It was a cold winter’s morning on 4 January 1989 and I was pacing back and forth in Mette’s parents’ house in Denmark when the phone rang. Mette and I had resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d have to return to our flat in Luxembourg to pack up all our stuff once the Christmas holidays were over. We’d move back to Denmark and start a new life. No teams had come to me with any contract offers, so it seemed like the right time to put a stop to my cycling career and move on. Since finishing my season, I’d been doing a bit of cyclo-cross racing and had been on a detox diet, which had combined to cause me to lose a few kilos. I suppose that there had been one small part of me that still hoped that a team might be able to use me.
But it was my accountant and good friend, Rene Thill, who called me that day. Rene told me that he’d been in touch with Laurent Fignon and his Système U manager, Cyrille Guimard. The team, which was to change its name to Super U for the 1989 season, was still missing a good domestique, and apparently Fignon had thought of me. I was soon speaking to Guimard on the phone, the upshot of which was that he told me to get myself to the team’s training camp in France as quickly as I could. I’d been saved again, and this time to the tune of a contract worth 12,000 kroner (£1,000) a month.
I arrived at the camp in Rennes unsure of whether I was good enough to be on a team of this level, but also excited at the chance to ride for them. And the cyclo-cross training, and the weight loss as a result of the diet, meant that I wasn’t turning up out of shape. It was a chance for me to show them that they had made the right decision in offering me a contract. I said hello to Fignon, who was very much still the star of the team, and a rider who commanded a huge amount of respect from those around him. Everyone was in awe of him, and there was absolutely no question as to who the top dog was. He was the one who would bring the team success; it was his results that were paying our wages. He was quite a shy man, and did his own thing without worrying about what anyone thought. He was an intellectual who oozed self-confidence, and this courage to be a bit different pervaded the whole team.
Our French directeur sportif, Guimard, was a hard man – but in a good way. He was competent, knowledgeable, really knew how to read a race, and had a unique ability to motivate his riders.
As a rider, he had been a star at the start of the 1970s, winning several stages of the Tour de France, even battling against the legendary Eddy Merckx for the yellow jersey in the mountains in 1972.
His own experiences as a pro made Guimard perfect for the role of directeur sportif. He knew how riders thought, how they felt and what they needed when it came to different race situations.
As a team manager, he’d discovered American talent Greg LeMond, and had also worked with Tour winners Bernard Hinault and Lucien Van Impe. He’d watch you, without making you feel like you were being watched, and then suggest things you could adjust or change to make you a better rider.
Even though Guimard was a friendly, accommodating type of person, you could tell that he was also a man used to telling people what to do. “You don’t discuss things with Guimard,” five-time Tour winner Hinault once said. “You do what he tells you.”
The story goes that 1976 Tour winner Van Impe was once on the receiving end of Guimard’s fury – that same year he won the race. Guimard was the Belgian’s directeur sportif, and on one stage in the mountains told him to attack. But Van Impe ignored Guimard’s command, and so the Frenchman allegedly drew up next to Van Impe in the team car and threatened to run his star rider off the road if he didn’t do what he was told. The threat must have worked, as Van Impe attacked, dropped his rivals and went on to take the overall race victory in Paris. Personally, I hoped such methods wouldn’t be necessary for Guimard to threaten me with.
During the training days around Rennes that followed, I was very surprised to find that I was able to follow Fignon on the climbs. When he managed to drop me, I was quickly able to catch up again on the descents. And it seemed that both Fignon and Guimard had noticed. For the first time ever, I felt as though I actually did have some potential as a pro rider: that with the right training, the right lifestyle, the right team-mates and the right management, I really could reach a high level. Certainly Guimard thought that I had what it took to be an important domestique for Fignon. “Bjarne, go home and ride 1,000km over the next five days,” Guimard told me. “That should put you in really good form.”
It had been a long time since anyone had taken the time to try to help me become a better bike rider, and something just clicked when I talked to Guimard. It meant that someone believed in me, had confidence in me, and was interested in helping me improve.
I went home to Denmark, and set about getting the kilometres under my belt. Dad accompanied me by car on each training session. It was hard, and I got more and more exhausted with each day that passed. But by my first race, I could tell that I was in better condition than I’d ever been in. Guimard’s ideas about training proved to be spot on, which in turn gave me confidence that his interest in me and my career was genuine.
