3 JULY 2000

MILLAR’S MATURITY COMES IMMEDIATELY TO THE FORE

Phil Liggett in Loudun

David Millar, 22, lived up to all of the faith placed in him by his French Cofidis team yesterday when he retained the overall lead in the Tour de France, finishing 17th on the 121-mile second stage from Futuroscope to Loudun. After winning Saturday’s 11-mile time trial by two seconds, Millar’s first day in the leader’s yellow jersey was ridden with the professional skills of an old hand; the Scot’s youth giving way to a maturity rarely seen from a rider in his first Tour de France.

His team, made up of Italian, Belgian, French and Swiss riders, rode hard at the front of the large pack all day, while Millar himself rode behind them and even added two seconds to his overnight lead. He took a small time bonus at Châtellerault with 35 miles to go and now leads the defending champion, Lance Armstrong, by four seconds.

The Malta-born Millar is only the fourth British rider to wear the yellow jersey, following in the wheel marks of Tom Simpson, Chris Boardman and Sean Yates, and becomes the first from north of the border. His fluency in French and his place on a popular French team has immediately endeared him to the crowds, who can expect him to keep the lead today on the 100-mile ride to Nantes.

When Millar started the race on Saturday his ambition was limited to finishing in Paris on 23 July, but his targets altered dramatically after he scorched around the time-trial course near Poitiers to set the best time of 19 m 3 s.

This 2000 race has attracted its best field for years, so Millar’s beating of former world champions Armstrong, Laurent Jalabert and Abraham Olano and the world time-trial champion, Jan Ullrich, proved entirely satisfying. He rides under no illusions of final victory, especially as his youth and lack of stamina will count against him on the high climbs in the Pyrenees and the Alps, but his promise is such that he is being seen as a future winner.

 

 

15 JULY 2000

RED LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Graeme Fife

Eddie the Eagle may have launched a short-lived celebrity on his incompetence as a ski-jumper, but no professional sportsman attaches any kudos to being last; except that in the Tour de France, the ultimate inferno for cyclists, the rider at the bottom of the order in each day’s time classification occupies a special niche in Tour tradition. He is the lanterne rouge, the red tail lamp at the back of the race.

The French always billed the Tour grandiosely as an epic contest: riders battling against geography, elements and worsening fatigue over 2,400 miles of unforgiving road. It is a gruesome effort just to survive three weeks; gruelling punishment, and in popular imagination the lanterne rouge has become a symbol of human frailty caught up in a titanic struggle. The winners are on another planet; the lanterne rouge is the archetypal little guy, as brave as the rest but hanging on to his place by whatever tatters of will and strength he has left, just to escape the time guillotine.

In the past, someone usually donated a red lantern to tie under the last rider’s saddle and that jokey token became a badge of the defiance that every Tour rider – and they are the cream – needs when the road takes them into the thin air of the high mountains: the ‘Circle of Death’ in the Pyrenees and, as in today’s stage, the lunar landscape of the broken desert in the Alps.

It is not certain exactly when the tradition began but a photo from a Tour in the Twenties shows two riders side by side, holding a stick on the top of which is tied a tin can – the lantern. They are both grinning broadly, like a couple of kids on the way home from a tadpoling expedition. In those days they rode an average of 220 miles per day, doing all their own repairs, over the mountains on roads little better than rough, unpaved tracks. Hardly surprising if they sat back when they could.

In 1919, the race was particularly grisly: atrocious weather and bad crashes halved the field in the first stages and of the 69 starters only 11 reached Paris. The tail light was carried in by Jules Nempon, an independent rider. In those days, non-team men could ride and grab what winnings they could. The race director was so delighted that whereas most of the big stars had shown no stomach for the suffering and quit, the solitary hero had stuck it out, and he cheered him on most of the 210 miles from Dunkirk to Paris from his car.

Of the first two Britons to finish the race – in 1955 – Tony Hoar carried the lanterne rouge and was amazed at the ecstatic reception the French public gave him. But that is just part of what makes the Tour an exceptional event; and French cycle fans have always feted the riders who show extraordinary courage. Men like Eugène Christophe, who, in 1913, broke his forks in the Pyrenees, ran five miles down the mountain to a smithy where he forged a new set and rode on. He had lost hours of time and the overall lead, but finished a gallant seventh in Paris. The public adored him for that.

There are stories of riders actually vying for the red lamp – the last but one man dodging down a side street to wait for the lanterne to go past and then following him in. Perhaps on the basis that if you are going to be last, go the whole hog and be really last. More often, the lanterne rouge is only too aware of the broom wagon rumbling up the road behind him, witch’s besom tied to the back, the grim sweeper into which the day’s casualties of the perdition stumble, body broken, eyes dead, heart sunk. That happened to Jean Patrick Nazon the other day. Soaked and frozen by the rain through an appalling 125 miles over vicious climbs, he collapsed with fatigue and left the race; it was his first Tour. Only a week ago, when another rider, Stuart O’Grady, crashed and broke a shoulder but rode on to the finish, desperate to stay in the race, one arm draped useless over the bars, Nazon, the lanterne rouge, pushed him up every single little climb.

The red lamp is no mark of inferiority. One blistering day in 1969, on the Puy de Dôme, one of the nastier bits of geology on the Tour, the red lamp Pierre Matignan scorched past all the great men of the peloton to a famous victory at the summit. And in 1983, another tail light, Gilbert Glaus, cut loose to win the last stage on the Champs-Elysées and hand the lamp to someone else.

If there is romance in the idea of the lanterne rouge, the fact is very much grimmer. The present holder, Francisco Leon, riding his first Tour, has a wan look as the race goes into the first of three terrible days in the Alps. He is, in the parlance, ‘an accordion player’, meaning that he’s constantly yo-yoing off the back and clawing his way on again. For him there is no red-nose jokery in the lamp; rather it is like a fierce ‘stop’ light shining in his eyes. A reminder that this day may be his last in the race and, if it is, no sympathy will compensate for the disappointment of abandoning.

 

 

24 JULY 2000

ARMSTRONG RIDING HIGH AGAIN

Phil Liggett in Paris

Lance Armstrong won his second successive Tour de France yesterday, pocketing the £250,000 first prize with an emphatic victory. Runner-up Jan Ullrich, of Germany, finished 6 m 2 s behind with Spain’s Joseba Beloki third, more than ten minutes adrift of the Texan. Yesterday, Armstrong, 28, hoisted his recently born son, Luke, high above his head in an emotional end to his three-week campaign. ‘It was a hard Tour. It’s very special – but I’m glad it’s finished,’ he said.

Armstrong has become a changed person physically and psychologically since contracting testicular cancer. Until he recovered from the disease, he never expected to win the world’s hardest bicycle race and always saw himself as a single-day rider in classic races. Since then he has re-appraised his targets, lost more than a stone in weight, and changed his pedalling action to become one of the strongest riders in the world. His next target will be the Olympic Games time trial in Sydney in September. Aware that his cancer can recur at any time, he cherishes every day of his life and enjoys his training and living in France with a relish he never had before.

Yesterday’s final stage of 86 miles was only the second time the race had stayed entirely within the Paris area, the city closing its streets for the 128 survivors of the 180 who started in the Futuroscope theme park near Poitiers on 1 July. Stefano Zanini, an Italian in his third Tour, won the sprint from the entire field, and Armstrong cruised over the line in 76th place without even a wave to the large crowd on the Champs-Elysées.

Armstrong has not won, in his words, any ‘popularity contests’ with the French and still battles with the media in France, some of whom believe he could only have won the last two Tours with the use of chemical products. Armstrong retaliated by refusing to speak French, for fear of being misinterpreted, and in English has repeatedly denied using any forbidden products. ‘I have been on my death bed, and I have no wish to go back,’ he said.

The Tour ended on a sour note when Dutchman Jeroen Blijlevens was thrown out after what organisers said was a ‘particularly serious asault’ on Bobby Julich, of the United States. Eyewitnesses said Blijlevens struck Julich after accusing the American of blocking him during the sprint finish.

 

 

24 JUNE 2001

TOUR LEGEND DEFENDS HIS INTEGRITY

Owen Slot

This is weird. I am sitting at a table for two in a restaurant in Switzerland explaining to one of the most successful athletes on the planet why he lives under a cloud of suspicion of cheating.

I half-expect him to hit me, or at least storm out. He does, after all, have a reputation as a hot head. Sportsmen of this calibre tend to command a royal respect and, until recently, Tour de France winners were lauded like gods. Yet this one is reduced to a defence of his integrity based on the contents of his urine samples. He does so, however, with patience and intelligence, and he can turn on the charm when he wants to.

Four years ago Lance Armstrong required brain surgery to help him to beat a cancer so severe he was given a one-in-twenty chance of survival. He then returned to cycling and won the Tour de France twice. He is either, therefore, one of the greatest – arguably the greatest, a miracle – in the history of all sport, or he is using performance-enhancing drugs and is a liar and a cheat.

If he is the former, then it is an injustice that he is even being doubted, though as he makes his defence, he calmly claims that he is not unduly bothered: ‘Whatever gets said, it doesn’t affect what I’ve done for the world, it doesn’t affect what I’ve done for cancer survivors around the world. For me, surviving the illness, coming back to win, I’m standing up for those people.’

And when you hear that – and the fact that his cancer charity expects to raise $5 million this year – you want to believe the miracle even more. But it is not easy.

On the Tour de France of 1998, doping was exposed as commonplace and the Festina team were famously busted en route with a travelling pharmacy of banned products. The following year, the ‘Tour of Redemption’ we were told would be clean and therefore slower, yet along came our man with victory at an average speed that broke all records.

Sounds peculiar? Armstrong smiles; he’s heard this a thousand times. ‘On the 1999 Tour, the course was one of the easiest they’ve ever selected,’ he explains. ‘There were more flat stages, fewer mountains, so of course the average speed was higher.’ Next question please.

‘How can I prove that I’m the pure Lance Armstrong? I have never ridden as fast as I rode last year. I rode the final time trial at 54 kph, I climbed faster than before; I did things that are faster than almost anyone has done in cycling. And we have three weeks of absolutely clean urine from the Tour. There isn’t much better proof that I can give.’

Yet already we are on dodgy ground here. One day at the end of last year’s Tour, a French TV crew tailed a car belonging to Armstrong’s team, US Postal, and after 150 km, filmed them dumping some bags in a bin. On the back of this, a judicial inquiry was opened in France in November and frozen urine and blood samples from the Tour were taken away to be tested. Then, 11 weeks ago, Armstrong announced that the results had proved that he was clean.

However, this week we contacted the judge conducting the inquiry, Sophie-Helene Chateau, to check this and her response was: ‘Armstrong is dreaming.’ She explained: ‘I’m monitoring the progress but I haven’t received any of the experts’ reports that have been requested in this case.’

This clearly came as something of a surprise to Armstrong. ‘If she wants to change her story,’ he replied incredulously, ‘then it’s she who’s dreaming. But they can keep the inquiry open for ever. They’re not going to find anything.’

Either way, the Tour has rules against the random dumping of bio-hazardous materials (medicines, syringes, etc). ‘There was nothing bio-hazardous,’ says Armstrong. According to the film crew, however, there were syringes aplenty. And why drive 150 km to dump rubbish when it could have been left in the hotel? ‘Maybe it should have been. But you say: why didn’t you dump it in the hotel? I say: why wouldn’t you dump it on the roadside?’ That is a ludicrous answer which he quickly changes. ‘Whenever we leave hotels, as soon as we walk out one side, everybody walks in the other, the journalists, the fans, the maids. They’re all looking for something.’

And that is the sum of the hard evidence: an eight-month inquiry that is still unconcluded (which is a scandal in itself) and some unexplained irregularities. Thereafter, we are into hearsay, such as the comments by Antoine Vayer, the former Festina trainer, in court last year.

‘Armstrong rides at 54 kph,’ he said. ‘I find it scandalous. It’s nonsense. Indirectly it proves he’s doping.’ And Armstrong’s reaction? That if he had known French law – that you have only three months in which to sue for defamation – then he would have acted quicker. ‘If he ever says that again, I will invest whatever it takes to sue the hell out of him. If anyone says that again, I’m going to go after them. This is what’s happened in cycling: people are able to talk. They’ve never been held accountable for their words and they get paid a lot to make these comments.’

Armstrong adds: ‘And how is 54 kph impossible anyway? What’s his explanation? My blood was tested two days before – it was fine. My urine was tested too. There’s no smoking gun. These guys are liars.’

But they nevertheless all contribute to the broad perception that doping is widespread, a perception that taints Armstrong more than anyone. Ask him how bad the problem is, however, and he will contend that cycling’s problems are over-estimated.

Are doping scandals such as Festina’s commonplace? ‘They don’t happen in cycling. Honestly, honestly. I’ll bet the bank.’ Which is interesting, because reams of information suggest otherwise, particularly the raid on the Giro d’Italia by 200 police only 18 days ago when it was reported that another pharmacy of banned drugs was confiscated and from which, it is believed, only two of the 20 teams are left free of investigation.

Does he believe that there will be doping on the Tour de France this year ‘No.’ Really? Why should they dope in Italy and not in France? ‘The thing at the Giro made me absolutely sick,’ he replies. ‘If they’ve found things, then these guys should be punished big time.’

So how can you say the Tour de France will be clean? ‘I want to believe it, that’s what I’m saying. But would I bet my life’s savings on it? No. I can’t speak for rider No 137, I can only speak for rider No 1. But because of the facts with me – clean urine samples, no positive tests – people inevitably turn to asking about the sport: what about this guy, that guy, this crisis, that controversy?’

True, Armstrong cannot be held accountable for the rest of his sport, but the problem is that his answers have a history of being so inadequate. Ever since the Festina crisis, cyclists – and Armstrong is no exception – have closed ranks. They have insisted that all is well and that anyone suggesting otherwise is a troublemaker, and this gives the impression that they have something to cover up. By claiming in this interview that Festina’s was a one-off doping incident, or that this year’s Tour might be clean, it is impossible not to suspect a certain amount of economising with the truth.

‘Perhaps I didn’t handle it right in 1999,’ he says. ‘Maybe I should have been more aggressive with the stance against doping. It was a very sensitive time for cycling and I certainly didn’t want to be saying things I wasn’t sure about.’

Just because you think cycling is tainted, is his argument, you shouldn’t conclude that he is tainted too. But what can he prove? He shrugs. ‘The problem in the sport now is that you can never prove you are innocent. Certainties only exist when a test shows you are guilty.’

As these arguments chase round in circles, it is worth recalling a thought from his autobiography: ‘One of the redeeming things about being an athlete – one of the real services we can perform – is to redefine what’s humanly possible. We cause people to reconsider their limits.’

With Armstrong, it is easy to lose sight of all this. And we will probably never be sure because in the final analysis, no matter how many clean urine and blood samples he provides, there are always the new, smarter drugs on the market that the tests cannot spot.

‘Has it ultimately come down to that?’ he asks wearily. And yes, it has. ‘At a time when someone has ridden faster than anyone in cycling, and they’ve proved themselves clean of EPO, cortizone and everything else that people can think of, is the only thing to say: it must be something new? If that’s the argument, then I can’t say anything, I can’t defend that. There’s just nothing I can do.’

 

 

17 JULY 2001

TOUR CLIMBERS SCENT SPRINTERS’ BLOOD

Andrew Baker

Half-time in most sporting events is a welcome opportunity for rest and reflection, a chance to take on some refreshment while pretending to listen to a ranting coach. The job is half done, the opposition a known quantity: there is nothing left to fear.

But on the Tour de France, half-time does not signify that half of the required effort has been expended, and there is plenty left to frighten the riders this morning as they set out on the tenth of the race’s 20 stages. Connoisseurs of this marathon of pain insist that the Tour cannot properly be said to have begun until the riders have met the mountains, and today that uncomfortable introduction takes place.

The 2,000-metre Col de la Madeleine and the 1,924-metre Col du Glandon are but hors d’oeuvres to the agonising 14-km slog up to today’s finish at Alpe d’Huez, a destination as revered by cycling fans as it is loathed by the riders. Previous peaks will seem mere hillocks and the whole complexion of the race will be changed, as climbers scent the blood of their sprinting brethren.

Yesterday’s stage, from Pontarlier to Aix-les-Bains, will be a pleasant memory. If you imagine the route profile as an electrocardiogram, yesterday’s patient was recovering gradually from a mild surprise; today’s is suffering a series of massive heart attacks leading to a fatal coronary.

At least yesterday the riders could take comfort in the gentle downhill incline of the last few miles before the finish. The stage offered unusually hospitable conditions for spectators as well. Those who watch the Tour in the mountains must set out long before dawn in order to stake a claim to a precipitous patch of scree hours from the nearest refreshment station. At the finish in Aix, fans toddled up with their folding stools in mid-afternoon and settled down to read L’Equipe over a cup of coffee as they waited for the leaders to arrive.

In no other sport do fans adopt quite so much of the kit of their idols. Motor racing groupies sport a team baseball cap, football fans a replica shirt, but for followers of US Postal, Festina or Mapei-Quick Step nothing less than the full costume will do, complete with bike.

Hundreds of such clones were to be seen yesterday hobbling by the lakeside in their cleated shoes, the image of their heroes were it not for the added paunches and drooping muscles. Their bodies may betray them but the spirit is willing to believe: above all, that the Tour this year is clean, that innocence and fair play now reign where for so long the chemist has been king.

There are reasons why the fans may be justified in their hopes. Drug-testing is more comprehensive than ever, and the tests themselves are gaining in credibility. More effective than any tests have been the police raids on the Giro d’Italia before the Tour began, and the willingness of the French race organisers to co-operate with police and customs activity, should any be deemed necessary. Of course it is still not impossible to cheat, but it is getting harder.

Without any major scandal so far, the supporters who lined the Esplanade du Lac to cheer Sergei Ivanov home at the head of the field were able to do so with comparatively clear consciences. They come to applaud bravery, endurance, speed and skill, not pharmacological cunning, and the pendulum seems finally to be swinging their way.

David Millar, the British leader of the Cofidis team, has certainly had to display plenty of bravery and endurance as he attempts to recover from his painful crash in the Prologue to the race ten days ago. The gashes and grazes are gradually healing, and the mental scars inflicted by savage disappointment are starting to fade.

But still Millar is at the rear of the field. Yesterday morning he started 175th of 175 riders, the bearer of the lanterne rouge, the metaphorical red light at the end of the long and winding express train of the Tour. It is not a role without honour, and the fact that it has been filled for so long by a rider of promise rather than a plodder has earned Millar respect for his persistence and pluck.

Millar made up one place yesterday, but the bulk of the field will remain out of his reach all the way to Paris. It is a long way from red light to yellow jersey, but that is a journey that he will hope to complete another year.

 

 

23 JULY 2001

ARMSTRONG CLIMBS AHEAD

Phil Liggett in Luz-Ardiden

A week ago, Lance Armstrong was 35 minutes behind in the Tour de France, but that was before the crossing of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Yesterday, the American was the winner-elect, saluting the crowd as leader after crossing the two mountain ranges as the most dominant figure in recent years.

Since taking the lead on Saturday, it has all seemed easy for the Texan who has won the race for the past two years, and his advantage of 5 m 5 s over German champion Jan Ullrich should be enough to take to Paris next Sunday, where he will join the few who have won the race three times in succession.

This has been the finest Tour in years, with Ullrich, the winner in 1997, and with never a worse finish than second, always willing to attack Armstrong. Yesterday, on top of the final Pyrenean climb, Ullrich shook Armstrong’s hand as they crossed the line together at Luz-Ardiden in third and fourth places.

It was a sporting gesture between two athletes who have the utmost respect for one another. On Saturday, descending the Col de Peyresourde, Ullrich went too fast into a turn and crashed into a ravine. Armstrong, who saw Ullrich’s untimely exit as he descended behind him, freewheeled until the German rejoined with, remarkably, only a muddied racing jersey as evidence of a spectacular fall.

‘When someone falls like that, you don’t race away; you wait until he catches up and then restart the bike race,’ said the American after ending up the stage winner at Pla d’Adet, near St Lary-Soulan, finally claiming the race lead that was always only a matter of time.

 

 

28 JULY 2001

VILLAGE AWAKES TO A TOUR DE FORCE

Sarah Edworthy

Question: When do ordinarily sane French families take to picnicking in deep roadside ditches, complete with table, tablecloth, comfy chairs, bottles of wine and food that requires a knife and fork?

Answer: When the fast and thrilling convoy that makes up the Tour de France squeezes through their narrow rural lanes.

The visit of Le Tour is a lifetime’s honour worthy of celebration. Yesterday, for the first time in 37 years, it passed through Le Brethon, a sleepy village in the Allier, where Charolais cattle outnumber human beings, and drivers swerve off roads in shock at seeing an oncoming vehicle.

Gabriel Chevallier could have modelled Clochemerle, his comic masterpiece on French village life, on this hamlet of dozing charm complete with Chevallieresque communal WC. A region in which the tractor rules took the day off to pay tribute to the men who plough their sporting furrow on the skinniest of tyres – though only after the farmers prepared immaculate fields and verges for the army of Dutch, German and Belgium camper vans which invaded for 24 hours.

While Jan Ullrich was trying to take time out of Lance Armstrong’s lead, and Andrei Kivilev was desperate to hang on to his third place on the 61-km individual time trial, les Brethonnois had a whole day of it. Not for them hours of waiting for a few blurred groups of speedy cyclists. They saw cyclists whooshing through at two-minute intervals from 11.20 a.m. to 4.40 p.m. when Armstrong triumphantly pedalled past in a sweat-soaked maillot jaune.

Le Brethon claims one 13th-century church, one school, one shop, one post office, a Hotel des Sports – two bedrooms, bar and restaurant (Chez Gilles et Pascale) whose 65-franc menu du jour had sold out in advance – and a 13th-century stone crucifix put up to commemorate the questionable presence of the English during the Hundred Years War (they maltreated the inhabitants and razed the chateau).

On the approach to the Foret de Tronais, from which Louis XIV’s navy used to requisition their mighty masts, Le Brethon bills itself as ‘the heart of the most beautiful oak forest’. The village mayor, Jean Pasquier, was found on Thursday in the Hotel des Sports bar having his lunchtime Pernod with the men of the village. He confirmed the population of 350 felt immense pride.

‘It is very important for us, not because many of us are fascinated with cycling but because Le Brethon will be seen on televisions in Asia and South America and everybody will have a look at us,’ he said back behind his desk after a hasty change into official uniform.

