DEFENCE OF THE REALM
‘He was mad about the crash. Really, really mad.
He was angry all day and all week’ – Raúl Alcalá
12 July
Stage 11, Luchon – Blagnac, 96 miles
RUDY DHAENENS HAD it in the bag. The scent of victory was in his nostrils. But, in an instant, it was all about the taste of tarmac on his tongue.
His fate was a harsh way to involuntarily surrender a certain stage win. Dhaenens had timed it so perfectly, after all. With just around a mile and a half to go in this eleventh stage – the first flat one after the high drama of the Pyrenees – the PDM rider had given everyone else the slip. Part of a six-man breakaway heading towards the Toulouse suburb of Blagnac, at the precise moment that the Fignon-led peloton bridged the gap and dissolved the break, Dhaenens attacked again. It was a textbook manoeuvre. Sharp tactical nous and immaculate timing.
With a solid posture that any time trialist would have coveted – a perfectly still upper body but legs firing like well-oiled pistons – he was eating up Blagnac’s residential back streets, the layout of which suited a solo break. There was no lengthy, dead-straight finish to negotiate in full view of the marauding brigade of sprinters behind. Instead, there were plenty of bends to disappear around, to stay out of sight. And with those chasing sprinters starting to slow up and play a game of bluff back down the road, only a few hundred metres remained for Dhaenens. Just a matter of seconds. He looked unstoppable.
That was until he reached the penultimate bend. The second of two closely located left-handers, the Belgian simply misjudged his speed and, in trying to adjust in order to achieve safe passage around this second bend, his back wheel slipped out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground. In one movement, he scrambled over to his bike, before slightly stumbling and having to rebalance. And that stumble did for him. By the time he was back on his feet and pulled the bike upright, the peloton swung past at high speed. There was nothing left for Dhaenens to do, except express his frustration, raising the bike a few inches off the ground before slamming it in anger back into the tarmac.
As the stage climaxed in a rare bunch sprint, Dhaenens remained at the scene of his misfortune, spinning around in bemusement, wondering if what had just happened really happened. The team cars were zooming past now, their drivers gazing across to see who the unfortunate soul was and second-guessing the fate that had befallen him. Dhaenens was too angry to dissect the crash, to consider an on-the-road autopsy. He slammed his bike back down into the tarmac again. Exasperated, incredulous.
Interviewed the following spring, he still didn’t seem to have made sense of what happened that July afternoon in Blagnac. ‘I took the corner too fast, maybe, or something happened with my bike, maybe, and I slipped. I still don’t know.’
His then PDM team-mate Raúl Alcalá thinks he knows. While Dhaenens’ final attack was cool, calm and calculated, Alcalá believes that wouldn’t have been how he was feeling internally going into that final mile. ‘He was mad about the crash,’ says the Mexican. ‘Really, really mad. He was angry all day and all week. But it was his fault because he was nervous all the time. I know riders are nervous, but he was one of the most nervous riders around.
‘He was a good rider, but he was nervous, nervous, nervous. He always went full gas all the time. I told him plenty of times: ‘Rudy, go calm. Relax.’ Maybe if he controlled his nerves, he could have been a huge rider. Many things happened in his head…’
Alcalá’s assessment of Dhaenens’ potential wasn’t necessarily shared by all. The New York Times cycling correspondent Samuel Abt described him as ‘a dependable, unselfish rider of moderate talent, not a star’. This seems a little harsh, bearing in mind the Belgian’s palmàres. In 1986, as the Tour reached Bordeaux, Dhaenens had struck out in a similar fashion to his attack in Blagnac. That time, however, he stayed on two wheels to take the stage victory. But his crowning glory came in 1990 when he won the world championships in Japan.
Winning the ultimate one-day title didn’t seem to completely cure Dhaenens of his nervousness or insecurity, as later reported by Abt. ‘Usually he looked like a small boy who asked Santa for a set of trains for Christmas and got instead underwear and a book, but his plain face could light up when he discussed the few races he had won. The world championship was the peak, of course.’
Prior to that success, Dhaenens had always believed his fate was written in the stars. ‘I’m always in the top group, usually in the front, but I never win. And that’s what’s important in cycling races. To win, you need luck.’
And that luck would desert him in future years. In 1998, while en route to commentate on the Tour of Flanders for Belgian television, his car left the road and collided with an electricity pylon. He died the following night from head injuries. He was 36.
***
The sprinters were at least happy with the opportunity that Rudy Dhaenens’ bike crash offered them. Pickings had been slim for them in the Tour until that point and to a man they were itching to duel it out on the home straight in Blagnac.
