But I have to tell the truth: sometimes, some of Guimard's instructions were so grotesque and could have been so damaging for me that I could not blindly follow them. For example, on the stage through the Alps to Morzine, 100km from the finish, Guimard wanted me to make a long-range solo attack. I said, 'No'. I believe he wanted to wear me out, and I wasn't going to waste my energy for nothing. Thinking back, I was not prepared to tolerate what was going on during that Tour. After ten years of working closely with him, he should have let himself be guided by rather n.o.bler feelings, a higher interest.

So I left him on pretty much the same terms as Bernard Hinault had done eight years earlier. That's curious, isn't it? Who would have expected it? But with Guimard, the end is never pretty. All partings are brutal, cruel, and even though I'm not going to pile all the blame on his back, I can now acknowledge my great mistake. To keep in tune with the cycle of my life, both in my mental needs and in the way I compete, I really should have changed team every four years.

After the Tour I did as I liked, and I went where I wanted. All that was uncertain was my future. Everyone knew that I wanted to change teams, and in that, incredible as it may seem, I was on completely unknown territory. I believed, wholeheartedly, that my name and my racing record would get me what I wanted. I a.s.sumed that offers would come flooding in. Nothing could be more obvious, I thought. But there was nothing. Nothing at all. The phone didn't ring. No one was interested in me. The silence was ferocious. I didn't feel hard done by, I simply didn't understand. But thinking it all over, I finally worked out that everyone was afraid of me. Beginning with the directeurs sportifs directeurs sportifs, who might have been 'forewarned' behind the scenes by Guimard.

One morning I said, 'Oh, what the h.e.l.l, I'll end my career now.' Then, faced with the prospect of pa.s.sively letting it all finish, I relented and picked up the telephone. It didn't feel humiliating in the slightest. I had to clear the minefield myself. I couldn't just let myself be pushed out of the sport without doing anything about it. First of all I detected a good opening at Panasonic, but the money they were offering was below everyone else. To continue making the physical sacrifices that the sport demanded, I required a certain incentive. Then there was interest from an Italian team who wanted to make an impact on the French market. The contract was signed and sealed in no time at all. I was delighted.

The winter finally froze my relations with Guimard. We divided our business interests. He wanted to continue with the team, so he ended up with Maxi-Sports. As he owed me quite a lot of money and didn't have a lot of ready cash I was allotted some property that belonged to the company. Everything was sorted out properly through our lawyers and I had no reason to complain about the division of our a.s.sets.

CHAPTER 31.

RESPECT FOR THE CAMPIONISSIMO CAMPIONISSIMO.

Getting old is a destabilising process for everybody. You don't skip lightly down the path to being 'old', 'wise' or 'experienced'.

When I set off to join my new team, I took Alain Gallopin with me: that was one of the conditions I'd agreed on with the Italians. And having him alongside me was essential to ensure the mental stability that would lead to good results. Although back in France my private life wasn't getting any happier, as soon as I arrived in Italy I became aware of how much they admire the best cyclists, the campionissimi campionissimi. It was a ma.s.sive eyeopener for me. For the Italians a champion remains a champion and there is always colossal respect for anyone who has won the greatest races in the past. A sportsman who has once been considered great is always seen as a great. He draws admiring looks for ever. He matters as much when he is an older statesman of the sport as he did in his best days.

Before the season began, the owner of the team, an Italian multimillionaire, organised a stay in Venice, where he owned a palazzo palazzo, and then on his vast estate near Treviso. The mindset I discovered completely changed my way of seeing things. Sport mattered so much in Italy, and within the team everything around us helped us to race to the best of our ability. We were positively spoiled. There was no chance of any disruption due to problems with equipment. The organisation was tip-top. The sportsman was king. It was a different world.

Not only had I begun learning Italian during the winter which rather impressed them but I also came to this new team in a low-key way, without making any demands, even if it was out of the question for me to be viewed as a mere gregario gregario or team worker. My contract stipulated that I would be the joint leader of the team together with Gianni Bugno. In reality, of course, Bugno not only had youth on his side and the support of an entire nation which was betting on him to win the Tour de France, but he had talent to burn and was in his prime. The or team worker. My contract stipulated that I would be the joint leader of the team together with Gianni Bugno. In reality, of course, Bugno not only had youth on his side and the support of an entire nation which was betting on him to win the Tour de France, but he had talent to burn and was in his prime. The directeur sportif directeur sportif Gianluigi Stanga was hoping that I would play the role of ' Gianluigi Stanga was hoping that I would play the role of 'capitaine de route' for Bugno. I was to give him the benefit of my experience and race knowledge and make sure he had all the advice and support he needed. Bugno was a fragile being, and was continually teetering between dominance and disaster. He was a true superstar, but a vulnerable man.

