Three Weeks, Eight Seconds

by Tassell, Nige;

  As they flew westwards, riders had the chance to plan for the following day’s time trial, to contemplate the weather forecast and fashion a strategy accordingly. This would be a day for the likes of Stephen Roche or Erik Breukink to shine, to make more of an impression on the GC. Roche knew exactly what a strong ride against the clock could do. In 1987 he had won the long time trial into Futuroscope, a victory that set up his charge towards the yellow jersey and the title. The following year had seen another English-speaking rider win the long time trial. Not that this rider had his eye on the GC; individual glory on one particular day was his singular aim.

  In a modest, mid-terrace home in a modest, mid-Sussex town, Sean Yates stands before a wall of cycling books and a growing tower of cycling magazines. Most of them are pristine, unread. For Yates, cycling is more about the doing than the analysis, the pontificating. Pride of place, though, goes to the framed yellow jersey on the wall, the ultimate souvenir of a 20-year relationship with the Tour de France as both rider and directeur sportif, the memento of the single day he led the race in 1994. One day in yellow, just like his more decorated namesake Sean Kelly.

  The day that would rank second-best among his golden Tour memories would be that July afternoon in 1988 when he furiously rode his bike into the time trial finish in Wasquehal. Back then, he was part of the English-speaking brigade at Fagor, which also included Roche and Robert Millar. But his stage win was a rare happy moment while there. A diamond in the dirt. ‘It was the super-team, but it all went pear-shaped right from the start.’

  Yates’s escape route from Fagor had already been planned before the Wasquehal time trial. Before the ’88 Tour, in fact. ‘Dag-Otto Lauritzen, who was a close friend since our Peugeot days, was in 7-Eleven and I got my dad to ring him up and ask if he could get me out of this team. Fagor found out and threatened not to pick me for the Tour. But I signed during the Tour anyway. 7-Eleven turned out to be my team. I found my position.’

  After the raging civil war at Fagor, the American outfit was much more in keeping with the laconic Yates. ‘At 7-Eleven, it was more of a fun thing. They weren’t embedded in the European culture of cycling. When we’d do a training camp in Santa Barbara, we were given a certain amount of money to go out and eat, and we’d stuff ourselves with Mexican food and a few beers. It was much more relaxed. The sponsors didn’t know too much about the sport, so we weren’t under a huge amount of pressure to deliver big results. It was more like a fun adventure.’

  That said, the team – under the guidance of directeur sportif Jim Ochowicz – had helped deliver Andy Hampsten to the maglia rose in the ’88 Giro. Expectancy was growing and, with the arrival of the Tour into Dinard, Yates would be expected to push hard to repeat his time-trialling success of the previous year. ‘The team was climbing up the ladder,’ he admits. ‘They’d climbed every rung before that. And we’d had a decent build-up. Dag-Otto had come third in the Tour of Flanders, I’d come second in Gent-Wevelgem and we won the Tour de Trump with Dag-Otto. We were hoping that Andy would really perform and get us a decent result. He had high hopes.’

  Although unbeknownst at the time, 7-Eleven’s presence at that May’s Tour de Trump would dramatically contribute to the result of the Tour de France two months later. Aside from the sizeable protests against the titular entrepreneur (‘Die Yuppie $cum!’, yelled the placards), the inaugural stage race, visiting five states on the Eastern Seaboard, was notable for one particular innovation being introduced to road-racing: aerobars.

  Also known as tribars on account of their growing use in triathlon (where the legendary triathlete Dave Scott had pioneered their adoption), this elongated, U-shaped tube, complete with elbow rests, clipped to a road bike’s existing handlebars. They allowed the rider to assume a comfortable, tucked position; the irresistible theory was that this lower profile met with less resistance from the wind and thus allowed greater speeds. The theory was both irresistible and pretty watertight. Windproof, too.

  While he huffed and puffed to the not so dizzy heights of 27th place in the Tour de Trump, Greg LeMond saw these aerobars in action on the final-day time trial, clipped to the bikes of some of the 7-Eleven team, including the winner of the stage, the Coloradoan Ron Kiefel. LeMond liked what he saw. Their unveiling, and their use on a road bike, would be the only positive he took from the race.

