Giancarlo Ferretti was already at the table when we came stumbling down the hotel stairs for breakfast. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed while the rest of us plonked ourselves down on our chairs. He looked like he might already have been onto his fifth espresso. “Let’s get started, shall we?” he continued, impatiently, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it had only been a couple of minutes ago that most of us had rolled out of bed. He liked to hold his team meetings at the breakfast table, and it paid to be awake, as he tended to gabble through his strategies, thoughts and team orders without so much as a pause for breath. But there was something special about him. Yes, he talked a lot, and could have quite a temper, but he was also assertive, which gave him the ability to make his riders give everything for him and for the good of the team.
He looked over at me. “Are you going to do something today, Bjarne?” he asked. We both knew that he was trying to provoke me after what I’d said about taking my own chances.
“Hmm,” I growled back.
I found the way he’d taunt me extremely irritating. He was looking for some aggression from me.
“Was that a ‘yes’, Bjarne?” he continued. “Is today the day you’re going to show us what you can do?”
“I’ll have to wait and see how the race develops,” I mumbled back. But it was non-committal answers like that that spurred him on even more.
“You need to be more aggressive, Bjarne. Show more of your temper, Bjarne.”
Yes, he was trying to provoke a reaction all right. He was goading me to break out of my “domestique’s shell”, as he liked to call it. And when he saw his chance to chip away at me, he took it. But his provocation was just his way of trying to convince me that I had potential. He’d worked out that I felt safe in my role as a domestique – that I was uncomfortable when it came to trying to ride for the win myself.
“If you only see yourself as a domestique, then you’ll always be a domestique. You’re limiting yourself,” he’d tell me, which he knew hit all the right buttons.
Joining an Italian team was a bit of a culture shock. Both the teams and the riders were a lot more professional when it came to training and diet compared to what I had been used to. The riders’ roles at Ariostea were very clearly defined. It was totally hierarchical: a leader at the top, the other big-name riders below him, and then the “water carriers” at the bottom. As a nation, Italy has always been extremely serious about its cycling. Riders went to bed early, they were careful about what they ate, and their training was clearly structured. And Ariostea were considered one of the best teams of them all. It was well organised, it contained a number of really decent riders and, although Ferretti could sometimes be a bit much, he was a master at motivating his riders to work together, and knew exactly how to approach each race.
The team’s star rider was former world champion Moreno Argentin, whose results and experience ensured that he commanded respect. I would need to show him what I could do, both in terms of results and my willingness to work for him, before he would accept me. My fellow Dane, Rolf Sørensen, was another rider who wasn’t lacking in self-confidence. He was the team’s one-day specialist, expected to get results in the Classics, and so enjoyed star-rider status, too.
As a team, we dominated the first half of the 1992 season. Argentin won the Tour of Sicily, Adriano Baffi won a stage at Paris-Nice, Giorgio Furlan took victory at the Belgian semi-Classic, Flèche Wallonne, and Rolf Sørensen took the overall win at Tirreno-Adriatico. After one of the stages at Tirreno, Argentin came up to me. “Now I understand why Fignon liked having you around,” he said, and told me that he wanted me to ride Milan-San Remo with him. We almost pulled it off, too. I rode the whole race for Argentin, but he had to settle for second place on the day.
All the Italian teams had their own doctors, who would double as the teams’ coaches. Ariostea had Luigi Cecchini and Michele Ferrari, who would work out our training programmes, which were very specific, and tailored to each rider’s strengths. Each training session had a goal; it wasn’t just about getting kilometres in your legs. “You need to know what you’re trying to get out of each training session,” Cecchini would say. “You either need to be concentrating on building muscle strength or working on your fitness. And you need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.” This more scientific approach to training intrigued me. The doctors’ approach opened up a whole new world for me to try to improve my results. I realised that it was what I’d been missing: a systematic, focused approach. The way it worked was that Ferretti would work out my race programme and then pass it on to the doctors, who would use it to plan my training programme. I soon worked out that the doctors had a huge influence on the team. Their scientific knowledge was also used to help the management choose which riders would ride which races. It took a bit longer to work out how the system worked and which riders were linked more closely to which of the two doctors – Ferrari or Cecchini. I felt that Cecchini seemed to show more of an interest in me as both a person and a rider, and so I found myself gravitating to working more with him.