‘One resident found an old bike in his cellar and turned it into this sculpture, bending an old farm instrument into the silhouette of a rider,’ added Bernard Benoit, the mayor’s first assistant, referring to a bike set up on a plinth and decorated with bunches of corn and lavender. And the son of a councillor, who likes cycling, has painted the road nearest to their farm with a list of his favourite riders in huge letters with a big heart around the name of Laurent Jalabert. Their land is on a long hill and he wanted to give the riders extra strength with his words. We are not a rich community. Everybody has realised their ideas however they can.’

This is not a place preoccupied with Le Tour’s pharmaceutical history. Cars came from nowhere and the main street was lined five-deep with sun-worn faces intent on celebration as a helicopter buzzed overhead. Only one dissonant voice was heard, echoing the communist traditions of the area. ‘How can Montlucon spend money hosting a stage of Le Tour when 30 per cent of the Allier’s inhabitants still have outside toilets?’ Hermione Quihampton griped.

But home improvements abounded. Previously shabby cottages and shutters were barely recognisable under new paint. To many inhabitants, Armstrong, the two-times Tour champion who prefers to be celebrated as a cancer survivor, is the prince of cyclists who has brought an awakening.

 

 

29 JULY 2001

TIME FOR SCEPTICS TO PAY ARMSTRONG HIS DUES

Chris Boardman

Running with the dog on the beach this morning and moaning loudly about how much my legs hurt, it is hard to believe that just nine months ago I was a professional cyclist and used to compete in what is the hardest physical challenge in mainstream sport, the Tour de France.

This year’s Tour has truly been a vintage one, with drama from start to finish and welcome evidence that it has been a largely clean race. The time gaps between competitors have been perfectly believable and no team has dominated. Both of these things point to the fact that, perhaps, the war on drugs is being won.

There was certainly some fantastic racing in the first week, mostly ending in a mass sprint for the line, as the riders realised that no team was strong enough to control the race. The drama unfolded almost as soon as the 2001 race started in Dunkirk. Britain’s David Millar, last year’s winner of this stage and clear favourite to take the Tour’s first yellow jersey, faltered under the immense pressure. He pushed it a shade too hard and crashed with just 1.5 km left. Millar battled on for a further week but eventually succumbed to the injuries he sustained and withdrew as the race entered the mountains.

On the 222-km eighth stage to Pontarlier, we saw the record broken for the largest amount of time yet gained in the race by a breakaway. The 14-strong group eventually earned a staggering 36 minutes, putting Stuart O’Grady into yellow. If the rules had been strictly applied, all of the main pack, including Armstrong, should have been eliminated.

The race took on a slightly more predictable format on the tenth stage, the first of five high mountain summit finishes. Armstrong, who had feigned fatigue in front of the TV cameras for the first few hours, launched a devastating attack at the foot of Alpe d’Huez. He took more than a minute out of all his rivals, a pattern he was to repeat for the next four stages.

Sidelined for most of the season with a broken back sustained when he fell off a ladder, Laurent Jalabert made an amazing comeback to win stages four and seven. He then went on to establish an unassailable lead in the polka-dot jersey competition for the best climber in the race, an incredible feat for a man who has twice won the green jersey for best sprinter in the Tour. For the non-cyclists among you, that’s like Linford Christie winning a marathon.

This year’s green jersey competition is headed by Australian Stuart O’Grady, of the Credit Agricole team. It is so close between him and former winner Eric Zabel, of Telekom, that it is likely to come down to the final sprint of the race on the Champs-Elysées, helping to make it an even bigger spectacle.

So after three weeks of eating 8,000 calories a day and more time in the saddle than John Wayne did in True Grit, this year’s 3,500-km epic trip around France is due to end. Barring accidents or illness, it will be won for the third successive time by American Lance Armstrong. Most people know by now of Armstrong’s battle with cancer and his incredible comeback to win the sport’s biggest prize. I remember riding next to the aggressive young Texan in 1996 in the opening, rain-marred week of the Tour. He turned to me and said: ‘I feel terrible, just . . . blocked up’.

At a time when nobody was having a great deal of fun I didn’t think much more of it but, just five kilometres further on, Lance abandoned the Tour. Soon afterwards it was announced that he had advanced testicular cancer and was to start treatment immediately.

Today, five years on, he is poised to win his third consecutive Tour de France, nothing short of a fairytale, but, sadly, people have become more sceptical. Some refuse to accept that performances such as these are possible without ‘help’. He is constantly shadowed by innuendo and veiled accusations by members of the foreign media.

I think it only fair to point out that, in a sport that now has more doping control procedures than any other in the world, he has never tested positive. I suspect that for a man like Lance, the more people throw insults and accusations at him, the more it will fuel his fire. Anyone who really wants to know why Armstrong is almost invincible at the moment need only to have looked at his face as he prepared to launch himself down the starting ramp in Dunkirk three weeks ago. It was a mask of concentration and aggression. It scared me and I was 600 miles away.

I know that look because I’ve worn one just like it. I think this mindset is perhaps best summed up as the difference between those of us who want to win and those who need to win. The latter category are not always the nicest individuals or the most mentally well balanced, but they are the ones who win because everything else in life comes second. I am amazed that Armstrong, after all he has done and been through, still has that drive, but he clearly does and, until he loses it, he will be next to impossible to beat. This year, even with a weak team, he did not just beat his rivals, he crushed them.

Can he beat Miguel Indurain’s record? Is he another Eddy Merckx? Personally, I think his style is comparable, if a little more aggressive, to that of Indurain. He hits hard in the mountains, takes time out of his rivals and then defends. Indurain has said he sees no reason why Lance can’t beat his record of five Tour victories and he’d know. It is natural people are sceptical, even paranoid after the drugs problems faced by cycling in recent years, but perhaps it’s time we started to believe in the sport again.

 

 

30 JULY 2001

ARMSTRONG READY TO RIDE ON

Phil Liggett in Paris

Lance Armstrong’s expected victory in the 2,200-mile Tour de France, which finished in Paris yesterday, continued the remarkable life of the American champion since he recovered from testicular cancer in 1998. He won his third consecutive Tour by almost seven minutes.

Armstrong, 29, has no other ambition than to just keep on winning the world’s biggest cycle race, and he sees each of his victories as a triumph for cancer survivors. His wife, Kristen, who is expecting twins in December, and his young son, Luke, joined him on the Champs-Elysées at the end of the 20th stage from nearby Corbeil Essonnes. Armstrong rode his finest race, never appearing to experience a bad day throughout his long journey across France. In the Alps, he won both stages, and in the Pyrenees allowed others to succeed while he closely marked his main rival, Jan Ullrich.

Armstrong said: ‘I’ve really had a blast these past three weeks. Like everyone else I’m ready for it to end now, but this has been the best. The Tour hasn’t killed me like in the past and I’m feeling so good. I would like to keep on winning the Tour as it’s a triumph for all cancer survivors. I really have no other ambition left. When I lose my taste for this race, then it will be all over.’

Eddy Merckx, the winner on five occasions, believes that the Texan can break the record of five wins (held by four men) and go as far as winning seven, but the multi-millionaire from Austin may, indeed, have lost his appetite long before then. He is now one of only five riders to have won the race three times straight and joins another American, Greg LeMond, on the same number.

Armstrong stood between the same two riders as last year, Jan Ullrich, the Olympic champion who has now finished second four times (he also won in 1997), and Spain’s Joseba Beloki, again third. Generous in his praise of his two rivals, Armstrong will be remembered for his act of sportsmanship when he waited for Ullrich in the Pyrenees after seeing the German fall into a ravine. Unhurt, Ullrich rejoined his side and then resumed the battle between them.

Armstrong wore the leader’s yellow jersey for the last eight days, less than in his two previous races, but this time he had to bridge a gap of 35 minutes to take the lead after a surprise breakaway put different names on the leaderboard in the opening week. It made a better race and showed the full potential of the American.

 

 

30 JULY 2001

NOTHING LIKE THE WHEEL ACTION

David Millar

Three weeks ago, after crashing in the Prologue time trial, I was sitting in a hotel in Dunkirk coming to terms with the fact that my Tour de France 2001 was somewhat ruined, trying to be as philosophical as my professionalism would allow and telling myself that it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Eleven days later, I was but a shadow of myself with a newfound stoical mantra of ‘It can always get worse’, drained emotionally and physically to the point of complete and utter exhaustion, with no choice but to slow to a complete stop on the descent of the Col de la Madeleine and give up the Tour de France. I had refused to give up on the climb and made myself endure the humiliation of climbing the 25 km to the summit by myself at a pitifully slow speed past the thousands of spectators.

I can’t explain why I didn’t want to give up on the climb, but then it’s hard to explain much about the Tour de France or professional cycling in general. After close to 2,000 kilometres of hell (almost all of which were spent oscillating on and off the back of the peloton), I wasn’t about to be stopped by one mountain. When the time came for me to stop I would do it on my own terms, and where better than on a descent where anybody could have carried on?

The race organisation put me in the ambulance, so there need never be any images of me actually giving up and climbing in the dreaded voiture balai, a nod of respect from the Tour de France itself in acknowledgement of what I had put myself through the previous 11 days. Now I am sitting at home in Biarritz finally able to turn the page as the Tour is completed by the 139 riders who are left in the peloton, 50 less than rolled down the start ramp of the Prologue in Dunkirk, which I suppose is about the usual number of abandons for the Tour – not very many when you consider how ridiculously hard it is and the number of crashes and injuries that are endured.

To put into perspective the dangers involved you need only look at the crash that occurred a few days ago, from which six riders didn’t get back up, four with broken collarbones, one with a broken wrist and the last, a friend of mine, who fractured his face and skull in five places. And that was only one crash.

All this is what makes the Tour de France what it is. It’s a sporting event with no equal, beyond description and beyond comparison. It even made the Olympics an anti-climax for me, which may surprise a lot of people, but the Olympics could simply not generate the passion that the Tour does.

Riding up a mountainside with hundreds of thousands of people cheering for you is something that stays with you for ever, having them close enough to touch you and close enough to look straight into your eyes, to be able to look straight into the eyes of a Lance Armstrong in full flight.

So now to LA himself, the man, the myth. Three Tours de France under his belt and I can’t see him stopping there. There is no doubt that Lance could have probably become a world-beater in almost anything he chose to do, and it’s not until you get to know him a bit that you come to understand this fact.

This is why when he says that he loves cycling, I know that he means it. It’s no longer the money nor the glory, these he now has aplenty. It’s those moments when he’s racing up a mountain pass in front of those hundreds of thousands of people, knowing he is the leader of the Tour de France, showing once again that he’s one of the greats.

And just occasionally he may choose to glance at one of those many spectators and let them see into his eyes. Those are the moments that touch people for the rest of their lives, and that’s what the Tour de France is about. It’s a mad, mad sport, created to make a good story.

 

 

5 JULY 2002

TOUR DE FRANCE TOUGHER ON DRUGS

Phil Liggett in Luxembourg

It is 99 years since chain-smoking chimney sweep Maurice Garin won the first Tour de France and, under the current climate of drug busts and stringent tests, the nicotine consumed then would have probably earned him a ban now.

The race, which costs over £7 million a year to run, has assembled in Luxembourg ready for tomorrow afternoon’s opening Prologue time trial. The organisers are hopeful that they have found the solution to the constant stream of cyclists caught for using drugs to gain their success.

Following a Tour of Italy last month, where former winner Gilberto Simoni and Stefano Garzelli were both evicted for using cocaine and Probenecid respectively, the Tour de France Society have more drugs tests than ever. They have already used their strength by rejecting Simoni’s Italian Saeco team and this week banned Frenchman Laurent Paumier from being part of his AG2R team after he tested positive in last month’s Midi-Libre race.

Up to ten riders a day will be spot-tested including the stage winner and all of the leaders of the race classifications plus others at random. Ninety riders will be tested for the blood booster EPO, compared to 72 last year. In addition, the International Cycling Union will test all 189 riders for EPO use, announcing the results by midday today. Any riders with a haematocrit blood count above 50 (indicating possible EPO use) will not be allowed to start.

Lance Armstrong, the winner for the past three years and favourite to make it four in Paris on 28 July, has only just been cleared of possible drug abuse after a two-year wait while a French drug-testing agency carried out an investigation into him and his US Postal team.

Armstrong, who is in remission from testicular cancer and hailed as a ‘saint’ in the United States for the millions of dollars he has raised for his cancer foundation, is not complimentary about the French, who have reluctantly announced his innocence.

‘The key to my success has been intense training,’ says Armstrong, ‘and they [the French agency] are incapable of accepting this. They have made no effort to end the tests quickly. As in sport, you should admit when you are wrong, but they do not seem to want to admit that.’

 

 

29 JULY 2002

ARMSTRONG FAMILY AFFAIR

Phil Liggett in Paris

Lance Armstrong raced on to the Champs-Elysées yesterday to win his fourth Tour in a row and at the same time completed perhaps the easiest victory of them all. Spain’s Joseba Beloki was second and Lithuanian Raimondas Rumšas third, but at no time during the 2,100-mile race from Luxembourg to Paris had Armstrong been under pressure. He countered with ease the few moves his rivals attempted in the high mountains of the Pyrenees and Alps and then finally crushed them in the time trial at Mâcon on Saturday.

After finishing safely in the pack behind Australia’s Robbie McEwen yesterday, Armstrong stepped on to the podium especially erected on the Champs-Elysées with his wife and three children.

The Texan was given only a 20 per cent chance of living through the testicular cancer which spread through his body five years ago. Now, with a single-minded view on life and only his family and winning the Tour as his main directions, he enjoys every day as it comes. He raises millions and gives hope to thousands through the Lance Armstrong Cancer Foundation. He admits his life changed completely in 1996, but it is clear that the determination he showed then to beat the disease remains intact as he races to success each July.

He continues to mystify the French media and government, who have both led campaigns to discredit him. The finding of syringes allegedly used by his US Postal team two years ago, indicating possible use of drugs, and the two-year span of tests on frozen samples of his urine by the French drugs agency, have led to nothing. ‘That’s because there is nothing to find, so why don’t they just apologise and admit they have made a mistake?’ Armstrong says. ‘If they saw how I train and prepare for the race then they would know how hard I try to win it without using banned substances.’

Armstrong has not been deceived by the drugs in sport and has made many friends, from President George W. Bush to his bodyguards who mix with the crowd every day. His £200,000 prize will go to his team, so loyal that they defend his name ferociously each time someone tries to insinuate he has cheated. This Tour, subject to final tests yesterday, has been drugs-free. The riders’ faces, so often pained, indicate perhaps that the stringent tests which a cyclist now faces have hit the evil that almost brought the sport to its knees.

On Saturday, winning the final time trial after being beaten in Brittany two weeks earlier was more a point of honour than a necessity. Armstrong beat Rumšas by 53 seconds. Armstrong, in winning his 15th stage of a Tour, which is three more than any other current rider, also showed his single-minded application to this event – the only race he wants to win.

Armstrong says: ‘I will be back for a few years yet, but I’m not saying I’m going to win it again as that would be suicide. I hate to sound like a broken record, but my team were the best I’ve ever ridden with and I hope I can ride with them again, too.’

 

 

30 JULY 2002

RUMSAS CENTRE OF DRUGS PROBE

Phil Liggett

Raimondas Rumšas, who on Sunday became the first Lithuanian to finish on the podium of the Tour de France when he took third place behind Lance Armstrong and Joseba Beloki, was at the centre of a doping controversy yesterday.

At the time Rumšas was racing into Paris, his wife was being arrested in Chamonix after her car was stopped by French customs and found to be carrying ‘medication which could be considered as doping products’.

Lampre, the Italian team of Rumšas, immediately suspended their rider pending further investigation. The team’s hotel was searched by police in Paris but nothing was found.

The 2,100-mile race from Luxembourg is being seen as the most drug-free for many years, with new controls felt to have had a great effect on the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

 

 

30 JUNE 2003

UNSUNG HERO WAS PRONE TO THROWING BREAD ROLLS AT OTHER RIDERS, BUT WAS STILL A BIG HIT ON TOUR

Brendan Gallagher

It is 25 years now since Barry Hoban completed his last Tour de France, but the fan letters keep arriving from the Continent and he cannot spend five minutes in France before the back-slapping and hand-shaking starts. Back home in Britain he remains unknown and unheralded.

Hoban is one of those sportsmen who lived his dream. A colliery apprentice in Wakefield, he quit his job in 1962 and moved to Arras in northern France with the crazy notion of trying to become a professional cyclist and ride in the world’s greatest race. He succeeded on both counts.

Hoban was never going to win the thing outright – he lacked the all-round ability to assume the mantle of team leader and enjoy all the racing advantages that brings – but in his own way he was a star performer. He completed 11 of the 12 Tours he rode – only a handful of riders have bettered that – and won eight stages. Sponsors and team directors loved him: a team man who could also win the big sprints – all those headlines and pictures in L’Equipe the next day.

His first stage win Hoban never counts. It was the day after his friend Tommy Simpson had died on the scorching slopes of Mont Ventoux in 1967 and the peloton decided they would ride piano – slowly – the next day and allow the British riders to lead the race and claim the stage, which finished at Sète. The other seven, however, were full-blooded victories against the best riders in the world.

‘The secret to completing the Tour and staying competitive is the ability to sleep,’ insists Hoban, a sprightly 63 who still thinks nothing of putting in 55 or 60 miles on his bike before lunch. ‘If you can sleep the body can recover, no matter how knackered. I’ve always been an eight hours solid merchant. I’m away from the moment my head hits the pillow. I might have been scraped off the finishing line the previous day, but I was always ready, bright and breezy, the following morning.

‘I was one of the few who got fitter and stronger as the Tour progressed. I was always a slow starter but by the second half I was beginning to pick off a few stage wins. If the Tour could have gone on for another fortnight I might have been a real contender.

‘Before any Tour starts there are only four or five riders who stand a chance of winning and I was never one of those. So as a middle-ranking rider, trying to earn a good living, my agenda was slightly different. After helping my team leader, I went looking for stage wins. Financially a stage win is worth ten times as much as slogging your guts around the route and finishing a worthy tenth or eleventh overall. ‘Not only do you get reasonably rewarded for the stage win, but you put yourself in prime position to pick up lucrative little contracts to ride in the popular one-day criteriums that always follow the Tour.

‘I was basically a conservative rider, especially in the sprints where there can be lots of pile-ups and bad injuries. The glory boys always hug the barricades by the crowd and the inclination is to slip alongside them. But in a bunch that can mean big trouble so my tactic was to take the outside route where there was plenty of road to work with, and an escape route if it all went pear-shaped.

‘I never once fell in a sprint, though I had my share of tumbles elsewhere. The trick, by the way, is never to put your arms out to stop a fall – you’ll lose all your skin and pop your shoulder for sure. Cover your head with your forearms and roll into the fall. It can shake you up, but I was never badly hurt.

‘Descending was my great joy and the only time I took risks. For some reason I was naturally good at it. You just set yourself firm and solid in the saddle – squatting like a downhill skier – and let rip. You can struggle up a big mountain climb and claw back ten or fifteen minutes on a good descent. On the Tourmalet once I did the 25-mile descent run, including all the slow, tricky hairpins at the top, in just under 35 minutes. The occasional corner at 70 miles an hour, definitely, sometimes nearer 80. Very exciting,’ he said.

‘Legend insists that some of the great mountain riders, Jean Robic for one, used to take on food bags at the top of a big climb filled with lead weights to speed their descent. I’m not sure. I don’t think you need to go any quicker than comes naturally.’

Hoban these days lives in an idyllic old farm cottage in mid-Wales with his wife Helen, the widow of Tom Simpson. The climb to their mountain home – named Col de Hoban by the locals – is as fierce, though shorter, as anything on the Tour, one-in-five in places. The view at the end, though, is well worth the effort, just like the Tour itself.

‘It wasn’t all pain, you know. My big mate was Gerben Karstens, from Holland, who was certifiably bonkers as well as being a great bloke. His favourite party trick on a quiet transition stage between the Alps and Pyrenees – with everybody in the peloton dozing or having a good gossip – was to spot a luxuriant maize field ahead, sprint hard, and then slam on the front brakes and somersault, bike and all, over the hedge to land comfortably upside down in a spongy bed of maize. God knows where he learnt that trick.

‘Another little favourite was for Gerben and myself to sprint a couple of kilometres ahead – the peloton knew it was playtime and indulged us – before we would stop with a group of fans on a bend and invite ourselves to their picnic. A little bit of cheese and sip of Muscadet, very pleasant indeed. Then, when the peloton rode past, we would hurl bread rolls and abuse at them, especially all the big names. The crowd would love it and cheered us on our way as we remounted. We had a lot of fun on the way.’

 

 

30 JUNE 2003

NEWSPAPER GIMMICK SET WHEELS IN MOTION

Brendan Gallagher

It was Geo Lefevre, the 26-year-old rugby union correspondent of Parisian sports paper L’Auto, who came up with the novel idea of a bicycle race around France. He never received the credit or financial reward he deserved – his autocratic editor, Henri Desgrange, saw to that – but Lefevre is the man who put the wheels in motion back in 1903.

A century later his legacy is probably the biggest single sports event on the planet. More spectators will watch a stage of the Tour de France – any stage – than attend Wimbledon over a fortnight. Daily crowds of more than a million are not unusual – upwards of two million are expected for next weekend’s Prologue and opening stage in Paris – while infamous set-piece climbs such as Alpe d’Huez or the Galibier can often attract 500,000 to that mountain range alone.

And all because two rival newspapers decided to wage war. Lefevre, ambitious and full of ideas, had been signed from rival sports paper Le Velo, a publication that was increasingly winning the dog-eat-dog circulation battle with L’Auto and threatening the latter’s very existence.

L’Auto badly needed a gimmick, so Desgrange called his editorial staff around for a brainstorming session and listened as Lefevre, an accomplished amateur cyclist, outlined his idea for the ultimate test of man and bike, a circumnavigation of France in six stages. Later he and Desgrange retired to a nearby café to continue their discussion before Desgrange presented the idea – as his own – to the board of L’Auto.

It was a winner: L’Auto had struck gold. Within six years circulation had increased from 140,000 to 250,000. The paper was saved and one of the world’s greatest sporting spectacles born. Lefevre was appointed official timekeeper, but the Tour de France became Desgrange’s race and fiefdom.

In fairness to Desgrange he was the ideal tyrannical entrepreneur, self-publicist and megalomaniac to breathe life into such a project. His version of Lefevre’s original concept was to make the race so arduous that ideally only one supreme rider should be able to complete the Tour and return to Paris. He wanted to break the human spirit, not to mention the riders’ bodies.

