The 100% Race
Like a swan. Beautiful, graceful, smooth; elegance in motion. But underneath, the feet paddle furiously, all movement unseen. That's the Tour de France. The giant peloton, weaving a crooked loop around France. An aessthetic, compelling sight. A sweeping mass of colour on its way to a rendezzvous with a nation. An adornment to La Belle France. Like a swan.
The majesty of the swan accepted, it is the hidden paddling that most interests us. How two Irishmen could finish in the top four in the greatest cycle race of all? There they were. Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly smiling broadly on the Avenue des Champs Elysees. Got into the photograph conntaining the winners. Got on the Tour podium. Big deal? It was.
That evening Jacques Chirac, the Mayor of Paris, had Kelly, Roche and a few others around at his place. Chirac has enough political sense to court the Tour and so two pedalling Irishmen enjoyed Hotel de Ville hospitality. From there they went back to the Hotel Sofitel on the Rue Louis Armand and ate. Cyclists are, forever, hungry.
It was night clubs for most. Tour winner Bernard Hinault and his enntourage were heading for the Lido, Roche and his friends were off to the 49 Club. Kelly, the same old Kelly, was driving home. Leaving the Sofitel at 'around nine for the two-hours drive home to Brussels. Celebrations? Celeewhat! Something that can wait for life after cycling.
And so Kelly set off for home.
The long Tour was over. He didn't feel like celebrating, didn't feel like hanging around and talking cycling to the groupies. This man needed a good night's sleep. Three and a half weeks, 2,500 miles, 113 hours of racing: who needs the rhythmic beat of the night club to induce tiredness? The followwing day Kelly would move out of his Brussels lodgings and into his new house. Married for close on three years, the world's number one cyclist has at last bought his own continental home.
If the phlegmatic Kelly was no more than satisfied with his Tour perrformance, Roche was patently pleased. Bordering on euphoria. One man had merely confirmed why he is a giant, the other had demonstrated that he possesses the wherewithal to be a giant. Two Irish cycling giants in the same year as McGuigan, Taylor and Ciaran Fitzgerald. Takes a bit of explaining.
A third Irish cyclist had been a part of the Tour pilgrimage around France. Bespectacled, a learner, Martin Earley surpassed his own and, especially, everybody else's expectation. Sixtieth place overall might not sound earth shattering but then neither does the "Tour de France" when the three words are left on their own. Earley, a relatively lowly paid team rider with the French based Fager, had an enndearing way of describing his situation:
"At least what I tell you is very diffeerent than what you hear from Kelly or Roche."
One hundred and eighty cyclists signed themselves into the 72nd Tour de France. History accommodating a new statistic, never before had so many been allowed into the Tour. The Tour organisation brought 800 employees from Paris, people who would stay with the race from beginnning to end and work for twenty-four consecutive days. Four thousand genndarmes would be involved in the painsstaking process of closing the Tour route to four-wheeled traffic and 5 60 journalists had come to transmit the stories of the race around the world.
The race is organised by two jourrnalists, Felix Levitan and Jacques Goddet. By any standards, a remarkkable combination. Levitan is an alert, agile and authoritative 76-year old while Goddet is still the idealistic and visionary spirit behind the race. Monnsieur Goddet had his 80th birthday on this year's Tour. Both write daily columns from the Tour for their newspapers Goddet compiling a clever, highly literate, summary for L 'Equipe ; Levitan putting together a more straightforward assessment for Le Parisien Libere .
It is said that during the month of July the two Tour directors are the most important people in France. They run the race and the race runs the country. Levitan controls the race with a dictatorial sledge hammer. The man who ensures a tranquil passage for the swan. Over the three and a half weeks of the race, Levitan's total connviction in the matter of decision making would become very obvious.
Brittany was the starting point.
The Morbihan district had paid almost £400,000 to have the Tour begin in their region and on the day that the race began the Mayor of Vannes, the biggest city in Morbihan, was claiming that it was money well spent. For their outlay, the people of Morbihan would have the race in their region for three days. Other cities on the route would pay around £100,000 to have the race spend a night in their hotels.