At the start of May, I was picked as part of the team for the Giro, which, as an Italian team, was our main goal of the season. But with around 50km left to go of the fifth stage there was a huge crash, with a number of riders going down, including me. I hit my head pretty hard, but was quickly back on my feet, looking for my bike – before falling down again, unconscious. The next thing I knew, I was on my bike again, riding, with Ferretti alongside me in the team car. “How are you feeling?” he kept asking me. I was pretty incoherent, but insisted on finishing the stage. Back at the hotel, in bed, feeling groggy, with an icepack on my head, Ferretti told me that I probably had concussion, and that we’d have to wait until the next morning to see whether I’d be able to start the next stage.
I still had a thumping headache the next day, but felt okay to ride. The day’s stage was the first in the mountains, which was where we hoped to do well as a team. Roberto Conti was second in the stage for us, while Furlan moved up in the general classification to second place, half a minute down on race leader Miguel Indurain. I battled through the stage to finish 175th, 51 minutes down on the stage winner.
A few days later, I began to feel a lot better again after my crash, which meant that Ferretti thought the time was right to again start heckling me to do something in the race. “So, Bjarne, isn’t it time we saw something from you?” he smiled. “We’ll soon be out of the mountains again.”
What he was trying to tell me was that, if I wanted to win a stage, it was now or never. The provocation worked and, 50km into stage 19 to Verbania, I went off up the road. I was no danger to the overall classification, so no one took me seriously. Besides, with 150km left to ride, attacking alone seemed like suicide. But it showed Ferretti that I was willing to take chances. I gave it everything, flying through the mountains, giving Ariostea plenty of TV time to boot.
My advantage over the rest reached four minutes at one point, and I began to hope that the main contenders would be content to just watch each other rather than try to get me back. But with 30km to go, my time in the spotlight was over, and Indurain, Claudio Chiappucci, Franco Chioccioli and Andy Hampsten came flying past me on the day’s toughest climb. I’d shown Ferretti what I was capable of, though, and he was pleased with me when we got back to the hotel that evening.
Our man for the overall, Roberto Conti, eventually finished ninth, while I was 101st, three hours and 38 minutes down on the race winner, Indurain. I hoped I’d done enough to get picked for the Tour de France, but it was during the Tour of Switzerland that Ferretti came to me with the disappointing news that they weren’t taking me to the Tour that year.
While my team-mates rode the Tour de France, I concentrated on training for the world championships, which were to take place in Spain later that year. I also used my free summer to spend more time with a heavily pregnant Mette and two-year-old Jesper.
Mette had been fantastic support during the first half of my season with Ariostea. As a pro, I’d spend two thirds of the year away from home, but even when I was home, I was either out training or had cycling on my mind. I’d train between three and seven hours a day, which meant I was normally quite exhausted once I came back. It was tough trying to be a normal dad. Being a professional sportsman took its toll on my family. Mette accepted what I did for a career, but it was hard for her when I was lost in thought about my next race and wasn’t giving her and Jesper enough attention. When I came home from races, I wanted to be able to rest and recover, but Mette wanted me to take part in normal family life to make up for the fact that I’d been away. I felt guilty that I was always away, but equally as guilty that it was so hard to take part in family life when I was home.
Despite how difficult it was, I think we did a good job as Jesper’s parents and, while I was away racing in Italy, on 31 August, Mette gave birth to our 3.6kg bundle of joy, Thomas.