The Tour length increased from 1,508 miles in 1903 to 3,257 miles in 1911, reaching an all-time high of 3,569 miles in 1926. The longest stage in this year’s competition – 143 miles – is 24 miles shorter than the shortest stage in 1903.

The riders would start long before dawn and often finish in the dark that evening – heads bowed, arms and legs turned raw by the summer sun and crying in agony from saddle sores. The Tour predominantly followed rough tracks that would be barely recognised as roads these days, and would be tackled now only with a lightweight, multi-geared mountain bike.

The temptation to seek additional ‘chemical’ assistance has always been there and has often proved irresistible. Indeed modern-day distances are down and rest days have been added to try to counter that threat. The financial lure, however, is greater than ever and the race itself remains an incredibly tough physical challenge. The Tour de France, and professional cycling, is undeniably fighting a doping problem, but arguably no more so than athletics.

Not that the controversy is new, or indeed wholly unwelcome. The Tour has become an annual soap opera starring diverse and intense characters, in which the stories come at you from all angles. The politics are typically French, especially those concerning which towns and villages are granted stage starts and finishes – the going rate these days, apparently, is not far short of £100,000, which goes into the Tour coffers.

There can, however, be spectacular fall-outs among friends, as occurred in 1971 at Marseille, which had hosted the Tour more or less continuously since 1927. On this occasion the peloton – driven on by Eddy Merckx, who was attempting to regain the yellow jersey from Luis Ocaña – arrived fully half an hour before the earliest estimate. The city mayor, Gaston Deferre, was incandescent. Lunch had not yet finished, his guests were still waiting for dessert. ‘C’est impossible, c’etait un scandale.’ Deferre ordered that the Tour was to be banned from Marseille henceforth, and indeed it returned only in 1989, following his death.

Then there’s the mystery. What did happen to Ottavio Bottecchia, the winner of the 1924 and 1925 Tours? Bottecchia, a high-profile socialite, was found dead in a field near Peonis, Italy, in June 1927, allegedly the victim of a training accident near his home. Then a peasant farmer claimed to have stoned Bottecchia for allegedly trying to steal his grapes – in June? But a decade later in New York an Italian mafia hit man made a deathbed confession, claiming to have assassinated Bottecchia on behalf of the emerging Fascists.

There’s been scandal, too. Italian winner Fausto Coppi, once a British prisoner of war, outraged much of his home country by publicly parading his mistress on the Tour before moving in with her. Even the Pope intervened and begged him to return to his wife. Jacques Anquetil, five times a winner, was for years accompanied by a blonde who deserted her husband, a doctor, every July to join him. They eventually married.

And, of course, there’s been tragedy: Francesco Cepeda, of Spain, died on the descent of the Galibier in 1935; Britain’s Tommy Simpson died on the Mont Ventoux climb in 1967; and Italy’s Olympic champion, Fabio Casartelli, perished descending the Col de Portet D’Aspet in 1995.

Equally, there has been heroism. In 1996 Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer, with secondaries in his lungs and liver. Doctors put his chances of living at no more than 50–50. Armstrong begged to differ and staged one of the most inspiring comebacks in sport to win four consecutive Tours.

It is all there in the Tour de France, every form of emotion and human endeavour. It is the Olympics of cycling – time triallists, road specialists, climbers, descenders and sprinters are all thrown into the mix together. For nearly a month a nation is gripped by one of the few sporting events that, in the words of Chris Boardman, you can need a haircut halfway through.

 

 

28 JULY 2003

UNLUCKY ULLRICH PUSHES ALL THE WAY

Phil Liggett in Paris

Lance Armstrong duly won his fifth Tour de France in as many years yesterday, surviving the scares of his most difficult Tour when he beat Jan Ullrich, of Germany, by 61 seconds, and Alexander Vinokourov, by 4 m 19 s after more than three weeks and 2,100 miles.

At the final 20th stage, which ended on the Champs-Elysées after 95 miles from nearby Ville d’Avray, the 22 surviving winners of the 53 who have won the race were presented to celebrate the end of the Centenary Tour.

Jean-Patrick Nazon gave the host nation a perfect end to the most interesting race for many years, probably since another American, Greg LeMond, won in 1989, when he beat the Frenchman Laurent Fignon on the last stage from Versailles to win by just eight seconds.

Armstrong won the race, by far his most difficult, by the smallest margin of the five, after finishing third in Saturday’s time trial from Pornic to Nantes. Britain’s David Millar recovered from a fall to win that rain-soaked stage in spectacular style. Ullrich made his last, desperate attempt to win, taking great risks on the slick road surfaces into Nantes and paid the price as he skidded into straw bales. He was leading at the time with the fastest time, but finished 11 seconds slower than Armstrong.

Millar, in winning his third Tour stage since 2000, immediately criticised the course, saying that it was unfair to Armstrong and Ullrich that they should have to race the last ten miles in severe weather. He may have been right, but both gave it their best effort, as the stage would decide the final outcome in Paris the next day. On Saturday night Armstrong said: ‘I’ve been vulnerable in this Tour and haven’t enjoyed it. I’ll come back next year having learnt a lot of lessons.’

 

 

7 JANUARY 2004

QUEASY RIDER FACES UP TO PEAK TEST

For one day every July some of the world’s top cycling enthusiasts ride a stage of the Tour de France while the race proper enjoys a rest day. In a moment of madness Brendan Gallagher agreed to take part

I blame jet lag, the euphoria of Ireland’s World Cup victory over Argentina and possibly that last, lingering glass of Hunter Valley red. I wasn’t of entirely sound mind and in a court of law I could probably squirm out of my promise, but what the hell – life’s too short.

So there I was in room 323 of the Adelaide Radisson in late October. Ireland had just clinched a glorious victory over the Pumas, acres of copy had been dispatched and, as is customary on such occasions, wine had been taken with friends and colleagues, possibly to excess. It was very late, in fact there was the smell of sizzling bacon and freshly ground coffee wafting up from the kitchen below. But life was good, not a worry in the world.

The office rang and an innocent voice gently applied the stiletto from 12,000 miles distant, where it was still a sober Sunday evening: ‘We’ve got a company – Giant bikes – who want you to ride a stage of the Tour de France. Sounds a bit of fun. Fancy a bash? They will loan you a flash bike and you’ll have to do a bit of training. Good chance to get fit, though. (Chuckle.) Are you up for it?’

My addled brain immediately conjured up memories of last summer and a fabulous five days covering the Tour – dazzling sunshine, snow-capped peaks, dramatic winding roads, ant-like crowds crawling over the mountains, fresh air, drama, excitement, world-class food and wine. Somewhere in the mental process, however, I forgot that I was driving a comfortable air-conditioned car and not pounding out the miles on a bike. In my mind’s eye I was, of course, 25 and disgustingly fit – rather dashing, actually – as opposed to 45 and at least two stone overweight.

‘Crackerjack idea,’ I said enthusiastically and promptly turned over and returned to sleep and dreams of Ireland World Cup triumphs, Brian O’Driscoll scoring a hat-trick in the final and Keith Wood lifting the Webb Ellis Cup. A few hours later – black coffees and croissants all round – and I was swearing never to drink again. Why do we do it? What had I let myself in for? Messing about on a mountain bike was the full extent of my cycling experience thus far.

Every year the Tour organisers allow a limited number of enthusiastic cyclists – 9,000 this year out of 200,000 applicants – to ride the previous day’s Tour route, while the peloton take a day off. This year, L’Etape du Tour is 150 miles of unrelenting climbing and descending, probably in temperatures touching 100 degrees. The longest and hardest Etape in history, the stage profile looks like a set of broken dentures. Only complete novices could study it without coming out in a cold sweat. Talented amateur riders will finish in eight or nine hours, hopeless hacks could take double or simply fall by the wayside.

Instinctively, and rather shakily, I rang Will Fotheringham, a leading cycling journalist and an invaluable Tour companion last summer, who doubles up as a rugby writer and is well acquainted with my state of fitness – mental and physical – and disastrous dietary tendencies.

‘You’re bonkers, absolutely bloody bonkers, Brendan. You must be completely insane. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. Get a grip. Phone me again when you are sober,’ he said. This from a former semi-professional cyclist who has twice completed L’Etape.

I persisted, my pride more than a little dented. ‘Seriously I can’t back down now, I’ve got to go through with it. What I need is help.’

‘What you need is a miracle. The ride is a complete bitch, the worst ever, and I’m going nowhere near it. The main thing is to stay alive, anything after that will be a bonus for you, Brendan. You have got to lose two stone in weight and start training in the New Year. You’ve got six months and we might just pull it off. Like I say, the main thing here is to preserve life.

‘You need an hour on the bike every other day for three months just to get some general fitness and then start building on bike time and endurance in the spring when we get some better weather. You need some long rides in May and June, and it would help if you could nip over and do the route itself sometime. Allow two or three days, that’s what most normal cyclists would reckon if they were just cycling for pleasure. You don’t do L’Etape for pleasure, that only comes when you look back on it, and even then it still hurts.’

I took delivery of the bike just before Christmas: a Giant TCR Zero. It’s a beautiful, sleek, lightweight, understated and possibly temperamental thoroughbred – not much change out of £2,000 – but for two weeks she lay idle at the back of my garage. Just as ocean-going liners are always female, so is my bike. No question. I’ll think of an affectionate name as we grow closer and become better acquainted with each other’s moods and habits. It’s very early days of course but I think we’ll get on just fine. She seems very nice. In fact it might be love.

For the first week I circled her warily trying to pluck up the courage to introduce myself properly, afraid of making a fool of myself. What if we didn’t get on? The humiliation and rejection. And then I crashed out of action for a week with ’flu, but finally the big moment could be delayed no longer. In the end it all happened very quickly.

I strapped into the pedals and pushed off gently. With almost no apparent effort I was suddenly ghosting along at 25 mph. I barely noticed a sharp incline, which I have often laboured up on my heavy, under-geared mountain bike, and as I cautiously went up through the gears I could feel my excitement rising. I rather self-consciously shifted into the racing position and started pushing hard on a big gear. To my utter shock and surprise I overtook an admittedly cautious woman driver on the school run. This was fantastic, 40 mph without breaking sweat.

There was a downside of course. I had been warned about the wickedly uncomfortable racing saddles and, as predicted by the splendid Fotheringham, the pain started to kick in after half an hour. I can only liken it to somebody systematically sticking razor blades into your nether regions . . . and then leaving them there. My cycling guru insists there is only one solution – to ride and ride until your rump is hardened to the pain and discomfort. He is no fun.

I headed for home, grimacing hard with the effort and pain. This was agony. Just 300 yards from sanctuary and an old mate spotted me. Here it comes, I thought, the first abuse and mickey-taking of the year. I wasn’t disappointed.

‘Who the hell do you think you are, Lance Armstrong or somebody?’ said my mate, almost choking with his own devastating wit. ‘You’ll be riding in the Tour de France next.’ I smiled a massive smile, even through the pain. The look on his face when I told him that actually I would be riding ‘The Tour’ – as we cyclists call it – will get me through the next month’s training at least.

 

 

28 JANUARY 2004

BOTTOM LINE IS BEWARE OF VAPORUB

Brendan Gallagher

The words of George Bickerstaffe – 73 years young and still pounding out the miles around Oldham and sundry cycling hotspots in Lancashire – came to mind as I started training for L’Etape du Tour in earnest earlier this month.

‘Dear Mr Gallagher,’ he wrote. ‘Bloody hell. I nearly fell off the lav when I saw your piece! It sounds a barmy idea and your novice status is clear. Look at your picture. The bike is all wrong. Look at the angle of the derailleur. What you need is a triple front c/ring. Good luck, though. Daily Telegraph cyclists want you to pull this off.’ Though mortified to have interrupted George’s early-morning constitutional – can’t a man get any peace and quiet these days? – his straight-talking, good humour and support struck a chord. I wasn’t entirely alone in this ridiculous quest.

So down to business. Acting on the advice of my cycling guru, William Fotheringham, I am aiming to spend an hour on the bike every other day for the next two months in an attempt to gain a plateau of fitness from which I can then start training properly for the gruelling 150-mile stage of the Tour de France on 11 July.

I have therefore devised a 15-mile circular route from my house that takes in the fiercest climb in mid-Sussex, the mighty Col du Turners Hill. Anybody who has done the London-Brighton ride every June will know it as the pleasant halfway point where they dish out free strawberries and you can grab a quick pint at the Red Lion or Crown. It is, admittedly, some 4,500 feet lower than the Col du Pas de Peyrol, the high point of the Etape this year, but you have to start somewhere. I comfort myself in the knowledge that the gradient is one-in-six in places, steeper than anything on the Etape. Allegedly.

I have put in eight sessions so far. Mostly I feel terrible, but that is inevitable. I am unfit and any sporting activity – and this is fairly strenuous – would leave me panting and nauseous. In my defence, I do also try to ride flat out to make best use of limited time.

Like most bad workmen, I blame my tools. The saddle seems too high, the handlebars are definitely half an inch too low and probably an inch too far forward. Of course they are nothing of the sort. The bike is simply set up for a normally fit and limber specimen. It is up to me to become that person.

There are other obstacles to overcome, notably Mum’s Café, the world’s best greasy spoon, which is hidden in a quiet industrial estate just off leafy Rowfant Road at the end of my circuit. Some days – twice to be precise, M’Lud – the smell of bacon and sausages has proved irresistible. I have done a deal with myself that in future tea and toast is permissible but only on days when I double up and ride two circuits.

I’ve picked up a few health and hygiene tips already. Nappy rash cream is ideal for that irritating chafing on your inner thighs and crotch that plagues beginners, while Vicks VapoRub attacks those stubborn chest infections which afflict most cyclists. A word of warning, though: under no circumstances get the two mixed up, as I did one morning. The result brings tears to your eyes.

Last Monday was also instructive and encouraging. Freezing early morning fog was soon replaced by an icy drizzle. After successive rugby weekends working in Dublin, Belfast and Limerick, I was lacking motivation and the vestiges of a weekend hangover remained.

It was a ‘bike day’ but surely I could be excused. I had no winter training gear or waterproofs and the local radio was full of dire warnings about driving conditions. I started brewing a pot of coffee instead and sat down to read the papers but couldn’t settle. Was it guilt or just stark terror at the challenge ahead? Perhaps neither. Experienced bikers speak of a strange madness, some call it an illness, that can take over when you start dabbling in the sport. Jobs and marriages are apparently cast aside in the need for a daily fix.

Whatever. The rain was getting heavier but suddenly I threw on my muddy fleece top and tracksuit bottoms. It was cold and miserable and the fleece was soon heavy with rain. I spent an eternity trying to get warm but gradually blood started to pump around the extremities and for some reason the bike was cruising along splendidly. Rain can be very comforting. For once, Turners Hill came and went without undue effort.

Very strange. I was sodden and freezing; rain was cascading down my face and neck, but this was OK. In fact it was more than OK. I was quite enjoying myself and even started whistling, for some obscure reason, Pretty Flamingo by Manfred Mann. Where on earth did that come from?

Exhilarated, I went around for another loop and, full of self-denial, sprinted past Mum’s Café before heading home for a bath and that much delayed mug of coffee. I glowed with health – inwardly at least, as nobody else would have noticed – and was unbearably smug and good-humoured all day. Reality set in about 7 p.m. when the eyelids started feeling heavy and I began to slump over my laptop, the day’s copy still unsent.

Dear Mr Gallagher. What you need is a triple front c/ring.

Dear Mr Bickerstaffe. Thank you, but what I need is 12 hours’ sleep.

 

 

16 FEBRUARY 2004

TRAGIC PANTANI HAILED AS ‘GENIUS’

Stephen Farrand

The world of cycling paid tribute yesterday to Marco Pantani, the greatest climber in the history of the sport, who died suddenly this weekend.

Although the Italian was widely regarded as the undisputed ‘King of the Mountains’ – particularly in his adoring homeland – the former Tour de France winner would always have to live with a tarnished record after being caught up in the drugs scandals of the late Nineties. His fall from grace would eventually lead to a great character suffering from clinical depression.

Pantani’s impressive victories in the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in 1998, combined with his shaven head and big ears, made him a household name, and he was openly adored by the passionate Italian cycling fans. They loved him for the way he raced with panache and courage, because he was never afraid to risk all in the pursuit of a lone victory in the mountains.

Lance Armstrong, the five-time Tour de France winner, led the tributes last night, saying: ‘This is terrible and shocking news.’ The American, who had a stormy relationship with Pantani, added: ‘Regardless of our battles on and off the bike, I had a deep respect for Marco. Cycling has indeed lost a great champion and a great personality.’

Belgian cycling legend Eddy Merckx pointed the finger of blame at an overly enthusiastic Italian justice system: ‘After his success in the Giro and Tour de France in the same year Pantani certainly made mistakes – but he was targeted by Italian justice who never let him go. I believe it was that that destroyed him.’

Merckx joined France’s now-retired former world champion Laurent Jalabert in saying the solitary nature of the sport Pantani had chosen had played a role in the tragedy. ‘Once your career is finished it’s inevitable that you’re forgotten. It’s a case of every man for himself and God for all.’ Jalabert said Pantani was ‘a genius’ whose memory should not be sullied by what went wrong in his life. ‘It’s always difficult to end your cycling career,’ said Jalabert. ‘Undoubtedly it hit him hard when he was thrown off the Tour of Italy in 1999.’

Jalabert said anyone would have struggled to handle the constant scrutiny of the authorities, which reached a peak when Pantani was among those targeted in a police raid of the riders’ hotel during the 1999 Tour of Italy. ‘It’s difficult to constantly be a target of suspicion when you’ve been really successful, above all in Italy where the people are fanatics. Pantani was disillusioned. I think in the end he must have said to himself: “What’s the point?” But Pantani was a genius. I still remember him climbing the Galibier, and even in last year’s Giro, the determination on his face. It wouldn’t be fair to summarise his life with issues of doping and depression.’

The whole of Italy was in a state of profound shock yesterday, the front pages filled with tributes to their fallen hero. His favourite football team, AC Milan, held a minute’s silence before their match and wore black armbands in his memory.

Pantani was known as Il Pirata for his swashbuckling style of racing and the colourful bandanna he wore to cover his shaven head. It was the perfect moniker and the skull and cross-bones was flown with pride by his fans along the roadside. Tuttosport’s front page yesterday read ‘Addio Pirata’, while the Gazzetta dello Sport headline was the poignant ‘Lost Hero, We Adored You’. Flowers were left outside his home in Cesenatico and thousands are expected to attend his funeral.

Although Pantani was no longer registered with a team – he had not ridden competitively since May last year – he yearned for a return to the roads. He recently wrote on his website: ‘Sometimes we close our eyes because we don’t like to face reality, but if we stop communicating we stop savouring life and stop writing our life story. I speak with my bike. And I want to continue writing the chapter of my life that I’ve left unfinished for too long.’

 

 

17 FEBRUARY 2004

‘THEY ONLY WANT TO PUNISH ME’

Phil Liggett

Marco Pantani, who died a sad and lonely person, should be remembered as a great athlete who conquered the heights of his sport. In reality this may not be the case in a sport in which drug-taking remains endemic and the cheats continue to stay one step ahead of the testers.

While Pantani’s death was confirmed yesterday as a heart attack, his links with drug abuse are undeniably strong and next week he was to have entered a clinic in Bolivia to be treated for cocaine addiction.

He believed he was being persecuted for his drugs connections. ‘They only want to punish me,’ he was reported to have written on notepaper found in his Rimini hotel room. He was also alleged to have written that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

There is no doubt that drugs have played a major part in cycling, especially in the Fifties and Sixties. Since the mid-Sixties drug-testing controls have been in place and the International Cycling Union believe that the battle is slowly being won. But only 48 hours before Pantani died at the age of 34, unknown Belgian rider Johan Sermon, 21, died from apparent heart failure. There have been 100 such deaths in the last decade and all apparently from natural causes. Last year alone, leading professionals Denis Zannette, Fabrice Salanson and José María Jiménez all died under similar circumstances.

Sermon was reported to be fit and in ‘peak condition’ with a haematocrit (red blood-cell count) level of 40 per cent – well within the norms and not indicative of a person taking the blood-booster EPO. It is the use of EPO that is thought to have caused the deaths of many riders, but this cannot be proved.

The serious side-effects of EPO are that when an athlete later rests and his circulation, and therefore his heart, slows, the thickening of the blood because of the increased red cells can have fatal effects. It is a risk, it seems, that is still seen to be worth taking.

This season started badly when the well-respected Cofidis team in France were placed under investigation by police after the discovery of drugs at riders’ and masseurs’ homes. The team, as a group, have been exonerated, but charges have been laid against individual riders and helpers and have resulted in the French rider, Philippe Gaumont, admitting to the use of EPO.

The sport continues its fight against cheats and has introduced more and more tests and controls. It has forced riders to keep detailed health dossiers and record their bodily fluid levels, being obliged, if asked, to give a good reason for any violent changes, such as an unusually high red blood-cell count.

In a sport that demands such a high performance from its athletes on almost a daily basis, doctors are part of the lives of the performers. Injury and sickness must be combated to meet the demands of the multi-million pound sponsors who expect results on a regular basis. Young riders are vulnerable in the dark world of unscrupulous dealers and masseurs to whom the riders turn if the results are not coming.

Italy, where riders from many nations go to learn their trade, is perhaps the most demanding of its performers and there is little doubt that drug use is still rife there, though the authorities are working hard to stamp it out.

All of Pantani’s victories were confirmed only after he had successfully passed the anti-doping controls of the day. Even so, he was stopped from completing the 1999 Giro d’Italia when certain of victory because of a high haematocrit level.

In 2000 he was charged under new Italian legislation with sporting fraud and given a three-month suspended prison sentence, the first custodial sentence imposed on an Italian athlete from any sport, but this was later successfully appealed against. Two years earlier he had been the toast of France after he won the Tour de France in the wake of the Festina doping scandal, when the complete French team had been thrown out after admitting that they had an organised doping programme.

With the Tour only five years away from its centenary and in danger of ending altogether, the organisers relied heavily on Pantani, who was in a different team, to hand the race back its credibility. He did, adding this win to that of the Giro d’Italia three weeks earlier, becoming only the seventh cyclist to do the double. In later years, the same Tour organisers turned on him by not allowing him to ride in the event because of his links to the use of drugs. He felt that organisers, officials and the Italian judiciary were out to prove his performances were not what they seemed.

