We Were Young and Carefree (31 page)

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Authors: Laurent Fignon

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During the 1992 season I believe that these forms of doping – which bore little relation to what we had experienced in the 1980s – were not yet widespread. There were some of the team leaders who clearly seemed to have access to EPO, maybe one or two others in each team. I really don’t know.
Then at the end of 1992, I was approached, I can see the scene as if it were yesterday. He began by talking in metaphors to give me a hint of what was going on. The process never got out into the open. He didn’t say: ‘I’ve got some EPO, do you want some?’ It was more insidious than that. Roughly speaking, what he said was this: ‘Laurent, you know that there is a super preparation product out there at present, we could perhaps have a look and see what we can do to have a go with you.’ But there was no chance of me taking anything that was against the rules: and EPO was clearly forbidden.
Before taking any medicine to cure any ailment I always took medical advice. During my career, whenever the opinions of the doctors seemed reliable and legitimate, I knew exactly what I was doing, what I was taking and I knew down to the last detail that I was taking no risks with my health or with my career as a sportsman. But this was about EPO. Not a great deal was known about it except that it was a way of manipulating the red cells in your blood. And as far as I was concerned, just thinking about doing anything to my blood scared the living daylights out of me. I do recall, however, that haematologists of the time were confident that if EPO was used carefully, there was no risk to health. That was of course the argument that was favoured by the dopers, even if I was perfectly well aware that certain forms of ‘doping’ were only dangerous in excessive quantities. But as far as excesses went, I had seen nothing yet.
Let’s go back to 1993, when everything became distorted and debased. As time passed, I noticed that some of my teammates were beginning to perform in a rather surprising way. Up to then, these same riders hadn’t shown any sign of talent that had impressed me in any way. But then there was a complete change in cyclists who I had seen pedalling alongside me every day. They improved without training any more than before, sometimes while doing less. It was blatant. I wasn’t fooled.
I eventually observed the same phenomenon throughout the peloton. The way riders behaved changed rapidly. There were guys I barely knew coming more often to the head of the bunch and setting a crazy pace, way beyond what you would expect. After a few months some of them ended up talking to me and letting me know what was going on. People came and told me: ‘This is how it is in every team.’ It was a way of encouraging me to do it too. I was astonished, because I had never seen this in Guimard’s teams.
I stood firm. I didn’t want to have anything to do with EPO and even less to do with Human Growth Hormone, which horrified me. But I have to admit that I was in a position where I could permit myself to do this. I already had a reputation that was worth a good deal. My contract was set in stone. I had won the Tour de France twice, the Giro, Milan–San Remo and so on. On the one hand my status gave me freedom to do as I wanted. And on the other, my character allowed to me to stick to my guns: I was not afraid of any one.
But looking back, there is one question that is worth asking: how would I have acted if I had been five or six years younger, and had yet to build up my
palmarès
?
There is no doubt that it took considerable courage to resist the crooked stuff that was going on. I didn’t lack courage. But I was thirty-one years old. Until that point I had always felt that I ‘did the job right’ to the best of my ability. What needs to be understood is that in my day, at least in the 1980s, there were riders who could ‘cheat’ without really feeling that they were doing so, because everyone was behaving in the same way, more or less, and using the same drugs. In addition, there is one thing that we have to bear in mind. Back then there was no drug, whatever it might have been, that could turn a donkey into a thoroughbred. Never. From Coppi to Hinault, passing through the eras of Anquetil and Merckx, there was no magic that could dose up lesser riders to compete on equal terms with the greats. Exceptional human beings, like their extraordinary exploits, were authentic. I can testify that until about 1989 drug taking in cycling was an unsophisticated affair.
Day after day, cycling no longer seemed to have a place for me. The metamorphosis in the cyclists around me, the sport’s clinical lack of humanity, meant that individuals were being turned into mere pedalling machines. What kind of a machine might I have become if I had given way to the pressures to take drugs? It became even more intense when, before the 1993 tour, someone went to see Alain Gallopin to tell him: ‘Laurent has to do something now!’
It was insidious and so typical of those years. It didn’t rattle me; rather the opposite. I’ve never taken fright when it comes to a show of force. But I can just imagine the damage that kind of thing could cause to riders who were psychologically weaker or less secure, or simply more desperate to get on in life.
And once it was done, obviously, if the cops caught up with a bike rider, he would end up being the ultimate ‘cheating bastard’ and his team would send him packing, screaming scandal and accusing him of every crime under the sun.
But most often, who were the real ‘cheating bastards’?
CHAPTER 34
ON A STREET CORNER
The 1993 season bore no resemblance to what I had planned. It was even more distressing than that. Who now recalls that my last professional win came in the Ruta Mexico? I’m the only European pro to have won that one.
When I started in the Tour de France, at Puy du Fou in the Vendée I had already come down with the beginnings of bronchitis which might have been enough to keep me out of such a demanding race, had circumstances been different.
The beginning was as bad as it could have been: I was sixty-seventh, forty-three seconds slower than Indurain. It was a worrying situation. Four days later the team rode a team time trial that ended up being a parody of a proper collective effort. It was an eighty-one kilometre stage where you needed to keep a cool head. Gianni Bugno was by far the strongest among us but he was completely unable to cope with his own strength. As a result, he set a pace that was too much for most of his teammates, all of whom were rapidly worn out so that less than fifty kilometres into the stage, the team blew to bits. Bugno definitely had no idea how to ride; this was simply not the way a team leader should behave.
