The Tour de France is one of the
biggest sporting events in the world. The sheer physical toll this
bike race takes on it's competitors is greater then any other
competition. As we celebrate the 100th edition's
completion this evening, I decided to reflect upon my own memories of
'Le Grand Boucle' and as if by fate, this will be my 20th
edition to follow.
I have compiled my most vivid memories
from each Tour not necessarily a defining moment when a champion was
crowned or an incident that you would see on the back pages of
tabloids in this country, and I've delved a bit into the archives to
help set the scene for the events of each Tour. I've decided to omit
certain achievements or victories which have been proven to be
tainted by doping, but have included others which may be under
suspicion. That said, it would be impossible now to go back and
analyze every rider's performance at the time for the use of doping
and to a certain extent, we should let those moments be. Cycling is
vastly different to what it was in 1994 and we should be thankful for
a much cleaner, exciting sport and not dredge through the past on a
witch-hunt looking for people to blame. If you want to comment on
this article, please do, but please don't point the finger at riders
who may or may not have doped so many years ago. If you want to have
that discussion, send me a tweet.
So, here it is, the first half of my list of 20 of my
memories from Le Tour from 1994 to 2013:
1994 – 'The Crash'
The Tour has an innate ability to
create drama, whether that be from a blistering attack in the
mountains or a hectic sprint finish after 200km on the flat. My first
moment occurred during the latter.
The 94 Tour route was strange, starting
in Lille with the prologue then after a swift Tour of Northern
France, a jaunt across La Manche for two stages in England. The first
stage proper of the race was to finish in Armentieres and upon closer
inspection, it looked perfect. A nice wide road, a gentle right hand
bend to finish where none of the sprinters would have to worry about
using their breaks in the final kilometer. This would be a
straightforward bunch sprint, or at least it would've been until
there was Police involvement.
As the sprinters were about to unleash
their final efforts for the push to the line Wilfried Nelissen, who
had held the yellow jersey for a few days in the previous year's
Tour, crashed and brought down a handful of riders in a nasty looking
crash. (every crash looks pretty nasty at 60 kph, but this one
especially so) Upon further viewing however it did not appear to be
his fault, as a police officer brought in to control the crowd and
prevent them hanging over the barriers taking photographs, thus
endangering the riders' safety was himself standing out from the
barriers taking a photograph of the riders. Nelissen admittedly had
his head down and was not looking in front of him as he sped towards
the officer, but given that he could see the barriers, he knew where
he was on the road, and should not have expected anything other than
a bicycle to appear in front him.
There was an official police
investigation and it was found that the police officer was not at
fault in any way whatsoever for the crash and there was no camera
involved. The officer broke his leg after being hit by Nelissen, and
presumably was never deemed fit enough to marshal the crowd at the
finish of a stage again.
Nelissen was never the same as a rider
and after a brief battle with injury, he admitted defeat at retired a
few years later at the age of 28. Of the other riders involved in the
crash, the most seriously injured was an exciting French sprinter and
previous green jersey winner Laurent Jalabert. Jalabert never
regained his speed in the bunch sprint and was forced to adapt his
style to survive in the race, but more of him later.
The Tour has since worked tirelessly to
eliminate most of the risks is sprints finishes, and now there is
no-one between the barriers at the finish except the riders
themselves and perhaps the odd support vehicle, so if anybody crashes
during the finish, they only have themselves or another rider to
blame and that's how it should be.
