We Were Young And Carefree Part 10

To gear down for the following tax year and avoid paying too much, I didn't ride a single criterium. Then I announced that my last race would be the Grand Prix de Plouay, in mid-August, and I set off for the start with a spring in my step. The atmosphere was special: before the start, people came to say 'thanks' and to wish me 'a fair wind'. There I was. It was all about to end.

I desperately wanted to finish the race, but the speed was high and I was low on kilometres; I really couldn't keep up. So I made my way to the front of the bunch to say 'adieu' to them all, with my voice cracking. Marc Madiot yelled, 'Look everyone, make sure you look at this: this is the last time you will see Laurent Fignon on a bike.'

A great surge of emotion welled up inside me. There was a lump in my throat. My muscles stiffened up and I got off my bike. There is no going back once a new dawn has broken.

Gianluigi Stanga left me in peace. Not long afterwards the sponsor announced that they were ending their investment in cycling. My contract was watertight, so I leapt at the opportunity and said that actually I had wanted to go on for another year. It was a windfall: they paid my third and last year. So in 1994 I was paid as if I were a bike rider when I actually wasn't. Why should I be ashamed about it? For two years I was their amba.s.sador in France, I just did it for a third year but not on the bike.

That was the beginning of a period of intense reflection. I had been fully aware of what I was doing when I called time, and I had no regrets, but it wasn't as straightforward as I had imagined. Whatever kind of cyclist you are, whether you were a great champion or an also-ran, when you turn the page the pa.s.sion that has governed your life comes abruptly to an end. That is what had just happened to me. Being ready mentally wasn't enough to soften the blow. For all of us, cycling is more than a mere profession: it's an all-consuming mistress.

So I was left in a hole. I had nothing concrete ready and waiting. I had no idea what to do with the days, or with the rest of my life. More worryingly I was incapable of pinpointing what I really wanted. Being idle isn't my strongest suit: I needed to think fast. But I was incapable of it. In the months that followed my retirement my whole being was still that of a racing cyclist. My biorhythms, my habits, my way of being and even my reflexes: everything still reacted to daily life just as it had done for so long.

It took the pa.s.sing of the winter for things to change. One morning at the start of 1994 I realised that the other cyclists, every single one of them, had begun training again, and were probably in camp. The first races were on the horizon. And what had I done? Nothing. I was just an ex-cyclist. This time, my body finally figured out that it wasn't just on holiday, waiting to return to its prime function. The break was irreparable. The others had begun again, without me.

I can see myself now on one particular day. It was the day I panicked. I was sitting on a sofa at home and I felt a huge void in front of me. A sort of terror gripped me. An insidious fear that gnawed at my stomach and ran up and down my spine. I stood up, swaying in a gust of anguish, as if I needed to take a deep breath. I sat somewhere else. It all looked the same. I really couldn't think straight. And the more ridiculous I thought I looked, the more the panic gained momentum.

I couldn't let the chaos take over, so I thought in a logical way, taking things one at a time.

Money? I had no shortage, given that the previous year I had been sensible and paid off all my debts so that I would have no worries. At the end of my career I was paying 1.5 million francs in tax, about sixty per cent of my emoluments. At the end I had been earning 500,000 francs a month, so I wasn't lacking cash. Back then I had about 2 million francs, to which should be added a few properties. Just a quick reminder: all this was nothing compared to what the best footballers, tennis players and golfers were earning.

What was I doing with my time? I was actually playing quite a lot of golf. It was a sport that gave me something to focus my mind and get to know another side of myself, which was rather disconcerting. I was also taking part in various adventurous activities which took me out of my comfort zone and helped me keep in decent physical form. And the journalist Patrick Cha.s.se had called me in to commentate on races for Eurosport. I was keen on the idea, so I went for it. But I have to be honest: it wasn't anything like building for the future. The more I reflected on it, the more I became aware that outside cycling I didn't know how to do a great deal. Should I go into business? Why not. But what, exactly? Property? It didn't turn me on. I finally realised that I had no other 'specialist areas'. And, more worryingly, I didn't have any particular desire to do anything.

Was I a victim, in my own way, of the inevitably stupefying nature of professional cycling? I had not stopped reading, I had kept informed and I had kept myself in touch with what was going on in the world. However, even for someone like me, in order to be a cyclist you are obliged to live in a bubble that floats above everyday reality. But I was clearly the sort of person who was inclined to be interested in things; even so, professional cycling consumes everything. It monopolises your life. Compared to a professional footballer, for example, being a cyclist takes up all your time and reduces to a strict minimum any chance of leisure interests. Training sessions are long and racing days are numerous.