Walt Disney would have paid millions to have created a cartoon character with the features and habits of Pantani. He was hardly larger than life at barely five feet and weighing in at less then eight stones, but when seated on his small, custom-built bicycle, he was the fastest and most colourful mountain climber in the world.

He should have headed into retirement a contented man who had made millions of people happy. Instead he died a lonely and broken person in a hotel room, believing that the world had turned against him, and surrounded by prescription drugs. ‘A tragic genius,’ was how the great Spanish rider, Miguel Indurain, described Pantani. ‘Many may have achieved more, but no one got more people hooked on the sport.’

 

 

27 MAY 2004

INJURY BRINGS MY ETAPE CHALLENGE TO END OF THE ROAD

Brendan Gallagher

Back in January – when I was still planning, plotting and dreaming – it seemed like the perfect destination. A week in La Manga in May to train like never before and lay the foundations for an assault on L’Etape du Tour, the 238-km challenge leg of this year’s Tour de France, the toughest in history, with its six major climbs between Limoges and St-Flour.

Impatient to get cracking, I even sneaked out to the sports resort near Murcia for a week’s holiday in early April, straight after rugby’s Six Nations Championship, and put in seven days of between 30 and 50 miles of quality riding. This was new territory for my body and I was beginning to feel the impossible could happen and I stood a fighting chance of finishing L’Etape.

Then disaster: a horribly painful pulled groin on my return and a month of torturous inactivity just when I should have been racking up the miles. Soon it was time to visit La Manga again, but instead of upping the daily mileage to 60 or even 80 miles, hours of treatment and rehab awaited.

First came two strokes of luck. La Manga was, that very week, opening a £14 million spa and fitness centre with every conceivable facility, including a state-of-the-art gym and a brilliant Thalasso spa pool with a selection of power jets that can be directed to the precise point of maximum pain.

Second, it was my good fortune that the resort now employs Jose Ruiz Espinos, who, at just 25, is one of the most highly regarded physiotherapists in Spain and treats the world’s top footballers, including David Beckham and Luis Figo, when they visit. Jose is a trained osteopath, sports massage therapist and physiotherapist, and disdains the use of anything electronic, such as ultrasound. The top surgeons in Spain often request that he sits in on their operations on sports stars so that he can assess ligament, tendon and muscle damage and plan the patient’s rehab accordingly.

But then the bad news. Jose treated me for four days and immediately diagnosed a nasty spasm of the large iliopsoas muscle which runs under the stomach from hip to pubic bone. Everything connected to the muscle was tight and uncomfortable. No wonder my hamstrings, tendons and adductors were regularly going twang. It could be treated but it would take between two and six months to resolve. It could not be rushed. The condition can become chronic and there are no short cuts.

Jose worked like a demon, almost splitting me in two to stretch the offending muscle. But even he can’t work miracles, and, in the short term, he contented himself with easing the acute pain.

The last day of my ‘training’ visit dawned and gradually the noon heat gave away to a perfect early summer’s evening. I was determined not to bow out on the treatment table – I would sulk all summer otherwise – so I munched a handful of painkillers with lunch and planned one last hurrah. Jose said a gentle ride on the flat should do no further damage.

I paced around all afternoon feeling sick with nerves. Was I up for this or what? L’Etape had driven me half insane. All through the miserable winter months, I had battled through rain, frost and wind without so much as a muscle tweak or a sniffle. And now the long summer nights and champagne mornings were here, my body had deserted me. These should have been the good times. Blooming bike race.

There had been a few nightmares along the way. One icy morning, my back wheel suddenly shredded and I finished in a flooded countryside ditch, a rude wake-up call followed by a chastening four-mile walk home. On my earlier visit to La Manga, I had nearly expired on a 1,100-foot hill climb with Geoff Cox, who runs the local cycle hire shop, though I was proud to crest it with plenty to spare a couple of days later. Generally, though, L’Etape spelt pain and anguish.

Actually, it’s a love-hate thing. Occasionally, I would shout for joy on those crisp winter morning spins around my local lanes and there is little to compare with lazing in a hot bath afterwards. It was brilliant to feel healthy and alive. There had been many magical moments and the odd mystery as well. At approximately 8 a.m. on Sunday 15 February, while out for an early spin, I witnessed an elderly lady apparently laying a wreath in the corner of a ploughed field and then playing a lament on the bagpipes – beautifully, as it happens. It seemed intimate and personal so I didn’t linger.

Back to La Manga and my swansong ride. The pain had dulled by tea time and, after a long stretching routine, I climbed gingerly on my bike and set out on my familiar ‘Breakfast Run’, a 38-km round-trip to the seaside resort of Los Alcazares. Flat, fast, bleak and desolate but always beautiful. I knew every roadside pothole and derelict medieval windmill. I was almost part of the scenery – farm labourers and bus drivers had started to nod in recognition or give a friendly thumbs-up. Just a month earlier, before injury struck, I used to polish off this run before breakfast as a warm-up for a long day’s training. Halcyon days. Where did it all go wrong?

I didn’t care any more. It was all over, yet I felt strangely exhilarated. I had given every last ounce since early January but I knew this was the end of the road. I coasted down the long downhill stretch towards shimmering Mar Menor lagoon and quickly built up speed as I flicked up through the gears.

The adrenalin was pumping and an angry surge of power rocked my body. I ripped my helmet off – the safety gurus can forgive me just this once – and relished the feeling of freedom and the sharpening wind on my face. I swung left at the third roundabout outside Los Belones and headed off down the lonely coast road that had become my second home, picking my way through the villages of Los Nietos, Estrella del Mar, Los Urrutias, Punta Brava and the imposing rocky outcrop of El Carmol.

I was flying and it all seemed so effortless. I rode on in disbelief, waiting for the breathlessness and heavy legs to kick in. But they didn’t. I hunkered down into the racing position, which I had grown to hate, and felt unusually comfortable as I pounded along the desolate straights with real pleasure. I sprinted hard, time and time again, but still my breath remained steady, though I was beginning to sweat buckets. Much sooner than seemed possible, I made the big right turn towards Los Alcazares and headed for the sanctuary of the Club Nautico and a reviving, ice-cold Coca-Cola. Incredibly, inexplicably, frustratingly and yet joyously, I had taken a full eight minutes off my personal best for the outward leg. Only when I tried briefly to dismount did reality intervene. Somebody was trying to drive a machete into my left groin, or so it felt.

It didn’t matter. I was on a high and was not going to be denied my small moment of triumph. I set out on the return leg – as usual into a strong headwind – and still felt fantastic. I blasted my way back home and sank into a warm bath. I could scarcely climb out of bed with pain the next morning, but what the hell. The feelgood factor had been restored.

Hopelessly ill-prepared and short of time, I had lost the battle. In fact, I had been routed and humiliated, at least in my own eyes, but privately, this cycling novice has declared war on L’Etape du Tour. It has become personal. Next year, God willing, I shall return and hostilities will recommence.

 

 

19 JULY 2004

A CIRCUS ON TWO WHEELS OR FOUR

Brendan Gallagher

A strange thing happened the other morning as we were driving into St Flour to blag a copy of L’Equipe and a croissant in the Tour village. To be fair, we had been invited and the intention was also to meet a few riders who habitually go scavenging for free nosh themselves. Journalists and sportsmen often share the same thoughts – it’s just their bodies that differ.

Anyway, we were speeding along a deserted back street when I spotted a youthful-looking cyclist wearing a yellow shirt and messing about with his mates. One minute he was standing up on the pedals, no hands, yawning expansively, the next he made an imaginary pillow with his hands and mimicked the need for more sleep. Flash git.

However, a second glance confirmed the startling fact that it was the yellow jersey, worn by France’s new favourite son, Thomas Voeckler, pedalling to the start from his team hotel. We wound the window down as Voeckler – 25 years old despite his schoolboy looks – rode along companionably.

‘Comment ça va, Thomas?’

‘Ça va bien, merci, monsieur,’ replied young Thomas cheerfully.

‘How’s the form?’

‘A little tired, but thanks for asking. It was a tough day yesterday. Hopefully I can keep the yellow for one more day. I am enjoying the experience. Take care. Have a nice day.’

In cricket terms, our little encounter was the equivalent of throwing a few balls to Michael Vaughan at Lord’s ten minutes before he opens for England against West Indies. That’s the great irony, and the enduring appeal, of the Tour de France. The world’s biggest annual sporting event is also the most free-booting, laidback and accessible. Everybody is encouraged to feel a part of the travelling roadshow and to contribute to the associated madness.

‘Riding the route’ is the biggest buzz of all. If you wangle the right accreditation you can drive the entire Tour route, sometimes just minutes ahead of the peloton. The trick is to park about 50 yards in front of the start line and then rev up and disappear in a cloud of dust as late as possible before the departure time.

The problem is that there are 4,000 accredited Tour and media cars and the subsequent carve-up is pure Le Mans with a dash of Keystone Cops. The unofficial rally provides hours of entertainment for the monumental crowds – upwards of 1.3 million yesterday – who line the route.

The ride can be the stuff of dreams, especially on the quieter sections of the Pyrenees we experienced on Saturday. World-beating countryside, no oncoming traffic, policemen smiling and occasionally saluting as you pass, people cheering and waving just in case you are somebody important. Or perhaps they are just happy.

But all good things come to an end and eventually you hit the ‘junk train’ – scores of small lorries, vans, quad bikes and the like distributing the Tour sponsors’ goods. The 20-foot-high Grand Mère coffee pot, painted a garish red, is my favourite or, more accurately, my least hated.

You crawl along behind the pot and start examining the crowd. On closer acquaintance, large sections appear to be on mind-altering drugs or, dare one mention it, the French just can’t take their drink any more. They dress up like the Brits going to a Headingley Test but with even less taste, play dare with the oncoming traffic, ride horses alongside the peloton, climb telegraph posts and throw water bottles at press cars and generally contribute magnificently to the madness.

Eventually you pull over at the finish and much later still, the stage done and dusted, you head for a distant B&B along an obscure mountain road. You finally relax and start planning the evening meal. But wait, what’s that around the corner ahead of you glinting in the setting sun? It looks like a massive coffee pot. Surely not?

You can rant and rave or simply take heed of the splendid Voeckler. Take care and have a nice day.

 

 

26 JULY 2004

ARMSTRONG WINS HEARTS WITH HISTORIC TRIUMPH

Phil Liggett in Paris

In October 1996, Lance Armstrong sent out a press release announcing that he had testicular cancer in a very advanced stage, and that he would fight it with the same spirit he had shown when he became cycling’s youngest world champion three years earlier.

Yesterday, on the Champs-Elysées on a perfect summer’s afternoon in Paris, the Texan saluted a huge crowd as he became the first man to win the Tour de France six times. He compounded his feat by doing it in six successive years.

Since 1903 only five riders have managed to win the Tour five times and, in moving into his own exclusive club, Armstrong has won the hearts of both the Americans and the perhaps more cynical French.

After stepping down from the podium, a hastily erected covered lorry trailer pulled across the Champs-Elysées moments after Belgian Tom Boonen had won the final stage from Montereau, he smiled. That was something the American rarely does in the heat of battle, but now he smiled and said: ‘It’s special to stand on the most famous boulevard in the world and have your own country’s national anthem played six times in six years.’

Armstrong, who at 32 is the second-oldest post-War winner, triumphed with ease. Having looked fallible for much of last year’s event, this time the man from Austin, Texas, was always in control. His winning margin was a massive 6 m 19 s over German champion Andreas Kloden and 6 m 40 s ahead of Italian Ivan Basso.

Armstrong’s secret is that he races to win only one event per year, while the others perform around the world. Instead, he studies the route and then rides all the sections he sees as strategic points. He then learns them by heart, and his stage win at Villard de Lans came because he remembered the sharp turns into the finish there.

His ability has never been in doubt and he spends long hours perfecting his racing equipment, hand-picking his team, all of whom finished the three-week race, and above all looking after his body, which is tuned to winning the Tour de France in July. Calories taken in must equal calories given out.

He becomes annoyed and animated when people accuse him of taking drugs and at no time has there ever been any proof of this. He is offended by comments such as those made by Greg LeMond, the American who won the event three times. ‘I’m sorry and disappointed about what Greg has been saying,’ he said. ‘If we are all drugged then why is it that Greg still holds the record for the fastest time trial, done back in 1989?

‘Sure, I do have fun and I do prepare well, but then I love my job and I love my team,’ said Armstrong, who celebrated his win with actors Robin Williams and Will Smith, and his girlfriend, the rock star Sheryl Crow. He also took a congratulatory phone call from President Bush after leaving the podium.

Armstrong could be said to have come of age in the Tour de France on Saturday, when he won his 21st stage since first taking part in 1993. At the same time, he rubbed salt into the wounds of his rivals, who arrived in Paris broken and many minutes behind this most remarkable champion.

 

 

26 JULY 2004

LEADER

TOUR DE FORCE

It is the magnitude of his victory that one marvels at: the achievement of, the mastery of the thing. The Tour de France is one of the most gruelling of sporting events. To ride 120 miles at speed is beyond most of us. To repeat the task day after day is awesome. Many professional cyclists aim simply to complete the course. To win is magnificent. To win six times in a row, as American Lance Armstrong has done, stands at the very edge of human accomplishment.

It is hard to think of a precedent. While all sports have their legendary figures, many of them are little noticed outside their own countries. Don Bradman may have done mighty deeds. But, beyond the Commonwealth, his feats are no better known than are, say, César Rincón’s four consecutive triumphs at the Madrid bullring in 1991 outside the Hispanophone world.

Armstrong’s singular achievement has been to universalise his sport. Until very recently, the Tour de France was largely the preserve of French, Belgian and Italian cyclists. But Armstrong has become a global figure, showing such determination and single-mindedness (he very rarely competes in other races, for example) as to win even the grudging respect of the host nation. Like his namesake and countryman Neil Armstrong, he has marked a milestone for all mankind.

 

 

5 AUGUST 2004

END OF THE ROAD FOR MILLAR AFTER BAN

Brendan Gallagher

David Millar, Britain’s top road cyclist, may be facing the end of his career following his admission that he took the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO). Yesterday, British authorities banned him for two years and stripped him of his world time-trial championship after his admission to French police last month.

Millar was set to become a household name with the strong possibility of winning two Olympic gold medals in Athens – in the individual time trial and the 4-km team pursuit – but is now left wondering whether to quit the sport altogether.

The Scot, who took the world title in Hamilton, Ontario, last October, has no right of appeal to the British Cycling Federation but may appeal independently to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Ahead of yesterday’s decision there had been fears of a life ban so Millar, 27, and his management team may decide to bite the bullet.

Millar has indicated recently that he would be keen to work with the British cycling authorities, addressing young cyclists on the pitfalls of becoming part of the doping culture which exists in road racing. He first admitted his guilt to a French judge, Richard Pallain, on 1 July this year, after two syringes containing traces of EPO were found in his Biarritz home during a police raid. The Scot told Pallain that he had taken it on three separate occasions, an admission he repeated to police on 20 July.

‘I had always dreamed of becoming a world champion,’ Millar said. ‘I had reached that aim but I had cheated. I took EPO when I was in Manchester and the two syringes found at my home were those I injected myself with in Manchester. I drugged myself because I was a prisoner of fame and money. I believe that those two syringes were the witnesses of how ashamed I felt to have used drugs. I am not proud to have drugged myself; I am not happy about it. I was a prisoner of the person I had become.’

Millar told the police he had been introduced to EPO by a Cofidis team-mate before the 2001 Tour of Spain. ‘I took EPO because I knew the Cofidis team were going to Spain for the Vuelta on the condition that I would do it and get a result. I could feel the pressure,’ said Millar, who has subsequently been sacked by the team. Prior to that, Millar had been struggling with injuries, glandular fever and problems in his personal life.

 

 

25 JULY 2005

ARMSTRONG DEPARTS A TRUE CHAMPION

Phil Liggett in Paris

Lance Armstrong dodged the slippery streets of Paris yesterday to claim his seventh victory in the Tour de France in seven straight years. He stepped off the winner’s podium and into retirement with no regrets at leaving the sport he has often referred to as ‘the greatest in the world’.

Afterwards, he spoke movingly about the race, which now enters a new era without him. Armstrong paid tribute to Ivan Basso, the Italian rider who was second and is a close friend. ‘He is the Tour’s future,’ said Armstrong. He nominated Jan Ullrich, who was third and has three times finished second to Armstrong, as ‘my greatest competitor’. Then, in a pointed message to the journalists who have worked overtime to attempt to prove that he has won his races by using drugs, he also had a direct message: ‘To the cynics and sceptics, I say I am sorry that they can’t live a dream, or believe in miracles, as there are no secrets to my success. Vive le Tour.’

Armstrong confirmed his win over Basso by 4 m 40 s in Saturday’s time trial at St Etienne, which he took by 23 seconds, from Ullrich. The German rider had returned to the form which saw him almost beat Armstrong in 2003. ‘If Jan had brought this form to the start of the Tour that he has shown at the end, I would have been in trouble,’ Armstrong admitted.

After three weeks and more than 2,200 miles, Armstrong said the race could not get better for him or his Discovery team. They won four of the daily stages, have the best young rider in newcomer Yaroslav Popovych, and, in all, Armstrong won his 83rd yellow jersey to move into second place behind Eddy Merckx in the winner’s list.

The time-trial victory before the long journey to Corbeil Essonnes for yesterday’s stage was special for Armstrong after his three children arrived with his mother, who nursed him through his testicular cancer, and his rock star girlfriend, Sheryl Crow. In the car behind him during the race was Senator John Kerry, who was the Democratic candidate in last year’s Presidential election.

‘I hope that Lance goes into politics and chooses the right party,’ Senator Kerry said. ‘He has focus, strategic ability, is not afraid to make decisions and is intelligent. His sporting accomplishment is one of the greatest of all times and he’s a great ambassador to his country. His future is limitless.’

 

 

31 JULY 2005

ARMSTRONG IS GREAT, BUT NOT FOR CYCLING

Sir,

I would take issue with your placing Lance Armstrong above such great cyclists as Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, Miguel Indurain and Eddy Merckx, who each won the Tour de France ‘only’ five times (Sport, 24 July).

Armstrong only ever trained and raced for that yearly exclusive win in the Tour and never had to wrack his body through the anguish of a full year’s racing programme.

Merckx, in particular, won seemingly everything, everywhere, all year and still had sufficient strength to power off the front of the entire peloton alone, riding away to win on his own by a massive margin, something Armstrong has never done.

Armstrong has definitely earned his place among such other inspirational names as Douglas Bader and Simon Weston, by being a beacon of strength and providing massive hope for all cancer sufferers. For this reason alone his name should be feted.

Kevin N Ward,

Bromsgrove, Worcestershire

 

 

1 JULY 2006

LEADING RIDERS SENT HOME OVER DRUGS RAID LINKS

Phil Liggett in Strasbourg

Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich and Francisco Mancebo, the three outstanding favourites to win the Tour de France when it starts here today, were sent home yesterday after their names were linked to a drugs syndicate in Spain.

Guilty by implication rather than any solid proof, the three riders have all denied any link with the drugs raid five weeks ago which was known to Spanish police as Operación Puerto. Their names appear on an official list sent to the Tour organisers late on Wednesday.

Spanish police investigating a doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes – accused of trafficking in all types of performance-enhancing drugs, including growth hormones and the blood booster, EPO – released the list of up to 58 names of riders accused of visiting his premises in Madrid. Christian Prudhomme, the deputy Tour director, said: ‘We will fight doping all the way. Cycling is a wonderful sport, but doping is our enemy.’

David Millar, of Britain, back after a two-year ban for using EPO in June 2003, said: ‘I feel ashamed, but I lied and cheated. Now I want everyone to know I am riding this race clean.’

 

 

25 JULY 2006

LANDIS EMERGES AS THE TRUE KING OF PAIN

Andrew Baker

Adversity attends every thrust on the pedal for the rider in the Tour de France. The awful and awesome history of the great race is speckled with the blood of the fallen and remounted, shot through with the pain of illness, exhaustion and over-medication.

Lance Armstrong beat cancer to become a multiple victor, and his absence this year might have robbed the race of romance. But his compatriot and successor, Floyd Landis, also has a tale to tell of suffering surmounted.

Landis confirmed his triumph on the Champs-Elysées on Sunday, at the head of his Phonak team. It was the end of a dramatic, unpredictable contest, during which the eventual winner had suffered staggering setbacks and demonstrated immense resolve to overcome them.

But then Landis needs determination every time he throws a leg across his bike. It has to be the right leg: he cannot board a bike with his left. He walks with a limp, cannot cross his right leg over his left when seated, and plans to undergo hip replacement surgery in the autumn, before – he hopes – resuming his career. The problem is medically defined as advanced osteocronosis with superimposed osteoarthritis. In layman’s terms, the ball of his right hip is deteriorating because the blood supply to it is restricted by scar tissue. His right leg is two inches shorter than his left. All of this is the result of a training crash in 2002, when he fractured the hip.

If that seems mundane, this is what it feels like: ‘It’s bad, it’s grinding, it’s bone on bone,’ Landis told the New York Times during this year’s Tour. ‘Sometimes it’s a sharp pain. When I pedal and walk, it comes and goes, but mostly it’s an ache, like an arthritis pain. It aches down my leg into my knee. The morning is the best time. It doesn’t hurt too much. But when I walk it hurts, when I ride it hurts. Most of the time it doesn’t keep me awake, but there are nights when it does.’

Millions of people all over the world deal with arthritic pain in their daily lives and, with courage and medicinal help, try to ensure that it does not interfere too much with their routines. But in the routine of a top cyclist pain is a constant. Every competitor during the Tour wakes with the certainty that before the day is out he will be in agony. Landis has had to live with the waking knowledge that for him, the pain will be worse than for all the others.

With the hip replacement operation scheduled for the autumn, he might have decided to skip this year’s Tour and hope for a pain-free attempt next year. But two considerations made him press on. The first is that the outcome of major surgery is never predictable. Landis, now 30, may go on to enjoy a successful postoperative career. On the other hand, he may never be able to ride a bike in competition again.

Furthermore, the retirement of Armstrong, for whom he had ridden shotgun on previous Tours, left a gap for a successor. And when the field was further depleted by the enforced withdrawals of Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso after a Spanish doping investigation, it became clear that this was to be the most open Tour de France for years. For Floyd Landis, it was now or never.