Gianluigi Stanga and I had discussed all this at length in Milan at a key meeting well before I decided I would sign for them. He was quite astonished by all the questions I asked that day. He clearly believed that all I was going to talk about was money, but what I really wanted was a.s.surances about the way the team was run. I wanted to know what the other riders thought about it, the role they really wanted me to play and so on. Unfortunately, the future was to prove that these fine people listened to me too infrequently for my taste.

When it came to building relationships within the team, that happened quickly and it was a pleasant process for everyone. I often shared a room with one of two really delightful riders, Stefano Zanatta and Giovanni Fidanza. Zanatta knew a few words of French; Fidanza didn't. At the start of the season Stanga entered me for a whole load of races that I didn't want to do because I couldn't stand the cold weather. Working with Guimard I had always had a say in my racing programme, but that wasn't the case with Stanga; so much so that I started MilanSan Remo without being able to prepare as I usually did.

I remember that beforehand there was a long discussion about what the best tactic would be for the race. My opinion mattered to them: I was a double winner of the event and that counted for a lot in their eyes. I had said that in my view the best thing was to keep out of the action for as long as possible to conserve our strength. They listened to me attentively as I expounded my views, and up to the end of the meeting I believed that they would take them into account, or at least take some inspiration from what I said. But in the first third of the race all those plans went by the wayside. A group of riders got away at the front of the race and who took up the chase behind? All my boys of course. I rode up to talk to all the riders one-by-one, to ask why we had changed our tactics. 'We've got to ride, we've got to ride.' It was panic stations and of course we lost the race.

Basically I think I had trouble adapting to the way they raced. As far as organisation went, everything was superb, there were no criticisms to be made and I couldn't have hoped for better. But tactically it just didn't suit me at all. When we decided we would do something it was often the wrong moment, but, above all, most of the time we didn't actually do anything. Worst of all the plan was to do nothing. With my new team I was guaranteed selection for the biggest events as 'back-up leader', but the modest way they raced and their lack of ambition took a lot of the pleasure out of it.

CHAPTER 32.

A LONG, LUNATIC RIDE.

As a cyclist gets older he believes that age has made him totally aware of all the information his body gives him. He imagines that this is a vital advantage, a science in its own right that gives him an extra edge. But during the 1992 season I gradually noticed an indisputable change in myself: I had lost my aggression and my ability to act spontaneously. I was less daring when I needed to push myself, even though I knew that I was as talented as before, and I may still have had all my physical ability.

I felt that I was coming into really fine form when I arrived in San Sebastian for the start of the 1992 Tour de France. It was rightly called the 'European Tour' because to celebrate the year of the Maastricht treaty the organisers made us visit no fewer than seven countries. I had just finished fourth in the French national championship and it wasn't unreasonable to have a few hopes. But was there once again a difference between what I thought I could do and what was physically possible? During the first few stages it was all as I had expected: my health was good; it didn't feel particularly tough. There were no grounds for aspiring to overall victory, of course, but no reason to feel anything was going to spoil the party. Reality hit me like a slap in the face. I was humiliated. The backdrop to this was Luxembourg. The stage was the celebrated individual time trial over sixty-five kilometres, during which Miguel Indurain pushed back the frontiers of the discipline. He put me to shame: I was caught and overtaken after he had started six minutes behind me. It was an incredible exploit, which was not in any way down to a lack of fitness on my part. Far from it: the Spaniard annihilated the opposition that day by putting more than three minutes into all his rivals. These were terrifying margins at the time. I was wounded to the quick. I didn't like this kind of thing.

Although most of the time I was officially working for Gianni Bugno, who would eventually finish third in Paris, more than ten minutes behind Indurain, the eleventh stage between Strasbourg and Mulhouse provided a perfect opportunity to show everyone that I was still called Laurent Fignon. It was a stage through 'medium' mountains and was of a length that suited me perfectly 249.5km. We had already reconnoitred this stage, which went over a fair few hills and the Grand Ballon.

