“Ah, I remember you: you’re the guy who lost the Tour by eight seconds!” – “No monsieur, I’m the guy who won it twice.” Despite winning the world’s greatest cycling race twice, Laurent Fignon is still famous as the man who lost to Greg LeMond by just eight seconds in over three thousand kilometres and 87 hours of racing.
Fignon, who died in 2010, takes the unusual step of recounting the most famous incident of his career at the start of his book with the following anguished words:
Come on, let’s burst the abscess before we really get started. The would has to be left open. Let it bleed away in silence. It will bleed a good while yet.
(There’s more than a hint of Amfortas about that paragraph!) While this decision makes for a more exciting opening than a load of guff about his childhood, it does somewhat hurt the architecture of the story.
Fignon was a genuine character, a rider who loved to attack and to go on what are charmingly known in the cycling world as ‘exploits’, feats of power, endurance and suffering that inspire all who watch them. He was also not afraid of expressing an opinion about his teammates or opponents, which perhaps explains why journalists liked to shove a microphone in his face at the finish of a stage.
In some ways he was lucky to win the Tour in 1983, only his second season as a pro, as he was only selected for the Renault team because of team leader Bernard Hinault’s withdrawal through injury. In pro cycling, team members may gain individual moments of glory, such a stage win, but they are required to subjugate themselves to the needs of their leader in the overall race classification, so Fignon would never have had the chance to win had Hinault been fit, even if he’d been selected.
Hinault must have been furious! Indeed, he left the Renault team to form a new team, and so Fignon was left as the Renault team leader the next year, when he won again.
After that, he was hit with a series of injuries and admits here that he never rode as well again. Despite wins in other races, he never won the tour again, even though he looked certain to do so in 1989 when starting the last stage – a time trial that year rather than the formality that the last stage is today – 50 seconds ahead of LeMond. Fignon’s saddle sores and controversial equipment used by LeMond proved to be the difference.
His book is beautifully written or at least that’s the impression left by by William Fotheringham’s translation. It’s full of anecdotes and insights into the psyche of a professional cyclist at the height of his sport. Sports autobiographies can be pretty uninspiring books, but Fignon’s is definitely an exception.
This is a book that will appeal to anyone who is interested in road cycling and, to those who are, I’d strongly recommend it.
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