In some ways, I regret the fact that those years were a bottomless pit. It had an effect on me later on: I was aware that I missed out on fifteen years of normal life. I was out of the mainstream, a long way from everything, my mind absorbed by cycling, rarely directed at the rest of the world. Real life pa.s.sed me by. I was in a world of my own. I'm well aware that it was impossible to do it any other way: sport at the highest level demands a high level of concentration and calls for your exclusive attention. As I learned throughout my career, the second that I let daily life worry me at all, in particular issues stemming from my private life, my attention wandered and my results suffered. Living cycling one hundred per cent was an obligation. It was regrettable but there was no alternative.

It was when I emerged from this infernal spiral that I became fully aware that my cosy, closeted universe was actually like a prison, albeit a golden one. There was a sense in which you were locked into that bubble. That isolation is one of cycling's great problems. You live on the margins, cosseted in your own little world, and you end up believing you are a superior being. You believe that the cycling world is the real world while in fact it is merely a distortion of real life. With hindsight I'm astonished to think of the day-to-day activities that I never did, or only rarely did. Just going out for a walk with your wife, browsing antique shops, window-shopping. Not recommended. Too tiring. There was always a good excuse.

Having got these regrets off my chest, if I had to draw up an objective balance sheet, I would still consider that the cycling life had more good sides than bad. How could I regret it all? How could I suggest that it was anything other than joyful, ecstatic? We were free men. We could jump into a team car in the middle of the night to go and see a girl. We could drive two hundred kilometres just for a date and come back in the small hours then ride the next stage: do you think that's an option today? It certainly wasn't part of the general culture, but it was part of the life. I'll make a confession here: where the diet side was concerned, I never really set many limits. I was careful, but that was all, except sometimes when certain major objectives were pending. That was because in the middle of the 1980s we were only just becoming aware of the importance of power to weight ratio. I had a few good blow-outs, although I didn't take myself for Anquetil, who made living cycling his own way into what amounted to an obligation, a real way of life. Sometimes I went over the top, and there were times when I cracked and I probably should not have done. I was definitely not a child of diet and programming, and I'm glad of it.

That's probably why I never had any aspirations to become a directeur sportif directeur sportif, which is a profession that demands conventions, traditions, compromises and accommodations. And no sponsor has ever suggested that I set up a team. Alain Gallopin and I had the notion once or twice. We suggested a simple project to the Caisse d'Epargne bank for example: we would unearth the next Frenchman who could win the Tour several times over. We know that the greats of the sport emerge in a cyclical way. Since Armstrong's first retirement there has been a gap. Of course there is Alberto Contador, who has ma.s.sive natural talent, but look at a rider like Carlos Sastre, winner of the Tour 2008: in terms of cla.s.s, he barely reaches Contador's knees. Searching for young French riders with a future, in a French team, for a French sponsor with a big name was a beautiful, ambitious project. And what did Caisse d'Epargne choose to do? They invested in a squad of Spaniards, and the most amazing thing about the whole story was that not an eyebrow was raised in France.

No one cried out that it was a scandal, although there was something disgusting about it. Whatever anyone else felt, it seemed that way to me. It was enough to make me sick of the whole idea.

CHAPTER 36.

TAKING ON THE BIG BOYS.

Doing stuff just for the sake of it in other words, not doing very much was out of the question. Cycling was still very much in my sights. There was no point turning my back on it: it would always bounce up in front of me again. There was no escaping it. After all, my specialist skills in cycling were beyond dispute. Who would dare contest my legitimacy? The more I thought about it, the more I realised that organising, in the greater sense of the term, was more and more tempting. So I formed a company: Laurent Fignon Organisation.

Initially I aimed low by dreaming up cyclo-sportif cyclo-sportif events. It was the bottom rung of the ladder but a popular art. I launched my first great innovation in 1996: the Isle de France Cyclotourist Trophy. It consisted initially of four touring events in four events. It was the bottom rung of the ladder but a popular art. I launched my first great innovation in 1996: the Isle de France Cyclotourist Trophy. It consisted initially of four touring events in four departements departements (Seine-et-Marne, Essonne, Yvelines, and Val d'Oise) and then a kind of grand final around Paris. The concept I dreamed up combined culture, family, sport and cycling. Each time we would a.s.semble in a great chateau in the (Seine-et-Marne, Essonne, Yvelines, and Val d'Oise) and then a kind of grand final around Paris. The concept I dreamed up combined culture, family, sport and cycling. Each time we would a.s.semble in a great chateau in the departement departement. We would set up a gastronomic village with a senior chef in attendance and a catering college. There were three editions of the Trophee: 300 took part the first year, 1000 in the following years.