My role on the team was clearly defined: I was to help Fignon in whichever way he needed me. At first, we hardly said a word to each other. I could speak a little bit of French, having learned at school, but neither of us was particularly chatty by nature anyway. Almost immediately, though, things worked perfectly. There was this mutual understanding between us on the bike – a sort of chemistry between our personalities, as we both knew our roles. During races, I had to be alert to Fignon’s needs, and take care of them quickly and effectively. After a while, it came naturally to me, and I’d know what he wanted before he even had to tell me. My main tasks were to keep him sheltered from the wind so that he could save energy, and to guide him safely up through the peloton to the front when the mountains approached. It was all about making things as effortless as possible for him. He needed to be able to trust me implicitly – to know that it was safe to sit behind me on my wheel, and that I would never let him down.
During the previous months, when it had looked like my cycling career was about to be over, I’d made a promise to myself that if I ever did get another chance, then I’d make myself indispensable to my team. Now that I had got that chance, I wanted to be the absolute best domestique possible for Fignon, which meant setting aside my own ambitions and hopes of good results for myself. I also treated it as a learning experience – an opportunity to really learn the tricks of the trade. Guimard had originally picked out a different rider to be Fignon’s right-hand man, but he had been forced to change his mind when Fignon himself told him that he wanted it to be me. Him choosing me meant that Guimard quickly gave me even more attention, keen to help me be as good a bike rider as I could be. And he didn’t hold back when telling me what I needed to do. My riding position wasn’t right, he told me. “You’re sitting all wrong on your bike. It’s too small for you,” he pointed out, and said that they would build a new one for me. My new bike was 2cm higher and 4cm longer than before, and gave me a much better position.
Every training ride and every race I did with Fignon helped my confidence, and taught me a lot about what it takes to be a leader. I was learning something new every day. During a race, Fignon would give instructions in a neutral and friendly tone. There was no shouting or swearing – he was always calm, and a complete gentleman. He just had so much experience; there seemed to be nothing in a race that he hadn’t seen before. But it was his way or no way, and I experienced that first hand in the run up to the spring Classic, Milan-San Remo. The team had got together in Italy two weeks before the race to prepare, and I was sitting at the dinner table in our hotel opposite Fignon on the evening that Guimard announced which riders had been selected for the one-day race. When he’d finished reading the list, my name hadn’t been called out. I was immensely disappointed, as Fignon and I had trained so much together in the lead-up to the race. It must have shown on my face, too.
“Did you want to ride this one, Bjarne?” he asked me.
“I’d hoped to, yeah,” I told him honestly.
“Okay – you’re riding,” he said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to make such a decision without running it past Guimard. And, sure enough, I did ride.
Fignon’s philosophy was that, as a team captain, you use your team. “You can never win on your own,” he’d say. For him, a team needed to be made up of different riders who could come together to complement each other. He’d spend a lot of his time in the peloton studying his rivals. He’d analyse them individually – how each of them was looking, what kind of form they had, whether their facial expressions and the way they were holding themselves on the bike meant that they were about to crumble. “It’s about discovering their strengths, their weaknesses and their sore points,” Fignon would tell me. I’d lap up his words of wisdom, filing it all away to perhaps use later.
The Frenchman always looked as though he was a step ahead of his rivals in terms of reading a race, knowing how it was going to play out before anyone else. “Always keep abreast of what’s going on,” he’d warn me. “Never lose your head.” He was always watching. He’d see the tiniest movement or change in the bunch that might influence the race. If something looked like it was about to happen, he’d already be thinking about what that would mean. He taught me that just a moment’s inattention could prove critical, but that at the same time you shouldn’t react to every single wave that goes through the peloton. It was about picking and choosing the right times to use your energy.
He would train a lot. His thinking was that if you didn’t have enough kilometres in your legs, it was because you didn’t want it enough. I was on the receiving end of that one, too, when we were in Sicily for the Giro d’Etna.
When I came down for breakfast on the morning of the 180km race, Fignon was already sitting at the table. He’d had an idea. “I’m going to cycle to the start to get in a bit of extra training,” he told me. “Do you want to come with me?”
He’d worked out that it was about 40km from our hotel.
“Sure!” I answered, proud to have been invited along for the warm-up.