1995 – Fabio Casartelli
Fabio Casartelli was the Olympic road
race champion in 1992 in Barcelona and was a member of a young a
promising Motorola squad at the Tour de France. Sadly tragedy struck
and on the 15th Stage of the Tour, Casartelli was riding
in a small group on the descent of the Col de Portet d'Aspet in the
Pyrenees when there was a crash. Dante Rezze fell down a ravine, but
was pulled out by spectators with relatively minor injuries. Dirk
Baldinger broke his leg and was out of the Tour, but those injuries
were minor compared to Fabio. Casartelli fell and struck his head on
a cement bollard at the side of the road. Pictures and video show him
lying in the fetal position with blood streaming down the road from
his head. The doctors were on scene within 10 seconds and he was
immediately airlifted to Tarbes to a hospital. His heart stopped
three times in the helicopter and although he was revived twice, he
succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
This was a huge shock to the peloton and I even get emotional when
thinking about that day. Casartelli as was the custom in racing at
the time, did not wear a helmet, only a cloth cap to protect him from
the sun. The coroner who inspected his body at Tarbes concluded that
although he still would have been seriously injured, if Casartelli
had been wearing a helmet he would have avoided some serious injuries
and could have survived. A memorial is built to Casartelli on the
mountain and is visited regularly by cyclists of all ages and
abilities. The following days' stage was neutralized and Casartelli's
Motorola team-mates crossed the line together pointing to the sky and
the memory of Fabio. Casartelli was the first rider to die on the
Tour since Tom Simpson perished on the slopes of Mont Ventoux almost
30 years before.
Stage 18 was won by Lance Armstrong
after a long breakaway and although he dedicated his victory to
Fabio, perhaps the more important legacy left after the Italian's
death is that helmets are now mandatory in most cycling races and
have save countless lives on the roads all over the world.
1996 – Big Mig Cracks
Miguel Indurain was a machine in the
early 90s, famously overtaking 2-time Tour winner Laurent Fignon in a
time trial in 1992 en route to becoming the first and now only five
time consecutive winner. The Spaniard had been flawless, gaining
large amounts of time in the time trials and marking his opponents in
the mountains, with the occasional attack a la Hautacam 1994. He
never seemed vulnerable and looked set in 1996 to overtake Anquetil,
Merckx and Hinault at the top of the all time winners list.
1996 would be the Basque's undoing, and
it would be spectacular. He entered the 7th stage in 8th
overall, 4:17 behind the yellow jersey, but only 12 seconds behind
another pre-race favorite in Alex Zülle
after the participants in a previous day's breakaway occupied the top
spots in the general classement.
During the stage, there were no warning
signs, Indurain stayed safely with the rest of the favorites, Zülle,
Yevgeny Berzin and Bjarne Riis. He repeatedly repelled attacks from
the select group with his usual vigor and they had even distanced
themselves from former sprinter and now re-invented all-round rider
Laurent Jalabert.
Suddenly Tony Rominger, Berzin and Riis
upped an already frenetic pace set by Indurain's former team-mate
Aitor Garmendia. Indurain dug into his well and tried to respond, but
this was not to be a fairytale finish for Mig, he had pushed his
Spanish V8 engine into the red-zone and far beyond any sustainable
effort.
In a scene that was repeated this year
on the double ascent of Alpe d'Huez, Indurain signaled to the team
car that he needed more fuel and a full bidon. Even that could not
arrest the slide of the great rider. Perennial polka dot jersey
winner Richard Virenque summed it up best, “When the other broke,
he just appeared to cycle on the same piece of road. Truly, it is the
most remarkable sight I have seen on the Tour”
Indurain could count himself lucky, the
commissars decided not to punish him an additional 20 seconds for his
illegal feed, the fate the befell Froome and Porte on Thursday,
instead allowing the natural course of events to play out. At the end
of the stage, the man who had dominated the previous five Tours, the
man who had consumed so many French mountains had been defeated,
demoralized and destroyed. He only lost 3:23 to new yellow jersey
Berzin and Riis who would go on to win the Tour. He would never get
any closer in the following stages, and when the peloton arrived in
Paris, he was over 14 minutes behind. He left the Tour like so many
former greats, broken by the toughest race, never to return.
1997 – Ullrich the Phenom
In 1996, Jan Ullrich was a promising
young rider and loyal team-mate to winner Bjarne Riis, he won the
white jersey for the best rider under the age of 26 and was touted as
a future winner of the race. Riis had returned to defend his title,
but he could not compete with the East German diesel possessed by
Ullrich. That isn't necessarily a slight on Riis though, as no-one
could compete with Ullrich in 1997.
After 8 flat stages and a prologue,
Ullrich sat 2:56 off yellow and 1:03 ahead of Riis, a further 27
seconds in front of Virenque and 4:21 in credit of Marco Pantani. On
stage 9, only Virenque and Pantani could stay with Ullrich on the
road to Loudenvielle with all three finishing with the same time and
taking 27 seconds off Riis. This had allowed Ullrich to close the gap
to yellow jersey holder Cedric Vasseur to just 13 seconds and surely
it was a matter of time before he took his place at the head of the
peloton.