That morning, before the start at the pre-stage meeting, I stood up and said, 'We have to try something today.' Although overall victory seemed to be slipping away from Bugno due to Indurain's dominance, we had to try and secure his place on the podium and to do that we needed to get rid of Greg LeMond, who was already showing signs of fatigue. I thought that during this stage we could at least get rid of this one threat to Bugno so I said: 'When I give the word, we all start to attack.' They all agreed and then, of course, they all refused to stand up and be counted. A hundred kilometres from the finish I went and found them. I said: 'This is the moment.' It was a joke: they all slipped away for some reason which again eluded me. But this time I lost my temper. Big-time. I went to see Stanga and warned him: 'If they won't go, I'm going anyway.' And I set off on a long ride which must have seemed crazy. First of all I rode across to the break which had gone away early in the stage; none of them were willing to share the pace, but it wasn't a problem. One-by-one, using brute strength, I got rid of them all on the Grand Ballon. On the hilly roads of the Vosges my willpower was what counted.

Behind, Indurain's team, Banesto, never stopped chasing: I ended up riding what amounted to a hundred-kilometre time trial. At the summit of the Grand Ballon I had a two-minute lead over the bunch but Anselmo Fuerte, who I had dropped on the final part of the climb, was not far behind, just thirty seconds. My team's a.s.sistant directeur sportif directeur sportif, Claudio Corti, drove up to tell me: 'Wait for him.' I refused. The gap over the bunch was not big enough and there were still fifty-three kilometres to ride before the finish. It was a headwind all the way to Mulhouse, but I did it in less than an hour. The peloton chased furiously but I managed to hang on to a few seconds' lead at the finish, so I had time to raise my arms. This one exploit justified my transfer to the team: they were delighted. It was their first stage win in the Tour.

I didn't learn about the background to the win until that evening; and what I found out confirmed that I had needed to be pretty strong to keep the peloton at bay; Cyrille Guimard had devised a plan which he had hoped would prevent me from winning the stage. Castorama placed four riders in counter-attacks which formed on the Grand Ballon, something which brought knowing smiles to the faces of everyone who was watching. Luc Leblanc was the last stage of the rocket Guimard had fired and he was unable to conceal what the strategy had been when he spoke to television after the stage: 'It was Cyrille who told us to attack,' he said, pa.s.sing the buck. Then a journalist who found it quite funny asked the Castorama boss: 'Well, Cyrille Guimard, were you riding against Fignon?' Guimard's answer was, 'You know where you can stick that question.' No one was fooled. He had put all the weapons he had into an attempt to foil me and everyone knew it.

Having won a prestigious stage I felt a weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I wanted to put all I had into helping Gianni Bugno turn the Tour around. After all, it wasn't totally impossible. During the famous stage to Sestriere where Claudio Chiappucci became a national hero after an incredible exploit, I had concocted an anti-Indurain plan. I had noticed that when he was put under pressure he never made an effort to pull back the attackers at once. He always waited for his a.s.sailants to slow slightly to get their second wind and at that precise moment he would lift the pace to come up to them. I gave up a lot of time to explaining this to Bugno, in great detail. Then I suggested: 'At a given moment I'll warn you and I'll begin to ride fast, but not at one hundred per cent of what I've got. Then, you attack once, without going too deep; you need to have a little bit in reserve.' He was listening like a schoolboy with his teacher. I continued: 'At the moment when you see Indurain lifting the pace to bridge the gap, then, at that precise moment, you attack for real. And you repeat the whole thing again as many times as you need to.' He ended up saying vaguely, 'Sounds good.' But I could see a total lack of conviction on his face. He was saying 'Yes' but I felt that he was probably thinking the opposite. I ended up convincing him, or so I thought, by saying: 'What are you risking? Honestly? Do you think you'll crack before he does? Do you think you'll lose the Tour? But if you do nothing the Tour is lost anyway, so go for it.'

On the climb that we had singled out beforehand, as agreed, I lifted the pace. And Bugno attacked just as we had envisaged. After a little while Indurain got going and I watched what happened next with horror. Not only did Bugno fail to attack again, but he put up the white flag without even challenging the Spaniard. He simply slipped on to Indurain's back wheel. I was devastated by the Italian's conduct. The role of team leader was just too big for him. To make the tactical fiasco complete, Stanga ordered us to attack on the Galibier the following day. We both got away, Bugno and I. Was it a 'royal escape', where the big names go for glory? Not in the slightest. Pushing Bugno to his limits was a fruitless task. He kept complaining, saying we were going too hard; it was an amazing thing to watch this exceptional champion committing sporting suicide in front of me. I was worn out by all the stupidity and finished the Tour in rather low spirits.

