Double-dealing had never been part of my make-up and I had enough experience to keep directing my anger, my spirit and my strength towards the next challenge without worrying about what anyone else thought. I was not like other cyclists. That goes without saying. I had never been a rider like all the rest. Kelly, Mottet, Duclos-La.s.salle and Bugno were riders with whom I spent a great deal of time. They all practised their sport in a quasi-religious style according to principles that had been laid down by their forefathers. My way was to a.s.sert my right to be different, to be independent, to keep a grip on my integrity. But there was an element within the public and within the media which obstinately refused to recognise that I had the right to be myself. They wanted to force me to conform, to bring me into the fold among the nice guys, the easy ones to deal with the lambs. Or the sheep which merely wanted to follow the flock. It would have been the crowning glory.

I've never liked buddying up to people. That applies to everyone and I'm actually rather proud of that trait. I've always behaved according to my principles and my conscience, never to please one person or another. For example, just before the 1989 Tour de France, at the national championship, Antenne 2's star journalist of the time, Patrick Chene, was determined to set up an impromptu interview with me. But he arrived very late, so I apologised to him and said I could no longer talk with him. I had something else that I absolutely had to do. He was unhappy about it and came out with this amazing expression: 'So this is how it turns out after everything I've done for you.'

I was astounded. What I was witnessing was the worst possible manifestation of hubris from a journalist who had let success go to his head and with it any sense of reality. A fairly nice man had been transformed into a show-biz star because of the minor degree of celebrity he enjoyed thanks to television. As a result he had confused his role that of a journalist with the relationships he believed he had with certain sports stars. I was so amazed by what he said that I couldn't help taking the mickey. 'I had no idea that you had helped me win all those races.'

He immediately understood that he had gone too far. 'That's not quite what I meant,' he added at once.

'No, but that's what you said,' I replied. 'Now leave me alone.'

At times like that I could be very curt and I didn't always think through the consequences of how I reacted. We never spoke about it again: such are the tribulations of professional life.

Since 1985 and the long fight against injury which provoked a good many controversial articles, I've protected my private life and my internal life. I didn't open my door as easily as before. It was as if I had put up a barricade around my life and placed everything that related to my personal existence under lock and key. I only gave interviews that I thought might be useful. It worked so well that by the end of the 1980s there appeared to be two very different Laurent Fignons in existence. The first one was a straightforward chap who said loud and clear that he didn't like answering questions from journalists. The second was no less direct but he tended to lie low and didn't give away a great deal. He was a secretive individual: the private Fignon that no one ever really got to know.

Generally speaking, in spite of the carefree att.i.tude I adopted in my early years as a pro, I would say that the second Fignon is my real persona. I may have been made to be a champion cyclist I have no doubt of that but I was absolutely not made to be a public figure.

We had come to a tipping point. This was the time when we began to live in a society dominated by celebrity culture. That in turn forced journalists to become either flattering or destructive, without it being at all clear why they went from being one to the other. The only clear guideline was the need to be buddies with people.

A champion sportsman only exists through what he does, not through the role that he plays in front of a microphone. But that is of little consequence. Journalists can end up like giants in fairy tales: they acquire a taste for human flesh. And when the meat begins to go off they go in search of other prey.

CHAPTER 28.

YES, I DID IT.

I don't take things lying down. Nor do I believe in supping from the bitter cup. Too often we scan our memories so we can dream up a wanted poster with a picture of some guilty party or other. We are often our own worst enemies and if what we see in the mirror is only a reflection of ourselves, it's often our worst side.

Here then is something which I did that was wrong. Very wrong. It has been verified and placed on the record. And I admit it without omission or hesitation. 'Positive for amphetamines'. At the Grand Prix de la Liberation in Eindhoven. Me, Laurent Fignon. This time it was true. I recognise the error I made. What I did wrong. But at a time when suspicion of doping is everywhere and doping overkill has killed dreams and made words lose their meaning, where just about every barrier of what is acceptable and what isn't has been broken, how can you explain without making excuses? Let's just spell out the facts.

Looking back at the affair in a superficial way, I could actually claim that the person who was indirectly at the root of it was Alain Gallopin. He will bear witness to that. His wife was on the point of giving birth and I was in the middle of my build-up to the Grand Prix des Nations, for which Alain was putting me through some pretty nasty training sessions. A lot of kilometres, huge numbers of sprints and hill intervals.

Ten days before the race, one Wednesday, we had arranged to do a session of intervals behind the motorbike. The phone rang. Alain's wife was in labour and he had to go to hospital for the happy event. There was no more to be said, except that I was left alone with my bike, my morale in my boots. I had absolutely no desire to hurt myself on my own and I can still see myself now, completely undecided whether I would even put my leg over the saddle. It was that bad.

