Etape - Richard Moore

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went past nine and a half minutes, Pelier was yellow jersey on the road. But it kept growing, to ten, fifteen, eighteen minutes … ’It was twenty-five minutes at one point,’ Pelier says. ‘But even then, your mood is changing all the time. You believe, you don’t believe, you believe, you don’t believe. I tried to concentrate on managing my effort, and I did that quite well. I wasn’t a young rider; I was experienced.’

      Pelier was a typical équipier, or domestique. A team man who, if he ever had individual goals, had learned that if he wanted a professional career he had to forget them. His career had been shaped by such hard lessons. In his first year, 1985, he was riding the Tour de France; they were in the Alps, on the 269km stretch between Morzine and Lans-en-Vercors, and he felt strong. So, in a moment of impulse, he attacked. ‘There were eight cols, and I attacked on the second one. What I didn’t know was that the leaders had decided to neutralise the race until the seventh climb.’

      Pelier jumped away when he saw the Colombian, Luis Herrera, sprint for points for the King of the Mountains competition. He didn’t realise Herrera was not attacking: that he only wanted the points on offer at the top of the climb. Herrera sat up, but Pelier carried on. And Bernard Hinault, in the yellow jersey, set off after him. ‘Hinault caught me on the descent, and grabbed my jersey. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Don’t touch me!” He was angry and he told me, “You will never win a race!”

      ‘We had an argument, but then I understood. He was the patron, but afterwards it was exaggerated into a big story by the journalists, who saw Hinault go away on the descent to catch the little idiot who attacked.’

      Three years later, as Pelier rode alone towards Futuroscope, Hinault set off in pursuit of him once again. When he caught him, he shouted – again. But Hinault was in a car this time, working for the Tour organisation in retirement, and his yells were of encouragement. He and Pelier had become friends at the 1986 world championships in Colorado, which Pelier rode for the French team, in support of Hinault. Now, as Pelier battled into the wind, Hinault repeatedly pulled alongside, winding down the window to speak to him. ‘He really supported me,’ Pelier says, ‘keeping me up to date with the time gaps, giving me constant encouragement. I think he was happy to see me have a go.’

      Hinault knew this was a rare, perhaps unique, opportunity for a rider who had endured mainly misfortune in his career. A year after their run-in at the Tour, Pelier made the headlines again, and once more for the wrong reasons. At the finish of stage seventeen of the 1986 Tour, at the summit of the Col de Granon, he collapsed. It had been a particularly tough and high climb; indeed, the Granon is one of the highest roads in Europe, ascending to 2,413 metres, and steep too. But Pelier didn’t just collapse, he lost consciousness. An oxygen mask was strapped to his face as he was loaded into a helicopter and taken to hospital. Then he slipped into a seven-hour coma. He plays this down, dismissing it as simply the consequence of a ‘massive fringale’ – hunger knock. ‘I was hypoglycaemic. I had to stay in hospital overnight. I recovered quickly but not quick enough. You can’t have a day off at the Tour …’

      Pelier’s career refused to run smoothly. Unusually for a French rider, he opted to join a Spanish team, BH, for the 1989 season. ‘I wanted an atmosphere that was warm and welcoming and I found that in Spain,’ he says. ‘I was lucky when I turned professional to ride for two years for Jean de Gribaldy.’ De Gribaldy, known as ‘The Viscount’, died, aged sixty-five, in a road accident on 2 January 1987. Pelier joined Cyrille Guimard’s Système U team the same year. ‘The Viscount is someone I think about often, even today. De Gribaldy loved cycling and loved his riders. And I needed that kind of atmosphere. With Guimard, I found a different atmosphere, one that didn’t work for me.

      ‘In 1988, I didn’t have a good season and it was difficult to find a team,’ Pelier says. ‘The Spanish put their trust in me and there was another Frenchman, Philippe Bouvatier, who encouraged me to join BH. The Spanish teams were full of grimpeurs [climbers], so they were always on the lookout for riders who could do everything, especially baroudeurs [fighters].’