We rode the 40km to the start, and then added on another 180km of racing. Slightly exhausted after my 220km, I was looking for our team car to take us back to the hotel when Fignon rolled up beside me. “Shall we cycle back to the hotel? We may as well, eh?”
It was less of a question and more of a suggestion.
“Why not?” I found myself replying.
We were quickly on our way, and we weren’t hanging around, either. At such a speed, the 40km Fignon reckoned it was back to the hotel were going to fly by. But it was also beginning to get dark, and perhaps it was that that had an effect on Fignon’s sense of direction. Or he had miscalculated the distance from the finish to the hotel.
We were soon riding through towns I’d definitely never seen before, and which I was pretty sure weren’t on the route we should have been taking. As it got darker, I began to worry that perhaps this island, of all the islands we could have been on, was perhaps not the best one to be lost on, considering its Mafia connections. But Fignon seemed completely unperturbed. “Nearly there!” he chirped.
I had long suspected that he had absolutely no idea where we were, and he was virtually dragging me along with him. I was completely finished, and had to really fight to follow his wheel as we ploughed our way through the streets of yet another unfamiliar town. It had gone 9pm, by which time it was pitch black, when we finally found the hotel. The others had been worried about us, and had been out several times to look for us. Fignon shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “A good few extra training kilometres, eh?”
It was all I could do to drag myself up to bed, having ridden at least 300km in one day. I was learning all right.
That April, Guimard told me that I was going to ride the Giro. My role? To be Fignon’s shadow and help him to win the overall classification. My selection for the race was proof that I had passed the test – that they could count on me, and believed in me as a loyal domestique.
From the very first stage, I stuck to Fignon like a limpet. Each time I turned my head just a few centimetres behind me, there he was with his ponytail and round glasses. I’d guide him through the peloton, keeping him out of harm’s way and protecting him from the wind. A grateful nod or look was generally all the feedback I got, or needed, from him to let me know that I was doing a good job. But he was particularly appreciative on the occasions that I’d be dropped on a climb and then claw my way back up to him in the front group on the descent, and get back to work for him on the front. He was a rider who would fight against everyone and everything, but he thrived on it. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, and was very selective with whom he would give his attention to. He also had friends and a life outside of cycling, which he was very protective of, and which meant he could distance himself from the sport when he wanted to.
Being able to see Fignon as a person as well as a sportsman was also helpful when it came to my willingness to ride for him. If he’d been an idiot, I doubt I would have been willing to sacrifice myself for him the way I did, like a good domestique should. You need to be as willing to fight for your team leader as you are to fight for yourself. And victory for your leader is good for your bank account, too. For every decent result Fignon attained, it meant a share of the prize money for me. Good results for him would also put me in a better position when it came to negotiating my contract later in the season. Most importantly, though, working for Fignon had brought me up to the sort of level that I had never even been close to, and would never have dreamed of reaching. My riding at that Giro showed just how far I’d come, and Fignon was in the perfect position in the overall classification going into the second week, just half a minute down on the race leader.
The 221km-long ninth stage of the 1989 Giro between L’Aquila and Gubbio on Monday 29 May should have been just another day, when I’d “gulp the wind” and work for Fignon. Whenever I rode hard, I’d do it with my mouth gaping open – as though I really was gulping in the wind, protecting Fignon from it. On that stage to Gubbio, I was feeling pretty good – and Fignon had apparently noticed. I was up at the front of the bunch, helping to chase down a breakaway, when Fignon rode up next to me. “You should go for it today, Bjarne,” he said.
“No – I’ll stay here and work for you,” I replied.
But it seemed that the boss had already made up his mind, and I wasn’t going to argue.
“Get on my wheel, and I’ll help you get a gap,” Fignon told me.
I did as I was told, and with 7 or 8km left to go, I managed to get away from the peloton and found myself in a break with Enrico Galleschi, Dmitri Konyshev and fellow Dane Rolf Sørensen. Having established a decent enough gap back to the bunch, it was pretty clear that the stage winner was going to come from one of the four of us. But a quick look around at the others made me realise that I wouldn’t have a chance in hell against them if we were going to sprint it out between us, so I needed to come up with a plan. Rolf shouted at me, as though I was his domestique and working for him. “Come on – ride, ride!” he yelled. He was hoping that I’d ride for him to help him win – that I would give it everything so that he could nick victory in the sprint. But I wasn’t going to let that happen.