Such is the petulance of youth that
Ullrich went out the very next day and on the climb to Andorra
Arcalis, he blew the field away on the longest mountain stage on the
Tour, effortlessly cruising up the slopes to lead the field home by
1:08 an with it a secure hold of the yellow jersey with a cushion of
nearly three minutes.
Riders were quick to heap praise on the
young star. Lance Armstrong preached, “It's not so surprising. He's
a talented young guy who was world champion as an amateur. He could
win many more Tours”
Ullrich himself summed it up best, “I
made the break, then I looked back and saw no-one coming with me so I
thought, this is it and pressed on”
This seemed to be his mantra for the
remainder of the Tour and after a brief respite for the competition
with a bunch sprint into Perpignan and a rest day, Ullrich resumed
his demolition of the field on stage 12, an individual time trial
around St. Etienne. He beat the field by over three minutes, catching
Virenque on the road and extending his overall lead over the
Frenchman to 5:42. He had not completely silenced the peloton
however, as Pantani won the following stage up to Alpe d'Huez albeit
with a new record time, but again Ullrich took time from Virenque,
this time 40 seconds. Pantani reclaimed 1:17 into Morzine, but this
was too little, too late and Ullrich hammered the final blow on his
Mickey Mouse opposition in the penultimate stage, another time trial
this time at Disneyland Paris. He finished 2:47 ahead of Virenque
with Pantani a further 1:03 behind. Ullrich cruised up the Champs
Elysees to complete his crushing victory, in the end 9:09 ahead of
Virenque and 14:03 in front of Pantani. Defending champion Bjarne
Riis finished 7th, 26 and a half minutes behind Ullrich.
Such was the domination of victory, only 15 of the 139 finishers were
within 1 hour of Ullrich at the finish line of the Tour. The era of
Ullrich was upon us.
1998 – Festina
In 1998, the Tour began in Dublin, but
the drama had already started well before 'Le Grand Depart'. 3 days
before the Prologue in Dublin, Festina soigneur and Richard
Virenque's personal carer Willy Voet was stopped by customs on the
Belgian-French border. His car was searched and officials found
anabolic steroids, EPO syringes and a whole host of doping
paraphernalia. Voet was arrested and taken into custody. Police then
searched Festina team headquarters in Lyon and seizing more doping
products including perfluorocarbon, an artificial carrier of oxygen
suspected to have caused many riders to collapse on the road due to
it's instability as a doping product.
Two days later in Dublin, Festina
directeur sportif Bruno Roussel maintained his innocence and claimed
Voet was acting as a lone wolf and had nothing to do with the team at
the Tour. Meanwhile in France, a judicial inquiry had been called to
investigate the matter and Voet would be imprisoned for two weeks for
his possession of the doping products.
On the first day of the Tour, French
police announce that Voet's car had contained 250 bottle of EPO and
400 bottles of other substances including steroids. They also
announced their intention to question Virenque, Alex Zülle and
Laurent Dufaux once they returned to France.
On the day of the fourth stage, Roussel
and Festina team doctor Eric Rijckaert were arrested and taken into
custody in Cholet. The Festina team hotel was also searched by police
and the following day Roussel was stripped of his license to run the
team by the UCI. Despite this, Festina intended to continue and team
officials Miguel Moreno and Michael Gros would take over. Virenque
called a press conference with a few of his fellow riders to assure
fans that they would continue.
The following day however, the charade
was up. Roussel admitted to systematic doping on the team and
explained that riders were paid a premium to dope on the team and
that all but one of their Tour team had been doping during the race.
That one rider was crucial however, his name was Christophe Bassons.
Race organizer Jean-Marie Leblanc
expelled Festina from the Tour and they did not start the seventh
stage on the race the following day. Richard Virenque spoke to
reporters in tears and left the race to face the French authorities.
Almost a week later 12 members of the
Festina team were taken into police custody. 8 of the 9 riders in the
team for the Tour along with another rider and three team officials
were to be charged by the French authorities, but Bassons was
exonerated from charges as he was the only rider not implicated in
the doping program.