I said goodbye to rank and privilege. Alain and I did everything. We put out direction arrows, set up tables and unblocked the toilets. The first year we even erected the barriers ourselves in the small hours after working all night. Then I got on my bike to ride the first seventy kilometres with the field. I was wasted.

This was just the beginning. My crazy dream was ent.i.tled ParisNice. There were several reasons why I believed it was attainable. Firstly, the organiser, Josette Leulliot daughter of the founder, Jean Leulliot, and the head of the Monde Six company was getting towards the end of her time with the race. She was keen to sell it. Secondly, the 'Race to the Sun' was the last of the great stage races on the calendar to remain independent, rather than belonging to a major company such as the Societe du Tour de France. Finally, ParisNice has always enjoyed international renown since its creation before the Second World War. Its long history is testimony to that.

As early as 1997, completely possessed by this crazy idea, I became convinced my choice was the right one. I went to meet Josette Leulliot and talked through my thoughts with her. She was interested but undecided. I knew from other sources that the Societe du Tour de France, headed by Jean-Marie Leblanc, was also in the running. It goes without saying that the Tour had the cash to back up its ambitions.

So as an alternative I broadened my experience in running events. The Polymultipliee one-day race, once known as the Trophee des Grimpeurs, was reinstalled at Chanteloup-les-Vignes where it had been founded and where, according to cycling history, early derailleur gears were tested. Then came ParisBourges. Next I began to create events for major companies such as Point-P (a major building products company). All these enterprises involved constant battles: to get road closures, to win over sponsors and partners and keep them on side.

Alain Gallopin had come back to my side after a brief move to the short-lived Catavana team, but he was tempted once again by the professional peloton. In 1997 he was hired by Marc Madiot as a.s.sistant directeur sportif directeur sportif at La Francaise des Jeux. 'I can't turn it down,' he told me. He was right, but I was still angry. It was a long time before we spoke again. I was in the midst of a period of intense activity: I liked to think about a project, dream up its broad lines, then make it happen. ParisNice haunted me. I knew that Josette Leulliot had vowed that she would never surrender the event to the Tour de France. Her brother Jean-Michel, a former journalist at TF1, was overly focused on the bottom-line and did all he could to persuade his sister to up the ante, no matter who was the eventual winner. For months, I struggled with it. Then one day Eric Boyer, a former Renault rider who had stopped racing and worked from time to time for Josette, called. 'They are about to sell ParisNice to the Tour. If you really want it, you'd better get a move on. It's now or never.' I picked up my pilgrim's staff again. I pushed them, in the nicest possible way, in the name of the high principles that Josette herself had delineated. And she accepted. I offered almost 4.5million francs. A ma.s.sive sum for me, but next to nothing for the Tour. With ParisNice and 'a.s.sociated races' I acquired other events with prestigious names that had resonances for all cycling fans: l'Etoile des Espoirs, la Route de France, le Grand Prix de France, and so on. at La Francaise des Jeux. 'I can't turn it down,' he told me. He was right, but I was still angry. It was a long time before we spoke again. I was in the midst of a period of intense activity: I liked to think about a project, dream up its broad lines, then make it happen. ParisNice haunted me. I knew that Josette Leulliot had vowed that she would never surrender the event to the Tour de France. Her brother Jean-Michel, a former journalist at TF1, was overly focused on the bottom-line and did all he could to persuade his sister to up the ante, no matter who was the eventual winner. For months, I struggled with it. Then one day Eric Boyer, a former Renault rider who had stopped racing and worked from time to time for Josette, called. 'They are about to sell ParisNice to the Tour. If you really want it, you'd better get a move on. It's now or never.' I picked up my pilgrim's staff again. I pushed them, in the nicest possible way, in the name of the high principles that Josette herself had delineated. And she accepted. I offered almost 4.5million francs. A ma.s.sive sum for me, but next to nothing for the Tour. With ParisNice and 'a.s.sociated races' I acquired other events with prestigious names that had resonances for all cycling fans: l'Etoile des Espoirs, la Route de France, le Grand Prix de France, and so on.