Steve Bauer had been rather anonymous in the Tour thus far, certainly in comparison to his extended ownership of the yellow jersey the previous year, not to mention his fourth place overall. But it was the Helvetia-La Suisse leader who made the first bolt for the line, presumably concerned that ADR’s Eddy Planckaert, last year’s green jersey winner, was not only lurking but pretty much unbeatable in a straight dash for the line.
In the end, though, it was a Dutchman – Mathieu Hermans – who snatched the victory, repaying the efforts that his Paternina team had put in during the last few miles to get him into a favourable position for the stage win. Hermans was clearly a man in form and no doubt frustrated by the lack of sprinting action so far in the race; he had taken no fewer than nine stage victories in the Vuelta over the last two years.
Another rider at the top of his game – the Italian Giovanni Fidanza, winner of the points competition in the Giro the previous month – took second, with an out-of-sorts Planckaert only able to bag third. Sean Kelly took another fifth place, having presumably held back in the final run-in as his man Dhaenens looked to have the victory all sewn up. While truly Mr Consistent whatever the terrain, the Irishman was still looking for that elusive stage win. Remarkably for a rider almost always in the mix at the finish, he’d not won a Tour stage since way back in 1982. This day he did, however, take possession of the red catch sprints jersey from Søren Lilholt. Another for the collection.
After the leg-sapping tumult of the Pyrenees, this stage had been a surprisingly lively one, especially in view of the high temperatures toasting the south of France. And the day wasn’t without its casualties; there was one high-profile abandonment in particular. Fabio Parra, the Colombian initially fancied by many to at least repeat his podium finish in 1988, was one of only two riders from the Spanish Kelme team left in the race. He hadn’t made his mark in the Pyrenees on the previous two days. Far from it. He had lost more than nine minutes in the mountains, his home territory.
Parra had already been dropped within 12 miles of leaving Luchon that morning and, after struggling over two comparatively tame climbs, he called time on the ’89 Tour, citing tendonitis. That left just one Kelme rider, a young Colombian called José Roncancio. Whether performing an act of solidarity with his leader, or simply too embarrassed that the team would need to continue with only this rookie domestique on the road, Roncancio also abandoned. This was particularly harsh on the 23-year-old. It was to be his one and only stab at the Tour de France.
For every yin, there’s a yang. And for every suffering Fabio Parra, there was a buoyant Laurent Fignon. On a day when he could justifiably have chosen to relax and recuperate within the safety of the peloton, Fignon elected to play an active part in the stage, along with his Super U team-mate Christophe Lavainne. It had been their twin motors that had driven the peloton to bring the race back together, moments before Rudy Dhaenens made his break.
As rookie domestiques fared, Bjarne Riis was in a somewhat better place than José Roncancio. He was the personal bodyguard of the yellow jersey, of the man who was now the overwhelming favourite to taste victory in Paris, to collect his third Tour title.
‘Yes, there was no doubt about that,’ agrees Riis. ‘We all believed in him. There was a great bond between all of us. Quite a few of us had done the Giro too. We’d spent a lot of time together, building up to this. We had huge focus. We were very committed and motivated. Fignon was a guy who gave a lot of confidence to his team. He took care of us. There was a lot of respect around him because he treated his people in a good way.
‘Of course, he was an introvert, but that’s OK. There’s a lot of pressure on a guy like that. He didn’t jump around among everybody. He was very private. He was a little bit like myself, to be honest.’
However, on stage after stage, Fignon’s riding style was anything but introverted. He was the dominant rider, the agenda setter. And his team were following the script. But, as hard and fast as the Super U leader rode across to Blagnac, another man was riding just as hard and fast – and he was right on his back wheel. Greg LeMond wasn’t easily shaken off. Just seven seconds away.
Stage 11
1. Mathieu Hermans (Paternina/Netherlands) 3:37:47
2. Giovanni Fidanza (Chateau d’Ax/Italy) same time
3. Eddy Planckaert (ADR/Belgium) same time
4. Teun van Vliet (Panasonic/Netherlands) same time
5. Sean Kelly (PDM/Ireland) same time
General classification
1. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) 49:49:36
2. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) +7”
3. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +57”
4. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) +2’53”
5. Andy Hampsten (7-Eleven/USA) +5’18”
***
13 July
Stage 12, Toulouse – Montpellier, 150 miles
On the eve of the 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, in the warm haze of late morning, Martin Kettle, a non-sport feature writer for the Guardian, found himself on assignment in the small town of Puylaurens, 30 miles east of Toulouse. He was on the trail of the Tour de France. But his brief wasn’t to dissect tactical strategy or interrogate the riders or sniff out the latest gossip from behind the scenes.
Instead, Kettle was charged with sampling the Tour through the eyes of those on the roadside, those who arrive at their vantage points with hours and hours to spare, but who would be left behind by the speeding train of a peloton within seconds.
