L-R: Luis Herrera, Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon
L-R: Luis Herrera, Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon
16 July 1984. Stage Seventeen: Grenoble to l’Alpe d’Huez
151km. Mountains
A contrast in styles. The spindly legs of the small climber, Luis Herrera, spinning fluidly. The lumbering and painful grinding of the Badger, Bernard Hinault, forcing a huge gear, shoulders rolling.
Herrera floats out of the saddle and eases clear. Hinault lifts himself heavily and accelerates back up to him. Then he passes Herrera. But it’s a façade. The Badger is bluffing. It has been the story of Hinault’s day, of his Tour. If he’s going to go down, he will go down fighting. Herrera, who looks like a child on an adult’s bike, pulls effortlessly clear again and Hinault, still snarling, has no response. Daylight opens between them.
Herrara, the little bird, is set free. Now he is flying up l’Alpe d’Huez, while Hinault labours, and a little lower down the mountain, Laurent Fignon, in the tricolore of French champion, sets off in pursuit …
Let’s freeze the picture there.
Herrera was an amateur, riding for the Colombian national team. For a twenty-three-year-old débutant, he arrived at the start of the 1984 Tour with quite a reputation. Big things were expected. There was even talk of him winning. He had won a major stage race in his own country, the Clásico RCN, three times. All twenty-three editions of the Clásico had been won by Colombians, but in the early 1980s it opened its doors to European teams and some of the stars had gone prior to the 1984 Tour de France – including the ’83 Tour winner, Fignon.
Fignon talks about his visit to Colombia in his book, We Were Young and Carefree. ‘An astonishing experience,’ he writes. He and the other Europeans were there primarily because it was at altitude, over 2,000m. It was thought to be good preparation for the upcoming Tour. Fignon was struck by the vast crowds, by the remarkable mountains, the equally remarkable climbing ability of the Colombian riders – and the cocaine. He later admitted he dabbled on the final night. But in the race itself, the Tour champion was nowhere. Fignon finished 43rd in the Clásico, humbled by Herrera.
The question was, could the Colombians demonstrate their talent overseas, in Europe? At the Dauphiné Libéré, a month before the 1984 Tour, Hinault was beaten by another Colombian, Martin Ramírez, despite some dubious tactics that spoke of the disdain in which the Colombians were held – or, perhaps, the threat these ingénues posed. Ramírez defended his overall lead by positioning himself on Hinault’s wheel, and later claimed to Matt Rendell for his book, Kings of the Mountains, that Hinault ‘responded by braking hard to make me fall, while his team bombarded me with elbows and fists’.
‘No one knew who we were,’ Ramírez continued. ‘Cochise [Martin Emilio ‘Cochise’ Rodríguez, the first Colombian to ride the Tour de France in 1975] had raced in Europe, but that had been long before. So it was clear that they saw us and called us “little Indians”, “savages”. We showed up all of a sudden, and managed to beat them in a big stage race on the eve of the Tour de France … Well, that just wasn’t something they wanted. So the reception was not very good.’
* * *
What was not appreciated or even widely known in Europe was how developed Colombia’s cycling culture was. It had prospered quite apart from the European circuit, separated by a chasm even wider than the Atlantic. The Colombian scene had its roots in the early 1950s when a national tour, the Vuelta a Colombia, started, followed a decade later by the Clásico RCN. Like the Tour de France, the Vuelta was founded by a newspaper, Colombia’s biggest daily, El Tiempo.
Almost immediately, both races attracted enormous crowds and dominated the national conversation. According to Klaus Bellon, the Colombian journalist, they unlocked something, revealing that ‘the entire mountainous South American country was delirious with passion for cycling’. That passion simmered for almost four decades before finally boiling over and spilling into Europe.
If nobody in Europe knew about the popularity of the sport in Colombia, the ignorance was reciprocated: few in Colombia knew about the great European riders and races. ‘My first Tour de France was in 1972,’ Hector Urrego, another Colombian journalist and broadcaster, tells me. ‘I worked for Mundo Ciclistico, a monthly cycling magazine in Colombia. My impression at the Tour de France was, this is the best, the biggest event in the world.’
Well, of course it was. It was the Tour de France. But in the pre-mass media, pre-Internet age, they did not realise this in Colombia, where the Vuelta a Colombia or Clásico RCN were the biggest bike races. Biggest in South America? The world? Who knew?