“Bjarne, you have two goals for 1993,” Ferretti told me. “We want good results from you at both the Giro and the Tour.” My whole season was structured around hitting form for those two races, so I sat down with Cecchini and worked out my training programme. But ahead of the Giro, Ferretti had some bad news: Ariostea had decided to stop sponsoring the team at the end of the season. Seeing as my contract also ran out at the end of the season, there was an added incentive to do well at the Giro and the Tour.
Moreno Argentin, who’d ridden for us the year before and was now with the Mecair-Ballan squad, won the first stage of the Giro, and took the pink leader’s jersey as a result. The veteran rider certainly showed us that he still had it in him. When we saw each other, he greeted me with a smile. We chatted a bit about the previous year and how things were going now, and that’s when he asked me whether I might be interested in riding for a new team that was being set up for the following season.
“That certainly sounds exciting,” I replied.
“It’s going to be a strong team,” he assured me.
“I’m definitely interested,” I told him. “Let me know if you want to talk more about it.”
We arranged that he’d be in touch once there was something a little more concrete in place.
I spent the first half of the race trying to ride on the offensive and show off the Danish champion’s jersey, which I’d won a few months earlier, but Miguel Indurain and his team were particularly strong. I noticed, though, that I was a lot more consistent than I had been before, and was able to follow the lead group when the Spaniard put the hammer down.
At 29 years old, I knew that the next team I rode for needed to be one where I could earn a bit of money in order to set myself up for life after my riding career was over. And so I needed to show what I was capable of at this Giro if I wanted to earn more money.
On stage seven, in Sicily, a 242km stage between Capo d’Orlando and Agrigento, I got away with two Italians, Perini and Coppollilo. We worked well together and quickly built up a good gap. At one point, we were told that we had 10 minutes on the peloton, which meant that, if we could maintain it to the finish, I’d take the pink jersey. I tried to rid myself of my two breakaway companions twice in the last 30km, but they stuck close to me and weren’t prepared to let me go anywhere. The gap back to the peloton had been brought right down thanks to Argentin’s team working hard to ensure that he held on to his leader’s jersey, but we still had enough of a gap to ensure that one of the three of us would take the stage win.
Coming towards the finish, Pirini opened the sprint, but was dying as we neared the line. I nudged ahead of him, and managed to keep Coppollilo behind me, and it was enough to win the stage. I was thrilled, although it did little to lift me up the general classification, as the peloton came across the line just a minute behind us. Ferretti, too, was ecstatic. The team hadn’t had too many wins of late, so it came at a very welcome time.
I was also encouraged by the fact that the big Italian newspaper, La Gazzetta dello Sport, picked me as one of their riders of the race so far. But rather than being able to impress yet further, a severe stomach ache one night had me struggling for the next couple of stages. Not even a course of antibiotics seemed to help. I also had a fever, but tried to continue regardless. But all the power was gone, and I slipped down the general classification, unable to follow the leaders when the road went upwards. I decided to quit the race after stage 18. I was hopelessly off the pace, and just didn’t have any energy left, which was a major disappointment.
In the days leading up to the Tour de France, I came to an agreement on a two-year contract with Mecair-Ballan, which would change its name to Gewiss-Ballan for the following season. The manager, Emmanuele Bombini, promised me that the team was going to be strong, and that he was in a position to pick and choose the riders he wanted. My Ariostea team-mate, Giorgio Furlan, was also going to join the squad, which was continuing with Argentin as its team leader.
At the Tour, the other Danish riders taking part congratulated me on my new deal, and as early as the first stage to Lucon we were flying the flag for Denmark. Brian Holm was the first to try his luck and, when he was caught, my old friend from Herning, Per Pedersen, had a go and stayed away for 120km as part of a breakaway group. When they were pulled back in, with 5km to go, Rolf Sørensen attacked, but he, too, was caught. With just 2km left, I saw my opportunity, and with a good tailwind I quickly got a 100m gap. This was no time to be looking over my shoulder; I just gave it everything I had. I was convinced that I’d done enough to win the stage, and perhaps even take the yellow jersey, but the bunch was absolutely flying, and the sprinters barrelled past me with just 700m to go. It was perhaps a waste of energy on my part, but it at least showed that I had good form. And on a flat stage like that, the sprinters’ teams were always going to be aggressive – this was their time to get noticed and win some precious prize money.