It was just me, alone with my stupidity: to get myself going I took a spot of amphetamine. Not simply to help me get out of my front door, but mainly so that I could get in some extra kilometres; to make the ride hard and useful. It was called a 'pot'. The only difference was that back then 'pots' were only amphetamine, with nothing added, in contrast to the ones that were on sale a lot later, for example, at the end of the 1990s, in which all kinds of drugs were to be found.

It was a mindless thing to do. I had heard that this kind of amphetamine was flushed quickly out of the system and didn't leave any traces in your urine after forty-eight hours. Well, the Grand Prix de la Liberation didn't take place until the following Sunday, four days later. So I told myself that there was no risk. I felt so unconcerned that I actually raced on the Sat.u.r.day as well, at the Grand Prix di Lazio, near Rome. My mind was completely untroubled.

So when it came to the anti-doping control I went and peed in the jar without an iota of concern. I'd already forgotten what I had done on Wednesday. 'Positive'. When I learned the news I was astounded but well aware that it was entirely my fault. The official confirmation didn't take long in coming: the Dutch laboratory stated that they had found 'amphetamine residues' which predated the day of the test. So there was no doubt at all of my guilt. What more needs to be said? Nothing, apart from the fact that I felt rather pathetic; a bit dirty. Time moved slowly around me. And there was not a lot of point in saying to myself, 'Come on, a bit of amphetamine isn't actually all that much.' The distress at what I had done was still there inside me. It was a feeling of shame at my own weakness, at the reason behind the misdeed rather than the act itself. It was so derisory, so stupid.

Not long afterwards I raced the Grand Prix des Nations, with more motivation than I had ever felt before. I had been thinking about nothing else for weeks and weeks. On the Thursday I had gone a bit too far with the partying and Gallopin had warned me: 'Laurent, you're messing about.' But he knew better than anyone else that I had prepared properly and as for me, in a muddled way, without admitting it to myself, I felt that 1989 would be one of my last chances to win it. If I could manage it, I wanted people to remember this one. Until then, Charly Mottet had held the record for the course on the backroads inland from Cannes. There were no half measures: I lowered the record which everyone thought was unbeatable by 1min 49sec, at an average speed of 45.6kph. But who remembers today quite how tough that circuit was?

Looking back at it, with many years' hindsight, I now feel that on that day there was such a level of physical violence in the effort I produced that truly perceptive observers might have felt it was a kind of swansong, the last vestige of authentic heroism in an exceptional champion living at the limit of his pride and natural ability. That day, my power was everything I had. There was no dividing line between the champion and the man inside: they were as one, in a final show of strength. But I was unaware of any of this. Alain Gallopin said to me that evening: 'When you are in form, you can do anything, you know.' I ended the season at number one in the world rankings.

I'm not entirely sure that everyone was happy about that. During the six day at the Bercy stadium in Paris, I was an actor in a rather pathetic media storm. The sports minister, Roger Bambuck, had just put through a new anti-doping law which permitted random, unannounced drug tests. During the six day all the riders suspected that there might well be one of the tests there was no problem about that but we were outraged when a camera crew from television station TF1 appeared in order to film the actions of the federation doctor, Gabriel Dolle, who had been appointed to carry out the tests. The pictures were being taken without the riders being aware of it but with the support of the minister who doubtless wanted to get the publicity. For the first time in doping history television cameras were going to be allowed into the medical room to film a drug test being carried out; it was a violation of the riders' privacy. We were disgusted and made up our minds that something had to be done.

In pa.s.sing, I should mention that I didn't have a cosy relationship with Bambuck. It was based on what each of us had said in the press about the other. After I had tested positive at Eindhoven, the sports minister had spoken about it and referred to me as 'the poor lad'. That hurt. And in keeping with my character I responded: 'If you don't know the full story, keep your mouth shut.' Of course he should have kept his mouth shut, even though he was the minister of sport, rather than giving lectures that were barely worthy of primary schoolchildren.

I've never liked spite. Or voyeurism. What's more, Jacques G.o.ddet himself, who was the director of the Bercy Palais Omnisports, where the race was held, had protested virulently against the presence of cameras enticed by the scent of p.i.s.s. G.o.ddet had told the TF1 journalists: 'This is a private place. With or without authorisation from the minister you will not transmit any pictures of what the cycling federation doctor is about to do. You are welcome here to take pictures of anything else. But as far as this is concerned, it's a firm, definite, "no". You will not make a spectacle of the riders.' There was no getting round G.o.ddet. His words settled the issue.

It was almost 1 a.m. On the track, the riders were still racing a Madison. I had been leading since the start of the session. Along with nine other riders including Urs Freuler (my teammate at the six), Mottet, Etienne De Wilde, Doyle and others, I was requested, the instant we got off our bikes, to go to the medical room in the bas.e.m.e.nt where Gabriel Dolle had set up shop. The television cameras had decamped under the joint pressure of the cyclists, G.o.ddet, and the French Cycling Federation president Francois Alaphilippe.