Landis was raised in Farmersville, Pennsylvania, as a Mennonite, a member of a conservative Protestant community which discourages many manifestations of modern society, including – crucially for Landis – Lycra cycling shorts. So the teenaged Landis was obliged to take part in his early mountain-bike races wearing tracksuit bottoms. These failed to disguise his talent, and before long he was recruited into road racing and ultimately, in 2002, into Armstrong’s US Postal squad.

The streak of stubbornness needed to defy his upbringing was to serve Landis well on this year’s Tour. On the 16th stage he appeared on the point of collapse on the gruelling final climb up to La Toussuire, dropping ten minutes to his rivals over the final, agonising ten kilometres. Many observers scoffed, and the French sports newspaper L’Equipe crowed ‘Landis a craqué’.

But Landis knows more than most about cracks and how to repair them. The following day, with a breathtaking display of courage and determination, he sprinted away from the field with a long-distance counter-attack that cut his deficit to the leaders to 30 seconds, broke their resolve and set up his final victory.

Time, and the surgeons’ skill, will tell whether or not Landis will return to defend his title next year. Every year, the best climber on the Tour is awarded the title of King of the Mountains. Landis has been invested, in perpetuity, as the king of pain.

 

 

28 JULY 2006

THE QUESTION IS WHY, WHEN HE KNEW HE’D BE CAUGHT

Phil Liggett

My first reaction to the news that Floyd Landis had returned a positive test during the 17th stage of the Tour de France between St Jean de Maurienne and Morzine was one of extreme sadness, and the huge question: ‘Why?’

In Strasbourg at the grand départ, the Tour had seemingly handled the sending home of pre-race favourites Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Francisco Mancebo, among others, well, and the stage was set for ‘the cleanest Tour in years’.

The organisers had sent out a clear message that dopers would not be tolerated, even though those sent away left protesting their innocence, and still do. This year’s Tour seemed ‘clean’ as riders had good days and bad, something which doesn’t always happen if the drugs are kicking in. Landis himself collapsed on stage 16 to La Toussuire in the Alps and then, rehydrated overnight, won the fateful stage 17 to Morzine by almost six minutes. Even seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong was moved to call Landis at his hotel that night and congratulate him at ‘having big balls’ to do what he had done after such a defeat 24 hours earlier.

There are many questions to be answered before Landis is condemned. The first is: why win the stage knowing that the winner is automatically drugs-tested and when finding unusual testosterone levels in a testing laboratory is an easy thing to do? Landis would have also been tested at least three times previously as race leader, too, and these presumably have been negative, as only stage 17 is under discussion.

The quiet but determined American was genuinely happy when he finished at Morzine. He arrived punching the air. Landis has never failed a drugs test in his career and this season was enjoying his best run of victories yet, all of which would have carried compulsory drugs tests. His wins in America and France since February have all been achieved despite a dying femur bone which will mean a replacement hip soon. As winner of the Tour de France he could have expected annual earnings in the multimillion pound bracket, even though there is the risk that his hip operation might mean he never races at the same level again.

They say that drugs have been in cycling for more than 100 years. At first it was simply alcohol – a tot of brandy did wonders on a long climb in adverse weather. Then came amphetamines, which were found in Briton Tom Simpson when he died on Mont Ventoux during the Tour in 1967. Now, with the help of unscrupulous medical experts, growth hormones, steroids and blood changing is available for those who can afford it. But the doping agencies, International Cycling Union and the Tour de France all agree that drugs must be stamped out.

The Tour de France organisers have been ‘saddened’ by yesterday’s revelations, but the second test has still to confirm the first. There is a possibility that Landis has over-produced testosterone and, if so, I hope he will be completely vindicated. If, however, he is guilty, then he will lose the Tour de France, receive a life ban at the Olympics, a two-year ban from the sport and a four-year ban from riding on a Pro Tour team. In short, he will never race again.

 

 

5 OCTOBER 2006

WHY PAIN WAS NEVER A BARRIER FOR FAST EDDY

Brendan Gallagher

He looked like a young Elvis Presley, rode like a runaway steam engine and, God bless him, enraged the French year after year by winning all their big races and grinding their high-profile superstars into the dust.

Lance Armstrong may have earned the worldwide headlines, notoriety and small fortune, but the Belgian with the swarthy Mediterranean looks remains cycling’s non pareil, indeed one of sport’s legendary figures. Such was his voracious appetite for devouring opponents and spitting them out on the roadside that Eddy Merckx became known as ‘The Cannibal’ and the nickname has stuck.

There were 525 wins in his 1,582 career races, a 33 per cent success rate and on average a win every week for ten years. Five Tour de France titles, a record 96 days in the yellow jersey and 34 stage wins. Five titles in the Giro d’Italia and 24 stage wins. Seven Milan–San Remo Classics, three world championships, three Paris–Roubaix . . . There just isn’t space to list his honours. And all this despite a chronic back condition that should have left him on a walking stick for the rest of his life.

Back in 1969 – soon after his first sensational Tour de France title when, uniquely, he won the yellow jersey, green jersey (sprints) and the polka-dotted jersey (mountains) – Merckx was involved in an horrific crash. He was being paced by a motorbike in a ‘derny’ race and a cyclist fell in front of Merckx’s pacer, who was killed instantly. Merckx suffered bad concussion, cracked a vertebra low in his back and his pelvis shifted horribly. It should have been the end of his career, but Merckx begged to differ.

‘Cyclists live with pain; if you can’t handle it you will win nothing,’ he told me. ‘If you don’t want to suffer, take up another sport. Winning big Tours and stage races is often about pain management. When the terrible accident occurred at least I escaped with my life. I was the lucky one, that was my reaction. I was positive and having worked so hard to succeed in cycling I was determined not to give up.

‘I was only young, and the injuries were to haunt me for the rest of my career, but I got through. I had to adjust my position on the saddle and I was always needing massages and manipulation. But I got through. In the end I grew philosophical. I could still turn the pedals, the bike still went quick. Not as quick, but still very quick. The only difference between me and my opponents was that I started most races in pain, they hit the wall three-quarters through or at the top of a big climb.

‘I began to use it to my advantage. Being in pain from the start made me sharp and on edge and well motivated. I had no fear of what lay ahead. I was already suffering. My opponents had all that to “look forward” to, but they didn’t know when it would ambush them in the race.

‘Sometimes, also, it was very bad and it was as if I raced so fast just to get the race over so I could stretch out on the floor or the bed to get comfortable. The mind can overcome great setbacks and make a person very strong.’

Merckx – now 61, always approachable on the circuit and notably lacking the preening ego of many, far inferior, ex-riders – has always enjoyed hero status in Britain. His all-out aggression and panache – termed ‘merckxismo’ by the French media – are understandably revered, but his staunch friendship and support of Britain’s own cycling hero, Tom Simpson, is also recalled.

Merckx and Simpson were team-mates for two years at Peugeot BP before Simpson’s death on Mont Ventoux on the Tour de France in 1967. The post-mortem indicated that the use of amphetamines could have contributed to the dehydration which saw him cycle into unconsciousness in the 55-degree heat of that stark Provençal mountain. Merckx was the ambitious tyro, Simpson the seasoned pro and former world champion. Simpson was re-motivated by his young room-mate’s energy and drive; Merckx soaked up sundry lessons from the Brit who had learnt everything the hard way, making his way in a foreign country.

‘He was very British and a gentleman but he also had that Continental love of just racing and getting on a bike. He was one of the British trailblazers but took to it very quickly. He was a complete natural. He was a very considerable star, but I am not sure if British sports people realised exactly how big.

‘I was shattered when he collapsed and died on Ventoux that dreadful day, 13 July. We all remember the date. Tom was always so strong and spirited, very brave. If he could die on a climb we could all die in a race some day. I made a point of getting over to Britain for his funeral. Because the Tour was continuing and I was not racing I was able to attend and perhaps represent those who couldn’t get across. It was an emotional day. I was very proud to know Tom Simpson.’

He added: ‘When the young pros ask about the old days they are always curious to know about the man whose memorial is high on Ventoux. I tell them all I know. It was an older brother-kid brother relationship. It must have been three years after his death, yes 1970, when we rode back over the mountain during the Tour and the memorial his family erected was up by then. I was in the lead and it felt natural to doff my cap and make the sign of the cross.’

Merckx is still cycling these days, an operation two years ago to cure a long-standing stomach problem giving him a new lease of life. He has been logging up the miles and has lost over three stones in weight. His enthusiasm for the sport seems undiminished despite the battering it has received this summer in the wake of the Landis affair and the banning, before the Tour, of Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich because of their alleged connections with a doping ring.

‘Cycling sometimes gets a bad press, but it always comes through; in fact I am very optimistic at present,’ says Merckx. ‘Its dope testing is the most severe and frequent in the world, much more than any other sport. No wonder we catch people. Cycling has identified many culprits and they have been dealt with. Other sports lag behind and perhaps they have tough days ahead.

‘Cycling is a sport of the people. How many people in the world have never been on a bike? Not many. It always comes through and always will. It is unstoppable. What we must do is to make sure it is well managed and policed. After that it has a dynamic of its own. I have no worries for cycling. It remains a great spectacle and a passion for many.’

 

 

27 FEBRUARY 2007

ULLRICH RIDES OFF PROTESTING HIS INNOCENCE

Brendan Gallagher

Jan Ullrich went into cycling as an angry teenager with attitude, and he quit the sport yesterday a bitter man. It has been a rough but exhilarating ride, often shrouded in controversy – not unlike the sport at which he excelled.

The second-greatest cycling talent of his generation, it was his extreme misfortune to be a contemporary of Lance Armstrong. Ullrich has lived much of a considerable sporting life in the shade, and ends it under a dark cloud. Announcing his retirement, Ullrich protested angrily that he had never cheated during his long career, and the fall-out of last year’s extraordinary Tour de France continued.

The powerful German was withdrawn by his T-Mobile team from the Tour the day before it started in Strasbourg, after his name was linked with ‘Operación Puerto’ in Spain. Ullrich was allegedly one of around 200 individuals from a cross-section of professional sports – although only the names of cyclists were leaked – being advised by a Spanish doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes, who allegedly ran a blood-doping ring.

Last May, Spain’s Civil Guard raided addresses associated with Fuentes and found anabolic steroids, blood transfusion equipment and dozens of bags of frozen blood, labelled with the names of the 200 athletes.

After being thrown off the Tour, Ullrich was sacked by T-Moblie and has been charged with sports fraud in Bonn, though he has yet to be charged with a specific doping offence. Earlier this month he gave a DNA sample for comparison with the blood found in Spain.

‘I still don’t understand why I was not allowed to compete in the Tour last year,’ Ullrich insisted yesterday. ‘My life as a cyclist collapsed that day. I’ve been painted as a criminal, while I’ve done nothing wrong. I never once cheated in my cycling career. At the start of this whole affair it was difficult to take, now it’s just sad. I will continue my involvement in cycling. I couldn’t live without cycling. It’s my passion and my life,’ said Ullrich, who is to act as an adviser to the small Austrian Volksbank team.

Thus ends a riding career in which he won the Tour de France once and finished runner-up on five occasions. He was fourth in 2004 and third in 2005, won the world time-trial championship twice and the Olympic road race in Sydney in 2000.

For Ullrich it all started in Rostock, in the then East Germany, where he was born into poverty in December 1973. His father left home when Ullrich was three and he never forgave him – an experience he shares with Armstrong.

Ullrich was identified as an outstanding talent and trained under the Communist system. Representing the reunified Germany, he was amateur world champion in 1993 – the same year that Armstrong took the world professional crown – and announced his arrival as a Tour de France rider in 1996 when he finished runner-up on debut to the Dane Bjarne Riis.

When Ullrich won the Tour the following year, it appeared to be the start of a long reign – but, atypically, he cracked on the massive Galibier climb the following year and finished second to Marco Pantani. He missed the Tour in 1999 through injury, atoned by winning the Tour of Spain, but when he returned to the Tour de France in 2000, Armstrong was in full flow.

Ullrich, having suffered in his early years in a bankrupt Communist state, was inclined to enjoy the fruits of capitalist success to excess, and in 2002 was convicted of drink-driving and using amphetamines. He fought a constant weight problem, and often used the first week to ride himself back to full fitness deep in the peloton. Armstrong would often chide Ullrich for his lack of discipline and inability to turn up race-fit, but he always acknowledged the German as his most dangerous rival, a rider of extraordinary power and tempo on the flat and a survivor in the mountains.

Ullrich’s focus now is to clear his name. In contrast to his riding career, there can be no glory in defeat.

 

 

25 JUNE 2007

THE ALPS CERTAINLY TOOK MY BREATH AWAY

James Cracknell

The Tour de France may start with the opening Prologue on the streets of London on 7 July, but Le Tour really gets going in the Alps, as I can testify after being given the opportunity by the T-Mobile team to attempt one of the famous race’s most gruelling stages.

The 159 kilometres of stage nine start from Val d’Isère, but our plans for a room near the start-line were dashed as seemingly all the hotels were shut for the season changeover – when the ski room presumably readies itself to welcome hiking boots and bikes. However, nobody had told the weather it was the time to stop covering the slopes with snow and bathe them in glorious sunshine. Our route up the Col de l’Iseran, the mountain pass above Val d’Isère, was blocked with snow.

The last time the Tour crossed the Iseran, in 1996, terrible weather forced the riders into their cars and the climb was abandoned. As the same thing had happened to the professionals, what else could I do except get in the car and drive round the mountain? Until Roland, the German driver/mechanic/motivator of the T-Mobile team who was to be guiding/feeding/picking me up from a crumpled heap throughout the day, said: ‘It’s sunny, let’s give it a go, the snow might not be so bad.’

Between stages eight and nine there is the first rest day, and the riders will need every bit of down time they can get as this year’s Tour contains more hors categorie (beyond classification) and category-one climbs than any race since 1987. To empathise fully with the riders, I took a day off, but thought doing the previous eight stages was taking journalistic responsibility a step too far, especially as stage nine contained two hors and a category-one climb.

Let me put these Alps into perspective. Ben Nevis stands at 1,344 metres (4,406 feet). Val d’Isère is the start and is at 1,885 metres; from there the first 15 kilometres of the stage are uphill/mountain to the Col de l’Iseran, which, at 2,770 metres, is the second highest climb in the Tour’s history and, to be honest, no place to be cycling.

I cut the corners of the hairpins pretending I was leading the field up the mountain. Twenty minutes later the image in my head had changed – I’d been spat out the back of the peloton and was left struggling up on my own. Despite seeing Val d’Isère in the beautiful valley far below me I struggled to enjoy the view. My pulse was thumping behind my ears and my breathing was frantic as I struggled for oxygen. With each hairpin I hoped to see either the summit or a snowdrift.

For turn after turn I saw neither. I was cursing the course designer for starting the stage with such a steep climb and even more the accompanying guide which said the Iseran comes ‘too early in the stage to make any difference’. My legs disagreed. Eventually the summit came, but there was no celebration – I still had 144 kilometres of the stage left and was already exhausted. I headed down the other side, trying to enjoy the speed of the descent, the sunshine and the number of Alpine villages I passed through. Except I couldn’t, because I had a big physical and mental block – the Col du Galibier which lay ahead.

Before I got to the base of the Galibier I had to climb the Col du Telegraphe, a category-one climb up to the Fort du Telegraphe, built in 1896 but also part of the Maginot Line in 1940. I underestimated this climb. It was the hottest part of the day, I wasn’t in the cooler air at altitude and I hadn’t drunk enough water on the descent. I plodded my way up the hill to a sign pointing straight up the road – and up the mountain – which read Col du Galibier 17 km.

I had a 40-kilometre ride to the finish after the summit, but that was mostly downhill and I would worry about that later. Until this ride I’d never paid attention to percentage gradients; it wasn’t a factor that affected my rowing. The average gradient of the Galibier was 6.9 per cent. The first three kilometres seemed pretty flat, so my basic mathematics told me the average had to be made up elsewhere.

This was a different climb from the Iseran; the bends were sweeping, I couldn’t focus on one hairpin at a time, I could see hundreds of metres to the next bend and they were taking ages to arrive. The realisation of what the riders go through hit me, not the riders at the front, who seem to dance up the mountain, but those who have blown their legs out helping the team leader and have been left to struggle, or the sprinters who just want to survive the mountains. For them it isn’t a case of just finishing, they have to finish within a certain time limit – if they’re outside it their race is over. They’ve gone from racing the first week of the Tour to just trying to survive every day.

I’d run out of gears on the T-Mobile team bike so there was nothing for it but to push harder with the legs, and one line from the course guide kept popping into my head: ‘The Galibier rears up horribly for the final eight vertiginous kilometres.’ The trees had given way to grass and the grass to snow – surely I was near the top. I wanted nothing more than to get off and walk.

Four days earlier I was knocked out in a charity boxing match, but this time I wasn’t battling a 2½ st weight disadvantage but a 2,500-metre mountain and, given the choice, I’d take the punch every time. In the ring I had no choice – he hit me and down I went; against the Galibier I had to hurt myself to get to the top. Every push of the pedal was a matter of pride. I wanted to get to the top as quick as I could and the only person who could stop that happening was me, and psychologically that’s a tougher situation to be in.

The last kilometre is over a ten per cent gradient. The photographer jumped out of the van and ran past me to take a picture. I swore as he ran passed. How slow was I going? ‘Don’t worry, they do it to Lance!’

I appreciated the line but neither felt better nor believed him. But I could see the top. If I were watching on TV, by now I’d be yelling at the rider who had let the guy in front sprint away so close to the summit, but can now understand why he had no response. When your legs have gone, they’ve gone.

I stopped at the top, taking great pride looking back down the valley, but there will be none of that for the riders on 17 July – they will power over and race the last 40 kilometres to Briançon.

My descent was more leisurely and with five kilometres left a rider passed me. I must have been a great target. Decked out in T-Mobile’s unmistakable magenta with a matching van, he must have thought he was going to scalp one of their team testing the route. I tried to chase him down before the finish in the town centre; the mind was willing but unfortunately the legs had been left on the Galibier.

 

 

5 JULY 2007

ROCHE RECALLS HIS SUMMER OF SUCCESS

Brendan Gallagher

When you cast an objective historical eye over cycling’s pantheon, Stephen Roche, by his own admission, probably tops the second division – the best of the rest, as it were. His achievements in the Tour de France are praiseworthy but comparatively modest when set against those of Eddy Merckx, Italy’s Fausto Coppi, the legendary French riders Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault, and the all-conquering Americans, Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong.

But exactly 20 years ago, the dapper Dubliner did enjoy one remarkable season that eclipses anything achieved by the others (save for the incredible Merckx, who frankly seemed to be from another sporting planet altogether, and it is almost unfair to include him in any list containing mere mortals).

In 1987 Roche overcame his mutinous, largely Italian, team and the wrath of the Italian public, to win the gruelling, mountainous, three-week Tour of Italy before riding the canniest of races in the Tour de France to romp home in Paris as well. And, just when his cup was running over, Roche happily pitched up at the world championships in Austria to ride in support of his friend and compatriot Sean Kelly, the overwhelming favourite, and was so strong that he simply pedalled away from the field on the last lap of the race.

There is evident steel in those sparkling Irish eyes – now as well as then – and though he claims never to dwell on the past, Roche can become very animated when recalling his year of destiny. The memories burn bright.

‘Putting those three massive wins together was a minor miracle, frankly, and involved a good deal of luck, not to mention some bloody hard days in the saddle. I still can’t tell you exactly how it all happened, except to say that God must have been looking down on me and the talent that I do possess blossomed fully that summer.’

Roche admits: ‘It had been a disastrous winter. I had struggled the previous season with my left knee and went in for a serious operation which took a long while to come good. I had missed months and months of background training yet, come the spring, I felt incredibly fresh and strong. It makes you think, doesn’t it? Perhaps sometimes we overdo the training. Anyways, I was flying during the early season and hit the Giro [Tour of Italy] running, but there was a huge problem. My Italian team, Carrera, also included the current Giro champion, Roberto Visentini, and there was huge pressure to ensure another Italian triumph took place.’

Roche took the pink jersey – the equivalent of the leader’s maillot jaune in the Tour de France – early on but his colleagues, with one notable exception, declined to defend it for him. Eddy Schepers, a tough old Belgian pro who had learned his trade in service to the great Merckx and knew when a rider was being stitched up, rode his heart out for Roche and kept him competitive.

Eventually, however, the favoured Visentini was installed as race leader, at which point Roche produced the race of his life to destroy the Italian on the mountainous stage to Sappada, beating his colleague by eight minutes. Roche regained the pink jersey, which is just as well because without that kudos and protection he would probably have been sent home altogether, or fired.

For the remainder of the race Schepers and Scotland’s Robert Millar formed a protective blanket around Roche as Italian fans hurled abuse and spat mouthfuls of masticated rice in his direction. Victory was hard earned, but sweet.

Roche recalls: ‘I was very strong mentally going into the Tour de France, even if I started only 80 per cent fit physically after working so hard at the Giro. I had to box clever. Apart from the political issues within the team and their decision not to ride for me for much of the Giro, I doubted our ability as a team to defend the yellow jersey for a prolonged period.

‘We were a talented group individually but didn’t have the obvious team make-up to produce a Tour winner. I adopted a softly, softly approach, keeping out of trouble and saving my resources.’

Roche was true to his word, waiting until stage 19 to Villard de Lans in the mountains to make his move to claim the yellow jersey from François Bernard. He defended that stoutly on Alpe d’Huez, heroically at La Plagne – where he needed oxygen after his sensational effort – and applied the garnish at the crucial time trial in Dijon. There were extraordinary scenes as 250,000 delighted Dubliners lined the streets for his homecoming the following week, and it took the returning hero fully five hours to travel from the airport to the city centre.

Today, Roche divides his life between homes in Paris and Nice. He remains fit and trim and still hops on a bike at every opportunity. ‘I pile on the pounds if I slob around but I’m not prepared to deny myself the pleasures of the French table any more. So the compromise is I must get out there regularly and do a bit.’

He adds: ‘My cycling life has turned full circle. I’m now cycling again for the sheer pleasure and child-like fun of getting on a bike. In between times I became a club rider, dreamt the unthinkable dream of becoming a professional, travelled to France, worked hard, immersed myself in the culture, got my break and fulfilled my dream. Now I just like pottering around country lanes. Some days I feel brilliant. I’ve got my racing legs on, and I up the tempo. But most of the time I’m a 47-year-old ex-pro with dodgy knees, and I ride accordingly.