Filling the time and keeping the interest was the seemingly endless procession of trade vehicles offering promotional items to anyone with an outstretched hand. The first van reached the town at 9.30am; it bore the livery of Reader’s Digest and handed out kitchen whisks. What followed were vehicles of all shapes and sizes. One had been made to resemble a cigarette lighter, another was disguised as a loaf of bread. All were touting their various wares, offering freebies to a grateful public happy to fill its boots. ‘Two hundred years ago,’ Kettle observed, ‘the French stretched their hands for bread. Today, they strain for free plastic bags advertising the World Cycling Championship.’
The best part of two hours later, the main event was approaching, the point at which the marketing caravan would disappear and a palpable buzz would fall on Puylaurens. There would even be a small degree of competition, with a catch sprint being held in the middle of town.
Kettle painted a vivid landscape for his readers. ‘“Five kilometres away,” a voice over the Tannoy announces and the vans hastily clear out. Police motorcyclists come through the square at speed. At 11.17, there is cheering down the hill and two emaciated riders come into the square, one in blue and one in red. Number 175 crosses the line first, snatches a drink from his cycle bottle and both ease off.
‘No one in the crowd knows who they are.’
To be fair to the crowd, even cycling’s most knowledgeable commentators and reporters would have been scratching their heads when trying to identify these two riders, almost certainly having to reach for the start list for assistance. GC contenders they were not. The man in blue was Dominique Arnaud, a Frenchman riding for Pedro Delgado’s Reynolds team. The rider in red, number 175, was the Chateau d’Ax domestique Valerio Tebaldi, an Italian.
Their early lead grew and grew and grew, soon aided by a second Italian, the Carrera rider Giancarlo Perini. Riding through the impossibly scenic Haut Languedoc national park, their advantage rose to 29 minutes over the peloton. The unconcerned peloton, that is. None of the three were placing Laurent Fignon’s jersey in jeopardy. The main field bided their time.
There was a danger to the trio’s on-the-road advantage, though. It came from another protest group using the profile of the Tour to advance their cause. This time, the road was strewn with tree branches and homemade banners, the handiwork of ecologists registering their opposition to a planned waste dump. When Tebaldi, Perini and Arnaud reached the impasse, 16 miles from home, they were forced to pick a delicate path through the dumped foliage before heading back on their way towards Montpellier. Not that the demonstration was entirely peaceful and benign; the French TV host Jacques Chancel had his nose broken when tangling with protesters.
It was, though, rather fortunate for the rest of the field that the three riders had such an advantage. The margin of their lead allowed the police time to clear away both the branches and the protesters before the peloton, now escorted by half a dozen police motorbikes, surged through. (In fact, the lead car at the front of the race now carries chainsaws in order to swiftly undermine any tree-based blockade.)
The ecologists’ protest was simply the latest in a series of demonstrations that had affected the Tour that decade. The increased globalisation of the event, with even more eyes watching on television from Brisbane to Bogotá, offered a very public platform on which protesters could air their grievances. The most serious of these protests came in 1982 on the team time trial near the France-Belgium border. When they reached the town of Denain after 20 or so miles, the first team on the road, the Wickes-Splendor squad, encountered the various trucks and vans of the publicity caravan blocking the road. The advance party, usually entertaining and distracting the roadside spectators ahead of the race itself, could progress no further. There was a blockade constructed by a few hundred local steelworkers, protesting at the planned closure of Denain steelworks. The plans had been announced just the day before, plans that included the loss of more than 1,100 jobs.
Police outriders turned back to warn the teams behind Wickes-Splendor on the road. Very soon, the organisers realised that, such was the scale of the protest, that day’s racing would have to be abandoned. As the writer Geoffrey Nicholson reported: ‘Some riders reacted with disbelief and annoyance, and a few of those already feeling the strain with evident relief’. It was the first time, in 80 years of rich Tour history, that a stage had been cancelled after it had begun.
In 1987, what might have been an even more serious protest was avoided when two members of the Basque paramilitary group Iparretarrak were arrested. Unlike the more familiar Basque separatists ETA, Iparretarrak focused their activities on the French side of the border and police believed the race to have been targeted as the Pyrenees prepared for its arrival.
In 1990, another protest was sidestepped by the race. On the third stage between Poitiers and Nantes, reports were coming in of several felled trees lying by the roadside at one particular location. A number of sheep farmers were, apparently, also in the immediate area, causing race director Jean-Marie Leblanc to halt the race around seven miles shy of the trouble spot. Maps were consulted and an impromptu diversion decided upon. The farmers, who had already held a demonstration on the first stage, had been thwarted. Legend has it that a local moped-riding teenager led the peloton through the country lanes and back onto the official route.