Sean Kelly showed up for the Tour in his customary, morose mood. A quiet, non-committal figure. Only offering views that he believed could be substantiated. Make forecasts which are not realised and the journalists wipe you out, that's the Kelly belief. Not only was Kelly reticent in the matter of forecasts, he was always restricting conversation with would-be interviewers.
His answers would come in monoosyllabic jerks. As a contender for the big prizes in the Tour, Kelly was not prepared to dilute his commitment to the great race by indulging himself with the journalists. On the day before the race began L 'Equipe's Jean Marie Leblanc did track Kelly down and they talked cycling. Kelly conceded that he hoped to win the Green Jersey of Points Classification and do better than fifth in the hunt for the Yellow. He had been fifth in 1984 and that was the achievement to better.
L 'Equipe , a sports daily with a circulation of 450,000, devotes five of its twelve pages to the Tour de France. By getting Kelly before the race began, the French journal was fulfilling its statutory obligation. Getting Kelly out of the way before the race began and leaving itself free to pursue lesser, if more articulate, bike men during the race. It would be the twenty-third day of the Tour before it returned to Kelly.
Stephen Roche reported for Tour duty with a deliberately cultivated sense of "young man quietly trying to make his way in life'. Low profile activity doesn't come easy to Roche, he has to work at it. By the end of the Tour, he had given up the ghost. By the end of the Tour, he was entitled to have given up the ghost. Five minutes before rolling into his third Tour, Roche listed his ambitions:
"I would hope to do a good Tour, maybe finish in the top ten. That's what I say, but you know I have other ambitions. I can do better."
And who else was there? Ah, there was Bernard Hinault. A thirty-year old French man who is to cycling what God is to heaven. Dark, very handdsome, self-assured and one of the greatest cyclists the Tour has ever accommodated. Hinault made his enntrance to the race with appropriate panache. Why walk when you can swagger?
A Breton, Hinault bade goodbye to his wife Martina at their home near Yffiniac and cycled the fifty kiloometres to his team hotel at Locmine. Cycling to work. A notion, which you must agree, that gains in romance when work happens to be the Tour de France. Hinault, known as "le Blaireau" (the badger), would domiinate the '85 Tour. Would prove to the world that the seed of supremacy exists first in the mind of the athlete and develops from there.
The badger won the Tour in '78, '79, '81 and '82. Then he was coached by a man called Cyrille Guirnard , The coach had quite a reputation and people tended to attribute much siggnificance to his part. In '83 Hinault developed tendonitis, the ensuing operation forced him to miss the season's races and Guimard found a new star, Laurent Fignon. A new star that won the Tour at his first attempt.
Hinaults relationship with Guimard deteriorated. Not one to compromise, Hinault told his employers, Renault, to sack Guimard. Renault said no and Hinault left. The old hero was dispossable. Hinault said he would get another sponsor, at first he struggled. Then along came a gent called Bernard Tapie , A businessman with a penchant for reviving ailing companies, Tapie was attempting to do in sport what had worked for him in business.
The '84 Tour suggested that Tapie's judgement was out. Guimard's young star, Fignon, mauled the ailing Hinault. The Renault team dominated. The badger was treated cruelly. When he begged Renault for the compensation of one stage win they laughed and said no. This year Hinault intended to win and to exploit the vulnerability of a Renault team without its injured leader, Fignon. Hinault would win and every time that the Renault team raised its head in the race, Bernard Hinault kicked it. The revenge was total.
ATour de France is as delicately structured as a good French menu. For starters, there are seven days of interesting racing over relaatively flat terrain. It causes quite a stir while it is happening but amounts to little of consequence in the overall scheme of things. But like its gastroonomic equivalent, it does give you a taste for what is to follow.
The principal segment of the race involves a long individual race against the clock and numerous journeys over the most daunting peaks in the Alpine and Pyrenean mountain ranges. Tour winners are determined at high altiitude. The final three or four stages, culminating in the ceremonial charge up the Champs Elysees, serve merely to get the race back to Paris and rarely alter the patterns that have taken shape in mountains.
So conscious of the value of first advantage, Hinault struck hard in the prologue. Went for a big time in this 6.8 kilometre individual test and got it. First blood and first yellow jersey to the badger. An athlete who was practising the time honoured art of first winning the psychological battle and then going for the physical victory. Hinault's clearcut prologue victory sent ripples of demoralisation in the direction of his opponents. Then the badger said he would not be holding onto his yellow jersey, he would allow somebody else to take it before he would regain it later in the race.