We were all given an hour to turn up at the test. As you can imagine, I didn't turn up until the very last minute of the sixty. To be precise, it was 1.50 a.m. by the time I opened the medical room door. In the chamber decorated with fine old posters, Dr Dolle tried to talk but I just immersed myself in a paper I had brought along for the purpose, and kept my mouth shut. I had decided to give myself all the time in the world. And a bit more: I was prepared to drag it out to the end of the night, pretending that I was not ready to p.i.s.s in the bottle.

Well after 3 a.m., Dolle began to sigh. As soon as I saw him nodding off, I yelled, 'Stay awake or I might flick the control.' It was very late or very early when I decided to fill the little flask. Dawn was breaking as I went home.

I had absolutely nothing against the random test, but it was more than I could manage to endure this pathetic media circus. It was not a matter of prevention but repression for show. The fight against doping didn't justify absolutely anything. But we had seen nothing yet, either in terms of doping practices or ways of fighting the cheats.

CHAPTER 29.

THE LEADER AND THE DOORMAT.

Years of bizarre goings-on were now stretching out in front of me. I was not aware of it, or rather I didn't want to know. I refused to allow myself to be convinced of it. I don't have any particular memories of the process of ageing, of the gradual decline of the exceptional athlete who had just got over a sports injury which would have killed off many men's careers. Nonetheless, the gradual descent to the 'end of my career' had begun. I was certainly well aware of that.

There was no great upset at the end of our partnership with Systeme U, who had been working with Cyrille Guimard and me for four long years. We had been fully aware that a change was on the way, and well before the start of the 1990 season the incoming sponsor, Castorama, was already part of the furniture. We knew who our new backer would be before the 1989 Tour had even started.

As for Systeme U, its directors had plenty to be pleased about. In 1986 the recognition figure for the firm was zero: back then, everyone had believed they were a make of glue not a supermarket. By the time our time together ended, the figure had gone up to forty per cent. The impact on the company's image had been ma.s.sive and the sponsors had no complaints about deciding to put money into cycling.

In the build-up to the 1990 season we dreamed up a jersey design together for Castorama that resembled a set of overalls and was cunningly similar to the outfits worn by the shop a.s.sistants in France's leading DIY chainstores. The idea behind the jerseys was something that would be copied elsewhere in cycling. The Castorama head Jean-Hugues Loyez was in ecstasies: what's more, sociologically, this was a perfect time to promote the concept of DIY among French homeowners. In a few months, Castorama had a huge breakthrough in public awareness. We were the finest team in France. I was still number one in the world rankings. And the FignonGuimard tandem was still drawing media fire.

However, there was one unfortunate episode which cooled our relationship initially a fantastic one with M. Loyez. Officially, we had sold Castorama all of the display s.p.a.ce that was available on our racing kit. Or at least that was how they had interpreted our discussions. Cyrille Guimard decided that it wasn't quite like that. The day when we showed them the jerseys and shorts, you should have seen the look on the Castorama representatives' faces when they discovered that we had, of course, maintained our working relationship with Raleigh, whose name figured on the shorts. Guimard had never informed them. I'm not sure that he had dared take the risk. It was crazy. This was playing with fire.

Presented with a fait acccompli, the Castorama worthies presumably believed that we had pulled a fast one on them. It meant that from the very start, even before a wheel had turned in compet.i.tion, their confidence in us was undermined. From then on the relationship was always an honest one but they were suspicious about us, and whenever they had to decide about something they would look at it twice before giving the go-ahead. Guimard's lack of transparency perfectly reflected his state of mind at the time. Insidiously, the ties that bound us were being stretched a little more every day. The gaps between conversations became wider and more worryingly in my view there was a collapse of the mutual trust that we call 'friendship', the curious alchemy between two human beings that allows them to talk about anything at any hour of the day or night, without restraint or calculation. He and I were entering the dark tunnel of disagreement. I still had no idea how far it would go.

Another event led to more upset than might have been expected: Cyrille Guimard got rid of Guy Gallopin, Alain's brother who had been oiling the cogs of the entire organisation for two years, showing a mix of altruism and competence no matter what arose. As soon as he left, there was a resurgence of the logistical problems that we had experienced in 1986 and 1987, in exactly the same areas. All this annoyed me hugely but as soon as I wanted to pour out my feelings to Guimard he evaded the issue and refused to listen.