One little episode now seems very significant. One day, when the peloton was a very long way from the finish and an early break of no importance had escaped, the whole bunch accelerated suddenly. In a few minutes the whole peloton was riding at 50kph in single file, with everyone pulling out the stops as best they could. I’m not sure now, but there must have been three or four hours’ racing to go. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. So I went up to the front of the bunch as best I could, and was greeted by a mind-boggling sight.
Sitting at the head of the string was a hardworking French rider who had emigrated to one of the biggest teams of the day. The fact that this guy was on the front of the peloton wasn’t remarkable in itself. He’d been there before. No, what was brainblowing was the way he was turning the pedals. That was all.
He looked as if he was barely trying but he was riding at more than 50kph on his own, his hands on the top of the bars in a three-quarters headwind. I was astounded. I yelled, ‘You know there’s still a hundred kilometres to the finish? Do you know how fast you’re going?’
He just said, with his distinct northern-French accent, ‘Pah, they’ve just said to ride, so I’m riding.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The poor lad had no idea what he was doing. It wasn’t his fault: it was a product of his time.
Whatever was happening, it was for real.
The very next stage, en route to Amiens, was also ridden at an insane speed: 50kph average. The whole peloton was chasing flat out. And it wasn’t as if they were on their knees. It was incredible.
One day followed another and my amazement at what was going on just grew and grew. Nothing seemed ‘normal’ any more. In every stage I kept alert to every move, and given that I had no lack of experience, I tried to slip into a breakaway group, but I simply couldn’t manage it. It was impossible. I always lacked a little something, the final surge that might have made the difference. The spectacle that was unfolding around me each day seemed almost unreal. I was wandering like a soul in torment, lost in unknown territory.
Then the scariest episode of all took place: the one that definitively sunk any illusions that remained to me. In the Alps, between Villard-de-Lans and Serre-Chevalier, where we had to go over the Galibier, I had decided to attack on the Télégraphe. I was no danger overall and naturally I was permitted to open a gap. To be honest, I was ticking over nicely. For a second or two, a gentle breeze, the sweetest kind of daydream, blew kindly on my back. It was a delusion. That was all. Because well before the summit, while I was pressing on as I used to on my best days, or so I believed at least, I saw a vast group of riders come up to me. There were at least thirty. Or forty. Not one of them seemed to be pushing it, but I couldn’t stay with them. To say that it played hell with my mind is an understatement.
It stopped me in my tracks. It was something that went beyond mere humiliation. It was a death blow. I realised that I was being deprived of being my old self. I could no longer see a place for myself there. I was annihilated. Destroyed.
It was the death knell for my career in cycling. As I went over the summit of the Télégraphe I said to myself, ‘It’s over. I’m going nowhere. I have to put a stop to this.’ Because in front of me now there were not merely the best riders but plenty of others, some of my own generation, who I had never seen match me in the high mountains with such a worrying lack of effort.
Nothing seemed normal. Even ‘normality’ had no meaning for me any more. And nothing shocked me now. So much so that on the Galibier, as I rode at my own pace, who did I catch up? Gianni Bugno, no less, who had completely fallen to bits. The Tour was over for him. As for me, my career had tottered a little but was now definitely dying in the majestic silence of the Alps.
I knew that it was all over for me. But there was not a single second when I said seriously to myself: ‘It’s because of EPO.’ That might now seem bizarre and incomprehensible. But I still would not face up to it. I had pretty much all the information that I needed to analyse the situation clinically. But I didn’t. When I lost races, I would never put it down to doping. So now I just thought: That’s it. Your day is done.
That evening, I was quite relaxed about it all. The ageing cyclist was hiding behind the mature man. But he wasn’t going to hide from the decision that had to be made.
The next morning, on the road to Isola 2000 we climbed up the Col d’Izoard and then the Col de la Bonette, the highest pass in the Tour. I can remember it very clearly. I rode up the whole climb in last place. Because I wanted to. I put my hands on the top of the bars and savoured it all to the full. I was breathing deeply as I lived through my last seconds in bike racing, which I had thought would never end for me. This col was all mine and I didn’t want anyone to intrude. Climbing up over 2700m above sea level like this gave me a host of good reasons to appreciate everything I had lived through on the bike. I had plenty of time to let my mind wander. It was a poetic distillation of the last twelve years. A little fragment of my being, breathed in and lived to the full, at my own speed. It was total harmony.
I pressed gently on the pedals, admiring distant views, weighing each second as if it were a tiny shard of a time that had taken flight, glimpsing amidst the horizon of blue sky and mountain peaks a whole new universe that was opening up before me, and a different way of seeing what lay ahead.
Cycling would go on – without me. Life would go on – but I would be part of it. Was there any reason to feel sorrow and nothing more? It was a genuine moment of sadness and grace, intermingled.
Before the final climb to Isola 2000, which I could have ridden up, although I would have been outside the time limit, I decided to get off my bike. All that now remained was to take responsibility for the end of my story, be aware of what it meant and look calmly at its breadth and depth.
It was no tragedy. I quit. Just like that. On a corner somewhere. As if I was throwing myself into a void, headlong.
CHAPTER 35
YOU CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT THEY ARE UP TO
To a great extent, cycling had lost its way. Any points of reference I used to have had been lost in a fog of EPO, a substance which I did not know how to use and whose abuse had effects which I could not understand. Was it possible to refer to an ‘EPO generation’? Probably.
When I climbed off my bike for the last time during the 1993 Tour de France, announcing that my career was about to end, I was not quite in touch with reality. I had no idea how dark it was. Of course I had become aware of this new substance. People had begun talking about it in the newspapers and behind the scenes, but, in spite of what I had experienced in Italy, I had not understood the extent to which its use was becoming universal. And there was something else that I refused to acknowledge: its amazing efficiency. With EPO, all physical obstacles were blown to bits. And I had still not managed to resign myself to the notion that a lot of the cyclists who were racing alongside me were fuelled with this substance.

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