French Revolutions

the podium he cried. They were averaging almost 50
k.p.h., and it kept raining. Paul’s senior partner Phil Liggett said he’d
covered thirty Tours and this was some of the worst weather he’d come across.
    The race reached Dax, which in common
with all the other villes d’étapes looked a lot better with the flags out, but
when it set off towards the Pyrenees I wasn’t thinking about bicycleshaped
flower-beds and the other fruits of their million-franc civic knees-up. Sitting
there in the middle of the night, flanked by sleeping wife and rib-kicking
infant daughter, this was what I’d been waiting for. Up until now it had all
been tactical and fairly pedestrian; as the highlights zipped straight to the
foot of the col de Marie-Blanque, I knew I was about to witness the extremes of
human emotion. I wanted to see men soar where I had grovelled, knuckle down
where I’d knuckled under; to see how it should be done. But I also wanted to
see how it shouldn’t, to see terrible pain and defeat, to enjoy the company of
my fellow failures.
    ‘A tough little climb, the
Marie-Blanque,’ said Phil, and it was tougher that day more than most. There
was cloud and driving rain; a few soggy cardboard hands waving limply by the
road but plenty more wind-filled golf umbrellas. It had been a gut-cramping
bellyful of chilled fountain for me; for them it was a bidon of hot tea.
    The Tour had suddenly gone into slow
motion. For a week the peloton had flashed past spectators in a smudge of
hissing metal and artificial colour; now fat, wet, flag-wrapped Belgians were
able to waddle alongside the toiling riders, bellowing abuse or encouragement.
Four men abandoned the race before the summit, and a fifth fell on the descent
and was taken away in an ambulance, Lycra slashed, skin gashed. News that a
rider had thrown in the towel was announced via a little on-screen graphic of a
man energetically hurling his bike to the floor and storming off in disgust.
None of those I saw being helped into their team cars, eyes glassing up like
dying fish, looked as though they’d be up to that. Drugged-up men at the
threshold of human suffering, mouthing agonised obscenities and peeing into
their tight, greased gussets: an enticing image in certain circles, perhaps,
but surely not the appropriate inspiration for a national romance.
    I watched the ascent of the Aubisque
like a man reliving a nightmare. The towns were transformed by the crowds and
banners, but with slug-tennis rain keeping all but the very drunkest spectators
at home I had a clear view of every fateful hairpin, tunnel and false summit.
‘In these conditions, with the wind chill, your limbs get tetanised on the way
down,’ said Paul, and I instinctively flexed my knuckles and pressed them into
my hot armpits.
    ‘Blown to pieces’ was a favourite
refrain in a day of violent clichés; all around people were either putting
hammers down or hitting walls. Lance Armstrong started the climb to Hautacam
with fifteen riders between him and the leading Spaniard; he stood up in the
saddle and, without a single facial indicator of expended effort, cruised
haughtily past wobbling wrecks of men, leaving his rivals to fight distantly
among themselves. Armstrong had the yellow jersey and a four-minute lead and as
a contest the Tour was over.
    David Millar winced over the line a
creditable thirty-second, and with haunted eyes spoke of encountering ‘The
Fear’ during his journey through ‘a world of pain’. Then, without warning,
there was the round, expressionless, shop-wigged face of Eddy Merckx. ‘Deez
climbs are not so hard,’ he told Paul Sherwen in a slightly robotic monotone,
turning away for the next interview even as Paul said, ‘And that’s from a man
who knows a bit about the Tour de France with five victories in the event.’
    Dammit all to hell, Merckx. Why did
he have to say that? When the end credits began to roll it was like reading
every clause and subsection of my Pyrenean surrender. Phil and Paul had
explained perhaps a dozen times that the Tour was won and lost in the
mountains. It was where Armstrong had won, and it was where I had lost.
    The weather got worse when they
reached Ventoux. There was snow on the summit and a terrible gale that had the
trees waving desperately for help as Channel 4’s Gary Imlach bellowed his
report to camera. It was awful, the kind of occasion that blurs the boundaries
between holidaymaker and refugee, and yet if Gary was to be believed