Rough Ride (31 page)

The temperature is a sweltering thirty-four degrees; almost four hours have passed since you pedalled out of Luxembourg and there's still another hour to race. Five riders have been in front since the start of the stage but the order has been given to reel them back. Everybody is trying to get to the front; tempers are starting to fray; melting Tarmac is gluing your tyres to the road.

Two riders fight for the same inch of space, touch wheels and collide; the screech of metal scraping on road is followed by the stench of smoking rubber as you brake frantically and try to avoid the crash. If this were football, the ball would immediately be kicked out of play. If this was tennis, a physio would be summoned to massage the aching legs. But this is cycling, and when you are stretchered off here, there is no running back when you reach the touchline – your collarbone is broken or your face is smashed.

The battle rages until the final kilometre and the foot of the Cauberg climb when Matthias Kessler bursts from the pack to claim the stage. I study the pained expressions of the defeated and those who have survived the many crashes; the blood trickling from raw, gaping wounds; the shredded Lycra of their shirts and shorts; the grated arms and buttocks that look like they have been scorched with a blowtorch.

Four days down, seventeen to go . . . Is there a more beautiful or demanding event in sport? How could anyone fail to admire the toughness and courage of these men? But these are questions I have already answered. Because the cancer of doping has destroyed the sport; because those who purport to love cycling have nurtured the cancer and facilitated its growth. And suddenly I feel rage.

Two questions from the day.

We have driven to the finish of the stage at Saint-Quentin and I've climbed onto the statue at the Place du 8 Octobre to observe the final sprint. Paul from England and Jerry from the US have chosen the same vantage point. We get chatting for a moment about what attracts them to the race and watch the arrival of the publicity caravan.

Jerry descends from the statue immediately and we watch in amazement as he joins the kids chasing the gifts thrown from the floats. Twenty minutes later he returns with his booty – a key ring, a mobile-phone cord, a small packet of jellies and several plastic bags – and settles down until the end of the stage.

The riders charge into view, led up the long finishing straight by the Australian Robbie McEwen. Jerry and Paul climb down from the statue and exchange business cards before going separate ways. Paul has taken a sabbatical from work to follow the race for three weeks. Jerry has a private jet with its engines running at Beauvais and is returning to his job as an assistant vice-president of one of America's largest banks.

Question one: Can someone please explain this?

The stage has ended and I've returned to the press room to an angry reception from one of my French colleagues. He has taken grave exception to my observation last week that the sport has been very badly served by some of the muppets covering the race. I do my best to explain that I didn't mean everybody covering the race, but he won't be appeased.

'When you were a cyclist,' he says, 'you respected the rules of the peloton. But there are rules in the press room as well, and one of those rules is that you don't criticise your colleagues.' I thank him for voicing his displeasure but tell him I don't agree. There was indeed a rule in the peloton when I was racing but it was a rule I didn't respect. It was called
omerta,
the rule of silence. He is obviously as unfamiliar with my work as I am with his.

Five minutes later, an equally red-faced English colleague decides to vent his spleen. He's not happy with me. He informs me he has taken a lot of stick from friends who thought I was referring to him. He's enraged. He can't sue.
'LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF,'
he fumes. But he's right. I can't look him in the eye. I'm afraid I'm going to wet myself.

Question two: Since when was it a journalist's job to be popular with his friends?

I woke up a couple of days ago to a fax shoved under the door of my hotel room in Luxembourg. It was sent by my brother, Kevin, in Dublin and included the following covering note: 'Have you read about the man who has saved professional cycling?' The second page was from an Irish Sunday newspaper containing a first-person piece written by the new UCI president, Pat McQuaid.

The subject was the big-name exclusions from the Tour in the wake of the Spanish doping controversy. The tone was self-congratulatory. 'That's the risk we take to protect our sport,' the headline announced. 'When I came into this job I wanted to clean up cycling and I will clean up cycling,' he insisted. I nearly choked.