We had an excellent start in our new colours, which were easily picked out in the peloton. Gerard Rue won the Tour of the Mediterranean and I finished Paris Nice in a decent fourth place. The season looked as if it was going to be like the one before: I couldn't hope for better. The only problem was that my grip on MilanSan Remo didn't last, unfortunately, in spite of the care I took over my preparation. I trained in exactly the same way as I had in the previous two years but the Italians wanted my domination of the race to end and they cooked up a rather nasty surprise for us at the very start of the race. While I was lurking deep in the back of the bunch as I always did, a vast group escaped at the front of the race. It wasn't the traditional early suicide break but a mini-peloton in its own right including several major players and race favourites. Our attempts to get back on terms were in vain. I never saw the front of the race again. Gianni Bugno, the young starlet of Italian cycling, was the winner and a whole country breathed a sigh of relief.

And so did I, because a week later I was winning again, at the two-day, three-stage Criterium International, a race I had already dominated as a new professional in 1982. It was a race full of attacks, from every side, and I owed the win to my experience and consistency, because I managed to salvage the overall t.i.tle in spite of not winning a stage. It was Castorama's second prestigious win in a few weeks, but it was to be my last victory in a major stage race: how could I have imagined at the time that such a thing could be possible?

Because something was not quite right with me. What was it? For example, at the Tour of Flanders in 1990, the weather was glorious and I was in flying form, so I made a colossal effort to get across to a breakaway group. But no sooner had I come up to them than they all immediately showed me that they had no desire to cooperate in keeping the move going. I didn't understand their thinking and lost my temper. A few years previously I would have tried to ride them all off my wheel and it wouldn't have made any difference apart from tiring me out a little. This time I reacted in a different way. I was disgusted by their collective lack of drive, which I perceived as having something to do with a ma.s.sive change taking place in the sport, and I got off my bike. I just quit. I no longer saw any place for me among colleagues with a code of conduct in which honour and sacrifice were old-fashioned eccentricities. This little episode left its mark on me.

From that day on, there is almost nothing to write about the rest of the 1990 season, so catastrophically did it unfold. I came out of the Cla.s.sics season completely washed up twenty-seventh in Paris...o...b..ix for example I came close to coming down with pleurisy, and I set off in the Tour of Italy wearing race number I with a mindset that was nothing like what I might have hoped for. In total contrast to the same period the year before, I was desperately seeking some trace of something to cling to in my own shadow. Things were as bad as they could be. And from the first day, even though I didn't feel in particularly bad shape far from it I still lost ground on the future winner, Gianni Bugno: 29sec in the prologue time trial and all of 47sec on the very first climb, Vesuvius. But worse still, the bad luck that had spared me a little in 1989 was determined to cross my path again and have its merry way with me.

On the fifth stage from Sora to Teramo, after exactly 150km as the race went through the Apennines, many of the bunch were caught by surprise as the race went through a tunnel. It was pitch dark. I could vaguely hear the noise of braking, dull thuds and crashes, then after flying though the void I could see nothing at all I landed on the tarmac without any idea what was going on, coming down heavily on one b.u.t.tock. It was dark and there was shouting from all round me. I got up with my thigh covered in blood and I could tell from the pain that was paralysing the whole of my lower back that I had done some real damage. I got back on the bike and finished the stage but the truth was like a kick in the teeth. I had dislocated my pelvis. The pain never let up and four days later on the ninth stage, I quit in thick fog on the Tyrrhenian coast. The bunch didn't wait for me: they were already a long way ahead of where I was.

This was a bad injury and the people around me were worried. I remember Alain Gallopin tried to rea.s.sure me when I returned to Paris. He kept the world off my back and showed the patience of a saint in trying to stop anything getting on my nerves. But my morale was low. I didn't say much to anyone. Nothing was working out as I had wanted and after this latest crash my body refused to do what I asked of it for several weeks. Was it ever going to give me any respite after that?

When I arrived at the start of the 1990 Tour at Futuroscope, a theme park entirely devoted to modernity and new technology, that opened three years earlier, I was a tired man, physically and mentally. I had few illusions about what was coming. Thierry Marie gave the team a win in the prologue time trial of course, and I was a decent fifteenth. Then the fun began. There are cycling specialists who expound the theory that the 'weakest' cyclists in the Tour 'fall more often'. They have no idea. All that I remember is that I simply wasn't strong mentally. And when I ended up on the tarmac again, on the third stage to Nantes, with a nasty knock on the calf this time, I felt as if injustice was singling me out like lightning striking a lone tree. I said nothing. I just pondered my physical misery, and gave short shrift to anyone who wanted to feel sorry for me and expected me to bemoan my fate.

