I followed his instructions to the letter, going with the main escape of the day which took shape between the Aubisque and the Tourmalet. I wasn't too careful and stayed for a good while with the leaders, Patrocinio Jimenez, Robert Millar and Jacques Michaud. But between the Aspin and the Peyresourde I felt a bit below par and didn't want to push too hard; at this precise moment, just as I was coping with the pain, Pascal Simon came past without looking at me. That evening, he put on the yellow jersey. All the cards had been reshuffled. I was now second overall, 4min 30sec behind Simon and had the white jersey on my shoulders. It was a big gap, and yet not much at the same time. It was big, because Simon was clearly having the best year of his career. But it wasn't much, because Peugeot were a long way from being able to dominate the race in the ruthless way that Hinault and Renault had used to do. Above all, Guimard was pleased with the way I was riding. I had stuck my neck out, and I hadn't slipped up.

In bike racing, you constantly tempt fate. And fate was cruel to Pascal Simon. Between Luchon and Fleurance the next day, during the early part of the stage, the maillot jaune maillot jaune hit the deck. It was a ridiculous little crash, of the kind that often happens. He cracked his shoulder blade. The next morning, Guimard, more cautious than ever, advised me to keep hidden in the bunch and justified it like this: 'If this injury of his is as bad as they say, the hit the deck. It was a ridiculous little crash, of the kind that often happens. He cracked his shoulder blade. The next morning, Guimard, more cautious than ever, advised me to keep hidden in the bunch and justified it like this: 'If this injury of his is as bad as they say, the maillot jaune maillot jaune will come to you sooner or later. Then there will be a lot of work to be done. So save yourself for the moment.' will come to you sooner or later. Then there will be a lot of work to be done. So save yourself for the moment.'

Straight away, deep inside, I was convinced that I was going to win the Tour. It was so clear to me that I spoke about it to Pascal Jules. I needed to tell him so much. And the Tour kept going on its way, with Pascal Simon still there. All eyes were on him; all the photographers' lenses pointed at his shoulder. That suited me perfectly. All the while I kept my eyes fixed on Pedro Delgado, Lucien Van Impe, angel Arroyo, Peter Winnen and the others, who clearly were under the illusion that they had the race in their pockets before we had even reached the Alps.

The media plaudits and popular esteem all went to Simon, of course, who postponed his departure from the race which was inevitable every day and even survived the time trial to the top of the Puy-de-Dome by a few seconds as the Spanish climbers dominated and came dangerously close in the standings. Not only did I now have to get ready for all the cameras to zoom in on me, and prepare to fend off the climbers' attacks in the Alps, there was another issue, a big one: I had to convince my teammates that I could rise to the immense challenge that was looming up over the horizon.

In the last few days the way they looked at me had changed a little. I could see my credibility building. Julot was a vital presence at my side, always ready to stand by me. The only one who refused to admit that I was now the leader and the others should put themselves wholly at my disposal was Guimard. He was in an unusual position, for him, of having to manage the race conservatively. As he was betting on two horses at the same time, he was still keeping Marc Madiot under wraps. That wound me up. Perhaps he expected me to crack in the final week, at l'Alpe d'Huez, maybe. Perhaps he was just doing it to get me angry and force me to go deep inside myself to find supreme inspiration, unforeseen resolve.

I believe that I was paying the price for what I reckon to be a fairly annoying trait in Guimard's character: in my opinion he is incapable of saying exactly what he thinks, even to those who are close to him. He's always working things out, he calculates and gives a few snippets to one guy, then a different version to the next person. I'd never seen this side of the man. One evening I was so fed up with seeing Guimard take the mickey out of me by refusing to accept that I could win the Tour that I almost handed my Renault jersey back. Pascal did what was needed to calm me down and persuaded me to avoid doing anything irrevocable. It had occurred to me to walk out of the Tour in a fit of pique; when I look back, that speaks volumes about how unfeasibly frivolous I was in those days.

And then it happened. Between La Tour-du-Pin and l'Alpe d'Huez, in the ninety-second kilometre, I became leader of the Tour. At the end of his tether, in tears, Simon gave his best in a combat which had become impossible for him. I was mentally prepared for this, but the first thing I did was to make a mistake. As we descended from the Col du Glandon, I was weak-minded enough to let Peter Winnen get away as he tried to latch on to a desperate attack from Jean-Rene Bernaudeau. I was only fifth on the stage; the Dutchman was the winner, two minutes ahead of me. I was now wearing the yellow jersey, with a lead of 1min 8sec over Pedro Delgado.