One guy who wasn't intimidated by Hinault was the leader of the Fagor team, Fons de Wolf. He never had the chance to be. A tall, good looking Belgian, Fons is known as the playboy of the cycling world. He was due to begin his prologue at twenty minutes before three. At around half past two he turned up in the Place de I'Eglise at Plumelec.
In the ten minutes before his proologue was due to start, Fons got talkking to a few people he knew. One word led to another, the hands of time kept ticking away and suddenly Fons was reporting six minutes late for the start to his Tour de France. The starrter told him to get going and Fons covered the 6.8 kilometres in around eleven minutes. But his time was callculated not on the duration of his pedalling performance but from his official starting time.
So that was eleven minutes plus six, the end result was a time that put Fons de Wolf outside of the official limit. If you are outside the official limit without a good excuse, then automatic elimination follows. Fons de Wolf did not have an excuse worthy of expression. He was eliminated from the race and sent packing to his home in Belgium. Playboy Fons had ruffled the feathers of the swan and had paid the customary price. A race that should have taken twenty-four days had taken eleven minutes.
Kelly had been expected to get innvolved in the quest for stage victories over the first seven days. His principal rival would be Eric Vanderaerden, at least that had been the presumption. But another Belgian sprinter crawled out from Flandrian anonymity to upstage both. His name, Rudy Matthijs. He had threatened not to ride the Tour because his best friend, Pol Versluys, had not been picked on the Hitachi-Splendor team.
Team manager Albert de Kimpe, however, didn't want Versluys in the team. He reckoned that Matthijs was a very good rider but only if freed of the constraints imposed by his frienddship with Versluys. De Kimpe said:
"Rudy and Pol are good boys but together they have a bad influence on each other. They will laugh and joke all through the race and win nothing. Pol had to be left at home."
So, in the first mass charge to the line, Matthijs beat Vanderaerden with Kelly third. The following day the stage was decided in a similarly rapid and frantic stampede. Again Matthijs won, this time Kelly was second and Vanderaerden third. The Irishman is never slow to acknowledge reality:
"Matthijs is fast, you can't take it away from him. On the second stage to Vitre I was perfectly placed to beat him but he was too strong. As a person he's the kind of okay fellow who would put you into the barrier as quick as he would look at you. I supppose he's like all of us sprin ters."
The ruthlessness that lies at the heart of the sprinting game was the central theme of the stormy concluusion to the end of the stage on the eighth day. This time Matthijs had been unable to get to the finish with the leaders and victory appeared to rest between Kelly and Vanderaerden as a big bunch swept into the finishing straight in Reims.
Kelly was in the best position, just behind Vanderaerden. When he surged there was only two hundred metres to go. Vanderaerden sensed Kelly appproaching on his left and immediately veered in that direction to block the Irish rider. Kelly was never going to be intimidated. He continued. Soon what had been a six yards gap between the Belgian and the barrier on the left had dwindled to a couple of feet. Kelly pushed Vanderaerden as he tried to stay upright, the Belgian maintained enough momentum to cross the line first but the affair had killed Kelly's chances of a stage win. He ended up fourth.
The Kelly jVanderaerden confronntation had taken place as both riders travelled at around thirty-five miles per hour. Either or both could have been seriously hurt. Kelly took a dim view of Vanderaerden's tactics, called him a "salaud" (a word which the dictionary translates as "dirty dog"). Vanderaerden asked Kelly what he would have done if the positions were reversed and the Irishman agreed that he would have put his adversary into the barriers. As Kelly concedes: "All of us sprin ters are the same."
The Tour jury was not enthused.
It disqualified both. For Kelly it was a third Tour disqualification in his last six Tours. This time he was unlucky for if Vanderaerden had played it fair then Kelly would probably have won the stage. But when the Belgian invited the confrontation, he was always asssured of a Kelly response. The followwing evening Kelly reflected on the dissqualification' at the Novotel Hotel in Nancy: "Our contracts are based on the publicity we get, a finish like that and a disqualification generate more publicity than winning a race. There is no sense in getting too upset about it."