I am ashamed to tell the story of what nearly happened to me on the final stage to the Champs-Elysees. I was demoralised, ground down by the three weeks and opted to sleep in my own bed rather than at the team's hotel. But when I went to my car to go to the stage start at La Defense, it wouldn't fire. The battery was flat. Panic set in. It was Sunday of course, so there was no way I could get a taxi. No one was answering the phone. I could see the next day's headlines: 'Fignon, the non-starter'. Miraculously I ended up locating Alain Gallopin who jumped into a car and got me to the start in extremis in extremis. It goes to show that experience is no guard at all against sheer stupidity. My nonchalance might have been refreshing and somehow joyful, but it was unforgivable. You don't abandon ship before you drop anchor in harbour.

CHAPTER 33.

DOPING EVERYWHERE.

How do you describe a trend? One that you can only detect by sniffing the air, by vaguely following a mere nothing at all as if you have put your finger up to sense the wind direction? I understood what was happening but I didn't want to see. I could see but I refused to understand. Then it all became obvious. So obvious that it became part of my thinking almost on a daily basis. Drug taking? It had always gone on. Even I had seen it close-up on a few occasions. Drug taking was rife? I didn't really understand what that meant in practice. New undetectable drugs? The craziest rumours would often be contradicted when the facts emerged and I was well placed to know that.

But there it was. Something completely out of the ordinary was going on and, incredible as it may seem, I had to work it out for myself. No one came to see me to explain: 'This is what is going on at the moment.' No one stuck their neck out and declared: 'This time, it's going to be very serious.'

As it happened my transfer to an Italian team speeded up the process of discovery for me. Part of the culture of Italian sport is the way they look after the health of athletes: it sometimes pushes the boundaries in unacceptable ways. I'm not necessarily talking about doping here, but the use of medicine in all kinds of situations. However, the 1990s would ill.u.s.trate to the point of absurdity that the boundary between legality and illegality was a very porous one. For example, after my stage win at Mulhouse in the 1992 Tour de France I had great difficulty recovering and so, to avoid a disastrous backlash, the following day the doctors were determined to make me gobble up a heap of recovery products based on vitamins and minerals and so on. Some were clearly very good. Others were not safe.

When I had first gone to see them, they were completely flabbergasted by my lack of knowledge in this area and my refusal to contemplate this sort of medical backup. 'But what do you do in France?' they asked in astonishment. When I explained to them that I only took vitamin C because psychologically I needed to feel how my body reacted to training and racing, there was a ma.s.sive silence. They didn't understand. Or perhaps they didn't believe me.

As far as the recuperation stuff went, I ended up letting the doctors have their way, but it was done on my terms. I wanted to be on the spot whenever the soigneurs soigneurs were opening the packets. I wanted to check everything to make sure that it was really vitamins and not G.o.d knows what. Honestly, I can't say I had boundless confidence. No. I had no confidence at all. Zero. were opening the packets. I wanted to check everything to make sure that it was really vitamins and not G.o.d knows what. Honestly, I can't say I had boundless confidence. No. I had no confidence at all. Zero.

The years when everything was transformed were 1991, 1992 and 1993. From then on, nothing was the same again. They were also my last years racing a bike. You could see me as a witness with unique access, but paradoxically I was at one remove from what was actually going on. It was the way I wanted it and it took prodigious stubbornness.

I was aware of the availability of EPO without actually knowing. There were vague rumours reaching my ears, but nothing more. Let's be clear: when I was still at Castorama in 1991 I was able to work a few things out by mere deduction, or sometimes just intuition. For example, I talk today about EPO, but I only found out much later that this was the name of the 'miracle' drug which was spoken about in confidence. Growth hormone has to be added to the list.

During the 1992 season I believe that these forms of doping which bore little relation to what we had experienced in the 1980s were not yet widespread. There were some of the team leaders who clearly seemed to have access to EPO, maybe one or two others in each team. I really don't know.