The first day of my life in the yellow jersey was the eighteenth stage, 247 kilometres between Bourg d'Oisans and Morzine, climbing five cols: the Glandon, Madeleine, Aravis, Colombiere and Joux Plane. It was the stuff of legends. A real test. I felt a weight on my shoulders that was new to me; a rare honour, a responsibility that seemed to extend deep into the mists of time. It was as if I had finally been given my spurs by generations of ancestors. But there was plenty of danger. The proof of that came when Winnen put in his big attack first on the Madeleine then the Colombiere, along with about ten riders including angel Arroyo, Stephen Roche, Jacques Michaud, Robert Millar and so on. I was told I had a four-minute deficit, although Delgado had already lost ground. It was panic stations. I was a hair's breadth away from losing my head. Guimard came up alongside me in the car: 'Calm down, Laurent, calm down. Just keep riding, breathe deeply, it'll be OK.' Marc Madiot and Alain Vigneron helped in the chase but both of them were unable to keep up on the Colombiere and I had to get down to work by myself. The gap came down gradually but there was still the blasted Col de Joux Plane to come. I'd always hated its tight hairpins and steep gradients.

I ended up completely on my own. It was a nightmare. How can I explain the feeling? I knew this was a turning point and I felt every last detail of it intensely. I was looking into a void; if I didn't pull through I would be sent back where I had come from and there would be no second chance. I didn't want that to happen. But I was in agony, believe me, in spite of having the yellow jersey on my back. I don't know whether wearing the jersey helped me in any way or made me freeze. I clung on; it was life or death. With barely an ounce of strength left, I managed to catch Winnen: I'd done what I had to do. After a ma.s.sive scare, my control over the Tour had just grown a bit stronger.

It got even stronger the next day in the time-trial stage over fifteen uphill kilometres between Morzine and Avoriaz. There, I managed to limit my losses in spite of the fact that I didn't like this discipline, which was an exercise for specialist climbers. By finishing tenth I hung on to a lead of two minutes on Winnen, which meant there was no need to worry any more.

Guimard didn't see it that way. During the stage out of the mountains to Dijon he came up with the idea of asking me to go for every time bonus I could. Was I really meant to risk my neck in all the intermediate sprints when I had the yellow jersey on my shoulders? That's a sign of how worried Guimard still was. So I set about it, against my will. And neutral onlookers were duly worried when they saw me taking on Sean Kelly, the best sprinter in the race, who each time beat me as expected. But along the way I gleaned another thirty-second lead. It was all useful time in hand, reckoned the boss, before the final time trial starting and finishing in Dijon.

In the last couple of days a few commentators had begun to talk about 'a Tour of second-raters', a 'Tour a la Walkowiak' a reference to the 1956 winner Roger Walkowiak, who owed his victory to a lucky early break. I didn't like that in the slightest, but I kept my head. I have to acknowledge that up to then I hadn't shown anything out of the ordinary, except that the way in which I raced was improving rapidly. Before the time trial, Guimard told me: 'You will do exactly what you're told. Firstly, start within yourself. Afterwards, we'll play it by ear.' Even now I can see it all clearly: on the start ramp, a few seconds before I set off, I was convinced I would win. Not the stage, but the Tour.

After only a few kilometres, Guimard was already driving up alongside me and shouting constantly, 'Relax, you're in front.' I found out later that this was a white lie. In the early part of the stage, I was gradually losing time. I followed his instructions to the letter and had plenty of energy left. When I got to halfway, on a little climb, he yelled, 'Go for it, Laurent, go for it.' I let rip. At every time check after that I was in front, although I didn't know it. As Guimard had stopped giving any instructions for a fair while, apart from the odd shout of encouragement, I knew that everything was in order for the overall standings. So when I crossed the line I raised my arms. I had no idea that I'd won the time trial but I knew I had won the Tour. No Tour rider had ever made a victory salute at the end of a time trial and no one believed I meant what I said. But it was true, I had absolutely no idea that I had won my first Tour de France stage.

What happened that evening at Dijon is still a blur. I can't remember any of it. I had to go back and look at the newspaper reports to find out that I must have done a quick television interview and that I was permitted to have a gla.s.s of champagne before going to bed. That was all. Similarly, I had to read the words of the great writer Pierre Chany in The Cycling Year The Cycling Year much later on to understand why no one dared mention a ' much later on to understand why no one dared mention a 'Tour a la Walko' after the Dijon time trial. Chany didn't mince his words: With a show of strength that should serve to ward off any attempts to diminish his achievement, Fignon crowned a well-deserved win, constructed over the whole Tour. An average performance in this contre la montre contre la montre would have revived memories of recent events Hinault's withdrawal, Simon's crash and the temptation to draw parallels with flukish wins of the past would have been too strong. Laurent Fignon's image would have suffered. Instead of which, he was able to settle the issue in the authoritative style of a man functioning in perfect harmony of body and mind. Rather than being a winner by sheer happenstance, Fignon made it clear that he was the best of all the contenders who were there and none of the famous non-starters could claim he might have been better. would have revived memories of recent events Hinault's withdrawal, Simon's crash and the temptation to draw parallels with flukish wins of the past would have been too strong. Laurent Fignon's image would have suffered. Instead of which, he was able to settle the issue in the authoritative style of a man functioning in perfect harmony of body and mind. Rather than being a winner by sheer happenstance, Fignon made it clear that he was the best of all the contenders who were there and none of the famous non-starters could claim he might have been better.

