FIGNON - THE DIVINE PONYTAIL
IN 1988, A REVAMPED, RESURGENT LAURENT FIGNON SPRINTED TO A SENSATIONAL COMEBACK WIN AT MILANO-SANREMO. PROCYCLING RECALLS THE MOMENT AND RETRACES HIS TORTURED STEPS
Writer: HerbieSykes
PROCYCLING MAGAZINE, February 2017
The big problem, Laurent Fignon said heading into the 1988 season, was that he’d become accustomed to losing. “Some days the old sensations are there but it always seems to be one step forward and two steps back”, he said. “A bike rider is alive only when he is winning. Only in victory can he make sense of the struggle, so I will try for another year but I won’t go on like this indefinitely. If I cannot find my old level I prefer to stop. I see things differently now, and there are other priorities in my life.”
Fignon, the two-time Tour de France winner, had found himself at something of a crossroads. He’d endured three long, hard, by-and-large miserable years, but now he was resolved to give cycling one last go. His wife Nathalie had presented him with a new son, Jérémy, and he in turn had bestowed something approaching equanimity. It was a new life and a different life, and he was approaching it with, by cycling’s ascetic standards, a radical new look. His golden locks receding, he now sported a ponytail. In truth it wasn’t so drastic but amid the orthodoxy and conservatism of his profession it was positively revolutionary.
A different look then, and on the eve of Milan-Sanremo the beginnings of a different attitude. Fignon’s relationship with the world of cycling had been fractious at best but here he not only refrained from being downright hostile, he willingly signed autographs for the tifosi. Gone were the histrionics, the withering glances and the persecution complex. Instead he merely stated that Sanremo was his early-season target, that recent experiences had taught him there was more to life than the Tour, and that he was looking forward to the race. He was affable and approachable, the polar 
opposite of the Laurent Fignon caricature he’d become in recent years.
He had won his second Tour in 1984 aged just 23 but had spent the ensuing three years at war with everybody who was anybody in bike racing. He’d fallen out with his team-mates and opponents, with his sponsors and the media, fallen out repeatedly with his manager-turned-business partner Cyrille Guimard. He’d fallen out with the sport of professional cycling and it had fallen out, seemingly irrevocably, with him. Worst of all, his body seemed to have called time on him. It had been the best, most beautiful body in the peloton, and it had seemed a shoo-in to dominate cycling for the thick end of a decade. Then, as he made ready for the 1985 Tour, it had all gone horribly, miserably wrong. Achilles tendon.
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In the absence of Bernard Hinault, Guimard had invited Fignon to lead Renault at the 1983 edition of the Tour. Though just 22, he’d assumed the maillot jaune atop Alpe d’Huez and never once looked like rescinding it. It was a monumental performance but it left Guimard with a monumental problem. Renault had two cocks in the henhouse and, in Charly Mottet and the American Greg LeMond, then 20 and 22 respectively, two more in the making. The old curmudgeon Hinault, anything but a domestique and anything but stupid, had taken the money and shipped out to La Vie Claire.
Fignon and Hinault had gone toe-to-toe the following year, and the 10 minutes by which Hinault was defeated might just as easily have been 20. Fignon had mocked him – quite literally - when the Breton attacked; delighted in rubbing his nose in it. By all accounts the French public hadn’t appreciated that but Laurent Fignon wasn’t much interested in the platitudes of sporting diplomacy. Rather he was in the business of winning bike races, and Hinault had taught him that you did that by bullying the rest into mental and physical submission. So while Hinault might not necessarily have liked the way Fignon had demeaned him, he would have perfectly well understood it. What’s more, somewhere deep in his Breton gut, he’d probably have appreciated it.
However, Hinault had had his time, and his time had passed. The fact was that Laurent Fignon was much better that him now and much better than the hotshot LeMond. At the season’s end LeMond had toddled off to join forces with Hinault at La Vie Claire, alleviating Guimard and Fignon’s budget from an expensive mouth to feed. They’d won consecutive Tours together and the champion had yet to celebrate his 24th birthday. There was nobody to touch him.
Since then, however, it had been one thing after another. They’d operated on the Achilles in May 1985 (he’d fallen out with the surgeon), and he hadn’t raced for eight months. He’d had a slanging match with Pascal Jules, just about the only true cycling friend that he had, and as a consequence Jules had abandoned him for a Spanish team. Guimard had persuaded Système U to replace Renault as title sponsor but then Fignon had crashed while making his comeback at the Madrid Six. The collarbone injury he’d suffered there had compromised the entire season. The win at Flèche Wallonne in ’86 aside, the whole thing had been another front-to-back catastrophe.