  Yates takes up the story. ‘Somehow we got hold of these tribars of Dave Scott’s. We figured out they were good, but Andy [Hampsten] did not want us to use them in the Tour de Trump, as the world would have seen them ahead of the Tour. But Dag-Otto was in a position to win the race in America for an American team. This wasn’t an opportunity we were going to throw away. So he used them and won the overall. Also in the race was Greg LeMond, racing for Coors Light, and he spotted them. He was open to ideas. At that race, he was going like a bag of shit.’

  ‘It was definitely a debate,’ confirms Hampsten. ‘“Should we keep these hidden for the Tour de France?” That wouldn’t have been too clever in hindsight as it would have meant I wouldn’t have been training with them. But we definitely wanted to use them on the Tour de Trump for Dag-Otto to protect his lead in the ghost town of Atlantic City. If we hadn’t been looking to win that race in that last time trial, we might have kept them secret.

  ‘I then had the opportunity of using them at the Giro when there was a flat time trial at the end but, probably foolishly, decided not to as I hadn’t been training with them because I’d been racing. I could have used them to try to move up from third place, but I didn’t – which was too bad.’

  Len Pettyjohn, for whom LeMond was riding in the colours of Coors Light at the Tour de Trump, insists that that wasn’t the first time LeMond had seen these aerobars. He had already been approached by their inventor, a guy called Boone Lennon who had been the USA national ski coach during the mid-80s. Lennon’s invention simply drew from his experiences on the slopes, where the more tucked position a downhill skier adopted, the quicker he or she would go. ‘We look at this now and go, “How could we not have known this?”,’ sighs Pettyjohn. ‘Everyone who’s ever ridden a bike, who gets down in a tuck, goes past people. I’m sitting here thinking “Why didn’t I think of that?”. It’s so simple…’

  As simple as the idea was, there were doubters, whether it was those who believed the gains it offered to be practically non-existent or those who argued that the bars contravened the Tour’s rules and regulations. Although back in ’89 he saved his dissent over the technology for the final-day time trial, Fignon remained indignant about others’ use of the bars when he wrote his autobiography 20 years later. He believed that the bars used had four contact points, rather than the permissible three. ‘For reasons that still elude me, [Cyrille] Guimard and I didn’t make a formal complaint,’ he moaned. ‘The idle commissaires shut their eyes. The rules were being bent and the consequences would be way beyond anything I could have imagined.’

  Fignon was actually wrong in suggesting the Tour authorities closed their eyes on the issue. The two teams to use the aerobars in the Rennes time trial – ADR and 7-Eleven – made separate visits to the authorities to secure official clearance. The day before, José De Cauwer had spoken with the head of the race jury, to whom he’d presented LeMond’s aerobars. ‘I went early,’ he told Cycling Weekly, ‘so no one from any other team would see we were intending to use them. I said, “LeMond wants to use these bars.” The chief judge said, “OK, you can use them. No problem.” I carried on. “He has a problem with his back. This is more comfortable for him.” The judge replied: “I said it’s OK. He can use them.”

  ‘Then I got out of there.’

  7-Eleven also sought official clearance. Jim Ochowicz and his team made their case to the commissaires, taking with them arguably the greatest Tour rider ever. ‘Having Eddy Merckx supplying your bikes has its advantages,’ laughs Hampsten. ‘We were not obscure people approaching the jury.’

  The fact that those seeking to use the aerobars were representi
ng either an American rider or an American team is not coincidental. ‘Boone Lennon had offered them to PDM and Panasonic,’ wrote the New York Times’ Samuel Abt, ‘and had urged riders on both teams to try them. He had no takers among the Europeans.’

  Len Pettyjohn offers his thoughts on why that might be. ‘Most Americans were not bound by tradition. They were more willing to see something new and different, and try it. Try to put those bars on a European bike at that time? Wouldn’t even hear of it. But Greg was open to that. Whatever he could do to go faster.’ The new order was butting up against old Europe. ‘The language of cycling was French. “We’re not going to change. We’re not going to broadcast anything in English. It’s French. If you don’t know French, fine.” I was told multiple times that France was the centre of the universe of cycling and that we were just interlopers.’