The last 500m were slightly uphill, and this was my chance. I decided that I was going to attack just when they least expected it, and would then have to be ready to have to do a very long sprint. But I knew that Rolf and Konyshev would do whatever it took to ruin my plans. I tried to conjure up everything that Fignon had ever taught me. The time had come to just do it and not think too much – and do it before it was too late to attack. I patiently waited until the last 500m, hanging on until just the right moment. I would prove to Fignon and Guimard that they’d made the right decision by giving me a place on the team, while showing everyone who had ever written me off what they were missing. This new version of me was better, smarter and worked harder, and was able to mix it with the best at the highest level. The moment that Rolf and Konyshev forgot about me and started to look at each other was going to be my signal to attack. And when that second came, it was all the time I needed, and I went for it. Every pedal stroke I made was with a rage and will to win that I’d never felt before in my professional career, and each new pedal stroke filled me with more self-confidence. Only Rolf could go with me, but the shock of my attack had bought me a couple of precious metres on him. However, I knew that he was just as hungry for the stage win as I was. But there was no way that I was going to let him pass me as we sprinted to the finish line.
The stage win was the highlight of my career so far, and my most important victory to date. The pride and joy I felt was overwhelming. This was more than just a win; this meant recognition and respect going forward. Fignon was thrilled for me when he crossed the line. “Congratulations, Bjarne,” he said, and I could tell that he really meant it. Giving me the opportunity to ride for myself was also his way of saying thank you. It was a reward for my loyalty, and in my world it was huge that he was prepared to let me, an unknown young rider, take all the attention and glory that comes with winning for a day. But he could be sure that I’d pay my appreciation back. We both knew it. He’d now got himself an even more dedicated domestique, while I was left feeling appreciated both as a rider and as a person.
Guimard was full of praise for me when talking to the Danish journalists who were there covering the race, and who quickly needed to find out who I was for their reports. “The Dane still has a lot to give as a rider, so that’s why I’m bringing him to the big stage races – so that he can learn. What he’s lacking is experience, but he’s got a lot more to give yet,” Guimard told the Danish press.
I rode the rest of the race 100 per cent for Fignon, not letting him out of my sight, sheltering him from the wind and from his rivals, and doing my best to make sure he was exactly where he needed to be when it mattered. Fignon won that Giro overall, and in doing so gave the Super U team what they had needed and had hoped for: the successful return to form of their French star. But what I had needed to do was convince Guimard and Fignon that they should extend my contract and keep me on the team for the following year. Guimard informed us that he was looking for a new main sponsor so that the team could continue the following year. “Would you like to be part of the team again next year, too?” he asked me. He didn’t need to ask twice.
My performance at the Giro had convinced Guimard that I was irreplaceable when it came to helping Fignon to try to win his third Tour de France in the summer. One of my biggest dreams was about to come true.
Fignon’s main rivals for the 1989 Tour were the American 1986 winner Greg LeMond and the Spaniard, and defending champion, Pedro Delgado. As early as stage two – a 40km-long team time trial – the Tour was proving to be everything I had hoped it would be. With Gérard Rué, Thierry Marie and Fignon at the head of affairs, we hammered away from the start. We rode fast – really fast. I was flying, and was giving it absolutely everything every time I took my turn at the front of the line. Fignon and Marie were among the world’s best time triallists and could ride fast for long turns at a time, and every time they took over at the front it was like trying to ride behind a rocket. Fignon was keen to show the French public that he was still capable of winning a third Tour, and for the second half of the stage he stepped it up again and rode like he was from another planet. He took kilometre-long turns on the front, and the rest of us had to absolutely kill ourselves to try to stay in contact. We won the stage and, up on the podium, I could barely believe that it was happening. I’d won a stage of the Tour de France, and yet less than a year before I was considering finishing my career.
In the Alps and the Pyrenees, where the race would be decided, it was my job to support Fignon and leave him in the best possible position once I could no longer follow the pace. On stage 10, a mountainous stage that included the climb of the Tourmalet, the specialist climbers took over. I worked hard for Fignon, and he managed to distance his biggest rival, LeMond, and take the yellow jersey. That night, back at the hotel, there was even more good news.
