrast on the road that day. LeMond used every advantage science could provide, donning a futuristic (for the time, anyway) teardrop helmet and skin-suit and using newfangled triathlon handlebars for a more aerodynamic position. Fignon, by comparison, was a little more contemporary: still wearing his specs, he raced on a standard time-trial bike with disc wheels, his blond ponytail flapping in the wind like a Whitesnake video’s hairdryer moment.

  The advantage LeMond gained from his modern set-up was immediately noticeable. His body remained static in a tuck position, allowing him to generate immense power from his back and legs. Fignon was constantly up and down on his saddle, body swaying from side to side in a futile effort to maintain his speed. (In Fignon’s defence, the up-and-down part might have had something to do with having a painful backside: ‘For two days I haven’t been able to sit down. I have an inflammation of I don’t know what.’)

  LeMond began reeling in the deficit almost from the start. At the halfway point he’d made up twenty-two seconds and, with just 3 km to go, Fignon’s lead was down to five seconds. The American set a new Tour de France time-trial record as he crossed the line, but he was left with an agonising wait as the Frenchman was willed over the line by the partisan crowd. When the clock stopped, Fignon had lost the Tour by eight seconds, the closest finish in the history of the race. LeMond exploded in jubilation, while Fignon collapsed in tears. The Frenchman was understandably taciturn after the race but conceded, ‘I should have gained ten more seconds somewhere else. There are a thousand places where I lost this Tour, and a thousand places where Greg won it.’

  Miguel Indurain: 13 July 1992, Stage 9 Luxembourg, 65 km

  Miguel Indurain is something of a mystery when it comes to Tour de France legends. He was a quiet, modest, uninteresting rider who showed very little of himself to the press or the fans on the way to five consecutive Tour de France victories. For all his blandness, he did have one special talent: the ability to ride really, really fast on a bike, and nowhere did he do that better than during the individual time trial in Luxembourg during the 1992 Tour.

  Indurain was a grand master of ‘The Race of Truth’, as the time trial is commonly known, and his performance on the 65-km course in the principality of Luxembourg (isn’t that from one side to the other?) was nothing short of superhuman. In the modern-day Tour, time-trial victories are typically measured in seconds — but Indurain’s efforts along the hilly course saw him take three minutes from fellow time-trial specialist Armand de Las Cuevas in second, and almost four from his closest rival, Gianni Bugno. If that doesn’t give you an idea as to how fast ‘Big Mig’ was that day, consider this: he overtook former Tour winner Laurent Fignon, who set off a full six minutes before the Spaniard.

  Even though there was a lot of riding still to come, Indurain effectively won his second Tour that day, creating a blueprint for success for the rest of his Tour career: 1) Take time from your rivals in the time trial; 2) Ride stubbornly in the mountains; and 3) Watch everyone else eventually give up.

  Lance Armstrong: 17 July 2001, Stage 10 Aixles-Bains to L’Alpe d’Huez, 209 km

  Lance Armstrong’s achievements may have been struck from the Tour de France record book, but his actions still have resonance. From his obsession with scouting and riding upcoming routes to his work on improving diet, nutrition and cadence, Lance’s legacy is still alive and kicking in professional cycling today.

  Of course, that legacy also includes the small issue of doping, lying, bullying and manipulating his way to seven Tour de France wins, so when trying to pick a great moment of the Armstrong era that doesn’t include feats fuelled by EPO, it’s slim pickings.

  If you take away all the illegally enhanced performances, one moment that sums up Armstrong in the Tour is ‘The Look’, the now-legendary stare he gave Jan Ullrich before he soared up L’Alpe d’Huez to stake his claim on yet another Tour. All at once it highlighted the Texan’s intense will to win, his supreme arrogance, and the mental superiority he had over his rivals.

  The scene was the first big day in the Alps and Armstrong’s team was ailing after some rough riding in the team time trial. Lance and his directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel came up with a plan to fake illness until the final climb of the day and bluff rival Jan Ullrich’s team into driving the pace. Armstrong’s contorted face on the climbs sent a clear message to the peloton that he was struggling, and Ullrich fell for the ruse hook, line and sinker.

  ‘Ullrich and his teammates took the bait,’ said Armstrong. ‘They surged to the front and rode at a hot tempo, excited. Clearly they had gotten the message that I was hurting. They responded exactly as Johan had predicted they would.’

  Armstrong was so good at faking a problem that even the race commentators noted that he was struggling. The Texan kept in touch with Ullrich with help from teammate Chechu Rubiera and, as he pulled ahead, he turned in his saddle and looked over his shoulder at the ginger German for a good four or five seconds.

  It was a ‘Let’s see what you’ve got’ stare and, whatever Armstrong saw in Ullrich’s eyes, he knew he had him. ‘I stared into Ullrich’s sunglasses for a long moment. What I saw convinced me to make my move.’

  Armstrong sped up the hill at a blistering pace, the earlier deception unmasked, and left a trail of devastation in his wake. He’d shown Ullrich he was the alpha dog, and the German never came close to challenging Lance again — in that or any other Tour.