But I still had to face reality. The next day between Nantes and Mont St-Michel I couldn't avoid getting trapped when the bunch split after a ma.s.sive crash. I lost another 20sec and any chance of winning the Tour was now just a distant illusion. Then came the coup de grace coup de grace: I admit it was more mental than physical. Between Avranches and Rouen a dreary rain was falling, the kind that dulls all your hopes. The bunch, for some bizarre reason, was going like h.e.l.l, going faster all the time, one attack after another. I wasn't really there. The pain in my calf was getting worse and worse. My body was suffocating, my mind wandering vaguely. Why did I find it so hard to be what I had been? Why did cycling suddenly turn against me? Why did bad luck and setbacks hound me whatever I did? Yes, why did fate torment me in this way, singling me out above all the others?

My act of rebellion was a silent one. At kilometre 124 as we approached the feeding station at Villers-Bocage, I was already in limbo, a footnote in the story of the 1990 Tour and I let myself slip behind a small group that was trying to regain contact with the bunch. I pulled on the brakes and got off the bike. I unpinned my race numbers. I said nothing, just made this one proud gesture. Unpinning my race numbers. It wasn't a normal abandon and it certainly didn't feel like capitulation. No, it was a gesture born of disillusionment and pride, a way of sticking up two fingers at fate. You must never disdain a symbolic gesture when you get the chance, even if it's done in infinite sadness. Otherwise you end up looking for them everywhere, constantly seeking compensation or reparation to boost your soul. It's like an eternal time trial, and the contre la montre contre la montre is a lonely affair. is a lonely affair.

I remember that evening, in a state of utter depression, I thought back to what I had told Alain Gallopin more than a year before: '1989 will be the last year I can win the Tour.' The 1990 Tour had gone elsewhere, without me, and I could not escape from the notion that my premonition was coming true. It was a devastating idea. Soul-destroying and yet so completely real.

The end of the season was like going through a desert. I don't remember much about it: there wasn't a great deal of any interest.

Things were so bad that at the start of 1991 I forced myself to make one single resolution: not to go through another year of h.e.l.l. That was all that mattered. I now entered a time filled with strange doubts. Wondering about what I wanted to do next with my life and not just my cycling career I began to question whether I really still wanted to suffer desperately on a bike. I knew that I was no longer the cyclist I had been in 1983 and that it was now time to stop kidding myself. It was no longer a matter of courage, but whether or not. I still had a burning desire to keep living the life of a professional cyclist with all the personal sacrifice that goes with it. I can still see myself, a few weeks earlier, saying to Cyrille Guimard just how worn out with it all I was and more seriously than anything else in the world explaining how I saw our work at Maxi-Sports developing in the future.

I was thirty years old. He was thirteen years older. I never for an instant imagined that I could cause him the slightest concern, but with hindsight I believe that Guimard thought I wanted to edge him out. The idea of having two managers in our business was not something he could envisage. That was a mistake on his part. There was no reason why we should tread on each other's toes and we knew each other inside out. The trouble was that I felt rapidly that something was going against the grain with him. Day after day, he didn't seem to see me in the same way as he had in the past. He did not approve of my wish to become more involved in running the team. Deep down, Guimard did not agree but he refrained from admitting it to me face to face. As for me, after ten years as a professional bike rider I was at the end of my natural cycle. I have noticed since that every ten years I seem to want to change something fundamental.

A new co-leader, Luc Leblanc, had signed with the team and I could clearly see from the outset that Guimard was trying to turn his ambition against me. Guimard manipulated him and that was all Leblanc needed. He showed few scruples, in contrast to what he claimed as soon as a microphone was shoved under his nose. He set to this perverse game with astonishing gusto. Guimard was no longer like he used to be. The man I had been so fond of was drifting away from me, irretrievably, with some added impetus from the Castorama directors. As opposed to what we had expected, these guys were beginning to push Guimard over the edge by racking up the pressure on him. Not only did they want to know every detail of our accounts, such as how much we paid the riders, but more seriously they began to ask for something more than results: they wanted me to be a television 'presence'.

It was part of a bigger picture. The reaper was sharpening his scythe. He was about to cut a swathe through the cycling I had known. This was new territory for me, and also for Guimard. Even if he didn't let me in on everything, I am personally convinced that never before had he been under the slightest pressure either from Renault or from Systeme U. So now we were being influenced by the need for a return on our sponsor's investment not merely through the image of the team, but also through our results. Our world was undergoing a radical change, and I didn't like it. Never had I envisaged a sponsor wanting to interfere in the sporting side of the team to that extent. I felt that it was scandalous and degrading for our integrity. But Guimard had clearly got off on the wrong footing with them or else had lost any bargaining power that might have enabled him to resist in some way. He refused to be disturbed by it.

I felt I was heading into uncharted territory. I was the co-owner of the team but Guimard was becoming more distant from me and was deciding a huge number of things without consulting me. The sponsor was putting a gun to our heads and was exerting power over the team that I felt to be damaging and possibly fatal. And amidst all this I was searching in vain for my old power on the bike and for the motivation without which it was meaningless to imagine better days.