“We’re so satisfied with the work you’re doing that we’d like to offer you a two-year contract,” smiled Guimard.
They were offering to more than treble my salary, from 12,000 kroner (£1,000) a month to 40,000 (£3,600). But for me it wasn’t only about the money; it meant that they really valued me.
Nine days later, Fignon won the 91km-long mountain stage to Villard de Lans, and in doing so increased his advantage over LeMond to 50 seconds. The Frenchman was all smiles at the dinner table that evening. He’d got through the mountains well, despite the competition from LeMond, and was now in a very good position to win the Tour de France. “I should win if I can keep riding like I am now,” he announced confidently.
It was unthinkable that LeMond would be able to overturn our captain’s 50-second advantage over the final stage, the 24.5km time trial between Versailles and the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Even though LeMond was an excellent time triallist – even better than Fignon – no one thought that such a deficit could be overcome over such a short stage. It would have meant LeMond going two seconds faster per kilometre than Fignon. At the hotel, the others on the team had started to work out what Fignon winning the Tour would mean for us in terms of prize money. The win would net him 1.5 million kroner (£123,500), which would be shared out between the riders and the team staff.
Everyone was in a really upbeat mood that Sunday, while Guimard and Fignon were locked in conversation about which handlebars Fignon should use. Fignon was against using the so-called clip-on “tri bars” that LeMond was using, as he hadn’t tested them himself. The position they gave you on the bike, which was much more aerodynamic and also produced more power, was borrowed from the world of triathlon. Fignon didn’t want to take any chances on such an important stage of the Tour, when as a team we’d never used them.
As race leader, Fignon would be the last man to start, while LeMond would start a place ahead of him. It would give Fignon an advantage, as he’d be able to hear LeMond’s time checks, and so stay that little bit more in control of how fast he was going himself. I rode that 24.5km final stage in a good time, and was proud to finish the 1989 Tour in 95th place overall. Not bad for a first attempt. Then all we had to do was sit back and wait for Fignon to make his victory official, dreaming in the meantime about all the prize money that was headed our way.
LeMond, however, had other ideas. The American took to the start ramp in his streamlined helmet and tri bars that Fignon had decided not to use. He was banking on these different aerodynamic aids buying him some valuable seconds. We stood in the sponsors’ pavilion, a stone’s throw away from the finish line, watching the race on the television. They’d split the screen so that we could follow the progress of both LeMond and Fignon at the same time. LeMond rode powerfully, smoothly and in control, while Fignon looked more ragged.
At the first time check, after 10.7km, a gasp went up. Fignon had already lost 21 seconds to LeMond. We looked nervously at each other, and the pavilion went silent. Everyone was there – wives, girlfriends, guests and sponsors – all ready to celebrate a Fignon victory. LeMond pushed onwards, elegant and effortless, with more and more belief that he could do the impossible and win. Fignon pushed onwards, too, but was fighting his bike, desperately trying to keep the momentum going. Hearing the time checks had forced him to give it everything. The American had started two minutes before Fignon, which meant that the crowds could watch both of them on the long Champs-Elysées. Everyone around us, though, kept their eyes glued to the TV screens and the time checks that showed the difference between them. Everyone had stopped talking long ago. We stood, our mouths wide open, staring at the screens.
LeMond crossed the finish line with easily the best time of the day – 26 minutes and 57 seconds. It meant that Fignon needed to finish inside 27 minutes and 47 seconds to win the Tour. It was unbearable to watch, especially having been so close to the person who had battled so hard for victory, as Fignon had. By now he was pedalling squares – desperate and completely having lost his rhythm. The clock was counting down, while the TV showed LeMond also watching Fignon’s ride, barely believing what was happening himself. “No, no, no!” a number of the wives and girlfriends had begun crying in the pavilion. The French commentators were shouting and screaming themselves, too. Fignon hadn’t made it, crossing the line 58 seconds slower than LeMond. We watched the American break down in tears. He’d won the Tour de France by a measly eight seconds. Then we saw Fignon virtually fall of his bike, collapse on the ground and break down in tears as well.
Around me, people simply couldn’t believe what they’d witnessed, and some began to cry.
We had just lost the Tour by eight seconds. We’d ridden over 3,000km, yet just eight seconds had cost us victory. It had cost us about 100,000 kroner (£8,400) per rider in prize money, too. “We killed ourselves for three weeks to lose it all at the last minute like that,” one of the riders lamented.