The Tour wasn’t the only French race to be affected by protests. The most famous example of this was the fifth stage of the 1984 edition of Paris-Nice. Shipyard workers from nearby La Ciotat were blocking the route, but they didn’t get a sympathetic ear from one Bernard Hinault, at that point leading a break of around 20 riders as he sought to take Robert Millar’s lead in the race. When The Badger saw the demonstration spread out across the road, he wasn’t exactly diligent in applying his brakes, crashing into the blockade. Then the fists started flying, Hinault wading in and striking the nearest protester before the gendarmes intervened. That evening’s news on French TV opened rather pointedly: ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Good evening. A lively stage in the Paris-Nice race. We were waiting for sport and got a boxing match.’
Although protests could offer a profitable photo opportunity for a Tour photographer, Graham Watson didn’t welcome them. ’1989 had its fair share of demonstrations, and one or two turned ugly once the protesters saw the TV cameras on them and the gendarmes drawing their coshes. Only in my youngest days did I actually take images of such events. I quickly realised the best way to deal with such people is to not take pictures, to not give them any publicity, no matter what their grievance is. Perhaps that’s the purist in me.
‘I suppose one of the attractions of the Tour is that it is a free show on free roads, and as such is exposed to all kinds of attention. The cyclists have a fairly laid-back approach to such strikes: on some occasions it allowed them to rest longer, or to find an excuse to pedal more slowly towards the finish.
‘It’s said that, at a strike in one Tour of that period, farmers blocked the roads with their tractors, forcing the race to grind to a halt during an important Alpine stage. What they didn’t know was that Sean Kelly was a farmer’s son who knew how to turn an engine on and then open the muck-spreader, scattering both strikers and cyclists all over the road. The strike soon dispersed and the peloton moved off.
‘Basically, you can stop a bike race as long as it’s not an important stage – the cyclists think it’s fun. But don’t block a race on an important stage or else…’
With the three leading riders in 1989 having safely negotiated the ecologists’ demonstration, the small matter of who was to take the stage win could now be considered. But, little more than a mile later, there were only two contenders left. Arnaud, who had earlier punctured and been forced to catch the other two up, found his bad luck continuing. He took a bend without due care and attention, and ended up in a ditch.
It wasn’t the last crash of the day. The pace of the peloton had been steadily increasing, thanks to – for a second successive day – the aggressive riding of Super U’s Christophe Lavainne. Fignon had commanded him to up the speed, not because the leaders on the road represented any kind of threat overall; for all three, any GC aspirations were a distant dream. Instead, Fignon simply wanted to stretch his main rivals, those riders glued to his back wheel.
But with the pace came increased danger. In the village of Clermont-l’Hérault, 30 or so miles from the stage finish in Montpellier, a huge crash caused carnage in the peloton, with around 30 riders hitting the floor. There were some high-profile casualties among them. Gert-Jan Theunisse, who had started the race with bruised ribs after falling in the Tour of Switzerland, looked the most dramatic, his forehead streaked with red stripes of blood and which required stitching. His King of the Mountains rival Robert Millar also came down, but the pair eventually remounted and rejoined the race; Millar, though, was seen by a specialist chiropractor that evening, one who flew in from Paris to assess his neck. A couple of team leaders were affected, too. Carrera’s Urs Zimmermann suffered a suspected broken wrist, while Z-Peugeot’s Éric Boyer had to have a plate fitted to protect an injured hand.
Up at the front, though, one man looked worth backing. Valerio Tebaldi had previous. The winner of a stage into Reims the previous year, where he also shared a lengthy break with one other rider, he certainly knew what was needed to secure victory. Perini, conversely, had little experience of the sharp end of a stage race and was indeed pipped to the win by his tall, dark compatriot.
Arnaud, after making his acquaintance with that ditch, rode alone for the last 15 or so miles and took a comfortable third place. But the day belonged to Tebaldi, whose 21-minute win was the third biggest margin of victory over the main bunch in Tour history. Despite this, he was still almost 48 minutes adrift of Fignon and the elite riders.
Tomorrow, he would be back in the anonymity of the bunch. The nowhere man. But after several hours in front of the cameras, a few more people might just recognise Number 175 from now on.
Stage 12
1. Valerio Tebaldi (Chateau d’Ax/Italy) 5:40:54
2. Giancarlo Perini (Carrera/Italy) same time
3. Dominique Arnaud (Reynolds/France) +2’09”
4. Thomas Wegmüller (Domex/Switzerland) +21’24”
5. Jan Goessens (Domex/Belgium) +21’40”
General classification
1. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) 55:52:12
2. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) +7”
3. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +57”
4. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) +2’53”
5. Andy Hampsten (7-Eleven/USA) +5’18”