From the very beginning of the enterprise, or pretty much, my troubles began. Initially with the bank, who really stuck a stick in my spokes. I had conceived a businesss plan over three years which permitted me to put in 2.2 million francs: one million in a company which would buy the race, the rest into a current account which would cover ongoing expenses, to which would be added a loan of 2 million francs. The bankers finally turned this down, obliging me to put the 2 million francs into the purchase which deprived me of liquidity. The icing on the cake was that the loan was for only eight years rather than fifteen. It all made it tough to get going. It was hard on my nerves: a few weeks after we had reached agreement, the bank began calling me every day. It was hara.s.sment. It was h.e.l.l. I had to argue with them every inch of the way just to keep afloat. At one point I began wondering if my troubles with that bank were mere coincidence.

I was all the more worried because I knew my personal weak area: I've never been a good salesman. I 'sell myself' rather poorly. And ParisNice needed a professional marketing man; I never managed to hire one. At the start of the second year it became clear that I wasn't going to come through financially. Apart from Phonak, with whom I had signed a contract, it was the devil of a job to find partners. I eventually found out why this was. On the one side there was Havas Sports and on the other the Tour de France. There was a kind of non-aggression pact between the two companies: neither would knowingly do anything to damage the interests of the others. So apart from the fact that my attempts to forge relations with Havas were doomed to failure, the other big sponsors that I had contacted all thought twice before coming in, because they didn't want to offend either of the big companies. The power of the Societe du Tour de France, who didn't wish me well, was a handicap for me. In those days no one wanted to alienate directors of the Amaury group.

The facts can't be denied. All my negotiations with possible stage towns, local and regional councils, were complicated. To make the racing lively I was determined to devise new courses with hills that had not been used for racing before, if possible not too far from the finish to offer the riders stages which were tough enough to cater for their racing instincts. My goal was to avoid the monotonous ParisNices in which one year's race ended up looking like the one from the year before; I'd ridden a few of those in my time. I can recall five or six ParisNices in which the stages were all virtually the same down to the last metre. It was a joke. But one day I visited Macon to suggest a stage finish to the mayor. It would have allowed me to use a new finale over a decent hill. The mayor said, 'No problem, Monsieur Fignon, I'll put it to the vote at the munic.i.p.al council, it's as good as done.' Three days later came the surprise: it was turned down. I ended up hearing on the grapevine that the directors of the Tour de France had been along as well. By happy coincidence, Macon was chosen as a finish-town for the Tour the following year, 2002. Similar things happened in other places. The councils were left with the distinct impression that if they wanted the Tour then they should not accept ParisNice.

I ended up putting my hand in my own pocket. In year one. And year two. In 2000 and 2001 ParisNice was a fine sports event, I reckoned. There were no glitches in the organisation. There were attractive start villages and beautiful finishes. But it was a permanent battle with the stage towns, even the ones that were part of the furniture, like Nice itself, where I had to negotiate hard to counteract their urge to break with convention. They even dreamed up the idea of having the last stage in the streets of Nice itself, as it is today, rather than on top of the Col d'Eze. I wasn't having anyone doing away with this mythical finish. I fought the idea and I won a symbolic victory, temporarily at least. It eluded my successors.

To organise ParisNice I employed a total of six people. Two of them, the former pro Francois Lemarchand and Valerie, who was to become my wife a few years later, kept up work on Laurent Fignon Organisation's other activities at the same time. But as early as the second year I no longer had any doubt about whether I could hang on financially; I was certain that it wouldn't be possible unless I ended up losing my shirt. The second edition of the race had gone perfectly but I knew I wouldn't make it to a third. Unfortunately I had to sell. So what was my strategy now? It was simple. I hung on as long as I could to oblige the Tour to buy me out. Although it sometimes left me a bit short of breath, the buy-out had to turn into something resembling a moral obligation for them. I was aware of the trouble I was in, but I waited until January before I picked up the phone to call them. It was all of three months before the prologue time trial was due to be held.

I called Jean-Marie Leblanc. 'Are you still interested in buying ParisNice? I'm selling it.' He said he would think about it. And he didn't hang around. Two days later I had their answer. It was a big 'yes'. But the price would be the same as two years previously. I didn't expect better. The upshot was that I lost two million francs of my own in the affair.