In 1993, the overall winner of the Tour de France won 2.3 million kroner (£240,000), second place got 1.1 million (£114,000), while third had to settle for 460,000 kroner (£48,000). Within each team, the money would be divided up in different ways. Some teams put all the prize money together for the whole season, and then divided it up depending on how many days of racing you’d done. At Ariostea, we took each race separately, and prize money was only given to those riders who’d ridden the race. For example, just before the start of the Tour, one of my team-mates, Marco Saligari, had won the 10-day Tour of Switzerland, with its prize money of around half a million kroner (£50,000). Fifteen per cent went to the team staff, which left the rest to be shared out between the riders on the team who had ridden to help Saligari win. A share of the prize money was a good driving force for domestiques – especially on teams like Miguel Indurain’s, where some of the less well-known and less well-paid riders could virtually double their salaries if they could guide him to the top step of the podium in Paris.
On the morning of the team time trial, we had a meeting. “We’ll just do it as if it was a training ride,” someone suggested. Most of my team-mates were only interested in stage wins, and none of them had any ambitions for the general classification. Most of them agreed that it would be good to have an easy day, but not me. Just because the team was stopping at the end of the year didn’t mean that we didn’t need to be ambitious.
“Let’s give it a proper go,” I said. “There’s no point losing a load of time and slipping down the general classification if it means missing out on publicity and prize money.”
A few more riders agreed with me, so we decided to vote on it. The result was that we would race the team time trial at full bore. If there was ever a time for me to show some leadership, it was now. I took much longer turns at the front of the line than the others, and we ended up ninth on the stage, which meant we didn’t lose too much time. I was still within striking distance of the big names.
Stage seven took us to Chalons sur Marne – champagne country. There was a special extra prize for the winner of the stage: 100 bottles of expensive champagne. There were more than a few riders who fancied their chances, but after 80km I saw my chance to try and slip away alone. However, I was joined by six other riders, including Max Sciandri, Johan Museeuw and my team-mate Bruno Cenghialta. We all worked well together, and the signs were good that we’d be able to stay away all the way to the finish. I had also won four of the five “King of the Mountains” climbs along the way, and I could feel that that had taken quite a bit out of me, so I slipped to the back of the small group to try to recover a little.
Heading into the final kilometre, I pretended that I was even more tired than I really was, and made the others think that I wasn’t interested in trying to win the stage so that they didn’t think they needed to keep an eye on me. With a Tour de France stage at stake, everyone gave it absolutely everything. Unfortunately for him, my team-mate Cenghialta crashed, which actually opened up a bit more space for me in the last few metres. It was close, but I just pipped Sciandri and Museeuw on the line. My stage victory meant that I moved up from fourth overall to third, and even took the polka-dot “King of the Mountains” jersey, becoming the first Dane ever to wear it.
Per Pedersen’s team was staying at the same hotel as us, so that evening I met him in the reception.
He cooed over the polka-dot jersey, and was about as impressed with it as I was. “Well, it doesn’t look like things have worked out too well for you, eh?” he said with a smile.
“No – it’s been awful,” I smiled back.
This moment – the stage win, the jersey – was the culmination of the journey we’d started together in 1985, when we set off from Herning in a rusty old dump of a car to begin our adventure in Luxembourg.