Major stars had raced in Colombia, including Fausto Coppi; but he, like Fignon three decades later, struggled in the mountains and altitude of Colombia. Any debate about who was better, the Europeans or Colombians, remained tantalisingly unresolved.
Urrego returned to the Tour de France as a journalist in 1975, ’77 and ’78. He was besotted by it, and dreamed of a Colombian team one day competing. To that end, on his way home from the Moscow Olympics in 1980, he stopped off in Paris, calling in at the offices of L’Equipe, where the Tour organisation was based. He asked about the possibility of a Colombian team riding the Tour de l’Avenir, the ‘Tour of the future’, for young riders and amateurs, and was told ‘yes’, Venezuela had just pulled out. But an answer was required in twenty-four hours. The race started in a few weeks.
With incredible haste, sponsorship was secured and a team put together. A Colombian rider, Alfonso Flórez, then won overall, beating the Olympic champion, Sergey Sukhoruchenkov of the Soviet Union. The Eastern Bloc riders were, like the Colombians, amateurs. And for similar reasons. The Colombian Cycling Federation resisted professionalism mainly because they were so focused on the Olympic Games, which were still restricted to amateurs. The first Colombian professional, Giovanni Jiménez, faced significant opposition from his Federation when he raced in Europe in the 1960s.
Three years after the Colombians’ success at the Tour de l’Avenir, the door to the Tour de France opened when amateur teams were invited. ‘For all Colombian people it was very new, but not for me,’ recalls Urrego of that first Tour. ‘I was interested and curious to know the level of our riders compared to the big riders in Europe – Fignon, Millar, LeMond, Hinault – at the best race in Europe.’
Before the 1983 Tour, there was another pressing question: how would it be received back home? ‘There was enormous interest!’ says Urrego. ‘On the radio there were four to six hours of transmissions a day. And so the people in Colombia discover the Tour, the great champions, France – and they see the Colombian cyclists fight against the best climbers in the world …’
Cycling in Colombia, Urrego stresses, is ‘the most important sport – the most popular is soccer’. The distinction is important. ‘It’s not about titles, medals, victories and legends,’ he says. ‘We have sixty years of cycling history, and that is important, but the bike in Colombia is also a vehicle to work, to study, for transport, for health. The bike means a lot. And the Colombian races, they help us know the country and the people.’
In their début in 1983, they rode respectably, impressively at times, with Patrocinio Jiménez coming close to a stage win when he escaped in the Pyrenees with Robert Millar, who attacked on the final climb, then plunged into Luchon to take the win. Jiménez was fourth, but took over the King of the Mountains jersey and held it for five days. He was eventually second in that competition and 17th overall, with his team-mate Edgar Corredor one place above him. Five out of the ten Colombians made it to Paris, where they finished tenth in the teams’ classification. In the mountains they had ridden well, more than holding their own; but in the time trials, over the cobbles, and on the long, flat stages, they struggled.
At home, millions tuned in. There were twenty-three Colombian journalists on the race, including three radio stations, with Radio Caracol purchasing the live rights. Consequently, they broadcast every minute of every stage – a first for anyone. But as Matt Rendell recorded, ‘the rivalry between [the radio stations] was so intense that it soon erupted into violence’. Radio Caracol, annoyed that the other two stations were basing their broadcasts on theirs, ‘began broadcasting fictional attacks’ to try and catch them out.
There were other stories, including those of Urrego’s station, RCN, broadcasting from payphones, feeding an endless supply of coins into the meter as they relayed the day’s action, interrupting the broadcast only to hold a cassette recorder to the mouthpiece to play pre-recorded adverts during commercial breaks. Urrego confirms this story, recalling that ‘one of our primary jobs during that first Tour de France was to find a bank, and get as many coins as physically possible’. But he clarifies some points about the dispute between RCN and Caracol: ‘Before the 1983 Tour, the president of the Colombian cycling federation had a problem with RCN and they arranged for the rights of the Tour to go to Caracol. But I had a good friend at the Tour de France, Xavier Louy, the vice-director, and I took a plane to Paris, spoke to him, explained the situation: that RCN were out of the Tour. So he did a deal with Félix Lévitan, to authorise RCN to also transmit the Tour de France.