‘There have been some hard times and disappointments along the way. I had knee injuries which were very tough and demoralising – I lost the best part of five years in total – and it was a huge blow personally when the Fagor “Superteam” of largely British and Irish riders I helped put together fell apart in my absence, injured again in 1988. But when I look at my basket of achievement, as it were, it’s pretty full. I’m very content. Generally, I never look back but I am making an exception this summer.’

 

 

9 JULY 2007

LONDON PASSES TEST WITH FLYING COLOURS

James Cracknell

This was a huge weekend for London. Following the previous week’s terrorist attacks, the second anniversary of the bombings of 7 July 2005, had even more resonance. The capital had to prove it could put on a major sporting event in spite of the threats that exist today. But it wasn’t just one big event: there was Live Earth at Wembley, tennis at Wimbledon and the Prologue of the Tour de France around Westminster, Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace.

Afterwards, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, admitted they had been stretched, but the city had delivered. It had to, because there was another anniversary this weekend, one that will always be forgotten because of the 7/7 attacks – London beating Paris for the right to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Saturday was the first big test for the capital since we won the Games and it is ironic it was with France’s most cherished event.

The crowds – as we knew they would – turned out in huge numbers, over a million lining the 7.9-km course, and the conditions were perfect. All the day needed was a British winner.

Of the five British riders in this year’s Tour, two were genuine contenders: David Millar and Bradley Wiggins. In 2000 Millar became only the fourth Briton to wear the yellow jersey when he won the Prologue, and the Scot is fighting hard to re-establish himself after a doping ban. It’s always difficult for sportsmen to come back in at the same level after a ban, first because they were cheating to reach that level in the first place and, second, because the momentum of their career has been halted.

Wiggins had a real chance because the Prologue suits a rider who can get close to sprinting speeds and maintain them – typically a velodrome pursuiter, and they don’t come better than Wiggins, who is world and Olympic champion. The only question was whether it was too long for Wiggins – his Olympic record for the four-kilometre pursuit is 4 m 15 s. Saturday’s winning time was expected to be under nine minutes.

Wiggins may have been the emotional favourite racing in his home town, but Fabian Cancellara was the man most tipped to win. The Swiss won the Prologue in 2004 and is the current world time-trial champion.

I got a rider’s eye view of the course following Vladimir Gusev around. The Discovery Team rider rolled down the start ramp and took off; the car accelerated hard to catch up with him. The crowd was a wall of screaming noise flashing past and I couldn’t believe we hadn’t caught him up yet doing this speed. Then I looked out of the windscreen and realised that we had caught him up – it was just that he was going 60 km/h. Even the tight righthander at Parliament Square barely slowed him down as he lent the bike over an alarming amount considering the tiny contact area his tyres had with the Tarmac.

Just under eight kilometres sounds like a day off compared to the 3,570 kilometres the race covers, but nine minutes is a long time when you’re at near maximum heart-rate, trying to maintain technique, steer a tight line and forcing your legs to keep pushing when they’re screaming ‘no’. Gusev went through the line in an exhausting 9 m 15 s, the fastest time so far.

Things were hotting up. German Andreas Klöden set a blistering 9 m 3 s, which again questioned his decision to join the Astana team as a support rider to pre-race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov. Klöden came second overall in the Tour in 2004 and third in 2006, and could have been a team leader elsewhere.

Vinokourov, from Kazakhstan, produced an impressive 9 m 20 s for seventh place, but the day he wants to be wearing yellow is on the Champs-Elysées, not the Mall, and he looks to have the form and the team – which is inevitably known as ‘Team Borat’ (because of Vinokourov’s nationality) – to do it.

American George Hincapie, who supported Lance Armstrong in every one of his seven Tour de France wins, was desperate to improve on second place in last year’s Prologue, but could only just beat Discovery team-mate Gusev by two seconds.

At 5.49 p.m. Millar rolled off the top of the ramp. He was riding smoothly but at halfway was 11 seconds down and he ended up 20 seconds behind in 13th place, but afterwards insisted he was ‘going to win a stage’.

Wiggins started six minutes after Millar and you could hear the wave of noise from the crowd that travelled with him. There was a groan on the Mall when he was down on Klöden at halfway, but the noise grew and grew as he shot past Buckingham Palace and turned on to the Mall. He hadn’t closed the gap but it was an impressive performance and he finished a fraction of a second behind Hincapie.

Meanwhile, Cancellara was tearing up the course in the rainbow jersey of the world time-trial champion. More powerfully built than the lithe Wiggins, Cancellara was seven seconds up at the interval and sprinted through the finish line in an amazing 8 m 50 s – 13 seconds ahead of Klöden with Hincapie in third and Wiggins just behind in fourth. Maybe the double motivation for Cancellara of wanting to cement his reputation as the world’s best time-trialist and needing a new jersey after his luggage got lost at Heathrow was too strong to match.

 

 

14 JULY 2007

FRANCE ACCLAIMS THE HEROICS OF A LOSER WHO WON

Brendan Gallagher in Bourg-en-Bresse

It was not Mont Ventoux, nor was it 54 degrees. But it was 13 July and it was the Tour de France. Britain’s Olympic pursuit champion, Bradley Wiggins, flew the flag proudly for five hours and 190 kilometres yesterday and proved that just occasionally losers can sometimes be winners as well, especially on the Tour de France. One fancies that Tom Simpson would have been proud.

When Wiggins finally trailed in behind the peloton in Bourgen-Bresse yesterday he was greeted by a media scrum the like of which we had not witnessed before on this Tour. On the 40th anniversary of Simpson’s agonising death, the French public, romantic fools that they are, were desperately hoping for a defiant gesture from one of Britain’s five riders on Tour. They were not disappointed.

As he surveyed the scene – stage six winner Tom Boonen slipped past relatively unmolested – Wiggins insisted that his incredible solo break was not deliberately undertaken to commemorate Simpson’s anniversary, nor indeed his wife Cath’s birthday back home in Preston. But if Wiggins was called upon to appear in the latest revival of Mastermind tomorrow, his specialist subject would undoubtedly be the history of British road cycling since 1960. He is a world leader on the subject. And if he could have one wish every morning when we meet him in the Tour Village for a café noir and a gossip, it would be to have his wife and two children with him.

‘She will have been watching at home with the kids on TV, so today was the closest I could get to spending the day with them,’ he explained in fluent French afterwards. Mums preparing tea for their brood across France will have shed a quiet tear as they caught the TV coverage.

Make no mistake, yesterday was a very special day for one of Britain’s most likeable champions, and if he was going to write his name large in the Tour’s history, the timing was perfect. Wiggins does not do histrionic and boastful, and certainly made no grand claims ahead of the stage, but he was revved up for this one. Indeed, he said earlier in the week that he was disappointed the Tour wasn’t going over Mont Ventoux to mark the anniversary. And that from a rider who hates the mountains more than most.

He and four others went after just two kilometres – only 197½ km to go – and engaged a big gear, but very soon he found himself alone. It rarely, if ever, works out like that in the Tour, but when it does you hit the green button and go.

The peloton were lethargic after a manic final hour on Wednesday’s stage and Wiggins offered no threat to the general classification. It was the first really hot afternoon of the Tour and nobody felt like mounting a serious chase.

Thus began the longest day. It was like one of those childhood afternoons in front of the TV and/or radio when England mount a brave rearguard action on the final day of a Test, usually at Trent Bridge or the Oval if memory serves. You expect the worst – in fact, you make a point of loudly telling everyone in earshot that it just cannot happen – but secretly hope for a miracle, and at the very least for that extraordinary prospect to be prolonged as long as possible.

Onwards, onwards, ever onwards. For more than five hours the cycling world was held captive. There was no escape. The French television cameras, beaming pictures to more than 100 countries, had to concentrate on a British rider, miles ahead of the peloton. In the Tour de France on 13 July. Everybody on the roadside knew the date’s significance and clapped their approval.

Cofidis, who have supported Wiggins’s track ambitions as well, were equally delighted. Advertising like this would cost a small fortune and Wiggins’s ride yesterday repaid his salary fivefold.

Onwards, ever onwards, but the lead was tumbling. A spoke on his rear wheel broke and was thrown into the undergrowth. Suddenly Wiggins began to zig-zag with a horrible sense of déjà vu, but no panic: he was just searching for shade. The headwind blew, the peloton closed and seven kilometres out the game was up. ‘Magnificent but suicidal,’ said former Tour de France winner Stephen Roche in the studios. It was and it wasn’t, for which we give thanks.

 

 

16 JULY 2007

ONE SAVAGE WORD WHICH TURNS A DREAM TO TEARS

Brendan Gallagher in Tignes

Abandon! The most hated word on the Tour de France, but the unspoken fate that hangs over – and also unites – all 189 riders who lined up in London last week. Injury, illness, a nasty crash, sheer fatigue, loss of morale and confidence, missing the time-cut one day or simply being unable to rise from your bed on another. There but for the grace of God . . .

Even young sprinter Mark Cavendish, who was strictly here for the first week and whose team had pre-booked his ticket home today, will find quitting the Tour emotional and tearful. Cavendish has put his heart and soul into the first week and loved every moment. The young British rider endured wretched luck with two painful crashes beyond his control in stages in which he had realistic chances, and was thwarted in a third when Tom Boonen’s pedal ripped out the spokes of his front wheel a kilometre from glory.

Two top-ten finishes are still a fine effort and T-Mobile, as they always promised they would, spared Cavendish the Alps proper and Pyrenees to come. At 22, time is most definitely on his side.

Cavendish has stacks of sprinting to come this season, not least in the Tour of Britain, and he will return older and stronger next year when he will, hopefully, nudge his way over the first mountain range – the Pyrenees in 2008 – and live to fight another day. And many more days until one year he gets all the way to Paris and challenges for the green jersey.

Eminently sensible and logical, but there will be days back home in the Isle of Man this week when Cavendish will ache for the heat, excitement and the pain and searing lungs of the Tour de France. Seriously.

 

 

26 JULY 2007

TIME IS UP FOR THE DRUG CHEATS

Brendan Gallagher on Col d’Aubisque

Is it the beginning of the end for the Tour de France? Or, perhaps, were yesterday’s extraordinary events evidence of a sport finally getting to grips with a drug problem that has polluted its history for 104 years?

These were the massive questions hanging over the Tour last night after the most remarkable day in its history. Certainly the most dramatic and thought-provoking, as the purge of drug cheats gathered pace.

The unprecedented expulsion by his own team of the yellow jersey holder Michael Rasmussen, who had virtually sealed overall victory with a stage win on the Aubisque yesterday, is a massive embarrassment as the sport appears to go into meltdown. Conversely it can also be seen as the strongest message ever sent out by cycling as a sport that the days of doping or any ambiguity over testing are over. There is now, clearly, no room for cheats to prosper in cycling and the Tour de France.

As the remarkable news broke, it was not clear if Rasmussen’s team Rabobank simply stopped believing his confused stories about two, three, or was it four, missed tests and his whereabouts in June and decided to sack him forthwith – or if Tour organisers finally lost patience and made it clear what the Dutch team were expected to do. One suspects the latter.

Earlier in the evening Tour officials had acted decisively to kick out Cofidis, a favourite French squad among the home fans, after Cristian Moreni had tested positive for testosterone. One of the innocent casualties there was Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, whose reputation as a clean rider is respected around the world and who is now denied the chance of winning a stage by the end of the week.

The Tour’s decision was in keeping with their move earlier this week to kick out Astana after Alexandre Vinokourov had tested positive for blood doping. Zero tolerance towards drugs is an easy approach to talk about, but a difficult policy to enact. Belatedly, cycling appears to be grasping the nettle, but have they left it too late? It could be touch and go.

The day had started with Christian Prudhomme, the Tour director, again spelling out what the Tour must do, although at the time he was reacting to Vinokourov’s expulsion the previous evening. Little did he know what lay ahead. ‘This has to change now,’ he insisted. ‘The re-conquering of cycling has to be done with the Tour de France. I started this job believing that we could change this system, but it’s not enough – there has to be a revolution. And if you go to war on drugs, there will be casualties.’

There you have it. The casualties are coming thick and fast. Cycling’s governing body, the UCI, might technically govern cycling, but the Tour de France is the dominating force and public face of the sport. The Tour must change, and not just the riders and their anonymous and often sinister associates.

The Tour remains full of contradictions. When two German terrestrial TV stations packed their bags in disgust after it was revealed that Patrick Sinkewitz of T-Mobile tested positive before the Tour, a deal was struck with an eager German satellite station within minutes, rather than hours. French TV, meanwhile, reports their best viewing figures since accurate figures have been available with an unprecedented 52 per cent audience share every afternoon. Yesterday a staggering 1.8 million fans lined the course. It didn’t seem like an event in terminal decline.

The French public staggered a little last year when the winner Floyd Landis tested positive for testosterone – this was a direct attack on the dignity of the race itself, and they were distinctly lukewarm when it arrived back in France after the triumph of the London départ. But the status quo has quickly returned and that is dangerous. Doping cases are considered on a par with their politicians admitting to mistresses and financial irregularities. They are expected, debated and even welcomed in a macabre kind of way. That will have to change if they want their Tour to survive.

Tour de France officials are not just fighting the cheating tendencies of one rider, there is an entire drug culture and public love of sporting scandal in France that is part of the Tour’s DNA. Prudhomme and the Tour have made a good start despite the critics. The drug testing now is ferocious and targeted and could be stepped up two or three notches next year with daily tests of all riders.

A coalition of six professional French teams and two German squads – the self-styled Movement for Credible Cycling – have combined to make their views known and staged a disorganised protest before yesterday’s stage.

The impact, however, is massively diluted by the fact that two of the eight – T-Mobile and now Cofidis – have riders implicated in positive drug tests.

 

 

30 JULY 2007

CONTADOR VICTORIOUS AT TOUR DE FRANCE

Phil Liggett in Paris

Alberto Contador, 24, became the youngest rider to win the Tour de France since Jan Ullrich a decade ago as he cruised home on the Champs-Elysées yesterday in the closest ever finish between the first three riders. Contador beat Cadel Evans, the first Australian to reach the podium, by 23 seconds and his Discovery Channel team-mate Levi Leipheimer by 31 seconds. Yesterday’s final stage was won by Italian Daniele Bennati in the expected bunch sprint.

The race for the overall title was won in the time trial between Cognac and Angoulême on Saturday, which Leipheimer won, setting the fourth-fastest average speed in race history over the 34 miles when he recorded 1 h 2 m 44 s. Leipheimer came to the race as leader of his team but was forced to help Contador when the Spaniard established himself in the mountains.

Lance Armstrong, the seven-times Tour winner and part owner of the Discovery Channel team, arrived on Saturday to follow Contador in the time trial. It was all the inspiration the baby-faced newcomer needed to force his lightweight body through the most important day of his life. He started the time trial 1 m 50 s ahead overall of Evans and, although the Australian closed in to be just 23 seconds behind, Contador had demonstrated he was the worthy winner.

Armstrong said afterwards: ‘We have seen Alberto Contador emerge and we have seen the future of cycling. He’s a complete rider – he can climb, time trial and is completely poised as a rider, so I’m proud of him.’

Cardiff’s Geraint Thomas, at 21 the youngest rider in the race, finished 140th overall and is also a fresh face in the sport. He is the renaissance rider that the organisers and world drugs agencies are hoping to see, and there is every reason to be optimistic.

After the huge crowds in England, the public continued to come out in greater numbers than for many years and they did not diminish after the disqualification of pre-race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov, caught blood doping, or the rejection of race leader Michael Rasmussen for lying to his team about his whereabouts when called for out-of-competition tests.

Next year there will be changes, but the feud between the organisers and the International Cycling Union (UCI) must end. The world body has, for whatever reason, tried for three years to lower the importance of the Tour de France and formed the ProTour, a circuit in which the Tour de France has no interest, but has been forced to be part of.

The UCI president, Irishman Pat McQuaid, was at Angoulême wearing a badge given to him by a French television network and he pointedly spoke to none of the organisers. They do, however, agree that there is no place for drugs in this sport and this is the common ground that could heal the rift.

 

 

5 JULY 2008

BERNARD HINAULT – THE BATTLING BRETON WHO MADE YELLOW HIS OWN

Brendan Gallagher in Brest

The Tour has returned to Brittany – the home of powerful brooding Celts and cycling fans second to none where, in sporting terms, ‘The Badger’ rules all that he surveys. Disturb his sett at your extreme peril, as countless cyclists discovered to their cost.

I refer, of course, to Bernard Hinault, a rider of volcanic temperament hewn from the granite blocks that make up Brittany’s spectacular coastline. The very toughest of the tough and a feared warrior who in the opinion of many heads the phalanx of stellar riders tucked in behind non-pareil Eddy Merckx in cycling’s Hall of Fame. Extraordinary to relate, he is the last French rider to win the Tour de France, 23 long years ago in 1985.

It’s not all about statistics – everybody knows that – but Hinault’s chapter in the record books stacks up impressively alongside the man himself – a fearless, proud, obstinate Breton who never took a backward step in his life.

Between 1978, when he made his Tour debut and caused a sensation by winning the whole shooting match, and 1986, he won five Tours and was again leading and wearing yellow in 1980 when he was forced to abandon with knee problems after battling the odds. He also claimed two second places in the remaining two races. In his pomp he was positively Armstrong-esque in his dominance of the race, both in his ability on a bike and the force of his personality. A supreme time-triallist – 13 of his 28 stage wins on Tour were time trials – but he could also hang very tough in the mountains and had a kick on him as well, if he found himself in a sprint. This is the man who also won both the green jersey (1979) – traditionally won by sprinters – and the polka-dot, King of the Mountains, jersey (1986).

Away from the Tour he was much more versatile and hungry for racing than Armstrong. He won the Giro d’Italia three times, the Vuelta a España twice, he won the Grand Prix des Nations on five occasions and took a cluster of the great spring classics such as Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Gent-Wevelgem and the Amstel Gold Race. Only Merckx can boast a Palmares to surpass that.

‘I raced for pleasure, the pleasure of winning, that can never be denied,’ says Hinault. ‘That’s not to say I raced to have the most victories. I didn’t set out to collect victories. If that was the case I would not have retired at 32 in my prime with a couple of good years left. But when the opportunity presented itself I gave it everything.’

Did he ever. Hinault crashed frequently for a rider of his class – then again he rode harder and more aggressively than most – but he always climbed back up from the ravine or picked himself up from the Tarmac before remounting to complete the race. Black eyes, broken teeth, smashed bones, blood everywhere and, on one occasion, even frostbite during an epic snowbound Liège-Bastogne-Liège classic. Nothing ever stopped him. The tougher the going, the more he enjoyed himself.

Hinault – nicknamed ‘The Badger’ when he was a tyro by old training partners George Talbordet and Maurice Le Guilloux because they could never shake him off – could be unpredictable and react viciously when challenged, and not just by fellow riders. When a gaggle of protesters – in France somebody is protesting about something, somewhere, most days on the Tour – lined themselves defiantly across the route one day Hinault was not amused, got up on his pedals, built up pace and charged into their midst, scattering them to the four winds, reckless of any physical hurt he may inflict, or indeed incur. C’est magnifique, ce n’est pas la guerre.

Not that he was averse to a little protest himself. During the Tour in 1978, he, like many others, was outraged by the extra demands being put on the riders which included one day that featured two separate stages. He stepped forward to organise a riders’ strike – at a time when the Tour was much more dictatorial – at Valence d’Agen and from that moment onwards he was installed as ‘Le Patron’ of the peloton.

The boss. You had better believe it. With his natural air of authority and peerless record among his contemporaries, Hinault ruled with a rod of iron, perhaps the last great patron the Tour has known. Self-policing is now frowned upon in these more transparent and accountable days. If Hinault decided it was too hot or too wet and plain dangerous to race flat out, the race tempo slowed. If a young rider showed reckless disrespect to him or his friends they were quickly put in their place.

But there was generosity as well. Teams or individuals badly in need of a win to make ends meet after a poor or unlucky season were given their heads on meaningless transition stages, as long as they didn’t take liberties and try to affect the general classification. Hinault may have been a benevolent dictator but he was a dictator nonetheless.

The son of a railway worker whose parents dreamt of him working in a bank, Hinault could have been a top quality runner. As a 14-year-old he finished tenth in the French junior cross-country championships in Compeigne against older runners, but his genius on a bike soon became evident as he made the daily trip from his home town of Yffinac to school in neighbouring St Brieuc, which was founded by a Welsh monk. The Celtic roots run deep here. Don’t dismiss these ancient connections – Hinault not only demonstrably looks like a Celt, he shares their hwyl and passion and potential for the spectacular. To be in his presence, physically, is to be reminded of Gareth Edwards – bristling, latent athleticism and fury.

A force to be reckoned with. Some years back the Tour’s organisers decided to get Hinault involved again. He had taken to breeding cattle in Brittany during his retirement and was getting a tad bored. Something of a poacher turned gamekeeper scenario, but it has worked nonetheless. His public duties are mainly as ‘meeter and greeter’ to the great and good and organiser of the podium party, but his most significant contribution is as a trusted adviser on the Tour’s route. Hinault helps ensure the correct balance between climbs, sprints and time trials and knows instinctively when a route has become too hard or too soft and needs to be adjusted. Frankly, if anybody should know, he should.

 

 

13 JULY 2008

DRUG SCANDALS REFUSE TO DIE

Brendan Gallagher

For some it is the first swallow that heralds the onset of summer. For cycling fans these days it is the first positive drugs test on the Tour de France. It duly arrived in Aurillac on Friday, and yet again the world’s biggest annual sports event has been left reeling. Spain’s Manuel Beltrán, a former colleague of the Tour’s seven-time winner Lance Armstrong, tested positive for the banned blood-booster erythopoietin (EPO) less than a week into the Tour.

The organisers await confirmation of Beltrán’s guilt, but another confirmed positive result would constitute a nightmarish scenario, especially because the last two Tours were marred by drugs scandals. The world’s greatest test of physical endurance is also testing the patience of its supporters.

‘When are these idiots going to learn that it’s over?’ said Pat McQuaid, head of the International Cycling Union, yesterday. ‘They continue to think that they can beat the system. They’re wrong. The system is catching up all the time.’ On last year’s Tour it was also the ‘old brigade’ who were caught out, riders who competed when the drug culture was absolutely the norm. But the use of drugs has always haunted the Tour.

The Tour’s future is on a knife-edge. The sporting world still loves it, but desperately wants it to put its house in order. A record 186 countries are taking television coverage and more than 30 million spectators will watch at least one of the 21 stages. Goodwill abounds in the cycling ‘business’, but it could all come crashing down unless the Tour can eliminate drugs cheats. An industry that promotes recreational cycling for its good health has become increasingly at odds with a profession that sinks so low.