The next day I met Fignon in the start village. He seemed pleased for me, and gave me a warm handshake. A few Danish journalists saw us say hello to each other, and asked Fignon what he thought about my stage win and my progress as a rider. “I’m really happy for him,” Fignon told them. “He’s the most loyal rider I’ve ever come across. He’s never tried to ‘steal’ anything from anyone, and never tried to trick anyone. Guys like Bjarne are hard to find in this game.”
I ended up losing my “King of the Mountains” jersey on the stage, due to having to change a wheel just before one of the summits where there were points on offer. None of my team-mates helped me back into the race, which felt like they were all just looking after themselves, perhaps because the team would be stopping at the end of the year. The plan was also for my team-mates to lead me out for the sprint at the finish, but that never happened, either, and I lost my third place overall, which I wasn’t too happy about.
For the time trial the following day, I’d decided to give it everything, and just try to ignore the lactic acid that would come later. Sure enough, the last 10km were hellish, and I was deep into the red, on the brink of blowing up completely. I was frothing at the mouth, trying to use what little energy I had left on keeping the pedals turning. This was the moment to demonstrate that I was capable of turning myself inside out. Right as I crossed the line, my battery was completely empty. I managed to climb off my bike, but needed to use it to support myself and stop myself from collapsing. Exhausted, I slumped over my bike, trying to get my breath back. “How far behind Indurain was I?” was the first thing I managed to ask the throng of journalists.
“Four minutes and 40 seconds,” one of them told me, amazed that I was measuring myself against one of the world’s best time triallists.
“Okay,” I said, still coughing and spitting. Inside I was proud – really proud.
“You finished 12th on the stage, which puts you fifth overall,” another of the journalists told me.
I was still up there with the big boys – the superstars – while riders like Pedro Delgado, Claudio Chiappucci and Fignon were further behind me in the general classification.
But the Tour is decided in the mountains, and on stage 10 we hit the Alps. On the road to Serre Chevalier, we had to tackle two big climbs, the worst of which was the “beyond categorisation” Col du Galibier – a mountain considered amongst the toughest there are to climb by bike. After the Galibier, though, it was downhill all the way for almost 30km to the finish. It was a fearsome stage. The favourites soon established themselves at the head of affairs on the first climb, and I was able to hang on to them without any great problem. But at the foot of the Galibier, the Swiss rider Tony Rominger forced the pace, which blew the race apart. Indurain was alert to the danger and gave chase with three other riders, while I just had to stay at my own tempo to ensure I didn’t explode.
I finished the stage in 19th place – over seven minutes down on Rominger, who won the stage just ahead of Indurain. In the general classification I dropped down to eighth place, almost 10 minutes behind race leader Indurain. Despite that, doing as well as I did on such a hard mountain stage was a massive victory for me. Ferretti was particularly proud of my effort, but we didn’t agree on how we should tackle the following stages in the mountains. “I’m not convinced that you should use up so much energy trying to stay up at the front again,” he said. “It’s still more important that you try to win another stage rather than finish in the top 20.” I, on the other hand, wanted to show I had what it took to ride consistently in the mountains and finish in a good position overall.
Back in Denmark, there had been a lot of interest in the race thanks to a Dane doing well there.
I rang my dad, and he told me that the newspaper BT had been to visit him to interview him about his son, who had become “the nation’s pet”. “They called the article ‘The Pre-School Terror’,” he laughed down the phone. Dad had told them how Flemming and I were quite strong-willed at nursery school.
“Don’t tell them too many bad stories,” I laughed back.
“You were frothing at the mouth during the time trial the other day,” he reminded me.
“I was giving it everything I had,” I replied.
“You always tried that hard when you were a boy, but I haven’t seen so much of it since,” he laughed, proudly. It was good to speak to Dad and, after the call, I was left in a really good mood.
Stage 11 finished at the Isola 2000 ski resort in the Alps after a 180km-long stage that took in two “category one” climbs followed by two “beyond classification” mountains. It was set to be a frightening day – especially the final climb up all the hairpin bends to Isola 2000. Once again, I felt like I was riding exceptionally well, and I tried to keep something back on the earlier climbs so that I still had something left for the final ascent.