Then at the end of 1992, I was approached, I can see the scene as if it were yesterday. He began by talking in metaphors to give me a hint of what was going on. The process never got out into the open. He didn't say: 'I've got some EPO, do you want some?' It was more insidious than that. Roughly speaking, what he said was this: 'Laurent, you know that there is a super preparation product out there at present, we could perhaps have a look and see what we can do to have a go with you.' But there was no chance of me taking anything that was against the rules: and EPO was clearly forbidden.

Before taking any medicine to cure any ailment I always took medical advice. During my career, whenever the opinions of the doctors seemed reliable and legitimate, I knew exactly what I was doing, what I was taking and I knew down to the last detail that I was taking no risks with my health or with my career as a sportsman. But this was about EPO. Not a great deal was known about it except that it was a way of manipulating the red cells in your blood. And as far as I was concerned, just thinking about doing anything to my blood scared the living daylights out of me. I do recall, however, that haematologists of the time were confident that if EPO was used carefully, there was no risk to health. That was of course the argument that was favoured by the dopers, even if I was perfectly well aware that certain forms of 'doping' were only dangerous in excessive quant.i.ties. But as far as excesses went, I had seen nothing yet.

Let's go back to 1993, when everything became distorted and debased. As time pa.s.sed, I noticed that some of my teammates were beginning to perform in a rather surprising way. Up to then, these same riders hadn't shown any sign of talent that had impressed me in any way. But then there was a complete change in cyclists who I had seen pedalling alongside me every day. They improved without training any more than before, sometimes while doing less. It was blatant. I wasn't fooled.

I eventually observed the same phenomenon throughout the peloton. The way riders behaved changed rapidly. There were guys I barely knew coming more often to the head of the bunch and setting a crazy pace, way beyond what you would expect. After a few months some of them ended up talking to me and letting me know what was going on. People came and told me: 'This is how it is in every team.' It was a way of encouraging me to do it too. I was astonished, because I had never seen this in Guimard's teams.

I stood firm. I didn't want to have anything to do with EPO and even less to do with Human Growth Hormone, which horrified me. But I have to admit that I was in a position where I could permit myself to do this. I already had a reputation that was worth a good deal. My contract was set in stone. I had won the Tour de France twice, the Giro, MilanSan Remo and so on. On the one hand my status gave me freedom to do as I wanted. And on the other, my character allowed to me to stick to my guns: I was not afraid of any one.

But looking back, there is one question that is worth asking: how would I have acted if I had been five or six years younger, and had yet to build up my palmares palmares?

There is no doubt that it took considerable courage to resist the crooked stuff that was going on. I didn't lack courage. But I was thirty-one years old. Until that point I had always felt that I 'did the job right' to the best of my ability. What needs to be understood is that in my day, at least in the 1980s, there were riders who could 'cheat' without really feeling that they were doing so, because everyone was behaving in the same way, more or less, and using the same drugs. In addition, there is one thing that we have to bear in mind. Back then there was no drug, whatever it might have been, that could turn a donkey into a thoroughbred. Never. From Coppi to Hinault, pa.s.sing through the eras of Anquetil and Merckx, there was no magic that could dose up lesser riders to compete on equal terms with the greats. Exceptional human beings, like their extraordinary exploits, were authentic. I can testify that until about 1989 drug taking in cycling was an unsophisticated affair.

Day after day, cycling no longer seemed to have a place for me. The metamorphosis in the cyclists around me, the sport's clinical lack of humanity, meant that individuals were being turned into mere pedalling machines. What kind of a machine might I have become if I had given way to the pressures to take drugs? It became even more intense when, before the 1993 tour, someone went to see Alain Gallopin to tell him: 'Laurent has to do something now!'

It was insidious and so typical of those years. It didn't rattle me; rather the opposite. I've never taken fright when it comes to a show of force. But I can just imagine the damage that kind of thing could cause to riders who were psychologically weaker or less secure, or simply more desperate to get on in life.

And once it was done, obviously, if the cops caught up with a bike rider, he would end up being the ultimate 'cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.d' and his team would send him packing, screaming scandal and accusing him of every crime under the sun.

But most often, who were the real 'cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.ds'?

CHAPTER 34.

ON A STREET CORNER.

The 1993 season bore no resemblance to what I had planned. It was even more distressing than that. Who now recalls that my last professional win came in the Ruta Mexico? I'm the only European pro to have won that one.