‘So,’ Urrego continues, ‘there are two Colombian radio stations transmitting the Tour de France from 1983 to 1986. Yes, there are tensions and fights. RCN had been broadcasting cycling for sixty years, Caracol just came on the scene. But eventually, RCN won. Today, we are the only radio station to broadcast cycling in Colombia.’
Even when it was shown on TV, radio was the preferred medium. Urrego’s broadcasts were (and still are) essential listening. This had much to do, as Klaus Bellon says, with ‘the tone and delivery of the radio broadcasters’. Other broadcasters reported with amusement, awe and bemusement the broadcasts of their Colombian colleagues: they filled the many hours of air time with breathless, non-stop, highly charged and emotional commentary, ‘sometimes breaking down into unintelligible fits of crying due to the excitement of a Colombian’s performance’.
Urrego says: ‘The surveys told us that from 1983 to 1988 fifteen million people listened each day to the Tour de France and Tour of Spain. The same as in Colombia for the Vuelta a Colombia and Clásico RCN.’
Fifteen million people: one in three Colombians.
* * *
‘The Colombians had come to Europe with dreams of becoming conquistadores, subduing the natives with their firepower and potent magic. It hadn’t happened that way.’
So wrote Sam Abt, the American journalist, as the high mountains of the 1984 Tour de France, the second to feature a Colombian team, loomed. The Colombian presence had increased: again there were ten in the national team, with another five on European teams. The press corps had swelled to forty. They had been through the Pyrenees, but still their much-vaunted climbing ability hadn’t shone as brightly as many expected it to. Why was that? Luis Herrera, the twenty-three-year-old star of the team, had a theory. The climbs were not long enough.
Not long enough? It was pointed out to Herrera that some of the passes in the Alps and Pyrenees were 20, even 30 kilometres, climbing to over 2,000 metres. Herrera didn’t scoff – that wouldn’t have been in his nature. Instead, he quietly pointed out that the Alto de Letras, the longest climb in Colombia, was 83km long, 3,195m high.
Luis ‘Lucho’ Herrera was the archetypal Colombian cyclist. From a humble background, he was known as ‘El Jardinerito de Fusagasugá’ (the little gardener of Fusagasugá, his home village). ‘I met Lucho for the first time in 1981,’ says Urrego, ‘in the Vuelta de la Juventud [an under-23 stage race]. He was fourth and the best climber. A year before he had been 97th. Sure, I thought Lucho would be a great rider. Then he raced in the Clásico RCN and won the most important stage, which finished at La Línea, a mountain 3,550 metres high. He was racing against the best Colombian riders of the day and some others. I thought, he will be the best climber in the world.
‘Lucho is a special person,’ Urrego continues. ‘He’s very quiet, not much words in a conversation, he smiles not much, he’s serious, but he has a great personality.’
It wasn’t the mountains that did for Herrera and the Colombians in the first half of the 1984 Tour, however. It was the flat stages. ‘They warned me,’ said Herrera a week into the race, ‘but I didn’t believe the Tour could be so difficult. The last fifty kilometres of each stage are raced at a terribly fast pace. It’s impossible to compare the Tour with our usual races. Here in Europe, it’s ten times tougher.’
It wasn’t just the speed of the flat stages. They also suffered prejudice and harassment, similar to that Ramírez experienced a month earlier at the Dauphiné. The Colombians were small, hardly suited to the argy-bargy at the sharp end of the peloton. They were lightweight grimpeurs, not powerful rouleurs. They tended to ride at the back, which inevitably meant they were caught up in more crashes. But they were lampooned for their bike-handling skills, blamed for the crashes, and criticised for riding their own race, for appearing oblivious to the complicated (sometimes dirty) politics of the peloton.
In this system, a favour done for a rival team one day could be repaid on another. But the Colombians didn’t get involved. Hinault called them amateurs (which was, at least, accurate), and Peter Post, the fearsome dictator at the helm of the Panasonic team, complained: ‘The Colombians refuse to work. They just sit there and let everybody else do the work. From them, nothing.’ Plus, added Abt, ‘They had no sense of tactics. And they subsisted on coffee, which cost them sleepless nights.’