During the seventeenth stage of the
race, the riders refused to race due to the scrutiny being placed on
doping. When they eventually started riding, they cruised along the
road very slowly in protest. Laurent Jalabert pulled out of the race
followed by his entire ONCE team, Team TVM were also called under
suspicion of doping and several riders were ordered to take blood
tests.
The following day, the Kelme and
Vitalicio Seguros teams also pulled out and reports surfaced the the
drugs found in Voet's car were to be shared by three French teams;
Big Mat, Francais des Jeux and Casino. It was also reported at the
time, that during interviews with police, the Festina riders had
corroborated this story.
Team TVM then pulled out prior to Stage
19 of the race, and now less then 100 of the 189 riders who start the
Tour remained. The Tour, in case you'd forgotten bout the racing, was
won by Marco Pantani. The era of Ullrich was over.
The ramifications of the Festina affair
continued and it was not until 2000 that they reached a French
courtroom. Of the nine riders taken into police custody after their
expulsion from the Tour, 8 tested positive for EPO, the ninth tested
was Christophe Moreau who although his results were borderline, had
already admitted to using EPO. Voet then gave an interview with Le
Parisien where he revealed only three of Festina's riders were clean,
Patrice Hagland, Laurent Lefevre and Christophe Bassons. Virenque
maintained his innocence to the point where he had a heated
confrontation with Voet and Rijckaert.
The courtroom trial had ten defendants,
amongst which were Virenque, Voet, Roussel and Rijckaert. During the
trial, Virenque admitted to doping as did team-mate Pascal Herve. 8
of the defendants were found guilty and given suspended prison
sentences and heavy fines. The charged against Rijckaert were dropped
due to his poor health and his death a month later from cancer.
Inexplicably, Virenque was cleared, but was banned a week later by
the Swiss cycling federation and was vilified by the press.
Cycling was in tatters, widespread
allegations of doping implicated almost the entire peloton. Cycling
would have to provide a new hero to alleviate the depression caused
by the so called 'Tour de Dopage'
1999 – Cipo and Bassons
Super Mario, the Lion King, Pretty
Mario or simply just Cipo. Mario Cipollini embodied the superstar
popularity cycling has in Italy. The larger than life character had
already appeared during stages wearing zebra and tiger skins suits
racking up more than his fair share of fines before he arrived at the
1999 Tour. During that race however, he cemented his legendary status
in the pantheon of Tour sprinters. Belgian Tom Steels had won stages
2 and 3, but was denied a famous hat-trick by Cipo on the run-in to
Blois. In doing so, Cipollini set the fastest ever average speed for
a mass start stage at a mesmerizing 50.355 kph. His team Saeco had
implemented and perfected the lead-out train and time after time
Mario was delivered to the front with uncanny efficiency. Famed for
his movie-star looks, Cipollini rode the majority of stages with his
gelled, slicked back hair on display for the cameras. It was said
that at the time the hardest and most dangerous job in the sports was
to be the rider tasked with returning to the Saeco team car to
retrieve Mario's helmet with 10km remaining. His date with destiny
approached as Cipo won stages 5 and 6, blasting past rivals with his
customary nonchalance while completing his own memorable hat trick.
Thionville would be his defining moment and he was once again
launched by his team with just over 200m to go. As he had with
allegedly over 1000 women in his prime, Cipo sealed the deal and
repeated his victories of the previous three days, completing the
first four-timer at the Tour since Charles Pelissier in 1930. Super
Mario celebrated in his typical style, dressing as Julius Caesar
during the first rest day, and despite a valiant effort, abandoning
during the first mountain stage just as he had on every previous
Tour.
The legend of Cipollini was always
entertaining, but this was his crowning moment in Le Tour. He won 12
stages in his career, and we have someone else coming up later who
may have a couple more.