I did still manage to fall out with them. To start with Jean-Marie Leblanc didn't want to negotiate directly with me and he delegated the task to Daniel Baal, former president of the French Cycling Federation, who was at that time the number two at the Societe du Tour de France and the anointed successor to Leblanc, although he would never actually step up. He was accompanied by Jean-Francois Pescheux, the Tour's directeur sportif directeur sportif, and their job was essentially to go through the accounts. I was left wondering what notion they had about other people, whether they believed I had been cooking the books or something. Being that mistrustful is almost unhealthy. They found nothing of course, but they had tried to humiliate me.

That wasn't the end of it. On the day appointed for the sale a group of five of them turned up while I had only my lawyer at my side. I was amazed: they wanted to renegotiate the deal. That was all. In particular the payment deadlines, which were spread out over a long period of time. I was boiling in my chair. My lawyer, who knew me well, was concerned that I might overreact. He read me right. After a couple of hours I banged on the table as hard as I could and said, 'You are winding me up, all of you. Do you take me for a crook? That's it, I'm pulling out of the sale. Just clear off.'

They had not behaved honourably towards me, which was something alluded to in his autobiography by Jean-Marie Leblanc, who had worked as hard as he could to edge me out of the cycling family since the end of my career. In Le Tour de Ma Vie Le Tour de Ma Vie (Solar, 2007) he wrote 'Reading "between the lines" I sensed that the preliminary discussions were not good for their self-esteem. But you should never offend your opposite number when negotiating.' It was touching to see a little humility for once on the part of Leblanc, who was never completely open as a journalist or a director of the Tour. He knew plenty about deal-making. Along with Roger Legeay and Thierry Cazeneuve he held the reins of French cycling for far too long. (Solar, 2007) he wrote 'Reading "between the lines" I sensed that the preliminary discussions were not good for their self-esteem. But you should never offend your opposite number when negotiating.' It was touching to see a little humility for once on the part of Leblanc, who was never completely open as a journalist or a director of the Tour. He knew plenty about deal-making. Along with Roger Legeay and Thierry Cazeneuve he held the reins of French cycling for far too long.

I had every right to react the way I did to Baal and the others. They left in a state of shock. My lawyer told me: 'I could sense that it was going to end up like that.' Meanwhile the former cyclist Tony Rominger had entered the fray with the backing of a Swiss financier. It had potential. I called him at once but to my great surprise he could not offer a meeting any time in the next two weeks. I had a gun at my head.

I had seen off Baal at least, but I knew that Leblanc wasn't going to lift a finger. So I called Patrice Clerc, the boss of Amaury Sport Organisation (the Tour's parent company). I told him sincerely: 'What I said went further than what I really thought. But I still don't like the fact that people want to renegotiate the deal; we had agreed on the basics and then I was told on the day of signing contracts that I was to be paid over a timescale which is impossible for me.'

He was concilatory: 'Are you still ready to talk?'

I answered: 'Yes, but not with Baal.'

Clerc did what had to be done. Another negotiator was sent and everything was settled as before. I remember thinking: 'If Baal is appointed as head of the Tour, they will have trouble. It's not just his way of negotiating, he doesn't understand anything about bike racing.' I had read it right: he never got to step into Leblanc's shoes.

Objectively speaking, if I had kept going with ParisNice I might well have lost everything. Bear in mind that the start of the new century was a time when cycling was going through a ma.s.sive crisis as the sport struggled to recover after the Festina drugs storm, with a succession of other doping scandals coming along. For a lone wolf like me, daring to purchase ParisNice in this context was a ma.s.sive gamble and it was doomed to failure. Only the financial power of the Societe du Tour de France was capable of shouldering the burden in this dark time. After our little run-in, they behaved well towards me, allowing me to have a role in running the event for the next two years. ParisNice was healthy and flourishing after all. At the time when everyone else was turning their backs on cycling I had managed the considerable feat of setting up a revolutionary media operation for the race: I had reached agreements for at least a hundred hours of worldwide television coverage whereas beforehand ParisNice could boast about ten at most.

The page duly turned. After this setback to my organising business, I cut back, deeply. I gave up virtually all the events I had been running, apart from ParisCorreze. I was fed up with it. I had lost money, but that wasn't the main issue. I was going through a divorce from my first wife, Nathalie, and my lofty dream of transforming ParisNice had been dashed. I had been through an entire cycle: ten years after the end of my racing career the key thing was to move on to something new, as I seemed to do every ten years. I was still driven on by my pa.s.sion for cycling and I came across a fantastic opening: I was approached to take over a business which was cycling-based. I travelled down to Gerde, a village near Bagneres-de-Bigorre in the Hautes-Pyrenees. Seeing the spot, shivers ran up and down my spine.