  ‘The Anglo-Saxon people do love to try and to taste new things,’ observes Delgado. ‘In old Europe, we like to be more conservative. “I know this new technology is good for me, but maybe later, maybe tomorrow. Not now.” It’s a typical personality across France, Italy, Spain… We don’t like quick change. We like to get there step by step.’

  Sean Yates, one of the four enlightened 7-Eleven men to clip on aerobars for the Rennes time trial, had seen the resistance to new innovations when he and other British riders, alongside those from the US, Ireland, Australia and Canada, went abroad to race on the continent in the early 1980s. ‘We used to turn up to breakfast with our cereal and the French would be like “What’s that bloody horse feed?”. When I turned pro, everyone had steak for breakfast. Steak and rice. Eating steak at 4am can’t be good for you. Twenty years later, though, they were all eating cereal…

  ‘There would have been a point where they said “These bloody English-speaking people are a pain in the arse”. Then there would have been a period of acceptance. It was a gradual acceptance over the years until now when the English-speaking people are winning left, right and centre.’

  If José De Cauwer was keeping the matter of aerobars close to his chest, so too was his main rider on the day of the time trial. LeMond was out warming up around the streets of Dinard, hiding – whether consciously or not – those aerobars away from the scrutiny of questioning eyes. He was all smiles as usual, making him as difficult to read as the most sombre, poker-faced competitor.

  Hampsten also elected to ride with aerobars attached. Hiding his eyes behind a very large pair of royal blue-lensed wraparound shades, he still appeared nervous as he glided around the warm-up area in small, tense circles, biting his bottom lip. He was worried about not allowing the other GC contenders, those with stronger time-trialling pedigrees, to put too much daylight between themselves and him at this early stage, to be disappearing into the distance ahead of his more natural habitat of the mountains.

  Fignon, fourth overall and thus the highest-placed main contender, looked relaxed and at ease in the Brittany sunshine. If he was concerned about both Americans’ adoption of aerobars, there was no trace of it on his face.

  That morning, Delgado had enjoyed the benefit of a silver lining. Still down in 134th place, he rose early, ready to depart among the domestiques in the depths of the GC. He would be gliding down the start house ramp – the one that had defined his Tour thus far – a good three hours before the other big guns. But, nearly ten minutes down on the yellow jersey, there was an advantage to this. The weather, warm and dry as he departed, was due to get much worse that afternoon, pretty much at the time when the main players would be setting out.

  And he made hay while the sun shone. As he set out from Dinard, Delgado had a breeze at his back, those light winds blowing in off the English Channel. By the time he reached Dinan and its impossibly quaint quayside, he was already more than three minutes faster than any of the 60-odd riders who’d already passed that point. The gulf in class was unavoidable as Delgado hurtled down the town’s narrow streets and over its hump-backed bridges.

  The rest day had clearly agreed with him; a time to reflect, to reboot his brain, to restore his confidence – and to leave the horrors of the previous week out of sight beyond France’s eastern borders. The immediate past was a foreign country.

  The arrival of a headwind during the second half of Delgado’s ride meant the split time registered at Dinan hadn’t grown correspondingly by the finish line in Rennes. Still, arriving with a lead of more than four minutes over everyone else was an impressive performance from the new, demon-vanquishing Delgado. And, with the Brittany weather very much on the turn, his was a time that would be decidedly tricky to overhaul.

  Roche the all-rounder was having a go at doing just that. At the 13-mile mark, he had shaded Delgado’s interim split by a single second. But then that headwind found accompaniment in the form of hard and heavy rain. Accordingly, the second half of his ride was less fruitful, losing three minutes to the Spaniard. As Roche rode into Rennes, there was a marked difference in the pair’s respective body languages. Where Delgado had charged to the line to gain as many seconds as possible, Roche timidly came round the final left-hander on Rennes’ now-greasy streets, as if riding on thin ice.

  The aerobars didn’t do a great deal for Andy Hampsten. Encountering the worst of the weather, he was three minutes down on Delgado at the Dinan time split. This rose to in excess of four minutes by the time he took the line in gloomy Rennes, the headlights of his support car shining golden on the glassy, wet tarmac. Bad conditions or not, he looked like he was riding well within himself. If Hampsten was at all a gambler, he was a patient, conservative one. A cool head, deploying reason over rashness. Any gambit was usually modest, certainly on these early flat stages. Higher stakes would surely be placed on better-suited days.