One of the darker moments in the Tour's
history also occurred in 1999. The so called Tour of Renewal after
the previous year's Festina scandal, had been criticized by rider
Christophe Bassons, an outspoken critic of doping who
had referred to the return to cycling and ascent to the top of the
sport by Lance Armstrong as having “shocked the peloton” in his
daily column for newspaper Le Parisien. This had angered the peloton
two-fold, firstly by accusing them of doping, which most of them
were, and secondly by breaking the riders' Omerta on doping or 'code
of silence'. On Stage
10 to Alpe d'Huez, they organized a go-slow for the first 100km with
the co-operation of all riders except Bassons who was deliberately
kept out of the loop. Bassons had a loyal mechanic in his team
however and found out about the protest the evening before.
While
the peloton were content to roll along the roads and protest their
innocence, Bassons decided to take a stand. He continually attacked
during this period and despite being brought back to the peloton
every time, he would not give in. The only man who could force him to
stop would be all-time villain on the Tour, Lance Armstrong. Bassons
said in an interview with BBC Five Live in 2012,
“
.
. . and then Lance
Armstrong reached
me. He grabbed my by the shoulder, because he knew that everyone
would be watching, and he knew that at that moment, he could show
everyone that he was the boss. He stopped me, and he said what I was
saying wasn't true, what I was saying was bad for cycling, that I
mustn’t say it, that I had no right to be a professional cyclist,
that I should quit cycling, that I should quit the tour, and finished
by saying fuck
you. . . . I was depressed for 6 months. I was crying all of the
time. I was in a really bad way.”
Bassons
was exiled from the peloton and vilified for taking a stand. The
other riders wouldn't even talk to him and his own team treated him
like the enemy.
Especially
in the light of the revelations of the last year or so, we should
salute Bassons and the other riders who spoke out and whistle-blew on
doping. Frankie and Betsy Andreu among many others had the courage to
swim against the tide and stand up for a sport they love and
principles they believe in. Cycling owes a debt of gratitude to
Bassons, the Andreus and many other, a debt that it can never repay.
2000 – David Millar
2000 was a short and sweet Tour for me.
We were treated to the rise of a new British hero on the opening
stage. Following the history of Chris Boardman's prologue wins, an
unknown Scotsman took the 16.5km time trial at Futuroscope. David
Millar became only the fourth Brit to wear the yellow jersey after
Tom Simpson, Sean Yates and Chris Boardman. Millar's margin of
victory was only two seconds, but he claimed yellow and held it for
the following two days before ONCE won the team time trial. Millar
however would not be forgotten and after a drug ban in 2004, he
returned to the Tour to become one of four British stage winners in
2012 and is the only few British rider to have won a stage and worn
the leader's jersey in all three grand tours. Only Sir Bradley
Wiggins has worn all three jerseys and although Mark Cavendish has
won all three sprinters' jerseys he has never worn yellow.
2001 - “The Look”
In 2001, Lance Armstrong was arguably
at his most dominant in the the Tour. He had won the previous two
Tours by a combined 13:46 and despite conceding almost 36 minutes to
a 14 man breakaway two stages earlier, the big, cheating Texan was
going to make a statement on Stage 10, form Aix-les-Bains to Alpe
d'Huez, the only Alpine stage in that year's Tour. Armstrong pulled
the second biggest deception of his career. Riding at the back of the
pack grimacing and looking ready to drop off the back and concede
time to Jan Ullrich and the Team Telekom machine.
When the rider arrived at the foot of
the Alp, only Laurent Roux was ahead of the group, 7 minutes up the
road. Ullrich had shed most of his team-mates trying to drop the
laboring Armstrong. When Armstrong's team-mate Jose Rubiera attacked,
only Armstrong and Ullrich could respond and when Rubiera finally
dropped off, Armstrong looked back, seemingly straight into the eyes
of Ullrich, then he was gone. Armstrong suddenly had a rocket on his
back, he flew up the climb in the second fastest time in history,
only Pantani was faster. Ullrich who had put a lot of effort into the
stage already was powerless to follow and limped slowly up the
mountain as Armstrong set off after Roux. The German was broken, and
when they arrived in Paris, he was nearly 7 minutes behind.
Armstrong stated in an interview after
the finish that he wasn't looking at Ullrich, rather that he was
looking back down the mountain to see who else was in the group.
Given what we now know about Armstrong, how can we be sure.