I finished Paris-Nice in tenth place, which barely matched what I'd hoped for, and during the race I had a ma.s.sive row with Guimard. During a stage where we were supposed to keep our cards to our chests and save our strength, all of a sudden I saw several members of the team get to the head of the peloton and begin riding hard as if they were defending the leader's jersey. I had no idea what was going on and rode up to find out. I had a grumble and asked what they were up to. One of them shouted, 'Cyrille asked us to get riding.' There was a simple explanation: Guimard had decided to implement a cunning manoeuvre to defeat the Toshiba team, but without telling me. Guimard had not warned me, not even a hint! It was unthinkable: until then we had always discussed race tactics together, exchanged our views and then decided on the line to follow. It was the first time that he had acted in this way. I felt betrayed.

That evening at the hotel, Cyrille and I exchanged words. Swear words. It amounted to mutually a.s.sured destruction. For the first time in our life together we didn't like each other any more.

An incredible thing happened a few weeks later at Paris...o...b..ix. Guimard came up alongside me in the car and, at a completely pointless moment in strategic terms, he asked me to get up to the front of the race because we didn't have anyone from the team showing his face. I didn't really understand at the time why he was asking us to take this precaution but I a.s.sumed that he must know what he was doing so I blindly went along with the tactic. I only learned the truth a little later. It was a grim truth that I had not dared admit to myself beforehand, because I knew how I would react. The Castorama directors had put pressure on Guimard to ensure an 'on camera presence'. They wanted 'television time' so that at the start of live coverage the cameras could show their colours. I was disgusted by the idea. The important thing on Paris...o...b..ix was to be in the front in the final phases, rather than grinning at the television pretending to put on a show. It was the first time I had been asked to 'do it for the cameras'.

I need hardly say that I made my feelings clear to Guimard after I learned about his dealings with the sponsor. This latest violent verbal altercation left me shocked and depressed. Our differences had become irreparable. We both decided, without anything being said, that we were not going to talk to each other any more. We even avoided meeting.

I have no idea how far the breakdown in my relationship with the man who had shared my whole life as an elite sportsman in other words, most of my adult life had a knock-on effect on my general behaviour and on my private life. But it just so happened that at the same time I began to experience serious difficulties in my relationship with my wife Nathalie. It was more and more of a struggle to go back home with a carefree, joyful heart. The lack of care and of the haven of peace that I felt I should be waiting when I returned home had turned into a furnace of tension as well. Nothing was working out there either.

These are painful memories of multiple doubts that invaded every area of my life. My whole environment seemed to be falling apart and the more time pa.s.sed the more everything around me seemed destined to failure, personal failure. Without feeling completely responsible for all this, apart from my lack of success on the bike, I believe that I was ground down by everything, by the pace of a life lived at a hundred kilometres per hour and the humdrum routine that I had got into over the years. I did the same work. I rode for the same team. The same people looked after me. I came home to the same woman. It was a hard thing to admit but I needed change. I needed a revolution.

The inevitable duly happened. Cyrille Guimard didn't content himself with keeping me at arm's length but ended up working against me. At the time Guimard had a vast amount of personal credit among the press and the wider public and he had no trouble exerting his influence. So for the journalists, for example, to explain away my repeated lack of results, he dreamed up imaginary injuries that were all equally grotesque. There were some hacks who weren't fooled, which simply added to the breakdown in the relationship.

I had no notion how difficult Guimard would be. At the Giro di Puglia, not long before the 1991 Tour de France, I actually managed to win the penultimate stage. I was happy, but not my manager, who looked pretty ill at ease. Guess why. If I had not managed to win a single race before the start of the Tour, Guimard might well have dropped me from the Tour squad. Unfortunately for him not only did I manage to raise my arms in a victory salute but it actually looked as if I might be coming into some kind of form for the Tour. His plans were going awry. Up to a certain point, anyway.

Before the French road race championship I was called to a meeting with Guimard and Jean-Hugues Loyez. During the season I had been calling Loyez to explain to him in no uncertain terms that I was having trouble working with Guimard and that I would no longer be in the team in 1992, whatever happened and however I decided to continue my career. I was far from having any notion of what was going to happen in this meeting which, to begin with, seemed more like a trial to me. I had barely sat down before Guimard began laying into me, accusing me of 'failing to do my job properly' and 'disrupting the harmony of the team' by 'failing to make proper allowances for the demands of the press and other media'. Then he added: 'You have to make a public statement that you are not riding the Tour.'

I was flabbergasted, to say the least. But I responded immediately, calmly but firmly. I said 'What?' Then I added without raising my voice but leaving no doubt that I was determined on it: 'I am doing the Tour. That's all there is to it.' Then I turned to Guimard, looking him straight in the eye. 'From this moment on, I'm not saying anything more to you. Guimard, you should be ashamed of yourself.'

