Fife G. - Inside the Peloton: Riding, Winning and Losing the Tour de France

RIDING, WINNING & LOSING THE TOUR DE FRANCE

Graeme Fife

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Epub ISBN: 9781780572185

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Copyright Graeme Fife, 2001

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

First published in Great Britain in 2001 by

MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD

7 Albany Street

Edinburgh EH1 3UG

ISBN 1 84018 400 0

Reprinted 2001, 2003, 2005

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is available from the British Library

For

John & Angela

and

Nick & Jan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have many people to thank for help in the preparation of this book. As ever, thanks to my friends Nick and Jan for their hospitality, generosity and practical help on several occasions when I went down to their Guest House in the Arige to ride and conduct interviews; also for use of their library, in situ and via e-mail and telephone. Another friend, John, as usual gave me invaluable advice at a critical stage of writing; he has encouraged and furthered the work throughout. Luke Evans, editor of Cycle Sport in whose pages some of this material made its first appearance and to whom I owe especial thanks for use of several photographs gave me my first chance of an interview and thus planted the idea of this book. Thanks to the irrepressible John Deering for setting up my visit to the Giro dItalia and securing me press accreditation on a couple of occasions when jumping barriers or sweet talk would have been wholly impracticable. Phil Liggett, although he is a subject of one of these chapters, has been a mine of information, uncomplaining about what anyone else might have taken as importunity; a friendly companion in the course of many conversations and bike rides. Jenny Daly, Gennie Sheer, Jayne Kendrick, Ron Webb and everyone at the Jacobs Creek Tour Down Under were indefatigably amenable, helpful, friendly and good fun to be with: their intelligent good humour made the work in Adelaide a joy. Thanks to Keith Wong of Bicycle Express, Adelaide, for the generous loan of the red Colnago for my use when I was in town; David Sharp for illuminating and stimulating exchanges in the press car and the press room; Terry and Veronica in Tea Tree Gully outside Adelaide, where the last two chapters were written. Marguerite and Lisa-Jane in Paris for hospitality; Daniel Carlier, for that lift to Roubaix station and for kind permission to quote his poem about the pav; Molly and M. Arcenay of the Office de Tourisme, Combloux, for their generous assistance and faultless organization in helping me arrange my visit to the Arc en Ciel week. Finally, thanks to all the riders mentioned in these pages: their riding provided the first inspiration, their readiness to talk to me the continuing stimulus, their generosity the example to make it as good a book as I possibly could. Any flaws are entirely my responsibility.

Graeme Fife,

Sevenoaks.

FOREWORD

I saw my first bike race at the Worlds Road Race weekend, Belgium 1975. Hennie Kuiper broke away on his own two laps (was it?) from the end to win the professional title. After the race, I joined the straggle of spectators ambling up the road towards the finish. Threading their way back down came Eddy Merckx and Lucien Van Impe, faces streaked with sweat and grime, slack with fatigue. They had missed out on their home soil and were caked, body and bike, with a liberal daubing of it. The finest professional cyclist ever to have pushed a pedal and the little climber whom Cyrille Guimard convinced he could be a giant passed so close I might have said hello, bad luck, whatever. They were, for the moment, just two bike racers from the bunch in quest of a hot shower. That curious anomaly between the fame and the very ordinariness impressed me again and again when I was talking to the men whose experiences fill this book. They were, each one, open, courteous and, however rich their palmars, very far from grand. It is the peculiar character of bike racing, at whatever exalted level, that the riders are there, with notable exceptions, accessible to public and press alike. I enjoyed no privilege other than the extraordinary fact that I met men whose names resonated in my consciousness. I asked for and was granted interviews; turned up on doorsteps and enjoyed the company of some remarkable sportsmen. Professionals all, riding the machine we can all own, from bog-standard to deluxe, they typified what I have encountered all through in my dealings with cyclists: what the French call politesse, a quality they demand of their sportsmen: an essential good manners which seems to emanate from a sense that the conduct of sport can match the conduct of life; that meanness in the one will spill over into the other. Andr Dd Darrigade said that when he was a young pro taking the train from home in Dax, south-west France to Paris to ride the spring classic one-day races, he got into conversation with someone in the same carriage. What did he do for a living? He replied that he was a racing cyclist. The response was immediate: had he ridden the Tour de France? That was when he realised that the real proof of being a cyclist was to have lived that adventure, a ride to the summit of cycle racing. For those of us who never have or never will share that unique privilege, its fascination nevertheless does not wane and imagination dips into something of the mystery. Here is my version of it.

1. BY WAY OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I started on a trike in Dudley Road in Finchley, a 200-metre downhill cut from Briarfield by the cricket ground to Rosemary Avenue. When the milkman came round with the horse and cart, my father would cry: bucket and shovel! and off wed race to get there first in front of the rest of the street for the horses droppings, a bucketful of fresh manure for the garden. The pavement was my trike piste: flat-out to the bottom and a left-hand, right-angle turn, no brakes. I did it solo, but the best was with Diana Muncaster, who lived next door, crouched over me, feet on the back axle, hands on the bars, the only solo-tandem trike team in north London and maybe further, hurtling towards the corner, shrieking like ghost-train passengers, into the bend at a mad speed and a 90 side-cast jink so sharp and fast it took a second for your heart to spring back into position. We were both five and when her family moved away the daredevilry lost some of its poignancy without her to share it. I outgrew the trike, mastered gyroscopic motion (or rather it mastered me) and began to explore the territory way beyond the backwater of my childhood. I had already in those waking years assimilated two things which became central to my life: a passion for the bike and the companionship of cyclists.