On the penultimate climb – the Bonette Restefond, which is Europe’s highest mountain pass at just over 2,800m high – I just climbed at my own pace to stop myself going into the red. With Chiappucci for company, I’d reckoned on taking the descent at the kind of speed I’d never dared to ride at before in the hope of catching the others again. A combination of self-confidence and trust in my own abilities allowed me to push it to the limit, and with our daring descent we managed to rejoin the Rominger and Indurain group, which had crossed the summit two minutes ahead of us.
We rode the first part of the climb up to Isola 2000 as a group, but I couldn’t help thinking the whole time how crazy it was that I was able to sit on Rominger and Indurain’s wheel. I couldn’t get my head around it – it was like a dream. It was the first time that I’d been in the “final” with the big guns, and I was still even in a position to try to beat them. I tried a couple of surprise attacks, but each time I’d get away, they’d bring me back, having decided that I was a threat after all. Into the last kilometre, the others ramped up the pace, and I struggled to match it thanks to cramp in one of my legs. Rominger won the stage ahead of Indurain for the second day in a row, while I trailed in in sixth place, 31 seconds down. It actually still moved me up in the general classification – to fifth place, ten-and-a-half minutes behind Indurain.
As I recovered from my efforts in the finish area, a sad bit of news filtered through from the race: Fignon had quit the race, and I worried that it might signal the end of his impressive career. My thoughts about my former teacher were interrupted by a flock of Danish journalists, eager for an explanation of why I was going so well. Mogens Jacobsen, from the newspaper Politiken, was especially pleased for me, having followed my career for many years. “This must feel like a dream, mustn’t it?” he asked me.
“It does, but when I’m struggling up another climb, it feels extremely real, believe me,” I told him. That evening, Ferretti promised me that everyone would now be riding for me.
Back in Denmark, people were going crazy. The media had even given me a nickname: “The Eagle of Herning”. A photographer from one of the Danish weekly magazines asked if he could take a couple of pictures of me in my hotel room, which I agreed to. I shared the room with my team-mate, Andrea Ferrigato, who was thrilled to have a photographer wanting to take some pictures of us. Later that evening I began to have terrible stomach pains, which kept me awake most of the night, and so did Andrea, who was also ill with the same thing.
The lack of sleep caused me to turn up to the first mountain stage in the Pyrenees on Monday 19 July feeling exhausted. I spent most of the 231km-long stage to Andorra struggling. It was like I was “pedalling squares”, as cyclists say; I didn’t feel good at all. But rather than let panic take over, I tried to stay calm and to ride myself back into the stage. I was still with all the big favourites as we approached the last couple of climbs. I even still had a couple of team-mates with me to help – or so I thought. On one of the climbs, where I was in a bit of trouble, I told them that I was “struggling a little”. But a few kilometres later, one of them decided to attack. Luckily none of my closest rivals – Hampsten or Chiappucci – were in any mood to chase my team-mate.
The Colombian Oliverio Rincon was in his element in the mountains and also attacked, but the favourites were again happy to just watch each other. With just 6 or 7km left to go, I knew then that I could probably stay with them all the way to the finish. But Indurain soon forced the pace, and I had to use my last reserves to hold on. “Just hang on,” I told myself through gritted teeth, determined not to let the Spaniard get away from me. And in the last couple of kilometres, I actually felt so good that I attacked. This time, Indurain didn’t chase me, but Tony Rominger did. No one else came with us, though, so the pair of us rode up the road to duke it out for second place, as Rincon was already assured of the stage win. Rominger took second, but I was happy enough with third on the stage, plus I’d done enough to hold on to my fifth place overall. If I could defend my position all the way to Paris, I’d be writing Danish history, as no other Dane had ever finished in the top five at the Tour before. There had been plenty of interest from the Danish press, but now the foreign media were taking an interest in me, too. “Why is it that you are suddenly so good in the mountains?” one of the journalists asked me.