When I started in the Tour de France, at Puy du Fou in the Vendee I had already come down with the beginnings of bronchitis which might have been enough to keep me out of such a demanding race, had circ.u.mstances been different.

The beginning was as bad as it could have been: I was sixty-seventh, forty-three seconds slower than Indurain. It was a worrying situation. Four days later the team rode a team time trial that ended up being a parody of a proper collective effort. It was an eighty-one kilometre stage where you needed to keep a cool head. Gianni Bugno was by far the strongest among us but he was completely unable to cope with his own strength. As a result, he set a pace that was too much for most of his teammates, all of whom were rapidly worn out so that less than fifty kilometres into the stage, the team blew to bits. Bugno definitely had no idea how to ride; this was simply not the way a team leader should behave.

One little episode now seems very significant. One day, when the peloton was a very long way from the finish and an early break of no importance had escaped, the whole bunch accelerated suddenly. In a few minutes the whole peloton was riding at 50kph in single file, with everyone pulling out the stops as best they could. I'm not sure now, but there must have been three or four hours' racing to go. I couldn't make head nor tail of it. So I went up to the front of the bunch as best I could, and was greeted by a mind-boggling sight.

Sitting at the head of the string was a hardworking French rider who had emigrated to one of the biggest teams of the day. The fact that this guy was on the front of the peloton wasn't remarkable in itself. He'd been there before. No, what was brainblowing was the way he was turning the pedals. That was all.

He looked as if he was barely trying but he was riding at more than 50kph on his own, his hands on the top of the bars in a three-quarters headwind. I was astounded. I yelled, 'You know there's still a hundred kilometres to the finish? Do you know how fast you're going?'

He just said, with his distinct northern-French accent, 'Pah, they've just said to ride, so I'm riding.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The poor lad had no idea what he was doing. It wasn't his fault: it was a product of his time.

Whatever was happening, it was for real.

The very next stage, en route to Amiens, was also ridden at an insane speed: 50kph average. The whole peloton was chasing flat out. And it wasn't as if they were on their knees. It was incredible.

One day followed another and my amazement at what was going on just grew and grew. Nothing seemed 'normal' any more. In every stage I kept alert to every move, and given that I had no lack of experience, I tried to slip into a breakaway group, but I simply couldn't manage it. It was impossible. I always lacked a little something, the final surge that might have made the difference. The spectacle that was unfolding around me each day seemed almost unreal. I was wandering like a soul in torment, lost in unknown territory.

Then the scariest episode of all took place: the one that definitively sunk any illusions that remained to me. In the Alps, between Villard-de-Lans and Serre-Chevalier, where we had to go over the Galibier, I had decided to attack on the Telegraphe. I was no danger overall and naturally I was permitted to open a gap. To be honest, I was ticking over nicely. For a second or two, a gentle breeze, the sweetest kind of daydream, blew kindly on my back. It was a delusion. That was all. Because well before the summit, while I was pressing on as I used to on my best days, or so I believed at least, I saw a vast group of riders come up to me. There were at least thirty. Or forty. Not one of them seemed to be pushing it, but I couldn't stay with them. To say that it played h.e.l.l with my mind is an understatement.

It stopped me in my tracks. It was something that went beyond mere humiliation. It was a death blow. I realised that I was being deprived of being my old self. I could no longer see a place for myself there. I was annihilated. Destroyed.

It was the death knell for my career in cycling. As I went over the summit of the Telegraphe I said to myself, 'It's over. I'm going nowhere. I have to put a stop to this.' Because in front of me now there were not merely the best riders but plenty of others, some of my own generation, who I had never seen match me in the high mountains with such a worrying lack of effort.

Nothing seemed normal. Even 'normality' had no meaning for me any more. And nothing shocked me now. So much so that on the Galibier, as I rode at my own pace, who did I catch up? Gianni Bugno, no less, who had completely fallen to bits. The Tour was over for him. As for me, my career had tottered a little but was now definitely dying in the majestic silence of the Alps.

I knew that it was all over for me. But there was not a single second when I said seriously to myself: 'It's because of EPO.' That might now seem bizarre and incomprehensible. But I still would not face up to it. I had pretty much all the information that I needed to a.n.a.lyse the situation clinically. But I didn't. When I lost races, I would never put it down to doping. So now I just thought: That's it. Your day is done.