      His decision to cross the border was vindicated when, in April, Pelier crashed and fractured his sacrum, the large pelvic bone. It was another serious setback and yet it served to emphasise Mínguez’s qualities as a manager and his faith in Pelier. ‘I spent all of April, twenty-five days, lying in a plaster. The day of the accident, I thought my season was finished and I cried like a baby in the hospital in Pamplona. I was in a team that had recruited me specifically for the Tour de France. But my directeur sportif, Mínguez, he told me, as I lay in my hospital bed, to focus on getting better and that I could still be there at the Tour.’

      ‘If there is one rider I want to see at the Tour de France, it’s you,’ Mínguez told him. ‘For me,’ says Pelier, ‘that was huge. Your morale is really fragile when you do sport at this level.

      ‘You have doubts, of course. After coming out of the plaster and being able to move again, I spent the whole month of May doing rehabilitation. In June, I returned to racing. It was very, very difficult. But I knew Mínguez trusted me, and that helped a lot. It was only fifteen days before the start of the Tour that I began to get on track, to feel that I could reach my previous level.’

      * * *

      Still, on the road to Futuroscope, Pelier battled the wind and tried to remain focused on the task, crouched over his bike, grinding his way for kilometre after kilometre after kilometre, through largely featureless, flat countryside.

      Then it began raining. The roads became greasy and wet, which helped Pelier – there was a big crash in the peloton, and they became cautious. With thirty-eight kilometres to go, Pelier led by eleven minutes. It was a big advantage – there was a full four kilometres between him and the peloton but it was tumbling from the maximum of twenty-five minutes. Pelier’s mind was a jumble of positive and negative thoughts, competing with each other: ‘I tell myself that I’m going to win, then I hear the gap is falling quickly and I think, it’s fucked, I’m going to be caught.’

      As the gap began to fall, the sprinters’ teams could smell blood. Greg LeMond was in the yellow jersey and his team, ADR, had been first to take up the chase, reckoning that even a journeyman like Pelier shouldn’t be allowed so much time. Panasonic, the Dutch team, whose sprinter was Jean-Paul van Poppel, then got involved. ‘When the peloton started chasing I was consistently losing time, my lead was really falling,’ Pelier says. ‘But I had been trying to manage my effort. And when they started chasing, I accelerated. I knew I had to spare myself as much as possible, especially in that wind. I was economical with my effort all the time.

      ‘But the advantage you have, it’s the peloton who decide it. At 100km from the finish, it was feasible for them to catch me. A rider on his own can lose ten minutes in ten kilometres.’

      The wind picked up. Pelier’s face was a picture of agony. ‘If Pelier does hit the wall, they’ll wipe him up very quickly indeed,’ said the TV commentator. He turned and hit crosswinds: treacherous in the peloton, but offering some relief to the lone rider. Then it was back into the teeth of the headwind, as torrential rain began to fall, spattering the lens of the TV camera. Through this distorted picture, the viewer could make out Pelier’s grim expression, which spoke of the torture of labouring for four and a half hours into the wind. ‘Pelier looks to be dying ten deaths,’ said the commentator.

      With 10km to go, his lead had collapsed to five and a half minutes. Now there was a thunderstorm. ‘It gave me an advantage,’ Pelier says. ‘For one rider, it’s easier in those conditions; in the peloton it’s messy and becomes disorganised. It helped me. But at ten kilometres to go, I was still very worried. I knew they could still catch me.’

      Inside the final three kilometres Pelier had entered the pleasure and business park that is Futuroscope. The roads were like a motor-racing circuit: wide and exposed to the full force of the wind. Pelier, as he had been for so much of his ride, was hunched over his bike, getting as low as possible, his upper body rocking as he forced a huge gear round. Earlier he had tried to keep the gears low, spinning his legs, saving his muscles. Now it was all about grunt rather than finesse. He got out of the saddle, searching for more power. Despite the greyness and rain,

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