“I’ve lost three kilos, and my doctor has been more involved with my training programme,” I told him. “I feel like a whole new rider, and am now just lacking a little bit of raw power, which I need for time trialling.”
It was partly true.
On the rest day, I signed a contract for the following season with Gewiss-Ballan manager Emanuele Bombini – which had the perfect amount of zeros on it. He called me, and after I went for a gentle ride we met in a side street where I signed the contract. When the Danish journalists heard that I’d signed a contract, they asked if the deal had made me a millionaire. “I wouldn’t tell you if it had,” I smiled. “But I’m trying to earn money while I can, yes, both to build my house in Luxembourg, and to pay for insurance that will cover me and my family if I have a bad crash.” The truth was that Gewiss had offered to pay me over 100,000 kroner (£10,000) a month.
Stage 16 was certainly no picnic. There were five big climbs on the menu in the 230km between Andorra and Saint Lary Soulon. It was freezing, and I shivered in a group of 30 or so riders fighting my own battle with the cold. I’d had to let Rominger and Indurain go, and we were only on the third climb of the day. But my legs were stiff with the cold, and there was nothing I could do. Somehow, we managed to catch the favourites again on the descent, but the only riders I was really watching were Chiappucci and Hampsten, as they were my closest rivals for stealing fifth place away from me. I was particularly concerned about the Italian. He looked like he was ready to attack.
On the final climb, the Pla d’Adet, I was struggling. It had been the hardest stage of the Tour so far. The climbs were particularly tough that day, and I was truly outside my comfort zone and very much on the limit.
Indurain, Rominger and the Polish rider Zenon Jaskula upped the pace, and there was no way I could hold on. More worrying, though, was what Hampsten and Chiappucci were capable of. If I was going to keep that fifth place overall, I couldn’t let them get too far ahead of me. The situation was critical. Up ahead, I could see my team-mate, Roberto Conti. “Hey!” I yelled at him, hoping to get some help from him. No reaction. I could feel the anger building in me. The Italian was only thinking of himself. “Hey! Hey!” I shouted again, even louder. Roberto looked behind and saw me. He seemed to be thinking about it – considering whether he should drop back and help me out, or just ride his own race. Slowly, he let himself fall back to me, and looked at me. The Italian had decided to lend a hand. I had a friend in my suffering.
For the last 6 or 7km to the top, I sat tight on Roberto’s back wheel, and it saved me. I was only two minutes behind the stage winner, Jaskula, but, most importantly of all, only 44 seconds down on Hampsten, so it was very much a case of damage limitation. “Thank you for your help,” I told Conti gratefully.
On stage 17, though, I needed everybody’s help. Another two big climbs – the Tourmalet and the Col d’Aubisque – needed to be tackled before the long, flat run-in to the finish in Pau. Chiappucci had decided that he fancied a crack at my fifth place, and on the Aubisque, with 120km still to go, the Italian attacked. On the climb, he and his breakaway companions built up a four-minute lead, which was enough to leapfrog me in the overall classification. None of the other favourites had any interest in chasing Chiappucci, so it was all up to me. On the descent, I looked around me and was pleased to see a number of my team-mates still with me. “We need to catch him!” I shouted to them. My team-mates – Elli, Cassani, Cenghialta, Conti and Järgmann – went to the front and buried themselves over the next 60km to try to pull Chiappucci back. We ate into his advantage, and back in the team car, each time a new time check came in, they were busy working out how much time we could still afford to lose.
With 4km to go, my team-mates had done everything they could, and now it was my turn to take over and try to reduce the gap as much as possible to defend my position. Chiappucci stayed away and won the stage, while I gave it everything all the way to the line, finishing one minute and 17 seconds down on the Italian. It still gave me an almost two-minute buffer to him overall.