That evening, I was quite relaxed about it all. The ageing cyclist was hiding behind the mature man. But he wasn't going to hide from the decision that had to be made.

The next morning, on the road to Isola 2000 we climbed up the Col d'Izoard and then the Col de la Bonette, the highest pa.s.s in the Tour. I can remember it very clearly. I rode up the whole climb in last place. Because I wanted to. I put my hands on the top of the bars and savoured it all to the full. I was breathing deeply as I lived through my last seconds in bike racing, which I had thought would never end for me. This col was all mine and I didn't want anyone to intrude. Climbing up over 2700m above sea level like this gave me a host of good reasons to appreciate everything I had lived through on the bike. I had plenty of time to let my mind wander. It was a poetic distillation of the last twelve years. A little fragment of my being, breathed in and lived to the full, at my own speed. It was total harmony.

I pressed gently on the pedals, admiring distant views, weighing each second as if it were a tiny shard of a time that had taken flight, glimpsing amidst the horizon of blue sky and mountain peaks a whole new universe that was opening up before me, and a different way of seeing what lay ahead.

Cycling would go on without me. Life would go on but I would be part of it. Was there any reason to feel sorrow and nothing more? It was a genuine moment of sadness and grace, intermingled.

Before the final climb to Isola 2000, which I could have ridden up, although I would have been outside the time limit, I decided to get off my bike. All that now remained was to take responsibility for the end of my story, be aware of what it meant and look calmly at its breadth and depth.

It was no tragedy. I quit. Just like that. On a corner somewhere. As if I was throwing myself into a void, headlong.

CHAPTER 35.

YOU CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT THEY ARE UP TO.

To a great extent, cycling had lost its way. Any points of reference I used to have had been lost in a fog of EPO, a substance which I did not know how to use and whose abuse had effects which I could not understand. Was it possible to refer to an 'EPO generation'? Probably.

When I climbed off my bike for the last time during the 1993 Tour de France, announcing that my career was about to end, I was not quite in touch with reality. I had no idea how dark it was. Of course I had become aware of this new substance. People had begun talking about it in the newspapers and behind the scenes, but, in spite of what I had experienced in Italy, I had not understood the extent to which its use was becoming universal. And there was something else that I refused to acknowledge: its amazing efficiency. With EPO, all physical obstacles were blown to bits. And I had still not managed to resign myself to the notion that a lot of the cyclists who were racing alongside me were fuelled with this substance.

So the day after I quit the Tour and after a certain amount of thought I still came to a conclusion which seemed perfectly obvious to me: I was simply not able to keep up the pace. You have to understand that my thought process at the time could only refer back to cycling in the 1980s and what had emerged from it. The idea that a drug could 'create' a champion or permit (almost) certain victory in a given race seemed completely far-fetched. I was convinced it was nonsense.

Some people will be astonished when they read these lines and will think: 'He must have known what was going on.' Let's be clear: I understood certain things, let's say the broad sweep of what was happening, but not the details. And my att.i.tude was this: I didn't give a monkey's what the other guys were doing. It had no interest for me. The only things that mattered were how my form was building, the work I did, and my results. Nothing else.

Alain Gallopin certainly warned me. 'You know, Laurent,' he would say, 'there's some crazy stuff going on out there. The guys are going over the top. You cannot imagine what they are up to. Some of them have lost their minds and will do anything.'

There were certain facts that simply didn't sink in: it was as if I had gone through a barrier and the rest of the peloton was on the other side. It was as if I was already elsewhere. The last few races I started were deeply dull and merely added to my feeling of being apart from it all. Racing was less fun, less alive, more tightly controlled. The guys were racing in ways which I simply did not understand. A lot of riders who weren't very talented seemed to be playing lead roles: it wasn't a game for me any more.

The period after the Tour was reasonably quiet. People gave me looks that were both compa.s.sionate and already indifferent. I had moved on and everyone began to be aware of it. I left the bike in the garage as the days went past and then one morning in August I went out training. Up to that day, thoughout my career I had always used the big ring to train: 53x16 or 53x15. That day I set off as usual, in tip-top form. And then, after I'd covered a few kilometres I felt worn out and put it on the little ring: 42x18. I said, 'It's over, Laurent.' And that was it. I didn't want to ride my bike any more. I had swept away the final few threads that still connected me to bike racing. I was no longer a cyclist. I had been prepared for this, but living through it in reality was bizarre.