And in the general scheme of things nobody was getting too upset about the first eight days. It was fencing, shadow boxing. Call it what you like. The real show would begin with the long individual time trial to Strasbourg. Hinault, having released his grip on the yellow after the first day prologue, was ready to reeemerge.
Stephen Roche had sailed through the first eight days comfortably. His only problems so far had been the wild boasts which his manager, Raphael Geminiani, had been uttering. Gemiiniani was saying things that irritated Hinault. Roche was told to keep his manager quiet and the badger also said that because of the things Geminiani said he would take particular satissfaction in beating Roche by two and a half minutes in the time trial.
Hinault was slightly off the mark.
He only beat Roche by two minutes and twenty seconds and the Dublin cyclist had been the second fastest to Strasbourg. Roche had ridden well, he was up to sixth overall and the race was gathering a momentum. Kelly was seventh in that time trial, a placing that would have been much better had the disaster not overtaken him in the third kilometre.
Kelly was using a carbon fibre rear wheel, a piece of equipment that should have bestowed an advantage in relation to greater wind resistance. After three kilometres of this test, Kelly's carbon fibre wheel disintegrated. "Just broke up into smithereens," Kelly recalled. The company which made that wheel, Mavic, sponsor Kelly's team so that when the Irishman spoke with the jourrnalists immediately after finishing he alluded to a simple back wheel punccture. Once a professional always a proofessional ....
After that Strasbourg examination, the race continued south through the Vosges and Jura country before enncountering the harshest mountain country of all. French people have long decided that the place to witness the Tour is somewhere on a steep Alpine climb. Hinault was comfortably clad in yellow, Kelly third and Roche sixth. Further down the list Martin Earley's name figured in the top fifty.
Always riding within himself, Earley performed with admirable good sense. A young man in his first Tour is enntitled to play things safe. Next year Earley will be asked to push himself into the red zone and only then will his true worth be realised. Earley will be recalled as one of the cheeriest riders on this year's Tour, never more than a reflex away from a smile.
On the evening after the Strassbourg time trial, Felix Levitan made one of his rare visits to the press room. We wondered to what did we owe the privilege? Dressed in light blue slacks, light blue shirt, Levitan walks as fast as some of us run. The clack of typeewriters faded in to silence as Levitan's enormous presence filled the room. His message was delivered with the maximum authority and the minimum elaboration: "Rider No. 67 has been expelled from the race."
Journalists checked their lists. Ah, 67, that was Dietrich ("Didi") Thurau, the only West German in the race. Levitan turned to walk away. Screams of "Pourquoi Felix" rent the air. If a . man had been expelled from the race then the journalists needed to know why. The cries of "pourquoi" reached a crescendo, Levitan turned round and said: "Expulsion follows from an offence under Rule 123, Section C of the officials Regulations."
Leaving the journalists dangling beetween confusion and consternation, Felix went about more important busiiness. The story later emerged from Thurau. On the previous day's indiviidual time trial he had been passed by the French rider Charly Mottet. In the following five kilometres it had been adjudged that Thurau illegally took pace from Motter. The Race Jury penalised Thurau one minute and warned him.
Thurau was very annoyed. The morning after he encountered Rayymond Trine, the President of the Jury. An argument ensued, Thurau grabbed Trine and threatened to land him in hospital. "Didi " never had a chance, he was sent home immediately. Anoother who had dared to ruffle the feathers of the swan. Still, Thurau had managed to get Felix into the press room.
Meanwhile Hinault was continuing to convince all that the Tour was his. His overwhelming victory in the long individual time trial was irrefutable evidence of his superiority, or so the badger would have had us believe. The ripples of demoralisation that had washed over the race after his prologue became waves after Strasbourg. His adversaries on their knees, it was time for Hinault to go for broke. To finish it all off as quickly as possible. On the eleventh day he did that.
It was a long trip to a ski-station at Avoriaz, a pleasant little settlement that hangs on an alpine mountain over Morzine. On the first of three mounntain passes that day, the Morgins, the badger snarled and broke clear. Only the Colombian mountain goat, Luis Herrera, could respond. Together the two flew away from the pack. Hinault had won his fifth Tour. On the final ascent to Avoriaz, Herrera sensed he was much stronger than Hinault and that he could leave him. It was time for Hinault to make a deal, nobody would be allowed to get a glimpse of his vulnerability.