There you have it. It was signed and sealed by one of the great and the good. I had just plucked the most coveted flower in the garden of world cycling. It smelled so fine that it felt like a rose with no thorns. It was a rare privilege: like Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx and Hinault I had won the Tour at my first attempt. I had fulfilled the objectives I had set before the start: I'd won a stage, taken the white jersey of best young rider to Paris and finished in the first ten overall.

This was how far my youthful pa.s.sion had driven me: to a glitttering place high among the legends. What a feeling.

CHAPTER 13.

THE DARK SIDE.

It's part of human nature that you see the best in everything. But when reality turns out to be greater than you might have imagined, you run a serious risk: you can believe you are a master of the universe.

After the Champs-Elysees stage at the end of the 1983 Tour de France I went through a spell when I was completely over the top. I didn't realise that the ecstatic feeling of being recognised for what you had achieved had a bad side as well as a good one. I never wondered about it. Anyway, there is no way to prepare a man of twenty-two for the effect of riding up the most beautiful avenue in the world crowned with the 'triumph of triumphs', after winning the event that is the dream of every cyclist in the world not just the French. Cyrille Guimard could have advised me and put me on my guard. With a few simple, friendly words he could have kept me from a few little displays which were totally out of character for me. But apart from devising tactics and understanding a race, Guimard was not a confidant who could get under someone else's skin. I would have to learn for myself: that was how I liked it anyway.

That evening, at Renault's post-race party, Bernard Hinault turned up. The greatest French champion since Jacques Anquetil had not been able to show what he was capable of in the race and I was almost fearful of meeting him. But not once did I think I had 'taken his place' or 'stolen' anything from anyone. You don't choose the circ.u.mstances in which you race. No one, in 1983, would have dreamed of trampling on Bernard Hinault; on the contrary. In 1980 he had abandoned at Pau while wearing the yellow jersey and that had not prevented him from coming back and riding as strongly as before. I myself was to go through a long lay-off due to an injury two years later, and Hinault would be the beneficiary. While we're here, let's ask the question: would he have won his fifth Tour in 1985 if I had been there? In the same way, would I have won the 1983 race if he had started?

On 24 July 1983, the Badger looked as if his suit was too small for him. He seemed distracted, his mind elsewhere, as if he was barely involved in the party. He looked distant, from the three-week race that had just taken place without him, and from cycling in a wider sense. He kept looking away, all the time. It was nothing to do with me; he was following Guimard's every move, as if he was wary of him and wanted to keep out of his reach. Seeing him looking so unhappy the four-times Tour winner, the man of granite celebrated for the strength of his character and the brute force of his deeds I understood immediately that there was no prospect of what everyone feared, which was a fight between the pair of us for leadership of the team. Everything in his demeanour led me to believe that his and Guimard's impending divorce was set in stone. He no longer looked like part of the Renault team. The Breton knew already that he was moving to another squad but which one?

As soon as he saw me, his body language was warm. He came over to congratulate me as if he was my elder brother, coming out with words that perfectly suited the occasion. 'I knew you could do it, you deserved it' and so on. I can't tell whether he was pleased that I had won I wouldn't presume to think that but nothing in what he said or did made me believe the opposite. I've already said that, apart from a silly incident in that year's Tour of Spain, Hinault had never had any reason to complain about me. In fact it was the other way round. He was well aware of this, and that showed in the hearty welcome he had just given me.

No, I could sense something else in Hinault: he was already looking ahead to the battles he would soon have on the road against Guimard's riders. Not just riders in the Renault jersey, but the men who were trademarked 'Guimard'. It was written all over his face: everything about him now rejected his old mentor. When he became aware that Guimard was in the room it was amazing to see how in a fraction of a second the Badger went back to being a tight-lipped, watchful Breton. His square jaw seemed to be chewing on his unhappiness. The pair of them clearly could no longer stand each other. I guessed that there must be a lot behind this: arguments, differences, altercations. I was light years away from imagining that one day I too would go through the same vicious process with Guimard.

But let's go back to that fantastic, victorious evening. I have to confess one thing: the party at the Tour de l'Armor was small beer compared with what I experienced that night. 'The worse for wear' hardly does my state justice. A red-top writer might have scribbled 'Laurent Fignon was totally out of it.' What else was I going to do? After the final award ceremony, after the collective feeling of joy within the team and the accolades of the public, I drank, I danced and celebrated as much as my body could stand and we did everything we needed to ensure we didn't slow down before bedtime.

The whole team ended up dancing on a pleasureboat in the Seine. I went through my first experience of 'celebrity'. I was a bit drunk and without even noticing I ended up in the arms of a gorgeous girl during a slow dance. Of course, we'd never met before. Nothing special happened, except that the next morning on the front page of France-Soir France-Soir the whole country saw a photo which immortalised the brief encounter, with the headline: 'The winner of the Tour de France relaxes with his fiancee.' the whole country saw a photo which immortalised the brief encounter, with the headline: 'The winner of the Tour de France relaxes with his fiancee.'