The penultimate stage was a time trial over 48km. During a warm-up ride that morning, when I rode some of the route, I felt fast and powerful, and even overtook Indurain at one point. During the stage proper, however, it was a different story. My legs felt heavy, and wouldn’t do what I wanted them to. The passion and morale was there, but I had almost no energy left. In the team car following behind me, Ferretti could see that I was in trouble. “Come on, Bjarne!” he yelled at me. The other news was that Chiappucci had set off like lightning, and was eating into my advantage.
I tried to stay relaxed, to find a rhythm and concentrate on my own race. But, suddenly, Rominger came tearing past me. He was a specialist against the clock, and was riding to beat Indurain, but I wasn’t sure whether it was him who was riding so well or me that was riding so badly. It would have been pretty bad to lose fifth place overall on the second-to-last day of the Tour. I felt like it was mine, as I’d fought so hard to keep it over the previous two weeks. Ferretti screamed as loud as he could from the car: “Come on, Bjarne! Come on! You can do it!” Those last 10km were a nightmare. I had to just try to block out the pain. My pulse was going crazy and my legs were screaming. Exhausted, I crossed the line and promptly fell off my bike.
“You did it!” I heard someone say. “You’re still ahead of Chiappucci by 52 seconds.” For some time, I sat on the ground, trying to recover.
“What’s it like to have beaten Leif Mortensen’s record?” a journalist asked me. Leif Mortensen had been the best-placed Danish rider at the Tour de France with his sixth place overall in 1971.
“I’d never dreamt that I could have done this three weeks ago,” I said. “For me, the difference between fifth and sixth place is the same as between first and second.”
But I still needed to make doubly sure that I had got my fifth place. As an unwritten rule, the final stage into Paris doesn’t change anything in the overall classification, but there are a number of riders who still want to try their luck to get something out of that stage. Even I was hoping I could nab another stage win. It was unthinkable, though, that Chiappucci could make up 52 seconds on a stage like this.
A few riders got away off the front, but at that point I didn’t really care who they were or how many of them there were. A little later, though, I told one of my team-mates to go to the front to help bring the breakaway back. When they were caught, I noticed that Rolf Sørensen was among them. When he saw me, he was furious, and made some less-than-nice gestures in my direction. He wasn’t pleased that I’d been complicit in bringing him back, albeit unwittingly on my part.
In the sprint for the stage victory on the Champs-Elysées, it was Djamolidine Abdoujaparov – “The Tashkent Terror” from Uzbekistan – who won, while I came across the line in 12th. Miguel Indurain had won his third Tour in a row, with Tony Rominger second, while I held on to that fifth place. The two commentators from Danish television channel TV2, Jørn Mader and Jørgen Leth, stood waiting for me with a bottle of champagne. There was an impatient taxi driver, too, who was going to take me to the airport. TV2 was determined that my performance should be celebrated properly, so they had chartered a private jet to fly me back to Denmark so that I could appear on their sports programme that same evening. I barely had a moment to enjoy the festive atmosphere on the Champs-Elysées – and the feeling of it all being over – before I was being bundled into the taxi and heading to the airport.
On board the plane there was champagne, wine and sandwiches, and, as we headed for Denmark, I tried to take in everything that had happened to me in the past three weeks – and especially the transformation from an unknown domestique to a famous sportsman in Denmark.
Just three hours since getting off my bike in Paris, I was back in Denmark. At the airport, I was greeted by cycling fans, friends from Herning Cycling Club and my dad.
“I’m so proud of you,” he told me, with a big grin.
When we arrived at the TV studio, the man who was putting on my microphone congratulated me. “Thanks, but I didn’t win,” I said, although I was already dreaming about getting onto the podium the following year.
In the weeks that followed, journalists were keen to know what had made my breakthrough possible. “Hard, systematic training combined with weight loss,” was my standard reply. But it was only half the truth.