I knew at once that I had discovered the perfect place to create the Laurent Fignon Centre, which opened in June 2006. At the foot of the legendary Col du Tourmalet, in a departement departement which boasts twelve mountain pa.s.ses and a host of mountain top finishes which have been used by the Tour de France since 1910, what more could you ask for? Down there, I dreamed up a whole new range of training camps for amateur cyclists, over less demanding courses. Throwing myself into this particular venture was like love at first sight. which boasts twelve mountain pa.s.ses and a host of mountain top finishes which have been used by the Tour de France since 1910, what more could you ask for? Down there, I dreamed up a whole new range of training camps for amateur cyclists, over less demanding courses. Throwing myself into this particular venture was like love at first sight.

I will make one confession, however. When I think back occasionally to ParisNice, I have to admit that I was wounded by that particular setback. I am convinced that in attempting to run it I was not taking on more than I could handle and I am still convinced deep down inside that I could have transformed this event into something unique, something which mirrored my personal style.

The directors of the Tour de France were annoyed that I got there first and made me pay the price. Sometimes, even the most daring souls have to give way to those who enjoy more power.

CHAPTER 37.

A WHIFF OF AUTHENTICITY.

Is there much difference between Laurent Fignon the television a.n.a.lyst, and the former cyclist with pa.s.sion coursing through his body? None, in my opinion. Pa.s.sion still drives my actions as much as my emotions. It's the brain fodder and beating heart of an a.n.a.lyst. You can't have one without the other.

After working for a long spell at Eurosport, then at France Television, I can safely say that I love working in the studio as an a.n.a.lyst, but above all as a cycling fanatic. I still find pleasure in it, even if there have been some difficult times in the last ten years; even if, with the succession of drug scandals, a sort of disillusionment may have ground us all down a bit. I do remember races that seemed neither to have a beginning or an end because all boundaries of understanding had been abolished. Sometimes, you had to stay very patient.

I like explaining to the viewers what is going on in races, helping people to understand the action, explaining the tactics. Explaining events and saying what I feel about them is a rare pleasure, and definitely a privilege. But let's be clear: I am an a.n.a.lyst, not a journalist. Unlike many others, I don't attempt to go with the consensus. I say what I think at the moment the thought enters my head. I get the impression that the viewers like sincerity, even if sometimes what you say may turn out to be the opposite of what actually happens. Since I've begun a.n.a.lysing the Tour de France for France Television, I have to admit that I've toned down slightly what I say, in the sense that I have to take it all a bit more seriously than for Eurosport. You have to adapt a little to the public way of thinking, without ever concealing what you really are. I make an effort not to speak merely for the sake of it. I can wait ten minutes before I open my mouth, if the circ.u.mstances of the race call for it. I'm not worried about my ego.

That doesn't stop me thinking, however, and saying if I have to, that cycling today is suffering from a sickness that affects sport in the broader sense. There is far more at stake than there was when I was racing, in the financial sense. The media has greater weight and greater power, and the sponsors are far more proactive. Everyone feeds off the others depending on what their interests are. To put it plainly, today, as soon as a rider farts on the Tour de France it seems as if he is radically reinventing his sport. That's rubbish.

Cycling has been transformed into a defensive sport. Its raison d'etre raison d'etre is attacking, but that has been overlooked. Of course you have to defend a position sometimes, for example on a major Tour, but how are you going to win a race apart from by attacking? That is the essence of cycling. That's its spirit, and its soul. Today, the riders seem to hope that they may win if they wait for the other guy to crack: that is the mentality of the second-rate. is attacking, but that has been overlooked. Of course you have to defend a position sometimes, for example on a major Tour, but how are you going to win a race apart from by attacking? That is the essence of cycling. That's its spirit, and its soul. Today, the riders seem to hope that they may win if they wait for the other guy to crack: that is the mentality of the second-rate.

Who actually remembers the name of the riders who finished sixth and seventh in the last few Tours de France? No one is interested. For certain 'decision-makers' in today's cycling, sponsors or media, finishing in that sort of position in the Tour is seen as more important than winning a major Cla.s.sic. It's a perversity of the current system. Finishing third or fourth in the Tour obviously does reflect a 'sporting value'. But the rider who finishes fifth will do everything to demonstrate to his employer that he could have finished fourth: there we are referring to 'market value'. Where is real cycling in all of that? It's not my idea of the sport.