The only thing was that we weren't engaged. At the time, my fiancee was called Nathalie and she was to become my first wife. Nathalie worked for Radio France and we had kept our relationship a secret to avoid her having problems in her work. That was why she hadn't been at the party. I hardly need to tell you that she woke me up with a phone call in which she screamed down the line, 'Who was that tart?' I barely even remember the dance, let alone the girl.

After that famous night, I barely had any time to savour my success, or to rest and reflect. A Tour de France winner, especially a French one, has a debt to his people and the cycling world was waiting expectantly for me in the criteriums. I think I rode twenty-five on the trot. Obviously, as the 'rules' stipulated, I won a fair few of them. And I earned a good deal in appearance money.

I liked the atmosphere. The criteriums were a sort of continuation of the after-Tour party which suddenly went on another month. You finished the race, and in the evening, as tradition demanded, you picked up where you had left the previous night's festivities. It was stimulating but tiring. The ascetic life of a sportsman competing at the highest level doesn't really fit in with letting it all hang out in nightclubs.

It took me a while to work out why there have been so few French world champions in cycling history. Back then the world t.i.tle was run at the end of August or the start of September, and not at the end of September as it is now. After a month travelling from one criterium to another, barely sleeping and knocking back a drink or two to keep everyone company, the French riders who were in greater demand for the criteriums than the foreigners were worn out. After riding the criterium circuit I would be almost more tired than after the Tour, which is saying something.

In addition, I was faced with the dark side of glory, partly because of riding all these criteriums where the organisers make any successful riders feel even more like megastars. It was the shadowy face of the shining light. After the Champs-Elysees all that happened for several weeks was one long victory parade. For a long time I couldn't see the difference between the winner of the Tour (the one that all the people wanted to glorify) and the Laurent Fignon who was somewhere inside him the true me. While the Tour winner kept playing the part to the point of caricature, the Fignon 'inside' withdrew into a persona that was no longer anything like him.

I didn't do anything serious, compared to how others have behaved in similar circ.u.mstances. Let's just say it all went to my head. I began to behave like a guy who looks down a bit on everyone. You know, the sort of bloke who's made it to the top and reminds everyone of it in every word and deed, in case they might have forgotten. I put ridiculous demands on people, said things I shouldn't have said. I thought the world revolved around me, and I have to admit: you come to a point where you genuinely believe that. People kept asking me to do things, and I was ferried here there and everywhere. You are constantly made to feel you are the centre of things, so you begin to think that way.

It was ridiculous, it was vulgar, and it was lousy for my self-respect.

The way other people looked at me had changed as well. It was worrying. Everyone looked so appreciative. When I saw a cyclist looking at me, I knew he was jealous; when I caught a glance from a woman, I imagined she must fancy me. All I would have to do was snap my fingers. My feet were no longer on the ground: I had flipped over into a parallel universe. I could have stayed there.

The whole thing is smoke and mirrors. I was never the centre of the world, but at most and only for a few days the centre of the cycling world. In the minds of some of those close to me, I must have become totally impossible for a while. One day, the Dutchman Gerrie Knetemann, who had been world champion in 1978, said to me: 'After I took the t.i.tle my head swelled, really swelled, believe me. It was perfectly understandable, but what is not normal is if your head stays like that.'

You are the best. The strongest. You can ask for things. Demand that things be done. Just for fun. You just have to want it.

When I began to pull my head out of the sand and open my eyes the whole thing horrified me. I felt truly pathetic. My pride had been completely misplaced. It had been the pride of a little upstart, a little t.w.a.t. It was rubbish. I am ashamed to look back on it.

How long did it go on for? I'd say a month, not much more. For some guys, it lasts the rest of their lives: I escaped the worst at any rate. In my defence, I'd call in my close friends: the way I behaved towards them hadn't budged a centimetre. Nothing whatsoever had changed between me and Julot, for example. He was my closest friend. I was happy; he was happy for me; and I was happy to feel that he was happy. Nothing and no one could spoil the way we felt.

There was a good side to winning the Tour: I now felt completely relaxed in the way I raced.

I had gone over a threshold and become a different sportsman. It was like being a lone sailor going round Cape Horn, or a top climber going over 25,000 feet without oxygen. It was obvious as soon as I began training again. It was a fabulous feeling. It was as if the aura of that victory had ended up instilling all its vital force in every pedal stroke I took. My physical confidence was so high that everything seemed straightforward. Just after the criteriums ended I won the third stage in the Tour du Limousin, just for fun. I had rediscovered the feeling of pleasure that cycling gave me. Racing for its own sake, for the hand-to-hand combat, the whiff of a fight. That's the beauty of cycling: you have to be constantly up there. I could never have done athletics, or focused on being good every four years for the Olympics. An appalling notion.