The Breton doesn't speak Spanish, Herrera does not speak French and so Italian was the medium of communiication. Hinault suggested that the two remain together to the finish where Herrera would be permitted to win the stage. That was fine by the Colombian who was so far behind in the overall standings that only stage wins interessted him. Herrera did win at A voriaz, Hinault held onto his yellow jersey and the facade of total invincibility.
And so Hinault's lead on the second placed Greg Le Mond was four minutes, he was five minutes and fifty-two seconds up on the third placed Roche and six minutes up on Kelly. We could argue all night, the lines of reasoning growing more distorted with each bottle of red wine but the race was over. Another race had started, the race for second place. A week or so later, there was a general awareness that Hinault was a long way from unbeatable but, by then, the badger was laughing his way to a fifth Tour win.
There are still interesting stories to tell. Three of the mountain stages were won by the Colombians. Angels of the Sky. They climb mountains with such a facility that it can only be a few years before a rider from their country wins the Tour. Getting to the Tour was not easy for them.
Last spring two of the best young cyclists in Colombia were shot while out training. Shot dead because a couple of bandits wanted their machhines. When Herrera and his team-mates train at home one of the group memmbers will carry a gun. It is a joke amongst the Colombians that the fellow who carries the gun is never dropped, irrespective of how badly he might be going.
When another Colombian, Fabio Parra, won at Lans-en-Vercors, he received a telephone call to his hotel "Villa Primerose" at Villard-de-Lans. It was from Bellisario Betancur, who happens to be president of the Repubblic of Colombia. Betancur was not merely ringing to congratulate but also to talk cycling. He later spoke with Herrera and is said to have spent twenty minutes discussing the Tour with the two stage winners.
The emergence of Stephen Roche in the Pyrenees was spectacular. Roche had previously done badly in the Pyrenees, the expectation was that he would lose his third place in that mountain range. But Roche had allways promised to make into a great rider. On the two Pyrenean stages in this year's Tour, he delivered on the promises. Twice he threw down challlenges to Hinault, twice he succeeded in getting away from the badger.
On the second occasion Roche soared clear on the barren slopes of the Aubisque, stayed clear and became only the third Irishman to win a stage of the Tour. It was a performance that put Roche in the front line of conntenders for future Tours. From being a rider that you might have bought for £50,000 per annum, the potential emmployer would now need closer to £150,000 to interest Roche. Ultimately the professional game returns to pounds, dollars or francs.
Roche had proved in the Pyrenees that he can will the Tour. He had also learned a lesson: "Sean and I realise that Hinault trapped us into thinking that he was unbeatable and that when we found out he wasn't it was too late." A year before the Tour had savaged Roche, had sent a very talennted athlete tumbling down into the ranks of the also-rans. Roche had got even on the Col d'Aubisque. His future Tours can be even better.
What of Kelly? He just carried on.
One day second, one day third, fourth overall. His team earned about £25,000 during the race, Kelly earned approxiimately £24,000 of that amount. He never won a stage. That was a tragedy. Five times second constitutes a pain in Kelly s recollections. He was never allowed to celebrate, even if he had a mind to.
He did, however, provide us with some endearing moments. Like the day the genteel English lady approaached: "Oh Sean we are so proud of you. Would it be too much to ask you to give me your autograph?" Kelly nodded in the affirmative. The lady rummaged through her handbag for a slip of paper, could find nothing only a Traveller's Cheque for £20. "This will have to do," she said as she asked Kelly to sign the back of it.
Kelly scribbled an "S. Kelly" and said: "Look, I'll hold onto this old bit of paper and give you my hat instead." The English lady smiled as she folded the cheque neatly and placed it back in her bag. Not too many burdened Earley with requests for autographs. The third Irishman in the Tour accepted people's lack of interest calmly. He said a number of times that he had a completely different story to that told by Roche and Kelly but nobody wannted to hear.
For three and a half weeks this great pilgrimage around France had enngaged us totally. Was it the graceful swan that had captivated us or someething more fundamental? Kelly offered this explanation: "The Tour is like no other race. When it is on you think back on the races that you rode before it and it seems that in those races you were only racing to 85% of your limits. This is the 100% race."