 

 

22 JULY 2008

LONG JOURNEY ENDS WITH SNAPSHOT OF A DAY TO REMEMBER

LOUISE BUTLER BLOGS ON WHAT IT MEANS WHEN THE TOUR VISITS HER ‘HOME’ TOWN

I suspect that when the majority of ex-pats are asked: ‘Where are you from?’ the answer would be the place they were born, rather than where they live now. But for me a transition has been made that has ended with a small town in Hertfordshire being replaced by Cahors in southwest France as ‘home’.

It’s been a long journey but I can pinpoint one event that completed it: the day the Tour de France came to town. As an aspiring photographer, hearing that the 18th stage of the 2007 Tour would start just ten minutes (by car) from my doorstep, gripped me with excitement.

July 27 arrived and the town was bathed in sunshine. I was given a lift in, then strode across the Pont Louis Philippe over the River Lot into the tree-lined Boulevard Gambetta.

Even with more than two hours still to go, the sense of anticipation was palpable. I met some fellow ex-pats, complete with five children under the age of 10, and the fun began in earnest. We exchanged excited grins as the Caravane Publicitaire whizzed by; cars and vans dressed up as giant tyres, watches and washing powder boxes, adorned with dancers and sound systems pumping out some serious decibels. The kids started to leap up and down and wave in their attempts to procure some of the goodies being thrown to the crowds (at one point tussling with a fully-grown man, who really should have known better).

As we neared the start line, the crowds gathered in earnest. I found a perfect platform – a concrete plant pot, above the crowds and 20 metres from the start. I was hot and uncomfortable, but I wasn’t giving up my spot for anyone.

The tension built as the start time drew near, then at 12.15 the riders set off – so quickly that I feared all I would manage would be a couple of blurred snapshots. But just a few metres down the road, there was some kind of hold-up. All the riders came to a halt right in front of me. I snapped away to my heart’s content. Obstruction cleared, the riders moved on again as the delighted crowd clapped and cheered. The bikes shot down the boulevard in a vibrant blur, and were gone.

I scrambled down from my vantage point and was immediately swept along by the departing crowd with a huge grin on my face. My lift home was in the opposite direction, but I didn’t care. I had the shots I’d dreamt of, and I felt such pride as I thought to myself: ‘The Tour de France came to my home town, and I was there.’ And then I realised: Cahors had become my home town.

 

 

28 JULY 2008

CARLOS SASTRE TRIUMPHS

TOUR ENJOYS FEELGOOD FACTOR AFTER TESTING TIMES

Brendan Gallagher in Paris

Rafa Nadal and Wimbledon, Euro 2008 and now, in Carlos Sastre, a third consecutive winner of the Tour de France. King Juan Carlos should probably call another national holiday but, frankly, the Spanish get away with murder already. Just enjoy.

Enjoyment, that’s the key. Ambience and mood colours our perception of everything, not least the Tour. You could argue that nothing much has changed for the better. Four riders, including Dmitry Fofonov on the final day, were drummed out as drug cheats after testing positive and another sacked by his disgusted team, statistics that are on a par with 2006 and 2007 which were considered low points in the sport.

But the Tour de France has rediscovered its confidence and is busy accentuating the positive. The sight of talented riders regularly being blown out the back or suffering horrific days when they look no better than the sport’s weekend warriors has convinced many observers this is the cleanest Tour in years.

Britain’s Mark Cavendish may have torn the field to shreds with four withering sprint victories, but he still finished last in the mountains and got blown away on a humble category-four climb on his last day before abandoning.

This is how big Tour cycling is meant to work. Sprinters aren’t designed to trek around Europe’s glacial peaks like mountain goats, and the climbers shouldn’t regularly be contesting bunch sprints and time trials.

When Spaniards Moisés Dueñas Nevado and Manuel Beltrán got caught with their snouts in the EPO trough there was no hysteria, just satisfaction that the system was working and they had got their comeuppance. And when Ricardo Ricco, Italy’s new climbing sensation, tested positive for a sneaky third-generation mutant version of EPO called Cera, there was universal celebration that the new tests put in place had worked. Good work by the boffins, disgrace for Ricco. Bravo.

The emergence of Cavendish is a godsend. Aside from Sastre, he is the biggest name to emerge from this Tour, a ‘bums on seats’ rider and an athlete the organisers and peloton believe in, even if the latter occasionally curse at his impudence and excellence.

Britain’s influence on the Tour is growing apace. The grand départ in London last year was a huge morale booster for a beleaguered sport, and the prospect of a GB national team competing in 2010 is also welcomed. Such squads – Australia have similar plans – would be tightly controlled and tested by their national federations and Olympic committees, and would only add to the clean profile of the Tour.

Team Columbia, backed by the North American leisurewear giants, are committed to clean racing and have been notably successful in picking off stages, mainly for Cavendish, while Garmin have thrown in their lot with Slipstream, who are so confident in their squad that journalists are invited to stay with the team and even share rooms with the riders.

There are still cheats to be routed and the power struggle between the UCI and the Tour is getting a little boring but, somewhat against the odds, the Tour de France is doing OK. Meanwhile, what odds Cavendish for the green jersey next year?

 

 

25 SEPTEMBER 2008

ARMSTRONG’S RETURN TO TOUR DE FRANCE ONE OF SPORT’S GREAT QUESTS

Brendan Gallagher

No doubt for a future encore he will join King Canute and turn back the tides. Impossible is a word he neither recognises nor acknowledges. About to turn 37 next week, Lance Armstrong is intent on becoming the oldest Tour de France winner in history next summer after fully three years out of the sport. Don’t bet against him. There is a comic-book quality to Armstrong’s sporting life that rules nothing out and makes the extraordinary seem mundane.

Two major thoughts occur. Armstrong has clearly missed the Tour desperately and has manifestly failed to fill the void in his life that retirement prised open. Frankly, that was always on the cards. He devoted his sporting life to the Tour de France – not just 23 days every July – and winning the Tour was a 24/7 preoccupation for the other 11 months every year.

No rider has targeted the Tour with such a single-minded obsession – even his detractors have to concede that – and his days must have seemed empty in recent years. He will have badly missed his team-mates and even the peloton banter, albeit that he used to dish out plenty of stick to lesser mortals.

By all accounts he remains a doting father to his three children, he has worked hard with his cancer foundation and kept in shape running marathons and messing around on his mountain bike. There have also been a series of high-profile relationships – Sheryl Crow, fashion designer Tory Burch and actress Kate Hudson – in the aftermath of his divorce from wife Kristin, but in the three years since he ‘retired’ nothing has brought him complete fulfilment and certainly nothing has remotely sated his smouldering competitive instincts.

Secondly, he ‘ended’ his Tour de France career entirely on his terms, after a seventh consecutive, almost routine win. Before his cancer he was vulnerable; after coming back in 1999 he never cracked, not once. The Tour never defeated him, either physically or mentally. He starts with a clean slate and his return next year – the build-up, the early races and the Tour itself – is going to be one of sport’s great modern-day quests. I sniff another best-selling book around the corner.

 

 

8 JULY 2009

ARMSTRONG EDGED OUT

Brendan Gallagher in Montpellier

Lance Armstrong missed out on the yellow jersey that he used to make his own by an agonising 0.22 of a second yesterday. However, he would be the first to acknowledge the heroics of Fabian Cancellara in defending the jersey after a thrilling team time-trial around the back streets of Montpellier. Armstrong and his Astana colleagues, riding like a proper team despite rumours of internal strife, produced a nigh-on perfect performance as they blasted around the highly technical and windy 39-kilometre (24.2-mile) course in 46 m 29 s. Unfortunately for the man who has won the Tour de France seven times, it was a fraction of a second short of the 41-second lead over Cancellara’s Saxo Bank team he required.

Cancellara, the world’s greatest individual time-trialler, had played a remarkable hand for his team, driving them from the front throughout, rarely moving back for a rest or a spell out of the wind. Cancellara defended the maillot jaune like a champion and his reward, barring something very unusual happening, should be a few more days in yellow before the mountain stages rear up. It was a close thing, though. Just over five miles from home Armstrong, looking increasingly like the powerful and aggressive athlete of four years ago, wore the yellow jersey ‘on the road’, but Astana, like all the teams, found it tough going over the final section and dropped a few crucial seconds. Armstrong will be cursing, but he will also be delighted by his return to form.

Afterwards Armstrong, who at 37 would have been the oldest rider to wear the yellow jersey, was in confessional mood when asked whether he thought he would ever claim yellow again. ‘Twelve months ago I expected it to be easier. I expected it then. Six months ago, I did not expect it. I realised, “This is harder than I thought”. That’s the truth. As has been reported in the press, I was disrespectful to Carlos Sastre, to Christian Vande Velde, to the guys who were a presence in last year’s Tour. And that was not correct. This is not easy. It will not be easy to win, if I’m lucky enough to win again. Today, I’m realistic. I’ve got both feet on the ground. I’m not going to be last but it won’t be like 2004, 2005, 2001. It’s going to be a lot harder than I expected. The team were perfect today. We lost a couple of guys, which we expected to do, but, technically speaking, we were as sound as we could be. I have no regrets. I don’t look at it and lose sleep or get disappointed. It’s a long race, maybe there’s one in my future.’

Armstrong also said that he felt he and Alberto Contador could both compete as ‘protected riders’ on the first big mountain stage to Arcalis in Andorra on Friday – which ends with one of the highest mountain finishes in Tour history at 2,240 metres (7,350 feet). ‘After that day it becomes a different situation. We’ll have to talk. But we both go in protected and see what happens at the top of Arcalis.’ That is Armstrong-speak for the gloves will be coming off.

 

 

15 JULY 2009

RED-HOT CAVENDISH SHADES HUSHOVD

Chris Barnett

The peloton might have been staging an unofficial go-slow yesterday but Mark Cavendish was still racing like a bat out of hell at the end. He duly pulled off his third stage win of the 2009 Tour de France to narrow the gap on Norway’s Thor Hushovd in an increasingly close tussle for the green jersey. The stage yesterday – from Limoges to Issoudun – was always one of Cavendish’s bankers as long as he came through the Pyrenees safely, and so it proved, though the teak-tough Hushovd raced hard for second place to preserve his lead, at least for one more day. Cavendish’s efforts garnered 35 points, Hushovd’s 30, and the battle for green is clearly about to get red-hot.

Big tour wins are becoming commonplace for Cavendish, but it is worth reiterating that in the past 15 months he has accumulated seven separate Tour de France victories and five individual wins in the Giro d’Italia, as well as another position on top of the podium in the team time-trial at this year’s Giro. Events yesterday were both predictable and curious. On Bastille Day it was in keeping with the script for a group of French riders – Benoit Vaugrenard, Thierry Hupond and Samuel Dumoulin – to disappear up the road in an early break in a vague attempt to satisfy national pride. They, as ever, were joined by Mikhail Ignatiev. The peloton stirred themselves to ensure the break was not decisive – this was always going to be the sprinters’ day – but then held them at arm’s length for most of the afternoon. You could argue that so early in the race it was not in the sprinters’ teams’ interest to close the gap and leave themselves open to attack. But the conspiracy theorists point instead to the International Cycling Union’s (UCI) decision that for this and Friday’s stages teams were banned from using radio communication between riders and managers.

The teams were angered by this and all but two signed a petition which was handed to the UCI, who were keen to react to suggestions that the use of radios has made racing too boring and controlled, with little opportunity for individual initiative. It was a theory that was challenged after a cracking first week. Yesterday the only information on the road was the old-fashioned chalkboard with time differences displayed by the motorcycle couriers, which is far from reliable. The result was comfortably the most boring day of the Tour thus far, which will not altogether displease the peloton.

 

 

26 JULY 2009

CAVENDISH PLANS MEMORABLE FINAL CHAPTER IN PARIS

Brendan Gallagher

Nobody who has encountered Mark Cavendish over the last two years – on or off his bike – would have doubted for a second his ability to overcome adversity to finish the Tour de France in the style to which he has become accustomed. Cavendish is rarely out of the limelight or headlines for long – it is not in his nature, indeed it is what makes him the box-office rider he is. Friday’s stage win in Aubenas, his fifth of this Tour and a staggering ninth in thirteen months to make him the leading British rider of all-time in the Tour, was quite stunning in its ruthless execution on difficult terrain which included a curséd Category Two climb ten miles from the finish. Nobody saw it coming, especially at the end of the third week.

‘Chapeau!’ as they say in these parts when somebody’s talent and audacity takes their breath away, and in many ways it demonstrated exactly how much he has grown up and developed as a rider in recent months. Cavendish is extending the repertoire, as indeed he must do to one day land the green jersey – the greatest prize in the sport for a cyclist who is not built to contest the yellow jersey on the Tour. His focus is extraordinary. As he cruised around Thursday’s time-trial he was, remarkably, barracked by a few British fans imploring that he get his ‘**** in gear’. To what end? He could have ridden flat out and only finished 80th or some such. His only focus that day was on Friday and today’s sprint in Paris. Getting your priorities right is essential in sport, even if you have to cop some flak from the ignorant.

Cavendish started the Tour like a runaway train, with four stage wins, but rather slipped into the background over the last week while his old sparring partner Bradley Wiggins hogged all the headlines, at least in Britain. The world’s fastest rider has been toiling away in the gruppetto half an hour behind the climbers, out of sight and out of mind. He was also stewing away inside after being harshly docked 13 points in last Saturday’s sprint at Besançon for impeding green-jersey rival Thor Hushovd, who complained bitterly about what seemed a relatively minor incident. The more you watch the replay the less obvious any infringement becomes. Cavendish, though turning his head inside, keeps his line, but the crash barriers were set at an angle. Now the dust has settled it looks suspiciously like a case of Hushovd being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He chose the inside track, which is always risky, and the fuss he then kicked up did little credit to Norway’s eco-warrior – he is a well-documented supporter of all green causes including, obviously, the shirt he covets.

The unfairness of it all seemed to take the wind out of Cavendish’s sails and a bitter little feud developed. Cavendish insisted earlier this week that Hushovd’s ultimate win in Paris would be ‘stained’ by his actions. The Norwegian replied with a superb ride on Wednesday’s horrible mountain day by stealing away in the break and hoovering up all the intermediate sprints, something which is physically quite beyond Cavendish at present.

On Friday evening, flushed by yet another success and feeling that everything was OK in the world again, Cavendish extended an olive branch, praised a worthy champion-elect and admitted to being ‘humiliated’ by his ‘stained jersey’ comments and Hushovd’s subsequent riposte in the mountains. It was a handsome apology and Hushovd should respond in kind in Paris today.

 

 

27 JULY 2009

CAVENDISH CELEBRATES THE JOY OF SIX

Brendan Gallagher in Paris

Mark Cavendish brought down the curtain on a remarkable three weeks for British cycling by racing away from the field in a manner rarely seen on the Champs-Elysées to claim a sixth stage win of the 2009 Tour de France. It was another withering display of pace and racing nous and Cavendish, off his own bat, finished the Tour having won more stages than any nation in this year’s race. Factor in Bradley Wiggins’s magnificent fourth place overall to equal Robert Millar’s all-time British best, sealed with the gutsiest ride of his life on Mont Ventoux on Saturday, and 2009 was the most successful Tour in British history. No other Tour comes close.

Cavendish has been talking about winning in Paris for months, but he always hoped such a victory would be accompanied by a green jersey for the points competition, though stage wins and merely getting to Paris for the first time were his main objectives. Missing out on green to Norwegian Thor Hushovd will only sharpen Cavendish’s hunger, which is bad news for every sprinter he tangles with. Aided as always by the Columbia train – George Hincapié, the tireless Tony Martin and Mark Renshaw – Cavendish did not so much win yesterday’s sprint as embark on a breakaway to take it by 30 metres while easing up, with lead-out man Renshaw freewheeling home for second.

There was ample opportunity for all sorts of elaborate celebrations, but there is a time and place for showboating and this wasn’t it. A first British win on the Champs-Elysées was treated with the respect, emotion and clenched fist it deserved, and a shout of triumph that could be heard up the Eiffel Tower. Renshaw and Cavendish, who always do their homework assiduously, often working from notes prepared by six-time green-jersey winner Erik Zabel, had cut a perfect angle on the final tight corner where Garmin faltered and were squeezed. Hushovd nearly hit a crash barrier and, unable to mount his usual challenge, trailed home in sixth position.

‘I always dreamt it would be a spectacular feeling winning on the Champs-Elysées and it didn’t disappoint me from the moment we heard the crowd roar as we rode in,’ Cavendish said. ‘It was a beautiful feeling, a proud feeling. I’m not disappointed at not winning green. I said before the race I wanted stage wins and to reach Paris. I came close to green. I got a bit excited, but it didn’t work out. But how can I be disappointed with six stage wins? Reaching Paris was as hard as I thought it would be. I’m exhausted but my team rode every day to support me. It hasn’t been easy but my fatigue is massively overshadowed by joy and a sense of achievement. I know what it takes to win the green jersey but, physically, I’m not quite ready to put it into practice yet. Thor is a special rider who rode beyond himself to get it – a special, once-in-a-decade ride – but for sure I can win the green in future in my own little way.’

On Saturday the general classification issues were all settled on Ventoux with Alberto Contador shadowing Andy Schleck perfectly to win his second title. Alas, it was noticeable that as Contador crossed the finish line in Paris there was scarcely an Astana colleague in sight – Tour tradition normally dictates that the yellow jersey be surrounded by his loyal cohorts as he finishes the job. Asked who his toughest opponent was, he answered simply: ‘The hotel.’ To win in such a divided team and under such circumstances was a remarkable achievement and speaks of an inner steel. Lance Armstrong conceded on Saturday night that he doubted whether he could have beaten Contador even when he was at his peak.

As for Wiggins, he covered himself in glory as he dragged himself up the most punishing mountain of all. With a picture of Tom Simpson, who died on Ventoux in 1967, taped to his crossbar he somehow found the strength over the last two kilometres to defend his fourth place from Andreas Klöden and Frank Schleck. Wiggins has enjoyed a superb Tour and, at 29, is just reaching his peak years as a Tour rider. After he enjoys a few hard-earned pints this week he should reflect that this was a beginning not an end.

 

 

5 JULY 2010

ARMSTRONG LOOKS STRONG AS HE AVOIDS CARNAGE

Brendan Gallagher

Lance Armstrong, in the early stages of his 13th and last Tour de France, managed to avoid all the mayhem on stage one on a day littered with major crashes and problems. It was a close call though as Armstrong, who lies fourth overall, was forced to take evasive action to avoid getting caught up in the massive crash in the finishing straight in Brussels yesterday. His biggest rival, defending champion Alberto Contador, scraped a leg by bumping a bike in front as he braked furiously.

Armstrong, who finished third in last year’s Tour de France, leads Contador by five seconds after Sunday’s stage, won by Alessandro Petacchi of Italy. ‘That was total mayhem, definitely in the finish but actually all day,’ Armstrong said. ‘Typical first stage, everybody wants to be in front, everybody is nervous for crashes. We even had a dog running in the group in the beginning that caused a big crash with a couple of our guys. Everybody is OK. It just shows how crazy it’s gonna be on Tuesday on the cobble-stones. Same situation, very small roads. A lot of turns, the nerves and the intensity will be high. Millions and millions on the road, it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s so great to have so many supporters and it also makes the guys super-nervous.’

Armstrong impressed all pundits with a strong performance in Saturday’s prologue, where he beat his bitter rival and former team-mate Contador by five seconds. Contador played down the importance of this minor gap and Armstrong agreed. ‘Five seconds in the scope of three weeks is terribly nothing. I don’t want to instil the rivalry any more than it already is,’ he said.

 

 

8 JULY 2010

CAVENDISH RETURNS TO WINNER’S PODIUM

Brendan Gallagher in Montargis

Mark Cavendish won stage five of the Tour de France after he held off the challenge from Thor Hushovd at the end of the 187.5-kilometre ride from Epernay to Montargis. There were no V-signs for his detractors as he flashed across the winning line; instead Cavendish answered his critics in the way he knows best by finally turning up the turbo and leaving the world’s best sprinters standing still in Montargis. All things considered it was a wonderfully gutsy and classy effort after the gathering torrent of criticism he has been getting from all quarters. L’Equipe, normally admirers of the Manxman, awarded Cavendish nought and one out of ten respectively for his efforts in the opening two sprints of the Tour de France and the French Minister of Sport weighed in on Thursday morning when she called him ‘the bad boy of cycling’.

Just 24 hours after a dejected Cavendish sat up and freewheeled home in Reims, the Manxman roared back on a course that could have been designed with the 25-year-old in mind. His banker stage paid handsome dividends. It was an emotional Cavendish who spoke afterwards in a manner that suggests that in private recently he has been nearly as self-critical as his public tormentors. ‘It’s easy to get in a cloud with your feet off the ground,’ he said.

‘Finally in the last few days I came crashing down to earth very hard and it hurt. I had a great group of people around me who picked me up and helped me get back on my feet. I’m so happy I could win for them today. I have learnt a big lesson and I want to thank them. It’s a special, special moment for me. It’s a great relief and a great sense of achievement. The guys did an incredible job for me on Wednesday as well, but then I let them down and it was a hard thing to live with. They could have given up today but they didn’t. They rode 100 per cent for me. It is just such a relief to finish it off today. I feel good on this Tour. I just don’t know what happened the other day but sometimes it just doesn’t happen.’

Barring injury or illness to Thor Hushovd – and neither can be discounted in a race lasting over three weeks – it is probably too late to seriously challenge him for the green jersey. But Cavendish and his team can now go hunting purely for stage wins, a blissfully simple game-plan that very nearly brought him the points title last year. Hushovd now leads the green-jersey competition having amassed 102 points with Cavendish, finally, appearing on the leaders’ board in ninth place on 50. Friday’s 227.5-kilometre stage, the longest at this year’s Tour, should be a sprinter’s stage if HTC-Columbia can contain any breakaways. While there is one sure-fire sprint finish in Bourg-les-Valence next week and two in the final week, including the Champs-Elysées finale. If Cavendish has got good legs next week’s 13th stage into Revel may also come into the equation.