The first rider who embodied this way of conducting a career was Greg LeMond. In the latter part of it he only raced really seriously in two events a year: the Tour and the world championship. The rest counted for little. After his second win in the Tour in 1989 and his second world championship win a few weeks later, the American reaped a reward from this 'model' which was beyond his hopes. The following year the businessman Roger Zannier built the Z team around him. It was a squad created for PR. He paid the American 1.5 million francs a month. Cycling had not just entered a new era, it had found a whole new scale of values. Miguel Indurain, Jan Ullrich, Lance Armstrong. And here I should point out that I am not best-placed to 'judge' all these champions. I don't know everything, but I'm not fooled by anything. I can feel, here and there, a certain respect and even admiration for some of their achievements. But they have frequently robbed the sport that I love of some of its essence. I am well placed to know this: they are the men who determine the very nature of the times in which they live.

For example, does Armstrong truly represent the new cycling? There are those who are adamant that this is the case. But he is not the only one. The only time that I met the American was in tragic circ.u.mstances, in 1996. He was sick with cancer, thin and bald, and had just announced at a press conference in Paris that he was taking a break from his cycling career. He had just undergone a brain operation. The doctors would not be drawn on the possible outcome. And get this: the evening after that press conference, before he was due to catch the next morning's plane back to the US, he was on his own at his hotel in Roissy. Everyone had simply dropped him. My ex-wife Nathalie and I found out and invited him round for dinner. The evening is still an emotional and surprising memory. To tell the truth, I wondered if I was meeting him for the last time. He confessed his fears to us, but he was also clear how determined he was to fight it with all his strength.

What can you say about a man who overcomes cancer in this way? What can you say about a sportsman who comes back to the Tour seven times and keeps winning it, the toughest sports event of them all? From every point of view, words fail me.

There is one key rule which we should all follow when discussing cycling today: prudence. Apart from the doping issue which, as everyone knows, has unfortunately caused changes in the last fifteen years by altering the most basic physical values, it can be said that cycling has still progressed in every area. The roads are better, so too the kit, so is race preparation. So the standard of the average professional cyclist has risen markedly. The problem is that while all this has been going on, there hasn't been much change in the races themselves. A race like LiegeBastogneLiege was a fearsome, highly selective race in my day, but is now just a race like any other. It's ordinary, for one reason at least: the hills are s.p.a.ced too far apart. It's not suited to today's cyclists. In the same way, is it right for Fleche Wallonne to come down to a sprint up the Mur de Huy? What that means is simple: the courses of the races are not suited to cycling today.

Here's another example. I am radically in favour of a return to having three mountain stages in a row during the Tour de France. Believe me, I'm not a slave driver, rather the opposite. All the riders can get through the first mountain stage. The second is a bit tougher. The third, if it were held, would create a form of natural selection, because of c.u.mulative fatigue. Once again we would see riders really cracking, more than we have in recent years. Today, the organisers always have a rest day after two mountain stages, allegedly so that the riders won't be overworked, and so the temptation to take drugs will be lessened. That is a ridiculous notion: stages in the Tour have never been shorter and yet doping has never been more widespread. It's grotesque. Everyone knows that during the rest day some riders will 'restore their levels'. What's more, I still believe that there are too many time trials in the major Tours, and especially in the Tour de France. They almost always decide the winner and even though in 1989 the final decision came down to the last time trial, no one will ever forget the battle that took place beforehand on all kinds of terrain. Times change and evolve and it's necessary to adapt with them. Back in the time of Anquetil the time trials were over one hundred kilometres long. In my day they were only occasionally over eighty kilometres. Today they are between forty and fifty kilometres. Cut them again! To twenty-five kilometres if necessary. What's the problem? Let's have more varied courses, with no gimmicks. Let's just dare to get back to racing and nothing else. Sport is about winning.