In contrast to what I a.s.sumed was coming, Loyez seemed rather impressed by my att.i.tude. He clearly hadn't expected me to react like this, and Guimard wasn't ready for it either. He tried to counter-attack by demanding certain conditions that he was sure would be unacceptable to me.

Firstly, I was to apologise to the press and answer any requests that might be made of me.

Secondly, I was to give up my status as leader and ride for the good of the team.

Then I turned to Loyez. 'If you refuse to give me the chance to ride the Tour you will have to give an explanation in public. Otherwise it will come from me, and I will give a full account of how you are treating me. You must understand that there is no chance of me saying that I am the one who doesn't want to race the Tour.' They looked at each other in silence. 'I will set one condition,' I continued.

Guimard interrupted, 'You have no right to set conditions.'

I looked at him: 'I'll hear nothing from you. I don't talk to doormats.' Then I turned back to Loyez. 'I want the following conditions. After the Tour de France, which I will race as well as I can, you will ask nothing else of me. There will be no demands from your side and I will race whatever I want. That's all. Guimard will no longer force me to do anything. Up to the Tour, I agree that I will do everything I can to make life easy for you, but afterwards it's all over. I'll be out of Castorama.'

Guimard shouted: 'But I'm the boss.'

I didn't deign to reply. To me he had become a somewhat pathetic figure.

We all understood that I was prepared to make concessions in order to start the Tour, but my determination had frozen their blood. Guimard, who was no longer my master, was furious, but clearly he had no option but to give way.

Eventually I was alone for a second with Jean-Hugues Loyez who was absolutely determined to talk to me one-to-one. He just said, 'Well done, Monsieur Fignon.'

I didn't understand how he had reacted: he had not an ounce of enmity towards me, he was just astonished, as if he had been impressed. But what was there to be impressed at?

CHAPTER 30.

FINISHING WITH GUIMARD IS NEVER PRETTY.

When we turned up in Lyon for the start of the 1991 Tour de France, the fact that Guimard and I had reached the point of no return had seeped out into the cycling world. There had been insinuating articles in the papers that hinted at a possible divorce, but by skirting round the topic and talking in general terms everyone held back a little to avoid compromising our chances in the Tour. That was going to be a grim affair due to the circ.u.mstances. The best that can be said is that there weren't many smiles in the camp.

Guimard obviously had more access than I did to the other riders in the team. Given the dominant position he enjoyed I can barely imagine what he might have said about me during this difficult period. My teammates' first thought was for the future of their careers, which was understandable. I felt more isolated than ever and I had neither the desire nor the appet.i.te for conspiring against Guimard. That was the price I paid for being straight. Apart from the fact that it wouldn't have been very honourable, doing the dirty on Guimard with whoever it happened to be held no interest for me. I had other things to do. I had no feelings of nostalgia for the past. The combative side of my character lent me the perspective of a mature man who knows what he's doing and why he's doing it. I was neither sad nor happy, peaceful or comfortable. I was feeling my way through a fairly tricky transition. I was the 'historic' leader but my position was threatened both by my lack of results and by the team manager who had overseen my career. With all these sources of pressure, I needed to be very resilient to keep my head above water. My result in the prologue time trial was not exactly delightful: I was sixty-fourth, 22sec behind the winner, my teammate Thierry Marie, and 20sec behind Breukink, 19sec behind LeMond.

To tell the truth the difficult circ.u.mstances had spurred me on in a way. Better still, I had done away with the notion of toning down my ambitions when I was racing, even though it might have crossed my mind now and then during the months before the Tour. I had gone through the same process with the temptation to quit cycling. I knew now that it was difficult to end your career once you were over thirty and had entered a time of life that was difficult for all sportsmen. Let's just say that I didn't see things the same way and was less sure about everything. Of course, I had seen the example set by Bernard Hinault, a determined Breton who had appointed a time limit and had stuck to it. That wasn't how I was. How did you end a career on a high point and when? Should I have given it all up in 1989 while I was still young? But back then I had been certain that the season that was coming up would be as rewarding as the previous one. On the other hand, how could you call time after something had gone wrong? That wasn't my style, not my way of doing things. I wanted to stop myself going downhill. And I was aware that there was a financial side to the debate: I loved this profession more than anything else and I was not capable of doing anything else to earn money, a lot of money. I didn't have any idea what the concept of 'a season too many' was. I hadn't catered for that eventuality.