The President and I have some previous on this issue: when McQuaid won the Tour of Ireland in 1975 on a national amateur team that included Sean Kelly, he was managed by my father, Christy. When I almost won the Tour of Britain in 1983 and finished sixth at the World Championships two years later, I was managed by McQuaid. But I was struck from his Christmas card list when
Rough Ride
was published and almost every time I was extended a microphone to talk about the book or my experiences of doping, I'd find him in the opposite corner, batting against me. His protestations served him well. A key player when the 1998 Tour started in Dublin, he informed a visiting Dutch journalist, a few days before the event began, that I was 'bad for cycling'. I know this much. There was a time, not so long ago, when Tour riders were revered as 'giants of the road'. Today they are dismissed as
'tous dope'
(all doped). McQuaid will probably argue that it's my fault but now that he is finally sorting it out, it would be small of me not to extend my congratulations. Well done Pat. It takes a rare genius indeed to solve a problem that has never really existed.

Those dreams that Greg LeMond still dreams were mine as a boy. One recurred night after night: I'd break clear of the pack in a stage of the Tour de France and feel the thrill of imminent victory as I sprinted for the line . . . But I never made it. The dream always finished with the sound of the alarm clock, or my mother pulling my arm: 'Get up Paul, it's time for school.' It was infuriating. I could never get across that line.

The dream stopped as a professional. The harsh reality of cycling as a job was never as wondrous as my boyhood visions – except for that seventh stage of the Tour in 1986, when I broke clear with Indurain on the road to Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouet. Tonight, we were driving south to Rennes on the A84 when I noticed a sign for it and thought briefly about making a detour. 'What's Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouet famous for?' I asked Richard. He shook his head. 'There's a plaque on the wall of the Avenue Marechal Leclerc that says, "In 1986, a twenty-four-year-old Dubliner raced to this point dunking he was about to win a stage of the Tour de France. He never made it. He finished ninth."'

This morning, at a small hotel near Rennes, I'm bashing my brains against the laptop when my mobile buzzes with an interview request from a radio station. The timing isn't great, but my agent keeps telling me the big bucks are in broadcasting – so I decide to oblige. 'Okay,' I announce to the cheery young producer. 'What would you like to talk about?'

'Well, I don't know much about cycling,' he confesses, 'but it would be great to have you on for ten minutes talking about the Tour and the favourites and how you see the race unfolding.' I considered my agent's advice, held my breath and started to count. I think I reached 'three' before spontaneously combusting.

'Listen,' I said, 'let's not waste each other's time here . . . Why don't you find a copy of what I wrote last week and decide if you want to call me back? I am not going to glorify any of these [unfortunate use of expletive here] dopers and cheats.' A pregnant pause ensued and after a brief discussion the interview was agreed.

'We'll call you back in an hour,' the producer insisted.

Twenty minutes later he phoned to cancel. 'We've had a disaster in the studio . . . technical difficulties,' he explained. I laughed and told him not to worry about it. What does a guy have to do to earn big bucks these days?

Today's stage, a fifty-two kilometre individual time trial, was the first major rendezvous of the race. There were some very odd performances and as I scanned the results this evening, I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with Bradley Wiggins during the week. 'The racing hasn't been as crazy as I expected,' he said. 'There have been all sorts of rumours flying around the bunch that there's another [doping] list about to come out.'

Interesting.

One of my abiding memories of my former life is a conversation I had with my old
directeur sportif
Bernard Thevenet on the morning after the stage to L'Alpe d'Huez in 1987. We were descending the 21 hairpins by car en route to Bourg D'Oisans, when we noticed hordes of aspiring pros and pot-bellied forty-year-olds racing up the mountain with their stopwatches on, trying to beat the time we had set the day before. Of course, it didn't take a Bill Gates to figure that there was some serious lucre to be made from accommodating these freaks and in 1993 the Etape du Tour was formed, offering the cycling-besotted an opportunity to race one stage of the Tour de France each year on closed roads.

This year, the 187 kilometre stage from Gap to L'Alpe d'Huez was selected. Tomorrow at 7 a.m. a gigantic peloton of 7,548 riders will take to the start. They've been training like demons, abstaining from sex and shaving their legs for months. Don't ask me to explain what I'm doing here.