  Armstrong called it the ‘best physical day I ever had on a bike’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean, considering what we now know), but it would have to rank pretty high on the psychological scale too.

  Cadel Evans: 21 July 2011, Stage 18 Pinerolo to Col du Galibier, 200.5 km

  The record books show that Cadel Evans made up his Tour-winning deficit over Andy Schleck during the final time trial in Grenoble, but it was on the Col du Galibier that the Aussie actually won the race. Lost in the aftermath of Schleck’s astonishing 60-km break, which deserves to go down in Tour legend, was Evans’s equally stunning fight back that set him up for victory two days later.

  Schleck had planned to make a break on stage 18 after finding himself more than two and a half minutes off the pace and being criticised for his earlier tactics, which involved pausing to assess the damage after every attack rather than continuing to ride hard to gain time. (Andy’s harshest critics claimed he was checking on where brother Frank, his riding security blanket, was.) His brilliant assault had given him a significant advantage as he hit the final climb — the Col du Galibier, on the 100th anniversary of the Tour’s first ascent there — and Evans was a massive four minutes behind the Luxembourger on the road.

  The Australian knew he had the beating of Schleck in the upcoming time trial — but he wasn’t four minutes better. That was Indurain territory. His chances of winning the Tour — after coming second in 2007 and 2008 — rested on him being able to pull back a lot of that time right then and there on the Galibier. The only problem was that, with his teammates knackered and
the rest of the peloton unwilling to help, he would have to do it solo.

  ‘I had to put it on the line,’ Evans said after the stage. ‘It was my Tour to win and mine to lose.’

  In a superb display of strength and determination, Cadel slowly began making up time, dropping rider after rider who tried in vain to stay on his wheel. Samuel Sánchez cracked, then Alberto Contador. While Andy Schleck ground to a virtual standstill with around a kilometre to go, the pursuing group continued to claw back time, making up nearly half a minute in the final kilometre. Frank Schleck pulled away in the final metres to take second but, by hauling back more than two minutes on the daunting 11-km climb, Cadel Evans had put himself just fifty-seven seconds behind Andy in the GC.

  It was an inspired piece of riding, all the more so because Evans was the only rider putting in the work down the stretch:

  It’s a bit bizarre when Voeckler’s team stops riding and he has the yellow jersey. They’ve ridden a lot all week, but he still had a teammate in the end and just sort of looked to me to do the work, but I’m alone too.

  Luckily for Evans, he still had enough in the tank to see the race through. The following day he defended his position on L’Alpe d’Huez before steamrolling the Schlecks in Grenoble, taking two and a half minutes from Andy on the 42.5-km time trial and securing the first-ever Tour de France victory for Australia.

  Bradley Wiggins: 15 July 2012, Stage 14 Limoux to Foix, 191 km

  Memorable moments in the 2012 Tour were few and far between, unless you were an English cycling fan revelling in the manner in which Team Sky helped Bradley Wiggins to his country’s first victory in the race. The man from Kilburn in northwest London rode a near-perfect race from start to finish, avoiding the first-week crashes, enjoying the protection of his team in the mountains and taking vast chunks of time in the individual time trials. The stars seemed aligned for Wiggins, with neither Alberto Contador nor Andy Schleck taking part, and potential grumblings from teammates Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish about their roles nipped in the bud early.

  If there were still questions over whether Wiggins had the mental and physical strength — as well as the presence — to win the Tour, they were answered on stage 14 between Limoux and Foix. And it had nothing to do with his riding.

  As the peloton reached the peak of the Mur de Péguère in the Pyrenees, rider after rider began lifting their arm to signal they had punctured. It quickly became apparent that someone had sabotaged the race, throwing tacks on the tarmac on a very narrow part of the road. Team cars struggled to make their way through to their stricken riders as valuable seconds ticked off the clock; more than thirty riders suffered punctures on the day. Defending champion Cadel Evans was the most high-profile casualty, losing a minute at the top of the mountain waiting for a rear wheel that almost never came. Even approaching teammate Steve Cummings, who would usually give up his wheel for the leader, couldn’t help; he’d punctured too.

  Wiggins, along with fellow GC contenders Vincenzo Nibali and Chris Froome, was on his descent when he heard through the race radio that Evans was delayed back at the summit. Rather than seize an opportunity to take advantage over a rival, Bradley sat up and told the other riders around him not to race until the Australian had re-joined the group.

  ‘Nobody wants to benefit from somebody else’s misfortune,’ he said after the stage.

  Wiggins might have been ‘doing the honourable thing’, but it was still a courageous and selfless decision. It highlighted a newfound maturity for the Briton, something that was sorely lacking when he was thrust into the role of team leader for Sky in 2010. To have the confidence, surely emboldened by the yellow jersey on his back, to tell the pack to stop riding — and for them to agree — spoke volumes for Wiggins’s standing in the peloton.