Speaking to Herrera now is not that easy; he seems to have disappeared from the sport. But talking on the phone from Fusagasugá, where he was born and still lives, about 60km from Bogotá, he recalls his and his fellow Colombians’ induction to the Tour and the professional peloton: ‘There was the old established European system, and we were new to it. Maybe we just didn’t have the abilities that they had on the road. So when there was a crash, we always got the blame, but it simply wasn’t true [that it was our fault] for every crash. I mean, before we arrived there were crashes too, so things weren’t exactly as they portrayed them.
‘I think it’s more likely that they were bothered that we made our presence known, and performed well in races,’ Herrera continues. ‘We kept attacking in all the climbs, and I think maybe that bothered them a bit, you know?’
In his first Tour, after ten days of flat stages and time trials as they travelled from Paris in a semi-clockwise journey around France, Herrera finally had his chance when they reached the Pyrenees. On stage eleven, he chased Robert Millar to the summit of Guzet-Neige, failing to catch the Scotsman, but finishing second, 41 seconds down. Stage fifteen, into Grenoble, over 241 hilly kilometres, saw more flashes from Herrera whenever the road went up. The Colombian commentators cried and screamed: ‘Viva Colombia! Viva Colombia!’ Often they could be heard over other nations’ broadcasts; a breathless stream of words, delivered at a relentless speed.
There were four days in the Alps. But it was the first, to the summit of l’Alpe d’Huez, that fired the imagination. The twenty-three-year-old Colombian Edgar Corredor had finished third the previous year, but it was new to Herrera, who didn’t know the history – that l’Alpe d’Huez was the scene of the Tour’s first ever summit finish in 1952; that the great Fausto Coppi had dominated that stage; that it had since assumed mythical status on account of its twenty-one hairpin bends, the way the road slashed in zigzags up the sheer face of the mountain; that it was a natural amphitheatre, offering spectacular vantage points for the fans who lined the roads, perching and peering over the side to see the riders approach from the valley and the town of Bourg-d’Oisans.
On Monday 17 July 1984 an estimated 300,000 people packed the Alpe. ‘Samba rhythms echoed around the ski resort,’ reported Cycling Weekly, a well-intentioned but misguided reference to the large number of Colombian fans, as Samba is a Brazilian dance. That wasn’t as bad as the reports describing the Colombians as Indians.
They were still an unknown quantity. But not for much longer.
* * *
Laurent Fignon and Bernard Hinault were the demi-gods of European, and, by extension, world cycling. The duel between them in 1984 was compelling, the greatest French rivalry since Anquetil and Poulidor, but with more of an edge. Hinault had grown up on Fignon’s team, Renault, under his directeur sportif, Cyrille Guimard. With Guimard and Renault, he won four Tours de France. But everything changed in 1983. At the Tour of Spain he suffered a knee injury – something that had first bothered him in 1980, after the stage to Lille described in an earlier chapter – and, although he won in Spain, had to withdraw from the Tour. In his absence, twenty-two-year-old Fignon assumed leadership of Renault. And he seized the opportunity. To widespread surprise, he won.
The rise of Fignon and fall of Hinault was sudden, dramatic and simultaneous. In the public imagination, it happened over the three weeks of the 1983 Tour: Fignon would later recall Hinault’s glowering, brooding presence at the Renault after-Tour party in Paris. In truth, his mood perhaps owed less to Fignon’s win than to the fact that he had fallen out with Guimard. ‘It was war,’ said Hinault of his relationship with the man who directed him to his first win in 1978, and the other three.
Following the Tour, Hinault went to the bosses at Renault with an ultimatum: Guimard or him. But Fignon’s victory, given his age and potential, gave Guimard and Renault the perfect excuse to dump Hinault. Not surprisingly, Guimard (and Fignon) stayed and Hinault, whose career was said to be in jeopardy after an operation on his knee, was left without a team. In the autumn, he hooked up with the colourful businessman, Bernard Tapie, to set up a new squad, La Vie Claire.
Hinault was widely written off, though he was only twenty-eight. The Badger had said almost from the start of his career that he would retire on his thirty-second birthday, in 1986. He had already won four Tours; if he returned to full fitness, he believed he could win three more, beginning in 1984. Thus was the scene set when the riders and teams gathered in Montreuil. ‘At the start of the Tour de France the journalists were working themselves into a frenzy,’ said Fignon. ‘France was cut in two, split between him and me.’