 

 

9 JULY 2010

CAVENDISH WINS AGAIN

Brendan Gallagher in Gueugnon

Just two days before he seemed dead and buried in Reims, but the resurrection of Mark Cavendish was completed with victory in Gueugnon, a second blistering win on the bounce and a triumph notable mainly for its reassuring routine nature. Cavendish’s withering stage-five victory equalled the career total of 12 Tour stage wins of legendary sprinters Erik Zabel and Mario Cipollini, a staggering achievement considering that the shelf-life of most sprinters normally extends well into the mid-thirties. Sometimes we are in danger of taking him for granted.

Though Cavendish’s HTC-Columbia team had worked steadily through a hot day to reel in the break, it was a strange finale with no ‘train’ taking command at the death. Old-style in fact. But Cavendish, with his confidence high again after Thursday’s win in Montargis, seemed blissfully unconcerned and simply tucked in behind his trusted lead-out man Mark Renshaw, who also seems back on top of his game. The result was an absolutely textbook final 200 metres in which there was only going to be one winner. With this second win on the bounce the Manxman has quickly climbed to fifth in the race for the green jersey with a total of 85 points, still 33 points behind Thor Hushovd, but the powerful Norwegian might just be looking over his shoulder now. Hushovd is only one bad stage or a crash from being right back in a dog-fight with Cavendish.

After the finish Cavendish revealed that generous words from another rival – the veteran Alessando Petacchi, 36, who is currently second in the green-jersey competition – helped calm his frayed nerves during a quiet phase on Thursday’s stage win as he pondered his poor ride the previous day. ‘It had been a stressful sleepless night, I had to make good what I had done wrong. In the peloton I talked to “Peta” who is a great man and rider and he told me, “I don’t think the problem is your legs, it is in your head”, and he was right. It’s seven days down, fourteen to go. We have got some hard days in the Alps now and then hopefully I will be trying my best to win again.’ As for a 12th stage win, the significance wasn’t lost on him. ‘If there is a book of great riders, I want to be in that book when my career finishes, although I know I owe everything to my team. I have eight guys riding for me and I am the ninth part of that machine.’

 

 

11 JULY 2010

ARMSTRONG HAS NIGHTMARE AS SCHLECK STRIKES

Brendan Gallagher in Morzine-Avoriaz

As Lance Armstrong suffered one of the worst days of his Tour de France career, Andy Schleck won stage eight in Morzine-Avoriaz and Cadel Evans took the yellow jersey. Armstrong’s days as a competitive Tour de France rider ended on the molten Tarmac of Morzine-Avoriaz when he finished nearly 12 minutes behind Schleck, the stage winner and potential 2010 Tour champion. A savage Alpine day saw the man who never cracks finish the stage a distant 61st. Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, meanwhile, was left hanging on for dear life to his faint hopes of a podium finish.

Armstrong was slowed by no fewer than three separate crashes as he tried to negotiate the 189 kilometres from Station des Rousses to Morzine-Avoriaz. None of the spills were serious physically, but they undoubtedly slowed his momentum on another sweltering day when being in the right place at the right time was paramount. Armstrong’s RadioShack team also seemed to lack focus from the start, showboating in front of the television cameras during the approach to the mountains, even after a crash just six kilometres in, when their leader took avoiding action and rode into an Alpine ditch. Vigilance had to be the watchword and sure enough a second crash occured at a roundabout in the lead-up to the category-one climb, the vicious Col de la Ramaz, and then with the game already up Armstrong was grounded again in the latter stages when an Euskaltel rider went over.

Thereafter Armstrong promenaded in, dejected and utterly defeated by a race that he had seemingly conquered so many times before. Wrong. Eventually Le Tour always wins and has the final word. It can never be otherwise and amidst all the emotions yesterday you have to admire Armstrong for daring to challenge that at the age of 38. He took defeat with more dignity than he has sometimes shown in victory. ‘It was just horrible trying to recover from something like that, we just had to work so hard,’ an emotional Armstrong lamented afterwards. ‘It was a bad day. My Tour is finished but I will try to hang in there and enjoy my last Tour.’ Armstrong’s demise, in the end, was swift, brutal and unexpected. French television, providing the pictures on big screens around the resort-town finish, had to cut into its advertising break to catch his belated arrival among the also-rans of the day. It was all a bit surreal for a generation of cycling fans who may have occasionally seen Armstrong beaten, but never routed in this fashion.

 

 

15 JULY 2010

IFS AND BUTTS AS CAVENDISH SPRINTS HOME

Brendan Gallagher

Another extraordinary day at a quite manic and vibrant 2010 Tour de France ended in uproar when Mark Renshaw – Mark Cavendish’s much-valued lead-out man in the sprints – was thrown out of the race altogether by outraged officials after landing three separate butts on Julian Dean at the sprint finish. Cavendish, back to his very best, took the line-honours in trade-mark fashion going away from the field and, having taken no part in the incident, the result will stand. However, the disqualification of his trusted ‘oppo’ could seriously undermine his challenge for the green jersey which was beginning to regather momentum as the Columbia ‘train’ rattled along at full steam in the closing kilometre.

Nothing had hinted at the drama ahead until Dean, a New Zealander riding for Team Garmin, and their top sprinter Tyler Farrar veered from right to left, either in an attempt to disrupt or to hitch a ride depending on how you view these matters. Opponents have been trying to derail the Columbia train throughout the Tour and Dean was certainly putting the squeeze on the riders to his left who were hard up against the barriers.

Renshaw, a fiery Australian who is fiercely protective of Cavendish, wasn’t impressed by the New Zealander’s tactics and countered aggressively, much too aggressively for the race judges. Not once, twice but three times he aimed a well-directed butt at the infringing Dean, making contact with his shoulder more than anything. In the testosterone-fuelled world of sprint finishes, head-to-head contact and leaning on each other is quite common. Indeed the world’s press photographers wait eagerly for such moments, but nobody can recall three quite so obvious and aggressive butts being landed in such quick succession.

The Tour’s technical director Jean-François Pescheux was incandescent and the decision to throw Renshaw off the race was quickly made. ‘Renshaw is out,’ raged Pescheux. ‘We watched the film once and it was blatant. He butted Dean like in a Keirin race. This is cycling not fighting. Everybody could have ended up on their backs. Rules have to be respected, it’s a professional sport.’ Cavendish and the HTC-Columbia team, meanwhile, saw the incident differently. ‘Julian Dean hooked his right elbow over Mark Renshaw’s and he used his head to get away,’ said Cavendish calmly afterwards. ‘It had put everybody in danger. Mark gave us a bit of space which kept everybody upright. The commissionaires have made their decision which we don’t necessarily agree with. We don’t believe the same but we will see what happens. The situation is sad. Mark is an incredibly good bike handler and a clever rider. I am really disappointed with the decision.’ Such guarded, diplomatic comments from the usually voluble Cavendish would hint strongly at an appeal, but Pescheux and his committee acted so swiftly and so equivocally it is difficult to see them backing down.

As for the finish itself, Cavendish, having tucked in safely behind Renshaw, emerged into the wind for the first time unusually early for him, at 375 metres out, but then accelerated in a manner we haven’t seen before on this Tour. This was absolutely vintage Cavendish, destroying the opposition with a withering burst as they appeared as he surged for the line. Whatever ailed him early last week is but a distant memory. The Manxman is right back on the money now but has he left it too late and can he achieve it without his most trusted lieutenant? It is still a long shot but he is the man finishing fastest, literally. Cavendish said: ‘The wins just keep adding up. I’ll carry on trying to win. Thor has a lot of points from [stage three in] Arenberg and the day I let the gas down [stage four in Reims]. That put me way out, but I’ll keep trying.’

 

 

19 JULY 2010

SCHLECK VOWS REVENGE

Brendan Gallagher

Andy Schleck was left fuming and vowing he would take revenge when his ‘love-in’ with Alberto Contador ended abruptly yesterday. Contador ruthlessly took advantage of Schleck’s mechanical problems on the final climb to erase a 31-second gap and claim the yellow jersey for himself. It is going to be open warfare now from here to Paris. Hitherto Contador and Schleck – good friends as well as opponents who have even shared the occasional lads’ holiday together in the past – had always spoken respectfully of each other and kept it ‘clean’ on the road. That, however, counted for nothing yesterday when Contador ripped up the unwritten law that you do not attack the yellow jersey when the race leader experiences either a crash or a mechanical problem.

Schleck started the day 31 seconds ahead of Contador and needing to extend that lead ahead of Saturday’s time-trial. After biding his time on another sweltering day behind escapee and eventual winner Thomas Voeckler, he attacked with a savage burst four kilometres short of the summit of the mighty Port de Balès, 24 kilometres from the finish, with only the tireless Alexander Vinokourov reacting. In no time Schleck had put 40 metres on Contador and was stretching that lead when his chain slipped and tangled and he came to a grinding halt. Contador, chasing hard by now, had to swerve as he passed the stationary Schleck on the inside and narrowly avoided colliding with a parked car as he attacked the yellow jersey.

Afterwards, however, he insisted he did not realise Schleck had stopped and encountered a problem. Replays clearly show Contador constantly looking back over his shoulder to check the progress of his rival as he accelerated hard to ram home his advantage. The incident delayed Schleck by the best part of a minute and forced him to charge up the mountain alone before trying to minimise his losses on a spectacular descent. Fast descents are not his forté and Contador had the excellent Samuel Sánchez to pick a line for his group. So for Schleck, ably assisted by Jurgen Van den Broeck, to lose only 39 seconds to Contador was a phenomenal effort.

The normally laid-back Schleck was furious as he came over the finishing line. ‘My stomach is full of anger,’ he raged. ‘The race is not finished and I will take my revenge. I can end it like a champion. These guys waited in Spa when I crashed, so that was fair. Today is a different story. I would never have raced like that and taken advantage of that situation. For sure these guys don’t get the fair-play prize today.’ Contador insisted that he was ‘attacking before he broke his chain’, that he was ‘unaware of the situation’ and that he ‘didn’t know what happened to Andy’. Given that he only narrowly avoided colliding with Schleck and that he was in radio communication with his Astana director throughout, the cycling world may choose to doubt him. Even bitter rivals such as Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich waited for each other at various times in their Tour de France careers when the honour of the yellow jersey was at stake. Breaking that ‘law’ is cycling’s equivalent of Trevor Chappell bowling underarm to prevent New Zealand hitting a six to win a one-day international. At a very deep level it undermines just about everything the sport stands for.

 

 

22 JULY 2010

SCHLECK PIPS CONTADOR TO COL DU TOURMALET TRIUMPH

Brendan Gallagher on Col du Tourmalet

Andy Schleck won stage seventeen of the Tour de France when he beat Alberto Contador to the summit finishing line on the Col du Tourmalet. The Spaniard, however, retained his leader’s yellow jersey. You could scarcely see the hands in front of your face on the Tourmalet, but that did not bother Contador, who only had eyes for Schleck’s back wheel three inches in front of him. Contador could see everything he needed. A third Tour de France title was effectively at stake and he rode with clarity of thought and vision in the mist, and with the great heart of a champion at all times. Chapeau.

In the final 100 metres Schleck inched ahead again to breast the winning line first, a moment of genuine celebration and satisfaction, but in reality he needed to win by nearly a minute to remain competitive with just Saturday’s time-trial left to influence the outcome. Schleck might have taken the battle honours, a full-on confrontation that will live in the memories of the rain-soaked roadside throng who marched up the Pyrenees’ most famous mountain climb. But barring an act of God, he lost the war.

The combatants, still separated by just eight seconds after more than 83 hours of racing, embraced warmly afterwards with all thoughts of their falling out earlier this week eradicated. Both are on record as saying that the rider in yellow at the top of the Tourmalet will win this year’s Tour. Contador is that man and the Spaniard would probably have to suffer an accident or injury for him to be denied at the death. Not impossible and the Champagne will stay strictly on ice in the Astana team bus. Schleck, having come so far, has declared that he is not quite ready to concede and will try to conjure up the ride of his life between Bordeaux and Pauilac on Saturday. In truth he produced the ride of his life on the Tourmalet, but it still was not enough.

For ten excruciating, vertical kilometres – and they had already been heading steadily upwards for the previous 20 kilometres – the reigning champion tracked the pretender on what we always fancied would be the crucial section on the key stage of the Tour. We have been waiting for this since the route was unveiled last October and now was showtime. The likes of Schleck and Contador operate at 90 per cent for most of their sporting lives – they are so good and dominant that they ride within themselves and such genius also learns to wait for the right moment – but for half an hour they went into the red zone and we saw two exceptional athletes in extremis. It was a rare treat and explains why all morning, in the horrible icy July rain that the Pyrenees often throws up, and the tourist board never mentions, the fans just kept coming in huge numbers. Just one thought occupied their minds: to walk to the very top ramparts of the Tourmalet and to witness one of those historic days that become part of Tour folklore. Schleck and Contador fed off their energy; it was everywhere.

Schleck did all the pushing and was constantly accelerating, but Contador, reading his mind like a twin brother and his pedal cadence like a computer, stuck so close that you could barely discern the changes of pace. It was as if Schleck had a bright yellow tail light attached for safety on an afternoon when day turned into night. They moved as one. With just four kilometres to go, Contador went to the front for the only time and accelerated, a move which immediately drew a response from Schleck, who pulled alongside and stared long and hard at the man in yellow. It seemed more perplexed than threatening to these eyes, but others wondered if the mind games were starting. On these occasions it can be the mind that cracks first, not the body. ‘I just wanted to remind Andy I was there, to show him I had good legs and that I wasn’t going anywhere,’ said Contador afterwards. Schleck insists there was nothing malevolent in the stare – Lance Armstrong used to be famous for giving opponents ‘the look’ just before he disappeared up the road on a mountain stage and crushed them.

‘I have to look somewhere,’ joked Schleck afterwards. ‘I just looked him in the eyes, and he looked at me. There was nothing in it. I just wanted to see how he was and he was very strong all day. Nothing had changed. He matched me every time I increased the pace. I tried to break him but I couldn’t. But I am still very pleased to win the stage. I am now his equal in the mountains and that is the first time I have been able to say that. I am not going to give up quite yet. I am sure I will do a very strong time-trial and this is a Tour when something different and a bit strange seems to happen most days.’

The battle for yellow was everything, but even on such a momentous day mention must be made of Samuel Sánchez who suffered a horrible crash early in the day and lay prone for minutes on the Tarmac as we feared the worse. Eventually he got up, a new bike was found and he slowly worked his way back to the peloton. Warming to his work, he then descended like the wind from the Col de Marie-Blanque and the Soulor and climbed the Tourmalet like a Trojan to finish fifth on the day and move into third place overall. Schleck and Contador were the warrior-chiefs, but there are some mighty foot soldiers in this sport who drive them on. And on.

 

 

24 JULY 2010

CONTADOR CAN LOOK FORWARD TO THIRD VICTORY IN PARIS

Brendan Gallagher in Pauillac

You couldn’t make it up. Last Monday, on the mighty Port de Balès climb, Alberto Contador caused uproar by ‘nicking’ 39 seconds from yellow-jersey holder Andy Schleck when he attacked while the latter experienced a mechanical problem. In Pauillac, after going head to head in the time-trial, Contador took the 2010 Tour de France title … by 39 seconds. It is a story that will be retold for decades and an argument seemingly without resolution, but there is no doubt that the cruelly ironic margin of victory will take the gloss off Contador’s third Tour de France title in the eyes of many.

After three weeks in the saddle, and after riding in excess of 3,500 kilometres around Holland, Belgium and France, many would insist that Contador and Schleck effectively tied the world’s greatest race, which is almost beyond comprehension when you consider the scope and span of the Tour de France. The two giants of the modern-day sport are, however, now that closely matched. It was perfectly illustrated during their epic duel on the rain-drenched Tourmalet when there wasn’t a fag paper between them. Also first and second last year – when Contador took the title much more comfortably – this is clearly the rivalry that will define the Tour for the foreseeable future. As they promenade into Paris on Sunday, sipping Champagne and posing for the photographers while the sprinters do their stuff on the Champs-Elysées, there will be much to ponder.

On Wednesday, during the rest day in Pau, Schleck insisted that he and Contador had ‘made-up’ after the latter’s cold-eyed breaking of convention and attack on the maillot jaune. Schleck had been ‘angry’, but after an apology from Contador he was just ‘motivated’. Schleck also added with some confidence that the Tour de France would not be decided by the ‘chain incident’, but he was being way too generous and diplomatic. Such a time difference was always going to be absolutely crucial in their battle. Would Tyson Gay happily give Usain Bolt even six inches start in the Olympic 100-metres final?

Yesterday’s finale started with Contador leading by eight seconds in the general classification and, as one of the world’s best time-triallists, the Spaniard was expected to put at least two minutes into Schleck and kill stone dead any lingering doubts about the quality and veracity of this year’s victory. Two surprise factors came into play, however. Along the Garonne Estuary the wind had got up steadily mid-afternoon, making the sailing good but the cycling trying, especially for the later starters in the time-trial. As a light man Contador began to suffer and frankly performed well below his best; Schleck, a lesser time-triallist but a bigger, stronger man, initially prospered and blasted away in the manner of a man still trying to right a manifest wrong. At one stage, just after 20 kilometres, he had gained five seconds and was only three seconds behind in general classification. But in the final half of the race he faded very slowly – and bravely – as Contador found some form at last. How much would Contador win by? Working on the well-tried dictum of ‘what goes around comes around’ we confidently predicted 39 seconds in the press box. For once we were absolutely spot on.

Schleck was again the diplomat afterwards: ‘I don’t care what the time difference was, the thing that counts is the position that I finished which was second. Alberto was better than me. After 3,500 kilometres 39 seconds is not a lot, though.’ Contador replied enigmatically: ‘The 39-second difference is true, this victory has cost me a lot and I am very moved by it.’

 

 

25 JULY 2010

CAVENDISH WINS FINAL STAGE BY STEALTH

Brendan Gallagher in Paris

Mark Cavendish will surely claim the green jersey one day, but even if he does not, few will doubt that when the force is with him he is the fastest sprinter the Tour de France has seen in modern times. Possibly ever. Cavendish’s win on the Champs-Elysées was his 15th Tour de France stage triumph since the beginning of July 2008, an orgy of winning that leaves opponents grinding their teeth in despair. He is Merckx-like in his need and hunger for victory, leaving mere crumbs for those who dine at the top table with him.

An explosive dart down the blindside with 275 metres to go delivered yesterday’s triumph, though the consistent Alessandro Petacchi came home in second to pip Cavendish for the sprinters’ maillot vert by eleven points. Another year the jersey will surely be his. Cavendish is still only 25 and this year’s Tour de France, by his own exacting standards, was a flawed campaign in which he admitted to being ‘the weak link’ in his team during the opening four or five days when he untypically squandered sprint stages in Brussels and Reims. If he had shown anything like his normal form he would have won the green jersey by a country mile. One July everything will slot into place.

With Alberto Contador’s third title confirmed after the time-trial in Pauillac on Saturday night, when he held off a brave effort by Andy Schleck, all eyes were on the sprinters yesterday as they raced on to the Champs-Elysées for their traditional end-of-Tour burn-up. Coming out of the final, nasty bend as the front-runners exited Place de la Concorde, Petacchi had chosen the conservative line down the left, Thor Hushovd and Julian Dean blasted down the middle and just for a minute we wondered if a hectic Tour had finally caught up with Cavendish. Where was he? And then suddenly there was a blur of colour – the white, black and yellow of HTC-Columbia – down the right-hand side and before you could assimilate it all Cavendish was soft-pedalling and raising his right palm to the sky to indicate five stage wins this year, though he looked more like a policeman trying to stop the traffic. For the second time in succession Cavendish had been ‘freestyling’, to use his own phrase, at the end having been denied the services of lead-out man Mark Renshaw, who was thrown off the Tour at the end of the second week for butting. Bernhard Eisel and Tony Martin worked prodigiously to keep him in touch, but at the sharp end of the race – 600 metres out – it was down to his raw talent and racing instincts. He trusts both implicitly.

After the finish, not for the first time on this Tour, there were tears. ‘The Tour de France is a roller-coaster of emotion, possibly the biggest sports event in the world and the people are with you for all the three weeks,’ Cavendish said. ‘That’s what makes it emotional. I’m disappointed not to win green. I was the weak link early on, my team rode brilliantly throughout, but we fought back, I did my best and we won five stages in the end. I’m happy.’

While Cavendish still has the majority of his racing career ahead of him, Lance Armstrong bowed out yesterday after his 13th and last Tour. Thirty-nine in September, Armstrong finished his final Tour in 23rd position, one place and six seconds ahead of Great Britain’s Bradley Wiggins. The duo were third and fourth respectively last year, so this was a disappointment to them both. It was not the way the American had planned on departing the Tour, but at least his RadioShack squad won the team classification and he got to stand on the podium one final time.

 

 

6 JULY 2011

CONTADOR EDGED OUT IN SCRAP WITH EVANS

Mick Cleary in Mûr-de-Bretagne

There are yellow jerseys at stake in the Tour de France and then there are symbolic moments to be won. On the lung-bursting, 1.2-mile uphill slog to the Mûr-de-Bretagne finish, defending champion Alberto Contador ceded the fourth stage but declared his hand. The three-time winner, who is desperate to make up lost time, as well as lost face, was unable to chase down the gutsy thrust for the line by 34-year-old hard-nut Australian Cadel Evans, losing out in a photo-finish after a 107.2-mile race through rain and wind from Lorient. Evans’s performance gave him the lead in the battle for the climbers’ jersey. In a bare-knuckle scrap, Contador, who attacked initially at 0.8 miles, could not quite deliver the knockout blow. Yet he is back in the fight, up off the canvas after taking damaging blows earlier in the Tour. He is not going to go quietly, subdued by scandal or adversaries. He may have been beaten on the day but his Tour is alive again.

Others did lose a modicum of time, Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins six seconds, Andy Schleck, Contador’s perennial challenger, eight seconds. Evans did his cause no harm. This was a preliminary skirmish before the big battles on distant mountain slopes. It was not decisive but it was revealing. ‘It was an important day, very good for my morale,’ said Contador, still awaiting a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing into a failed drugs test on last year’s Tour. ‘I’ve been able to reconnect.’ Contador was primed to make a statement, to show that despite opening-day mishaps as well as public opprobrium, he was still the man. He still wants to win and he still wants to be acclaimed. That honour belonged yesterday to Evans, twice Tour de France runner-up, the nearly-man on his seventh Tour. This was only his second stage win. Evans’s victory was all the more remarkable given that he had a mechanical problem 12.4 miles from the finish and had to work his way through almost the entire field of 197 riders. His BMC colleague, Marcus Burghardt, did a terrific job to pace him back before veteran George Hincapié delivered him towards the summit for the final push.