I arrived at the tented village to sign on this afternoon and started having serious reservations. In every corner of the merchandise stores, there were guys sniffing the shorts that Tom Boonen wears, loading up on power bars and spending thousands on carbon-fibre wheels. Tonight, most will forfeit the World Cup final and go to bed early. Apparently, that's what Ullrich does.

Not me. I've trained minimally, refused to shave my legs and should the opportunity for sex present itself after the game tonight (a French win will definitely help) I intend to indulge in copious quantities. You see, there's one thing these anoraks will never understand: when God created bike riders, he created thoroughbreds and donkeys.

Christ! Where to begin? Alarm call at four; fall out of bed; shovel disgusting bowl of raspberry-jam-sweetened porridge down neck; remove racing kit from bag and apply axle grease to shorts; spend fifteen minutes on loo trying to shift last night's foie gras. Unsuccessful. Not a good start.

05:30. Arrive in Gap after one-hour drive from hotel; bedlam; coachloads of bike riders everywhere queuing to get into the town; abandon car, strip by the side of the road and ride to the start; hand rucksack with spare clothes to baggage truck; sip small cup of coffee; find shaded bush to urinate (yellow, reasonable flow); follow the pink arrows (race numbers 1-350) to my starting corral; I'm number 67, up front with the thoroughbreds.

06:40. Alain Prost is escorted through the horde to the front row of the grid; I don't recall losing to him in qualifying but decide not to object. He's riding a Colnago, the Ferrari of racing bikes, and looks as fit as Floyd Landis. A few rows further back I spot the former Dutch professional Steven Rooks, who won the stage to L'Alpe d'Huez in 1988. He looks as fit now as he did back then. Don't any of these guys work for a living?

06:50. Ten minutes to the start. Tension is starting to build. A few guys have edged past me to steal a couple of lengths. Others are dancing and stretching limbs. The roof of my mouth is like a parched field. My bowels are starting to shift. I haven't felt this many nerves since the World Amateur Championships in 1983. And I'm the only guy at the front who hasn't shaved his legs!

07:00. Bang! We're off. Two twats collide and crash after 500 yards. Someone else attacks and there's an immediate split at the front. I notice Prost's blue jersey ahead and sprint to close the gap. My legs are filling with toxins; my lungs are screaming for air; my inner voice is pounding me with abuse: 'You f**king idiot! You haven't covered two kilometres and already you're in oxygen debt!'

07:55. Of course, you never really lose it, do you? The skill of moving your bike around a bunch packed like sardines, that is; the ability to put yourself in a position to avoid the crashes. We've reached Embrun and I'm starting to enjoy myself. The competitive juices are flowing and I'm holding my place at the front with the big boys.

As we climb up through the town, I place a friendly arm around Prost and introduce myself. He looks worried. The crashes are obviously getting to him. He seems to be breathing heavier than me and is visibly under pressure. 'Don't be afraid, my petit,' I assure him. 'You're in good company here.'

08:25. What you do lose is the horsepower, the ability to shift gears when the going gets tough. I'm almost two stones heavier than I was when I first raced these roads in 1986 and I'm starting to feel them now as we leave the village of Guillestre and enter the foothills of the Col d'Izoard. At the foot of the climb, a 14.5 kilometre brute that rises over 6,000 feet, I calculate there are about 300 riders in front of me.

But suddenly my legs are powerless and I'm going backwards. I stop at the side of the road for a pee (orange, poor flow) and my bowels explode with a fart that almost shakes the valley. Considerably relieved, I remount and try to attack the gradient again but I'm belching like a trooper (that bloody raspberry-jam porridge) and still going backwards.

A woman glides past me just before the village of Arvieux. (That may sound terribly sexist but I've been cycling since the age of eleven and it's never happened before.) I haven't passed a single rider since the bottom of the climb. They say age waits for no man. You'd better believe it. I've just been left behind by a sixty-year-old.