Hinault struck the first blow, winning the prologue time trial. ‘It’s funny,’ he said after accepting the first yellow jersey. ‘I feel as if nothing has changed.’
But something had changed. Hinault’s old iron rule was more difficult to impose when there was a younger, stronger opponent. What’s more – and making the situation worse for Hinault – Fignon’s team was so strong they were dubbed ‘The New Cannibals’ by L’Equipe. For Renault, Marc Madiot won stage three; then they won the team time trial, 55 seconds ahead of Hinault and La Vie Claire; then Vincent Barteau took over the yellow jersey after stage five; then Fignon won the long seventh stage time trial in Le Mans; and then Pascal Jules won stage eight. Hinault, who lost 49 seconds to Fignon in the time trial, became desperate. ‘I looked on as Hinault got all hot and bothered, racing for time bonus sprints as he began to wage what he thought was a war of attrition, every day, on every kind of terrain,’ wrote Fignon in his autobiography. ‘It might have worked on a rider who was mentally weaker than me. But I had an answer for everything, and above all, contrary to how he saw it, I never lost my head even if the guerrilla warfare occasionally got a bit tiring, because you had to keep your eyes open all the time.’
He maintained some respect for Hinault’s ‘audacious character’, Fignon added. But Fignon had a major advantage: Guimard. Tactically, Guimard possessed a touch of genius. And Fignon himself was certainly a much stronger and far more confident rider than he had been as a Tour débutant in 1983.
On the eve of the Alpe d’Huez stage, Hinault was a lowly seventh overall, three minutes, forty-four seconds down on Barteau, who was still in yellow. Fignon was second, now two minutes up on Hinault after stage sixteen, another time trial, which Fignon also won. Hinault had previously dominated time trials; defeat stung.
He had a plan on the morning of the seventeenth stage, from Grenoble to l’Alpe d’Huez. The plan was to isolate Fignon. All too aware of the strength of the Renault team, Hinault believed that his only chance of beating Fignon was to get rid of his team-mates and set up a mano-a-mano battle on l’Alpe d’Huez.
That explained his tactics as the stage got underway. There were two early climbs, the Col de la Placette, a category-three mountain, then the Côte de Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse, a second cat. The riders scrapping for King of the Mountains points contested these, while Hinault waited. After 53 kilometres they reached the Col de Coq, where Patrocinio Jiménez, the Colombian now riding for the Spanish Teka team, attacked. Now Hinault made his first move. Fignon was alert to it and chased him down. But it was, said Fignon later, ‘a vicious attack’. A taster.
Next came the Côte de Laffrey, 104km into the stage: the brutal climb that featured in 1971, when Luis Ocaña put Eddy Merckx on the ropes. On the approach, five of Hinault’s La Vie Claire team-mates mass at the front: something is up.
As soon as the road starts to steepen, Hinault jumps. Just like Ocaña. Hinault goes once. Twice. Three times. But Fignon is not suffering the kind of off day Merckx had thirteen years earlier. He responds each time. It’s an 8km climb, but horribly steep. A quarter of the way up, only fifteen riders remain in the front group. Barteau, in the yellow jersey, has slipped away. Hinault has one team-mate, and so does Fignon: the American riding his first Tour, Greg LeMond.
Hinault digs. And Fignon jumps after him again, while the others cling to his back wheel, gasping, reacting to each acceleration like it’s a punch in the stomach. The group is reduced to seven. Herrera is there. But just when they start to settle into a rhythm, boom!, Hinault goes again. And again Fignon goes after him, dragging him back. That makes it five attacks from Hinault. It’s more like bare-knuckle fighting than cycle racing. Robert Millar, one of those clinging on for dear life, will later write: ‘I haven’t witnessed savagery at this level before and it seems more like hatred than just plain competition.’
Next, LeMond has a go – it seems to Millar that they’re ganging up on Hinault. Right enough, when LeMond is brought back, there’s another attack – Fignon this time. The counter-punch. This blow lands. Fignon opens a gap. And it’s Herrera who dances up to him. The pair cross the summit together, only for Hinault to chase after them on the descent.