And because I was back to my previous self, the Route du Berry gave me a nice chance to remind everyone I was still there. It was a race that no one took seriously. We would know every year that there was never any dope control; there's no point saying that a lot of the boys were full of amphetamines and some pushed it too far. One of them was so wired and unaware of what he was doing that he kept jumping his bike onto the pavement without braking. He wasn't the only one. That year, only twenty-one riders finished the race. I abandoned and as I got to the finish pretty early, with the help of a few other riders I made a fake notice that was fixed prominently to a local building: 'Controle Medicale'.

It was right after the finish, so when the riders crossed the line, they couldn't miss it. It had the desired effect. It was quite a sight: the boys were completely spooked. It was panic all round. It was delicious. We giggled for hours.

CHAPTER 14.

WEARING THE BOSS'S TROUSERS There is no point in possessing a body at a peak of physical development, no use having muscles full of energy unless the whole unit is at one with the mind. Sometimes, the messages transmitted by your body are contradictory: you have to keep them to yourself. You can suffer in secret, in the same way that you can revel in absolute dominance without the slightest scream of triumph.

At the end of the 1983 season at the Montjuich hill climb in Barcelona, a cycle tourist coming the other way down the road ran straight into me. It was a head-on collision which could have cost me dearly. I broke my hand but still finished the race. Two weeks later I had already forgotten it. Pain is nothing if you accept it as something which is just there, rather than thinking about the implications.

At twenty-three, well able to make myself suffer and thirsty for new experiences, I began the 1984 season as team leader. Bernard Hinault had gone off to pastures new. Initially, however, close observers of the sport must have wondered what was going on. 'What's happened to the Tour winner?' they must have asked. The cold weather, my worst enemy, had got the better of me again. I contracted a vicious sinusitis, forcing me to forget the Criterium International and to abandon in MilanSan Remo and TirrenoAdriatico.

I was the only person who felt that my results from the previous year and my freshly found confidence were more than just a front. There were two views among the commentators. There were those who saw me following the example of Bernard Thevenet in 1976, in other words a Tour winner who had struggled to live up to a result that was too big for him. And there were those who, on the other hand, already had me riding down the ill.u.s.trious path mapped out by the greatest names in the sport. I have to confess that every day that went past saw me more confident that the second scenario was what lay ahead. I still didn't feel that I was a surprise winner of the Tour. I knew how good I could be and how much there was still to come. I also knew how lucky I had been in the way it had all happened. It's hard to restrain yourself when you feel that you are going well and you are ambitious; until then, there had been nothing to hold me back.

At the same time, I knew it would be harder proving it had not been a one-off. I wasn't afraid of that. And among my friends and I nothing had changed. We were serious when we trained. We were reliable and robust when we raced. But we were still as carefree when we had unpinned our race numbers.

At the start of that year, while we were driving back from a cyclo-cross Guimard made us ride them and you couldn't get out of it we got behind the wheels of three Renault team cars to return to training camp. In one of the cars, Vincent Barteau and Christian Corre. In the other, Pascal Poisson and Marc Madiot. In the third, Julot and I. After the cyclo-cross, the mud, the slime and the cold, we drove as you always did back then: foot to the floor, a smile on your lips. It wasn't just that there were no speed cameras, but professional cycling team cars were so popular with the officers of the law that sometimes if not actually all the time they would shut their eyes to traffic offences in return for a signed cap for their son or father-in-law. With this sense of impunity, all drivers of team cars, whoever and wherever they were, had no worries about redlining it. That night in the pitch dark we were gaily floating along at 200kph, b.u.mper to b.u.mper on the motorway, with barely a bike length between the cars. We slalomed. We pulled out at the last second. We tooted our horns. We thought we were Laffite, Prost, Jarier or Belmondo. It was how it was. But it was crazy, and dangerous. The inevitable accident came when Barteau fell asleep at the wheel, at full tilt. No one was seriously hurt, which was a miracle. He got away with one hand in plaster.

Was it luck? Let's just say we were pushing our luck, all the time. That day and there were plenty of others we survived. I was well aware of it. There was one key element in my make-up compared to guys like Barteau, who were not always able to keep a grip of themselves, and even Jules, who was every bit as fragile mentally and would let himself be taken in by any shyster. I've always felt something holding me back, something that has always prevented me from going further than merely mucking about, as if there is a little red light which comes on inside and says: 'That's it, stop there.' Whatever we were up to, my light always flashed before the other guys'. I've often wondered why I should be able to make myself see sense at the right moment, and how I manage to help other guys do the same by setting an example. The answer was that I so loved racing that anything that might compromise it seemed puerile. I would say to myself: 'Careful here, that might stop you winning something.' At the wheel of a car, for example, I wasn't necessarily thinking about whether I might die. But on the other hand I could see how I might end up wrecking the pleasure I felt when on the bike, and risking that was out of the question.