French cycling has had a tough few years. Initially, the problem was the fall out from the Festina drug scandal. Several generations of kids were turned off cycling, and the sport that profited mainly was football, crowned by the legends of France' 98, of course. And then there were clumsy mistakes made by the governing bodies, in particular during the tenure of Daniel Baal at the head of the French Cycling Federation. Baal wanted to restructure French cycling to focus on major clubs that developed young riders. Big 'centres'. That decision reduced the base of the pyramid to the part that corresponded to that idea, ignoring the fact that the clubs which are best at recruiting are the little provincial set-ups, in the villages and often supported by small local sponsors. Until then they had the chance to bring on champions of their own and were able to hang on to them for a few years. Then, thanks to regional and national squads, those at the base gradually worked their way up to the top, without the small clubs ever suffering. All this was wrecked, more or less. The young riders move on from the small clubs too quickly, without having the chance to be toughened up and to nourish the spinal column of the sport as they develop. The outcome is that the base does not radiate out as widely as before. By cutting off growth at the lowest level, the top will automatically end up in a state of drought.

That is one of the explanations but not the only one why since the 1990s we have not seen the two or three great French riders who could have been expected to come through at the top. We also have to bear in mind that a lot of the better French riders lived through the worst years of 'total doping'. They all came through it, with a few miraculous exceptions: luckily there are always outsiders who do not go along with the system, or help to change it and make it evolve in their own way. From the point when France decided it should 'wash whiter than white', our riders have been completely left behind: that was the price that had to be paid. That is exactly what has happened since 1998. Are we now beginning to emerge from that? Maybe. The recent advancing in anti-doping measures show that as it happened, our French cyclists weren't that bad after all. When the others cheat a bit less, the level of the French riders rises naturally: should we be surprised?

There remains just one major problem in that area. A lot of French cyclists have lost the winning habit, and they have been hardly helped in this by directeurs sportifs directeurs sportifs who have in some cases been fairly ineffective. Not all have been of Guimard's quality. It's hard to get back to a winning mindset. It was something that I was able to hang on to in spite of my dark years, because it was rooted in the deepest part of me. who have in some cases been fairly ineffective. Not all have been of Guimard's quality. It's hard to get back to a winning mindset. It was something that I was able to hang on to in spite of my dark years, because it was rooted in the deepest part of me.

Times change, even in doping. On that topic I should say without any hesitation that things have been getting better, at least in the last two or three years. There will always be a number of cheats, particularly because the core of the system, rather like the crisis-hit world economy, is completely perverted by money. It's about money for its own sake. But the holes in the anti-doping net have got smaller. There is now a fight being waged against 'no limits' doping which was the rule in the 1990s and the early 2000s. That's being done partly thanks to advances in drug-testing but above all by the inception of new rules of which the biological pa.s.sport is the most complete and efficient form. By following all the physiological parameters of all the riders, the UCI can now check everything. It's getting harder to cheat and that can only be a good thing.

For a little while now, it's looked as if cycling is returning to more normal ways. We are again seeing exhausted cyclists. Their exploits are more coherent. And so is my pa.s.sion for the sport. At a certain time, despair was gaining the upper hand, I have to admit. You would watch a race with enthusiasm on one day, and then your feelings would be dashed the next morning: what was the point? Before, when you saw a new pro, you could guess fairly quickly what his real potential was. With the doping years, all the old signposts were hidden.

Now, it feels as if the sport is regaining its cla.s.sic side, and the foundations are a little cleaner. Let's say there is a whiff of authenticity. Sniffing the wind, my eyes sparkle a little. Pa.s.sion is a happier thing than pessimism.

I've never met anyone who has looked me in the eye and said: 'I ride a bike thanks to you.' But that inspiration must have happened because in 1983 when I won the Tour for the first time, there were thousands of small boys wearing the celebrated Renault sweatband. What has become of those kids?

Because your career sets the tone for your life, there are times when it says everything about your character. A career is a lengthy unveiling process, in which the great public has little idea about the possible consequences. Afterwards, our successes and failures are just the most obvious signs of what has happened.

Only the greatest of stories are graven in history. Only the great names stay in people's minds, with the degree of their n.o.bility stemming from the scale of their exploits. Unlike most of the other Giants of the Road, I never had a nickname that stuck. From the beginning to the end, whether people liked me or not, whether they were impressed by my exploits on the bike or not, whether or not they felt I was an exceptional champion, I remained Laurent Fignon. Just Laurent Fignon. I was myself and nothing else, neither a fantasy, nor a transposition of something else. I was just a man who did what he could to beat a path towards dignity and emanc.i.p.ation. I did my best to be a human being.

In the process of becoming myself, there was nothing that scared me.

In my outrageous way, and in my love of that way of being, I was just one among many.

I still haven't surrendered. I'm still alive.

We were young, and carefree.