There’s a regrouping in the valley. Through the villages of Séchilienne, Gavet, Les Clavaux, Riouperoux and Livet, before Bourg-d’Oisans and the Alpe, the riders take on supplies – Fignon and LeMond collect bidons from Guimard, and Hinault chats to his director, Paul Köchli. ‘I’m sure he smiled as he took his bidons,’ reported Millar.
Hinault is the ultimate warrior. Pride is the word to describe him. If he feels strong, he attacks. If he feels tired, he attacks, ‘so the others don’t know I am tired’.
It’s a headwind through the valley; the worst conditions for any kind of attack. A truce seems to have been called. It will all be decided on the mountain. Then, boom! Hinault attacks. Almost with a sense of weariness, LeMond and Fignon go to the front and bring him back. Guimard drives alongside. Talks to them. It settles again. Then Hinault goes again. This time he’s away on his own.
It’s suicide, it must be suicide, but, racing through Bourg-d’Oisans, Hinault has a lead approaching a minute. Fignon will later describe his attack as ‘unexpected – almost pathetic’. He added: ‘I started laughing, I honestly did … Bernard was just too proud and wanted to do everything gallantly.’
* * *
Now is Luis ‘Lucho’ Herrera’s moment. Remember him? Nobody has. Sam Abt, the American journalist on the Tour, said: ‘Radio Tour, which links all cars and offers periodic reports on the race, spoke of nobody but Hinault and Fignon for most of the day.’
On the lower slopes of the Alpe, Herrera tested the water, jumping clear. ‘I was having a good day,’ he says now. ‘I felt good. In the moment when I was off the front [with Fignon towards the summit of the Laffrey], I knew I was feeling good. From there on, I had to wait and hope that things would go well for me. But I wasn’t sure because the only thing I knew was that Hinault would go hard, and that it would be difficult.
‘Then, on l’Alpe d’Huez, I attacked, just to see what would happen …’ It was still very early on the climb. ‘Yes, it was. I didn’t know the climb, so I guess it was perhaps premature of me to go then. I didn’t know how much of it was left.’
Herrera bridged the gap to Hinault, who was visibly tiring. His snarling expression had an air of desperation now, as though he was drowning. He didn’t have the smooth cadence of Herrera, perched on his bike that looked too big. They rode together but Herrera could tell immediately that he wouldn’t be in Hinault’s company for long. The contrast extended to their clothing, too: Hinault wore the ultra-modern Mondrian-influenced colourful patchwork of La Vie Claire, while Herrera’s was a more simple jersey, red at the bottom, then royal blue with ‘Colombia’ in white letters, and an inverted yellow V at the shoulders, for their sponsors, Varta Batteries (Herrera would have been an AAA).
Herrera didn’t know Hinault. ‘The dialogue I had with him was minimal. We almost never spoke. I had respect for him; he was No.1. There was no tension, no friction – never.’
When Herrera took off, leaving Hinault to his struggle, he knew the threat would come from behind – but not from Hinault. He was finished. It was Fignon he feared. By now the bespectacled, blond-haired Fignon, in the tricolore jersey of French champion, had counter-attacked and was motoring up to Hinault. He didn’t alter his pace when he caught Hinault, at least not initially. But then he eased up, allowing Hinault to believe that he might catch him again. ‘I stayed about thirty metres ahead of the Badger. Guimard wanted to crack him completely.’ Or as Abt put it: ‘Fignon seemed to believe that if you couldn’t kick a man when he was down, when could you kick him?’
Hinault’s punishment – like a form of waterboarding on a bike – didn’t last. Fignon could only hold back for so long. Then he was off. But perhaps, he wondered later, his games with Hinault – and Guimard’s earlier orders not to go too early – had cost him the stage.
Hinault continued to toil up the steep slopes of the Alpe, conceding three minutes. He was caught by Millar, who would later recall: ‘I could go past him and give him some shelter, some temporary relief from the misery, but then I remember Laffrey and the valley and how much it hurt … I let him take a bit more wind … I’ll have a little rest, thanks.’ Millar leaves him too, and again Hinault, reaching into the rear pocket of his jersey for food, has no response. ‘He wanted to be on his own anyway,’ was Millar’s pithy observation.