It was particularly out of the question in 1984. Bernard Hinault, as I said, had heard the siren call coming from Bernard Tapie and had signed for a new team completely devoted to his service, La Vie Claire. Now he was a rival, and probably the most redoubtable of the lot. I was sure of that. That meant everything had changed, but there was still another big name within my team. The American Greg LeMond, who had been carefully managed by Cyrille Guimard since he signed at Renault, was in a difficult position and didn't keep quiet about it. He had good reason: he had been pencilled in as a possible Tour winner and my surprise victory had thrown all his plans into disarray. What's more, Guimard had not selected him for the Tour in 1983 because he was considered too young. LeMond was worried and tried to manoeuvre the team into giving him a bigger contract after he took the world t.i.tle in Switzerland. Renault refused point-blank but I benefited, indirectly. The Renault management were terrified that I would ask them for an impossible sum and then go elsewhere. They were determined to keep me in the team so I turned up and demanded a contract of a million francs a year, or F80,000 (8,000) a month. I was amazed. Instead of choking in horror, the Renault negotiator let out a sigh of relief. He had expected far worse. I mulled it over: for days and days I regretted not asking for more. To put it in perspective, I'd ended 1982 on a salary of F12,000 a month and after the 1983 Tour, up to the end of the season, I was on about F50,000. For the time, it was a great deal, even though it was next to nothing compared to what was paid out in tennis or football.

Cyrille Guimard was never concerned. There was no way I was going to leave him, and he knew it. The 'Guimard system' was tailor-made for me the team, the preparation, the atmosphere and I still had a lot to prove. In my mind, I was now the sole leader, but in the heads of the team it wasn't like that. Since Hinault's departure the riders seemed less certain of the situation and less inclined to give their all. There was a lack of confidence about how I would shape up, which was understandable. With his record, Hinault instilled confidence naturally. If you looked at me, and LeMond, who was the 'reserve' leader, we were a similar age to our teammates. It was up to us to prove what we could do and to impose ourselves as leaders. Even though the ways of the team were slowly changing under my guidance the team's relationship was based on friendship rather than a rigid hierarchy winning was the thing that would settle everything down. Nothing else would do.

And then I had a colossal problem, which had to be overcome whatever I did: I was now in Hinault's shoes and everyone would be comparing me to him. Even Guimard must have fallen into the trap. He adopted the 'Hinault' way for me, item by item. The same programme, the same way of talking; everything was the same. It was too much: I wasn't Hinault but, paradoxically, Guimard wasn't able to change to suit me. And I was too young to know everything about my body and make him adopt new ways of thinking, new innovations.

No one conceived that I might need a racing programme that was different to the one Hinault had followed. I had won my first Tour and it was hard to imagine that anything might have gone wrong. Objectively speaking, there was no reason to change anything. We just reproduced what had worked in the past. And I paid the price. Fortunately I was really serious about my work: I didn't want to let anyone down.

The pressure mounted and was all centred on me. The more intense it became, the more I felt relaxed, serene, strong. My legs and my mind were functioning in complete harmony. That may sound pretentious but that's how it was.

CHAPTER 15.

c.o.kE IN STOCK.

When I imagine the uninitiated reader going through the excesses and illusions of our little world, I do wonder how it all looks. No doubt this visitor would observe our mixed-up ways, and would feel that our actions were every bit as foolish as we ourselves were. We were young, impudent, and sometimes open to youthful temptation.

Talking of temptation, the Tour of Colombia 1984, or the Clasico RCN, was an astonishing experience, one for which I was hardly ready. As far as the race went, there wasn't much to relate, apart from a pair of stage wins, one for Charly Mottet, and one for me on the final stage. The event was perfect preparation because it all took place at over 2000m above sea level, just right for boosting our red blood-cell counts. All we had to do was make the most of it and keep our eyes on the job.

As for the ambience, sometimes it was more fun than work. But we weren't the ringleaders, that's the least I can say, and I realised during that week that what we got up to in France was the stuff of mere choirboys compared to the values that ruled cycling in the world of the bad lads. The Colombians have a delightful way of reaching an accommodation with reality. I say delightful because they clearly don't mind breaking a rule or two, they laugh all the time, they enjoy life and cycling and they love pedalling through their homeland cheered on by vast crowds who've come to hail their heroes: the Colombians were professionals worthy of being in the biggest European races.

Back then, the races there seemed to be sponsored by the local mafia. The cash flowed in torrents and there were guns in suit pockets. All the racing was rigged and on a more serious note, cocaine was dished up instead of dessert. I can remember one guy in the caravan, clearly a dealer, who had kilos and kilos of white powder on offer in the boot of his car. It was the holy grail: ten dollars a kilo. Bargain bas.e.m.e.nt. Every morning, the buyers formed an orderly line, all but turning up with race numbers on their backs.

Caught up in this happy shiny world, the journalists were smiling from morning till night, snorting all day. And we messed about as well, just once, just to see what happened. It was a day that could have ruined my entire career.

Because we kept hearing people saying 'It's the best in the world', 'My G.o.d it's amazing', eventually we thought, 'Come on, let's give it a whirl.' We did it the evening before the finish in Bogota, where the Clasico always ended. We weren't taking the race that seriously, so there wasn't much at stake. Four of us got together in a hotel room, like kids with a new toy. Each of us had a gram, we divided it up and snorted.

Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. I looked at the guy next to me. 'Can you feel anything?' 'No.' We couldn't believe it. What a let-down. We pulled out another gram, shared it out and began again. Still nothing. 'Is that all there is to c.o.ke?' I asked, unhappily. I ended up believing that we had just been sold icing sugar. We had no idea what to do, so we snorted the whole lot. A gram each melting away in our noses.

We obviously weren't patient enough with the first couple of doses. Clearly, the effects eventually reached our dumb little brains. OmiG.o.d. Wow. My head turned inside out. It was an indescribable feeling, a total loss of mental control; my feet left the ground. I felt as if I was producing ideas so fast that my mind couldn't keep track of them. I had no idea who I was.

We had to go somewhere and do something; the call was too strong for us. We were so stoned we could have done anything. Off we went, and came across Cyrille Guimard and the journalist Daniel Pautrat in a bar. 'Don't muck about, get to bed,' said Guimard. 'I feel like having fun,' I replied. I didn't listen to a word he said. I got completely out of it, in some dodgy joint or other.

A bit later, Guimard who didn't nanny us was looking for me all over. He was worried: I might end up in trouble, or just get mugged. He finally persuaded us to go back to the hotel. But with the powder still in control, there was no chance of sleep. I kept talking with my friends for the rest of the night, until dawn broke.

Next morning in the start village I was in fine form even though I hadn't closed my eyes all night. And I was flying on the bike, so much so that I won the last stage in Bogota. Then, when I had to go to the medical control, I realised how thoughtless I had been. In a fraction of a second I saw my whole career run past me. I couldn't stop thinking: 'But why on earth did I want to go and win that stage. Why?' Of course, I believed I was going to test positive. That was the only possible outcome.

Then, before I went and peed in the bottle, I thought for a couple of minutes about where I was, about the last week's racing, about what I'd seen and what I'd heard. The Colombians had won most of the stages and some of them seemed to be riding on cocaine. Eureka! Some of the Colombian drug-testers were turning a blind eye. I was a bit worried when I went to the control, but my logical line of thinking calmed me down. And as I expected, there was no nasty surprise after the test. I was as pure as the driven snow. White as powder.

Thinking back today, I realise it was idiotic, a ma.s.sive risk. Not just because of the chance of testing positive, but because of that night out on the town where I could have come to the worst. The specialists in breaking the rules were used to risks like this. I wasn't.

CHAPTER 16.

TRAGEDIA DELL'ARTE Among the curious menagerie of creatures that make up the cycling world, only the truly exceptional ones last, and survive down the ages. I wasn't yet among them. But with all the excessive emotions to be found there, the roads of Italy might just be the new platform I had been waiting for. I yearned to get there. I had nothing but good memories of the Tour of Italy, which I had ridden as a new professional in 1982.

Our reunion could not have been more auspicious: I was fired up by this legendary race. Dino Buzzati was spot on when he wrote: 'The Giro is one of the last pinnacles of the minds of men, a bastion of romanticism under siege from the mundane power of progress.' The great writer understood that the Giro has never given up its true spirit and in my day that was even more true than it is now. I was completely bowled over by Italian cycling's intensity, which seemed to belong to another time. I loved the spectators, overcome with pa.s.sion yet full of languor at the same time. I loved the human warmth, the Italian urge to communicate, the shouts, the language. I loved the beauty of the countryside, its l.u.s.trous colours, the glare of the day, the warmth and coolness of the nights. I loved the delicately poised villages, the mountains in May, running with melt.w.a.ter from the snow. I liked suffering on those roads. I felt good in Italy and my pa.s.sion for the country was never to fade. The fact that I would later race for an Italian team was no coincidence.

A few weeks earlier, I'd only lacked a tiny fraction of the strength I needed to win LiegeBastogneLiege. Without a chronic sinusitis which had nailed me to my bed for a few days during the build-up, I wouldn't have been caught five kilometres from the finish as I flew away with Phil Anderson.

So I had only one objective when I started the sixty-seventh Giro d'Italia: overall victory. Nothing less. To achieve our goal, Guimard and I had carefully composed a team of attacking racers, all good mates, all devoted to duty. I had complete confidence in a group of riders who were as young and ambitious as I was: Gaigne, Mentheour, Corre, Salomon, Saude, Wojtinek, Mottet.

The background to the race is still clear in my mind. The 'threat from Fignon' was a big worry for the Italians, who had done everything they could to ensure that their idol Francesco Moser could at last win 'his' Giro. There was one small thing they had overlooked: the new, young Frenchman who, following Bernard Hinault, had come over the Alps to challenge the nation of Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali. The Italian riders had never been happy to have foreigners turning up and winning on their home turf, and had no second thoughts about joining forces against the common enemy. In some seasons, defying the alliances and winning in spite of everything had a miraculous quality.