Thierry Marie was inconsolable. “If only I could have swapped my time trial with Fignon’s,” he mumbled, having finished second on the stage to LeMond.
Everyone felt so sorry for Fignon when he stood on the podium as runner-up, trying to hold the tears back and keep the disappointment hidden.
That night, a big party had been planned at a restaurant. The team decided that we should stick with it and have a party anyway, and it was good to see that Fignon was determined to have a good time, despite his huge disappointment. “I thought you were the strongest rider,” I told him.
“Thanks, Bjarne,” he said, unable to completely hide how hard it was to accept that he’d been beaten.
We drowned our sorrows with champagne and partied long into the night. At one point, someone produced a copy of the next day’s L’Equipe. On the front page, the French sports newspaper featured a picture of Fignon just after he’d realised that he’d lost the Tour. “Put that away so that he doesn’t see it,” Guimard hissed. There was no need to ruin the party.
On 28 October 1989, back in Denmark, Mette and I got married. She was six months pregnant by then, but looked stunning standing there at the altar, and I thought how lucky I was that she’d stuck with me. Despite everything we’d been through, she’d always supported me, and never told me that we should just give up and go home. When we came out of the church, all my former Herning Cycling Club team-mates formed an arch of bike wheels for us to walk through.
Three months later came yet another fantastic day of my life, as our son, Jesper, was born. As I held him in my arms, I couldn’t have been happier. Now we were a proper family. It was the end of selfishly doing whatever we wanted to do as a couple; now little Jesper was relying on us. And I hoped this new-found maturity would translate well into my cycling career, too.
For the 1990 season, the Super U team changed its name to Castorama, but it was still Guimard’s team. Fignon, Marie and Rué were all still there, as well as big-name riders such as Luc Leblanc and Pascal Simon. At just 25 years of age, I was right-hand man to the number one rider in the world – Fignon – and that meant that I was also allowed to ride for myself in some of the smaller races. I got my chance at that year’s Tour of Luxembourg. Guimard gave me free rein for the race for the first time, even though Fignon himself was riding.
Fignon showed during the race that he was only too happy to work for me. On one stage, when I had to drop back with a mechanical problem, Fignon dropped back with me before pacing me back up to the peloton. Unfortunately, I had to settle for sixth place overall, but the confidence shown to me by Guimard and Fignon only served to fill me with even more self-belief.
Next up was the Giro d’Italia, where Fignon was the favourite. However, he crashed on a descent as we went through a badly lit tunnel early in the race, and from then on in it was a real battle for him to even stay in the race. He’d injured his back quite badly, and was having to take painkillers each morning just to keep going. Halfway through stage nine, he turned and looked at me. “That’s it,” he said, stopped and got off his bike. The pain had been too much for him, and it was the Italian, Gianni Bugno, who went on to dominate the race and win the 1990 Giro.
Things didn’t go much better at the Tour de France in July. Everyone expected Fignon to be out to avenge his second place of the year before, but he just wasn’t himself during the race.
As early as stage three, he crashed, but was able to get to the finish in Nantes and play down the seriousness of his accident. But in the days that followed, he seemed disheartened and demotivated.
Stage five was a 305km-long slog through pouring rain to Rouen, and Fignon was more than 11 minutes down on the race leader and looked like he would have preferred to have been almost anywhere else. When we got to the feed zone, he declined to take a musette bag of food. It wasn’t a good sign.
“Carry on,” he instructed us, and looked over his shoulder.
I knew what was coming next. A following team car pulled up and Fignon stopped and jumped into the back seat. He’d lost his morale, and so I was left in the race to ride for myself.
When we hit the Alps, I felt great. On every climb, I felt really comfortable, and was encouraged further by the fact that I was able to keep up with a lot of the big names. But on the morning after the Alpe d’Huez stage, I woke up with a temperature, and felt awful. The team doctor confirmed that I had a fever and wouldn’t be able to continue. I was furious. I’d got my chance to show what I could do, and it had been going so well, and yet I’d been stopped by illness. I packed my suitcase, said goodbye to the others and headed home to Mette in Luxembourg, where, after a further medical examination, the doctor told me that I’d been racing with a kidney infection.