The main picture on the front page of the next day’s L’Equipe would capture the key symbolic moment, Fignon riding away from Hinault (perhaps a premonition that this 1984 Tour would be the last time, in three decades and counting, where two Frenchmen would battle for the win). Inside, Jacques Goddet, columnist and Tour director, wrote: ‘Hinault carried himself like a combatant born of cycling legend. He took off down the road the way a boxer enters the ring, to strike, to destroy, to try and finish alone – yes, alone, in whatever condition, as long as he is still standing.’
But the other story of the day was told by the L’Equipe headline: ‘Fignon-Herrera: the Tour rocked.’ Up ahead, the little Colombian climber was still alone, still looking comfortable, fluid and relaxed as he pedalled through the 300,000 people, including a few Colombians waving flags. Although Fignon later claimed that his conservatism at the foot of the mountain cost him the stage win, Herrera actually pulled further away close to the summit. ‘I knew he was chasing,’ says Herrera of Fignon. ‘In each of the turns, I would be exiting and I would then see him coming into the turn. I knew that the difference was slim. When we were done with those tough turns, we went into some steep straights that were longer. That’s where I was able to get a greater advantage on Fignon. When I got to the top, with almost two kilometres to go, or the last kilometre, I realised I was alone. That’s when I finally knew I could win.
‘I didn’t have to be told where Fignon was – I could see him. And then there was the chalkboard on the motorcycle, which always tells you the time gaps. So based on that, I could tell whether the gap was increasing or not.’ And it was increasing.
Herrera wasn’t aware of the crowd, he says. ‘I was too concentrated on what I was doing.’ But he says he was aware of what it meant to his country, and those fifteen million people listening to their radios. ‘Yes, I think so. I knew I had a great opportunity to win and I had to take it. The best way for me to do it was to do things properly at that moment, and I did that.’ In other words, not to be distracted, to focus on managing his effort on a climb he didn’t know. ‘It was an incredibly important moment, one full of hope. It was going to be the first Colombian victory at the Tour.’
At the top, after the small, dark-skinned, black-haired Herrera crossed the line with his stick-like arms in the air, 49 seconds ahead of Fignon, he was swamped by the Colombian journalists on the race. Seemingly all forty of them. He had made history: the first Colombian stage win; indeed, the first by a Latin American, and the first by an amateur. The flags waved, and a small but vocal knot of people chanted: ‘Colombia, Colombia!’
Back home, the response matched the feverish, rapturous commentary that formed the soundtrack to Herrera’s ascent of l’Alpe d’Huez. The stock exchange in Colombia suspended operations for half an hour to allow the whole country to catch the end of the stage.
‘The meaning of that victory was above and beyond that of sport,’ says Klaus Bellon. ‘That’s because we Colombians feel we have been so maligned on the world stage, that sport sometimes affords us the ability to settle scores. Actually, it’s not about settling scores, but about something that Gabriel García Márquez mentioned during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which is to merely make our lives real in the eyes of the world. Such was the lowly way in which we felt we were portrayed, and conversely such was the value of that victory. Márquez said: “Our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.”’
Bellon considered Herrera a ‘symbol of Colombia due to his humble background, and so to see him win something that we suddenly understood had great meaning, was astonishing. It’s once you realise that, that you start to understand Colombia’s infatuation with the fact that these riders were taking simple peasant foods with them to Europe. In reality, this only happened at first, and out of need and ignorance. But we saw it as humble Colombia taking on superpowers with nothing other than our indigenous street-smarts. Doing things our way, and defeating the Europeans at their own game, and on their roads.’
* * *
Hinault was proud in defeat, Fignon ungracious in victory. He appeared on French TV’s daily post-stage programme, hosted by Jacques Chancel, and was asked what he made of Hinault’s final attack, on the approach to l’Alpe d’Huez. ‘When I saw him go up the road like that, I had to laugh,’ said Fignon. He had taken the yellow jersey but regretted that he hadn’t been able to win the stage. The regret would grow as the years went on, as Fignon admits in his book: ‘Could I have imagined back then that I would never in my entire life win at l’Alpe d’Huez?’
Meanwhile, at the top of the Alpe, Hinault said, ‘Today I’ve been thrashed, but I won’t stop attacking before Paris.’ In the end, he finished second but ten minutes behind Fignon: a dominant victory that seemed to confirm Fignon as the new patron. But how things change. The 1984 Tour was not the end of Hinault: it was more like the end of Fignon. The defending champion missed the 1985 race through injury, while Hinault won with the help of his new team-mate, LeMond.3 In 1986, Hinault’s final season, he finished second to LeMond. But he won at l’Alpe d’Huez.