2002 – Au Revoir Jaja
2002 saw the retirement of one of
France's best loved cyclists, The Panda, Jaja, Laurent Jalabert. He
had been a great sprinter and after his horror crash in 1994, he had
re-invented himself as an all-round cyclist. In 1995 he repeated a
feat that only Eddy Merckx and Tony Rominger had accomplished. He
rode in the Vuelta a Espana and won the sprinters' jersey, mountains
jersey and the overall race. He is also one of only five riders to
have won the sprinters' jersey in all three tours along with Merckx,
Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, Alessandro Petacchi and Mark Cavendish. The
2002 Tour was his farewell, a victory lap around France. The previous
year, he won the polka dot jersey, and it seemed to suit him and he
rode in as many breakaways as possible to mop up the points. He took
his bow and all of France saluted him. Sadly for French cycling, they
have not had much to celebrate since as Jalabert himself was the last
French winner of the green jersey in 1995, Bernard Hinault was the
last French winner of the Tour in 1986 and although Richard Virenque
won 7 polka dot jerseys in his career, only two riders have won it
since. How the French must envy Sir Dave Brailsford's rider factory
now.
2003 – Beloki's thigh and a yellow
bag
The 2003 Tour was defined by two
moments, neither of which necessarily fueled by EPO and they
highlight the best and worst parts of professional cycling.
Firstly the worst. Joseba Beloki had
been impressing in the first week of the race and looked like Lance
Armstrong's main competition for a then fifth Tour title. Stage 9
finished in Gap, a popular finishing town and although the hard work
in terms of climbing had already been done for the day, the excessive
heat and multiple breakaway groups up the road posed the biggest
threats to the main GC contenders like Armstrong and Beloki.
Alexandre Vinokourov, himself no stranger to doping scandals had
attacked on the final climb of the day and during the descent of the
Cote de la Rochette, it was a close call as to whether the chasing
group could catch him.
Shortly after passing the Col de Manse,
Beloki and Armstrong entered a right hand bend and possibly due to
the aforementioned heat and a patchy road surface, Beloki slid his
bike into the corner and was vaulted off his machine and onto the
tarmac. He landed heavily on his hip and although initially he tried
to climb back on board, he was unable to continue. He had broken his
collarbone, possible some ribs, but most importantly and cruelly, he
snapped his femur (thigh bone) and was out of the Tour. I can still
hear his cries of pain when being helped up and into the team car on
his way to a hospital on Gap.
The drama of the moment however was not
over as Armstrong was following Beloki closely and after the
Spaniard's crash, was forced to swerve to the left and take evasive
action into an empty field.
What followed was almost surreal, he
continued through the field, as though he was riding a mountain bike.
As the road looped back following a left hand bend, Armstrong
unclipped his pedals and hopped over advertising hoardings. The Texan
remounted just as the chasing group turned through the left hander
and he rejoined the pursuit of Vinokourov. The group would not catch
the Kazakh and although he vaulted up to second overall, Armstrong
was just glad to still be in the race, unlike the unfortunate Beloki,
who like so many before him would never recapture his former form and
retired under the cloud of Operacion Puerto a few years later.
The polar opposite moment of Tour
riding came on Stage 15 to Luz-Ardiden when during the last 10km of
the Stage, a group containing Armstrong, Ullrich, Iban Mayo amongst
other were chasing down a two man break of Santiago Botero and
Sylvain Chavanel. Just as Armstrong was beginning to accelerate, he
got too close to a spectator at the side of the road, hooked his
handlebars on a bag being carried by a child and the pre-teenager had
taken down a then six time Tour winner. Armstrong was quick to get
back on his bike, but Ullrich as the second placed overall rider
ordered the group to stop and wait for Armstrong to recover and
rejoin the group. Armstrong had waited for Ullrich and a crash a few
years previous and such is the custom in the peloton that a rider
doesn't attack when a rival has a mechanical issue or a small crash.
Armstrong thanked Ullrich when he rejoined the group and repaid the
German's sportsmanship by sprinting up the mountain and leaving
Ullrich and Mayo 40 seconds behind him. If Ullrich had attacked when
Armstrong crashed, then the American may not have rejoined the group,
but that's how Lance operated and a cyclist and apparently as a
person.