During the second stage, a team time trial over 36.5km between Bron and Cha.s.sieu in the Lyon suburbs, I played a full part in a decent performance by Castorama, second to the Italian team Ariostea by a mere eight seconds. That figure had a few resonances. Apart from Luc Leblanc, who was making my life h.e.l.l, the team included Christophe Lavainne, Dominique Arnould, Jean-Claude Bagot, Bjarne Riis, Pascal Simon, Frederic Vichot. There was also Thierry Marie, who delighted us all by taking a prestigious win in the sixth stage, between Arras and Le Havre, after a lone escape of historic length: 234km.

Any illusions I may have had didn't last long. I finished only sixteenth in the long individual time trial of 73km between Argentan and Alencon, 3 min 39sec behind Miguel Indurain who was unaware that he was beginning a long spell of dominance in the Tour. As for me, I had no idea what to make of my state because paradoxically I didn't feel short of form or mentally out of the race. I was far from out of it, as the future was to prove, but the stages through the Pyrenees completely changed the balance of power.

Between Pau and Jaca, Luc Leblanc got into the winning break together with Charly Mottet and pulled on the yellow jersey. Guimard was beside himself with delight. Not only had his latest protege pulled off one of the little conjuring tricks that were to be his secret weapon all through his career, he had also cornered me into playing a team role. How could you not work for the rider wearing the yellow jersey? So during the great Pyrenean stage between Jaca and Val-Louron, over the Aubisque, Tourmalet and Aspin, I took on as honestly as I could the role of teammate and protector to a bloke who was not on my side. Well, I did it to a certain extent anyway. After struggling slightly on the Tourmalet and then making up on the descent, I managed to stay with the best riders on the Aspin. There, Bugno attacked, Mottet countered, and I marked them immediately to protect Leblanc. But he was not able to keep up. In spite of being in perfect form he showed what his limitations were. A group formed including all the leaders such as Claudio Chiappucci, Bugno and Miguel Indurain, and I moved back ahead of Leblanc in the overall standings in fourth place.

The tension within the team got worse and worse. Even so, it still hurt when I realised that none of the other riders could recall my racing record, or who I was, or what I had achieved. One evening, at Albi, I was the epicentre of a memorably fair and frank exchange of views which went like this. Princ.i.p.al actors: all the team. Subject of discussion: Luc Leblanc. Tone of discussion: angry. Protagonists who expressed their views most strongly: Cyrille Guimard and myself. We discovered yet again how unpleasant it was having to speak to each other: it was noisy mayhem. All that can be said is that we called each other all sorts of names. And I can still remember the despicable att.i.tude of the rest of the team. They all cast looks at me that needed no interpretation. I was the only one who spoke in my defence; the only one who was willing to tell Guimard what I thought of his way of running the team, while making sure that everyone knew just what I thought of Luc Leblanc.

At l'Alpe d'Huez I had regained some of my old power and even if it was limited it was enough to drag me up to ninth on the stage. I was playing in the big boys' playground again, even if I was doing so on the QT and a little bit behind the others. It did me the world of good. There was just one thing: the stage had been cut back to the bare minimum: 123km. It did not work to my advantage, but worse still it marked the definitive beginning of a ridiculous era when the toughness of professional races was systematically diminished. Far from restraining the growth of doping, this allowed 'average' riders to use artificial aids to get through stages that were limited in their demands and which were interspersed with recovery time. Speeds that the riders were able to maintain for 130 or 150km would have been unthinkable over stages of more than 200km, even with the aid of doping products. 'Natural selection' was reduced to next to nothing.

In road cycling you should never confuse endurance events with sprints. This change was to prove fatal for cycling. No one has faced up to that fact for the last twenty years, but who does it damage? Six months before the start of the 1991 Tour I had made precisely this point to Jean-Marie Leblanc, the race director, but clearly he didn't share my point of view. I can remember that I even described to him exactly what the implications were for the way racing would develop. He didn't want to listen.

I finished the 1991 Tour in sixth place just over eleven minutes behind Miguel Indurain, and behind Bugno, Chiappucci, Mottet and Leblanc, who had managed to nip back in front of me in the last few stages. It didn't make a lot of difference. My performance had been more than honourable, the product of guts and experience. It didn't go completely unnoticed.

Going back home, I felt as if I had got out of jail. I was free of Guimard and liberated from a team that was now hostile to me. I could be completely myself again, far from malevolent eyes.

It never seems to end prettily with Cyrille. There was no point in looking at the events of the previous few months with the conviction that I had been a victim, although it was still one of the toughest spells of my career on a personal level, because for the first time ever I did not have to make decisions about the team of which I was the co-owner. It was as if I no longer had a team at all, even though I had not ridden the Tour as an individual. But what I can say is that I raced that Tour without Cyrille, without his advice and his support. And I still managed to finish sixth. I had scrupulously respected team orders particularly when Leblanc was wearing the yellow jersey when they were to the team's advantage.