Moser had noticed the way I had improved and knew what was heading his way. He said, the day before the start: 'For Fignon, what is at stake in Italy is decisive: he has to prove that his win in the Tour de France did not happen by accident. We will find out very soon whether he can adapt completely to being a team leader, because what's obvious is that this time round he does not have the advantage of surprise.'

He was right. Guimard and I wanted to impose ourselves on the race. We decided to adopt a strategy in which the team would be a daily, constant presence at the head of the race which suited me just fine by trying to take the maximum advantage of the unique geography of Italy. In contrast to the Tour de France, where the make-up of the country means that there is usually a long breathing s.p.a.ce between the race start and the Pyrenees or the Alps, the Giro had a strategically important stage every two or three days. I knew I was stronger than Moser or Saronni in the highest mountains, and it was up to me to live up to my reputation.

Oh dear, it all got off to a bad start: the first important stage at the end of the first week was a minor setback which would have major consequences three weeks later. During the fifth stage, a mountain top finish at the Majella fortress, I had a lightning attack of hunger knock. I gave away ninety seconds to Moser, who was flying, to the great delight of the tifosi tifosi, who already had me dead and buried. Yet again, big doses of glucose were behind the problem: it was a hypoglycaemic attack triggered by an overproduction of insulin. It was only on that day that we detected this anomaly and the problem never happened again. But the damage had been done in this Giro at least.

Guimard, a disappointed man, began to talk to me a great deal. Every evening we looked at the upcoming stages to devise a strategy for guerrilla warfare. I took to this game. I liked the idea of being at action stations every day, particularly because during the second week Moser just kept on getting better. He was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with confidence like all the Italian riders, who had declared their loyalty to His Majesty and were doing the spadework for him at every opportunity. As soon as a gap opened, an Italian would jump forwards to lend him a hand, whether or not he was in Moser's team. The Renault team were taking on an entire nation. I'm only exaggerating slightly. The breaches in the rules were obvious and that fact says a good deal about the late race director Vicenzo Torriani, who had made it clear which side he was on. I don't know if it's something that could happen today, but there were stages where the fans spat at me and sprayed me with vinegar and other delicacies.

Planning the race, I knew I would lose about another three minutes in the two final time trials. As I expected, I gave away exactly 1min 28sec over the thirty-eight kilometres between Certosa and Milan. Moser was an unusually good time triallist who flirted with techniques that pushed the rules to the limit. Partly on the technical side, because he was reaping the benefit of aerodynamic research and was riding the bikes that had taken him to the hour record, but also on the physical side, because everyone knew he had been working with a doctor who wasn't particularly ethical.

On the morning of the eighteenth stage, which I had highlighted in the race manual, and where Guimard and I had carefully examined the smallest details I knew exactly where the big attack was going to be made something scandalous suddenly happened. This epic mountain stage included the crossing of the mythical Stelvio Pa.s.s (2757m) which was the scene for one of the great Coppi's greatest feats. The Italians, true worshippers of cycling, are convinced that no one except the campionissimo campionissimo is capable of such sumptuous deeds. But the organisers, with the support of the local authorities, took advantage of the cold weather and the high alt.i.tude of the pa.s.s to give the impression that taking the race over might be dangerous. The national roads authority spoke of 'a risk of snow' and even 'avalanches'. They had already done similar things two or three times with less celebrated cols: the stages were modified on the day according to what they wanted. It was surreal. is capable of such sumptuous deeds. But the organisers, with the support of the local authorities, took advantage of the cold weather and the high alt.i.tude of the pa.s.s to give the impression that taking the race over might be dangerous. The national roads authority spoke of 'a risk of snow' and even 'avalanches'. They had already done similar things two or three times with less celebrated cols: the stages were modified on the day according to what they wanted. It was surreal.

Guimard protested as strongly as he could, in vain. Torriani erased the Stelvio from the stage and dreamed up a replacement route which was unworthy of the race's reputation. At the finish at Val Gardena I was second and regained a little time on Moser, who was delighted with the results of what had transpired. Our plan for a huge offensive had been wrecked by the duplicity of the organisers, who had little regard for the rules of sport.

That evening, Guimard and I were downcast, but we dreamed up our ultimate gamble. The mountainous route of the stage the next day between Val Gardena and Arabba might give us a chance or two. There were a few cols: the Campolongo, the Pordoi, the Sella, Gardena and the return over the Campolongo. I was itching to gamble everything on one single attack. And the next day, at the precise point we had decided upon, fifty-five kilometres from the finish, I attacked on my own in the cold and the fog, which I hated so much. By winning the stage, I turned the race around and took the pink jersey. But Moser, who was now 1min 30sec behind me, was not entirely sunk, as he might well have been on the Stelvio, which went over 2000m above sea level. The whole peloton had got together to prevent him from losing too much time. Chains of tifosi tifosi had lined the cols to push him up. The referees helped as well by fining me twenty seconds for taking a feed outside the permitted area. Moser simply had to win. had lined the cols to push him up. The referees helped as well by fining me twenty seconds for taking a feed outside the permitted area. Moser simply had to win.