By the time the 1991 season came around, Castorama wasn’t in the best of health, either. Guimard and Fignon’s relationship was on the slide. It was obvious that they couldn’t work with each other any more, and were ready to go their separate ways. However, they jointly owned the company that held the licence for the team – and their disagreements apparently stemmed from the fact that they both wanted to do things their own way. Unfortunately their business disagreements affected the team and our results. What had been a fantastic working environment suddenly became less pleasant.
In the spring Classics, I was the unlucky victim of crashes on several occasions, including at Ghent-Wevelgem where I smashed into one of the officials’ motorbikes at full speed. I hit my head hard on the ground, and walked away with minor concussion. In the ambulance, I met my old mate Jesper Skibby, who’d also fallen. Despite being battered and bruised, it was still pretty funny to share an ambulance together. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he laughed when he saw me.
At the season’s first big goal for the team, the 1991 Giro d’Italia, the unrest in the team was clear to see for anyone. Fignon was our team leader, yet it seemed that he didn’t have the support of all the riders. He and Guimard appeared only to be talking to each other when they absolutely had to, and it seemed unlikely that they would be able to work together much longer at all. But Fignon seemed optimistic on the morning of stage nine. “I’ll be in the top 10 today,” he told me. For that to happen, though, he needed the support of the whole team, and not just me.
As I feared, on the first few climbs of the day my team-mates dropped back having done very little to help. I was the only one left to help Fignon on the final category one climb, which was likely to decide the stage. I was able to help him on the first part of the climb, and then it was up to him. He finished ninth on the stage – inside the top 10, just as he’d predicted. But I was furious with my team-mates, and wasn’t afraid to show it in front of the Danish journalists.
“It’s got to the point on the team where I’m the only one riding wholeheartedly for Laurent,” I told them. “Both Laurent and the team management know that, but no one’s doing anything about it, and that’s what’s making me most angry.”
The next day, Fignon and I rode along chatting about the situation. “What’s going on between you and Guimard?” I asked him.
In his answer, Fignon showed a side of himself that I’d not seen before – a more honest, vulnerable side. Maybe he didn’t have too many people he could confide in, I thought.
“It’s over between Guimard and me,” he told me. “We disagree too often to be able to carry on working together. Our working relationship has run its course.” He went on to tell me that he was already in negotiations with a number of other teams.
Once he’d told me that, I plucked up the courage to ask the obvious question: “Might I be included in your plans?”
“Of course – if you’d like to be. It’d be great to have you in the same team next year,” he answered.
That was Fignon’s side of the story but, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that perhaps Guimard had also begun to think more about the future, and realised that Fignon couldn’t stay at the top of his game forever, while someone younger, like Luc Leblanc, might be ready to step up a level. I was all set to follow Fignon, but it suddenly dawned on me that if I ever wanted to break out of the role of domestique, then I’d have to do it without Fignon.
On stage 10, Fignon lost a lot of time, which meant that he was out of the running for the overall classification, and so he quit the race. Maybe it was time for me to move on.
At the 1991 Tour de France, both Guimard and Fignon seemed keen to give me a contract with their new, respective, teams. But I was in no hurry. I was still considering what my next move should be – and whether I should head to a team without either of them. On the Tour’s first proper mountain stage, we stole a march on everyone. Everyone in the peloton was busy watching the favourites, including Fignon, allowing our team-mate Leblanc to slip away in a 144km-long breakaway with fellow Frenchman Charly Mottet. The attack caused havoc back in the bunch, and Leblanc finished second to Mottet, but he also took over the race lead from Greg LeMond. Back at the hotel that evening, we celebrated Leblanc’s yellow jersey with champagne. But behind all the smiles, there was another conflict brewing between Fignon and Guimard: who should we now ride for in the general classification? Fignon or Leblanc?
In the following few days, many of the big names suffered, and it was a quiet, young Spaniard, Miguel Indurain, who made his breakthrough. He took the leader’s jersey in the Pyrenees, while Fignon was left back in sixth place as we headed towards the Alps. One day, Fignon rode up next to me and told me that he was going to tell the press that he wasn’t going to remain with Castorama for the following season, and that I should be ready for journalists to ask me what my plans were. “There are a lot of teams interested, but if you want to come with me, there’ll definitely be a place for you,” he promised.