Fignon, though still only twenty-three the year he won his second Tour, never won again, and never recaptured his form of ’84, even in finishing a close second in one of the greatest ever Tours, in 1989. He died from cancer in 2011, at the age of fifty.
And Herrera? ‘Lucho’ says that his win at l’Alpe d’Huez didn’t change his life, even if it made him a celebrity in Colombia. ‘Opportunities came my way,’ he says, ‘but I took it all in very carefully.
‘My life didn’t change, not really. It continued to be as it was. By then, cycling was such a part of my life, and I was so focused, that the only aspect that changed was the fact that I started to get even more satisfaction out of things like training. I became more dedicated.’ Three years later, he became the first Colombian to win a Grand Tour when he took overall victory at the 1987 Vuelta a España.
There was always a darker side to Colombian cycling, as Fignon found when he raced there in 1984. There was drugs money in the sport, with the notorious Pablo Escobar, whose vast fortune was built on mountains of cocaine, indirectly involved through his brother, Roberto, in running a team in the 1980s. Another pioneering Colombian rider, Alfonso Flórez, whose Tour de l’Avenir win in 1980 was so significant, was murdered by hired assassins in 1992.
Herrera retired the same year. Eight years later, he was kidnapped. He was at his mother’s home in Fusagasugá when he was taken by six masked intruders, thought to be from FARC, the guerrilla organisation. They bundled him into an SUV, drove for hours, marched him up a mountain near La Aguadita, then held him in a remote building. Then he was interrogated about his cycling career – his kidnappers were fans. As Herrera later told Bellon: ‘The whole time they asked me endless questions about l’Alpe d’Huez, Lagos de Covadonga, and La Linea, as though this was a perfectly good time to have a pleasant conversation on the matter. Sitting there talking to them only made me more nervous, because they were purposefully trying to intimidate and terrorise me as well.’
The outcry in Colombia at Herrera’s kidnapping was swift and loud. It backfired on his captors. Within a day, he was told he was free. In a later TV interview, one of the men behind the plot said: ‘I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to Mr Lucho Herrera for the very uncomfortable position that he was put in as a result of the kidnapping, particularly keeping in mind that he’s a great figure of Colombian cycling; one who, instead of being harmed, should be protected.’
Herrera doesn’t dwell on his kidnapping, either. Now, he says, ‘I dedicate most of my time to business and on weekends I ride my bike.’ He’s fuller in the figure, with closely cropped dark hair rather than his glossy black mane of the mid-1980s. It’s a livestock business that he runs. And he’s a father to three boys.
Herrera remains understated, modest and humble; on the other hand Hector Urrego, who commented on his victory at l’Alpe d’Huez, not so much. He can recall it as though it happened yesterday. Talking about it now inspires the same passion and emotions. He slips into the present tense as he recalls Lucho’s great victory, as though reliving it:
‘In the last three kilometres, Herrera goes solo. Is not possible in the world of cycling, but is true! Herrera goes to the victory with the Colombian flag on his jersey! Millions in Colombia and around the world see the birth of a new champion from Colombia, South America. We’re happy! We’re the best in this moment!’
Classement
1 Luis Herrera, Colombia, Varta, 4 hours, 39 minutes, 24 secs
2 Laurent Fignon, France, Renault-Elf, at 49 secs
3 Ángel Arroyo, Spain, Reynolds, at 2 minutes, 27 secs
4 Robert Millar, Great Britain, Peugeot, at 3 minutes, 5 secs
5 Rafaël Antonio Acevedo, Colombia, Varta, at 3 minutes, 9 secs
6 Greg LeMond, USA, Renault-Elf, at 3 minutes, 30 secs
3 A postscript to the Alpe d’Huez stage in 1984 is that later that same night LeMond was persuaded to join Hinault’s team, La Vie Claire. The American was picked up by a woman dressed in black leathers on a motorbike, who took him to a hotel, and led him into a room with Hinault and Bernard Tapie. ‘How would you like to earn more money than you’ve ever dreamed of?’ asked Tapie. Hinault wanted LeMond to help him beat Fignon in 1985. So, even after his most humiliating defeat, Hinault was plotting revenge.