  Yates, injured from that crash two days previously when he was searching for Hampsten over the cobbles, failed to repeat the exceptional performance of that ’88 time trial. The aerobars may well have helped though. Despite his injury – the wounds on his leg remained bright scarlet – Yates was into second place. No new record, no champagne. But a job well done nonetheless.

  Neither Hampsten nor Yates plumped for aero helmets, but possibly wished they had when the wind changed direction. Using the holy trinity of aerodynamic aids – teardrop helmet, rear disc wheel and those controversial aerobars – LeMond punched through the headwind as if it were nothing more than a light breeze. Although in touch with Delgado’s impressive time throughout, it was during the stage’s last quarter that he reeled in the Spaniard, screaming through the gloom to register a time 24 seconds quicker.

  The TV cameramen, who thought they had recorded the story of the day several hours earlier when Delgado finished, leapt up to pursue the American as he poured over the line, a forest of microphones engulfing him when he came to an enforced standstill. Whistles, jostling and more flashbulbs. Helmet off and forehead plastered with wet hair, he looked uncharacteristically non-plussed by the media scrum. More truthfully, it was that he was dazed from exertion, from a titanic effort in worsening weather. And, quite possibly, from the realisation that he could be in yellow by the day’s end.

  Delgado was sanguine at the state of affairs, at what Cycling Weekly correspondent Keith Bingham described as ‘fate switching horses at the last moment’. Perico was at ease with his belated return to form. ‘I finished in first position and needed to wait at the finish line for, maybe, two hours,’ he remembers. ‘Spanish television wanted me to be with them towards the end of the stage. “Pedro, you will win the stage because it has started to rain. You had the advantage of the good weather.” I said, “Maybe not. In the last part of my time trial, the wind was in front. I hope I’ll win, but it’s not easy to know if I’ll win or not.” I only lost by a few seconds.’ (The gap was a little more substantial than Delgado remembers. But when you’ve started the day the best part of ten minutes adrift, 24 seconds probably feels like ‘a few seconds’.)

  ‘For me, the Tour de France started again in this long time trial. My morale was very l
ow, but that day I found I was physically very, very good. At that moment, I started to think: “Maybe I can do something in this race…”.’

  Fignon, ever the practitioner of kidology, was quick to dismiss Delgado’s intentions, despite the fact that, now standing 28th overall, he’d gained 170 places in the GC over the last few days. ‘It’s impossible for him to make up seven minutes and win,’ he sniffed. ‘Even two minutes will be hard. Delgado is in an impossible situation. If he goes all out and attacks one day and gains five minutes, he’ll be committing suicide because he’ll have to collapse. And if he goes around trying to snatch 30 seconds here, 30 seconds there, he won’t be able to get enough of them.’ Fignon seemed to suggest Delgado needn’t bother trying. Fortunately for the neutral spectator, the Reynolds man instead dug his heels in and offered a masterclass in resilience and resistance over the following two weeks.

  Sean Yates was another man buoyed by a strong ride. Fifth place on the stage translated into fifth place in the GC too, a position to please both sponsor and team management. There were other benefits as well, to be enjoyed on the following day. ‘From the point of view of your car’s position, it’s nice to be up there as it means your car is very near the front of the convoy in case of emergencies. If you’re 20th, it’s impossible for your car to get to you and service you if you have an accident.’

  And 20th place happened to be the position that another Sean – Kelly – slipped to after a disappointing time trial. ‘I really weakened in the final 20 kilometres,’ he recalls. ‘I started to suffer majorly. I don’t know if it was dehydration or hunger, but I did fall to pieces in the final 15, 20 kilometres. I lost a lot of time.’ He wasn’t the only PDM rider to under-perform. The two Dutchmen, Steven Rooks and Gert-Jan Theunisse, both slipped down the GC to 36th and 39th respectively. Both had elected not to fly to Brittany the previous day; instead, they travelled in a team car before riding the last 90 or so miles to Dinard.