On Sunday, we arrived in Paris with Leblanc taking fifth overall, while Fignon was sixth. Two of our riders in the top 10, plus a certain Danish domestique in 107th place, two hours and eight minutes behind Indurain, wasn’t bad.
Following the Tour, Fignon continued to talk to a number of teams. I just played it cool and didn’t let on that in fact a number of teams had also contacted me to ask if I wanted to ride for them. I decided that I’d wait until after the world championships in Stuttgart to make my decision.
Shortly before the world championships, Fignon got in touch to tell me that talks with one of the biggest teams he was in negotiations with had fallen through. “But I’m still in touch with plenty of other teams,” he reassured me. His honesty, however, gave rise to some doubt in me. If I put all my trust in him finding a team, I might end up with nothing if he wasn’t able to find anything for himself that he was satisfied with. I was pretty certain that he would rather end his career than sign a contract that he wasn’t happy with.
At 27 years old, I felt as though it was high time that I took advantage of the fact that I was approaching the age where most riders reach the peak of their fitness and ability. Staying with Fignon would mean missing out on that chance. I’d trained with him specifically for the Stuttgart Worlds, both of us hoping to hit form for the one-day race that took place on a 15.8km-long circuit, which we had to ride 16 laps of – 252.8km in all. Gianni Bugno, Miguel Indurain and Claudio Chiappucci were all named as favourites, as the circuit featured a climb perfect for jumping clear of the bunch. A number of riders tried exactly that during the race, but on the 13th lap there was a split in the peloton, and I found myself in the front group of 34 riders, along with my Danish national squad team-mate Bo Hamburger.
By the 14th lap, I was at the front setting the tempo, and tried several attacks. I was in superb form, and my morale was equally as good thanks to me finding myself in a group alongside the sport’s star names. I tried to slip off the front with Fignon multiple times, but Indurain, Bugno and the Dutchman Steven Rooks were not going to let us go anywhere. On the last lap, though, Bugno, Indurain, Rooks and the Colombian rider, Alvaro Mejia, put the hammer down on the climb, while the rest of us could only watch them disappear up the road. They got a gap, and they kept it; Bugno won the sprint to become world champion. My group trailed in 11 seconds down. I’d normally stay well away from a sprint, but this was the world championships, so I wanted to show what I was capable of. I opened up the sprint in our group, but the German, Kai Hundertmarck, came past me in the last few metres for fifth place, while I got sixth. My immediate reaction was one of disappointment, but it soon gave way to pride over the way I’d ridden. I’d shown the teams who were interested in me just what I was capable of.
We took a family holiday after the Worlds, and I waited to hear whether my results in Stuttgart had convinced any of the interested teams enough to want to sign me. I spoke to various people in the days that followed. Rolf Sørensen talked excitedly about how ambitious Ariostea, the Italian team he was on, were. The team leader was Moreno Argentin, but Rolf had a free role on the squad. Fignon rang me, too, to tell me that he was on the brink of signing with a new Italian team, Gatorade. “Do you want to join the team with me?” he asked.
The new world champion, Bugno, was going to be the leader of the new team, which gave me a gut feeling that there could be few chances for me to ever ride for myself. It would be a case of continuing where I’d left off at Castorama – namely, riding in the service of others. The money that Gatorade were offering was good, but I was thinking more about personal growth than financial gain.
“Do you mind if I think about it?” I asked Fignon.
Whether it was Rolf or someone else who put a good word in for me, I’m not sure, but Ariostea team boss Giancarlo Ferretti was soon on the phone to me. “How would you feel about riding for us?” he asked me. We talked about my ambitions, and how my role could fit in with the Italian team’s goals. “I’ve seen you working for Fignon,” Ferretti told me, “and you’re good.”
He went on to say that he thought I made a good stage-race rider, which is something the Italian team was looking for. He added that, with time, I’d be able to ride for myself in the bigger races. After that, things progressed quickly. We arranged to meet at the airport in Milan to go through the details of the contract. Ferretti was known as somewhat of a hard man, but we were able to agree on my salary, which was to be 60,000 kroner per month (£5,700).
Signing the contract with Ariostea meant that my working relationship with Fignon was over, and that hurt on a personal level, too, as he had been such a good teacher and had always treated me well. But I knew that something had to give if I wanted to have a crack at a successful career of my own.