  What the ‘no race’ decision also underscored was the belief he had in his team’s ability to continue to dominate the race, even if Evans caught up. It was more than Alberto Contador did when Andy Schleck jammed his chain a couple of years earlier, and it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the other riders. Any doubts that Wiggins lacked the mental fortitude or force of personality to take out the Tour was ripped to shreds like so many tyres on that day of sabotage in the Pyrenees.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tour to the dark side

  Mention cheating and the Tour de France to most sports fans, and images immediately spring to mind of morally reprehensible riders injecting themselves with illegal drugs to boost their performance. However, the sad fact of the matter is that cheating and the Tour have been bedfellows from its very inception — and it’s not all about drug taking.

  Cheats and dirty tricks

  My generation is no different than any other. The ‘help’ has evolved over the years but the fact remains that our sport is damn hard, the Tour was invented as a stunt and very tough motherf*ckers have competed for a century and all looked for advantages, from hopping on trains a hundred years ago to EPO now. No generation was exempt or ‘clean’. Not Merckx’s, not Hinault’s, not LeMond’s, not Coppi’s, not Gimondi’s, not Indurain’s, not Anquetil’s, not Bartali’s and not mine.

  — Lance Armstrong

  A ‘win at all costs’ attitude has permeated the Tour de France since the early years and, for those riders who don’t ascribe Corinthian values to cycling, there has been ample opportunity for racers to deceive, defraud and dupe their way to victory. The men on the bikes aren’t the only ones to dabble in the dark arts during the Tour either. Officials and spectators have got in on the act too, doing their best to influence the outcome when they’ve had the means and opportunity.

  The Tour was in danger of ending before it had even gotten out of nappies, as the 1904 race was besieged by those intent on making a mockery of the competition. The first four riders to finish the race, including the previous year’s champion, Maurice Garin, were disqualified after being charged with various transgressions, including hanging onto motor vehicles, accepting lifts and taking trains between stages. The organisers didn’t help much either, awarding stage wins to the wrong riders and failing to see that some racers were blatantly breaking the rules. (I would’ve thought seeing someone standing on a train platform with a bike was a bit of a giveaway.)

  In the officials’ defence, it could have been that they were too busy breaking up the angry mobs that were hell-bent on beating up any rider they didn’t like. Regional fans had their favourites and would look to halt the progress of others with a hail of fists and farmers’ boots; the swinging of large sticks and the odd gunshot from an official’s car proved the only effective means of dispersing the ruffians. Desgrange was so disheartened by events that he wrote in the pages of L’Auto in 1904: ‘The Tour de France is over. I very much fear that its second edition will have been its last. It has been killed by its own success.’ While he was clearly overstating the problem, issues of cheating in the Tour had only just begun.

  The 1937 edition saw the dirty tricks become more organised as the French and Belgian teams went to war. Frenchman Roger Lapébie was getting a helping hand from a few of his non-riding compatriots as he pedalled up the mountains, and the Belgians were unhappy about officials turning a blind eye to the illegal pushing; they responded by allegedly sabotaging Lapébie’s handlebars so they fell apart just before the start of a stage. Both teams were ignoring or breaking the rules, but the problem was that race officials were being more lenient with the French than the Belgians. Lapébie was docked a derisory ninety seconds for accepting his pushes, leaving Belgian Sylvère Maes in the lead with just a few stages to go.

  Hostilities came to a head on the stage to Bordeaux. Maes punctured early and Lapébie threw sportsmanship out the window by attacking, although the Belgian was soon being paced back by compatriot Gustaaf Deloor. Just as the Belgians were making headway, they reached a railway crossing that was closed — suspicious, c
onsidering there was no train in sight. After a slight delay they decided to sneak under the barrier and ended the race more than a minute and a half behind Lapébie. As if to confirm the whole of France was out to get him, officials later gave Maes a twenty-five-second penalty for working with Deloor. It was the final straw for the Belgians and the entire team pulled out of the race, leaving Lapébie free to cruise to Paris as the winner. France 1, Belgium 0.

  It was a decade later that another Frenchman won the Tour by dubious means, this time by ignoring the unwritten rule of not attacking on the final day of the race. Nicknamed ‘Leatherhead’ for the helmet he wore due to his constant crashes, Jean Robic decided to try and overcome race leader Pierre Brambilla’s three-minute lead on the last stage after he promised his mum a victory in a letter he sent mid-race. Attacking outside Rouen, Robic led a group on a breakaway from a surprised Brambilla and, although he didn’t win the stage, the Frenchman ‘stole’ the 1947 Tour by more than three minutes.

  With Brambilla’s Italian heritage, the ’47 controversy could be seen as the opening shot of a Franco-Italian rivalry. There’s no denying the hostility between the two nations arose mostly from post-war political tensions but, if it was only simmering in cycling at first, it boiled over in the 1950 Tour. The main protagonists were the aforementioned Robic and Gino Bartali, although the French spectators did their best to get stuck in, too. The two rivals were inseparable up the Tourmalet and Aspin and, with the finish line in sight, the two bumped shoulders and hit the deck. The crowd threw stones and punches at Bartali. Unhappy with the unruly locals, Bartali decreed that the Italians were leaving the race, stating, ‘I have no intention of risking my life to a madman.’ Like the Belgians before them, the Italians left the Tour after a concerted campaign from the local riders and fans. (If only the French could’ve shown such resolve against the Germans a few years earlier …)