Hinault had won the ’85 Tour, his fifth, and had delighted in seeing his rival fail. As he approached retirement, he propagated the idea that the amiable Burgundian Jean-François Bernard – and not Fignon – was his rightful heir. Bernard was prodigiously gifted against the watch and of course he rode for Hinault’s team. However, he’d yet to win a major professional race, so Hinault’s rationale in talking him up was abundantly clear. He’d never forgiven Fignon for his hubris at the Tour and in promoting Bernard as a potential Tour winner he was de facto belittling him. The inference, lost on nobody, was that while Bernard was uncomplicated, transparent and genuine, Fignon was the arrogant, pretentious Parisian archetype. Immensely talented he may have been, but he lacked the class, the humility and apparently the longevity of a true champion. Not perhaps a flash in the pan but not nearly as good as he’d thought he was.
Hinault himself had been extremely prickly with the media. He’d found motivation in the rancour but now, his appetite sated, he had them in his pocket. They’d delighted in the anti-Fignon narrative and one among them had coined the “Monsieur Citroën” appellation. The jibe had its origins in the failed attempt to get Renault to renew the sponsorship. However, in reality it was more textured than that and a good deal more pejorative. In La France profonde, Renault was synonymous with dependability and probity, the very best French values. Renault cars were robust and unpretentious, and they offered outstanding value for money. Meanwhile Citroëns were perceived as esoteric and extravagant, and ultimately just a bit too clever for their own good. They were over-complicated which made them unreliable, and as a consequence unloved. As a dismissal of Fignon’s temperament and (under)achievements it was just about as cruel as could be.
Fignon felt he’d had every right to start charging the hacks for interviews. Most of them were bloodsuckers anyway, and hardly any were worthy of his patronage. In the final analysis it was he who paid their wages, and if they chose not to pay it was no skin off his nose. He’d have more time for his books and his introspection, and they’d be free to talk cycling drivel with lightweights such as Bernard or the Madiot brothers.
Equally he’d felt no moral obligation to support the Paris Six just because it took place in his home town. They’d whinnied and whined that their offer was almost the double of what Francesco Moser had accepted but since when had Moser won two yellow jerseys? Fignon had simply informed them that it wasn’t enough, and if they’d felt offended by his tone then so be it. He was well used to being called arrogant and he could live without their approbation. He didn’t seek it and didn’t need it, and he’d no particular interest in currying favour with the Parisian public. It was all well and good for the others to ride around the velodrome for farm labourer’s wages but he had better things to do with his time. Most of them were illiterate proles anyway, he felt. A bunch of ignorant, half-bred simpletons he felt almost ashamed to call his peers.
Most agreed that Fignon had an almighty chip on that haughty Parisian shoulder. The problem, more than anything, had been the unending physical setbacks and blows to his morale. They’d started to have an effect and his pride – what remained of it – had taken a battering in 1987. He had gone well at Paris-Nice, winning two stages, but then the Vuelta had been a miserable experience despite him taking a stage and coming third overall. Amid the usual doping insinuations he’d refused to appear on the final podium with Raimund Dietzen and winner Luis Herrera, and two weeks later he’d been positive for amphetamines at the GP Wallonie and was stripped of third. He’d fallen out with the press once more at the Tour de Suisse, as even Guimard began to question his psychological wellbeing.
He’d pinned his season on the Tour but he was off the pace from the outset. He shipped four minutes to Roche in the opening time trial, a humiliating nine to Bernard in the crono up Mont Ventoux. He won at La Plagne but, in so doing, merely underlined how far he’d fallen. He’d begun the day 15 minutes down on the GC group of Roche, Delgado and Bernard. They’d had the temerity to let him go and so the victory, gutsy or otherwise, was a pyrrhic one. He was seventh in Paris, behind riders he felt were his inferiors.
Next Martial Gayant, Pascal Poisson and the Madiot brothers all defected to Toshiba. They were disenchanted with Fignon’s intransigence and with Guimard’s absenteeism, and they claimed the latter favoured profit over performance. That was chastening but the real nadir would be reached that autumn. He and Pascal Jules, new fathers both, had been edging towards a rapprochement. However, on 25 October Jules was killed in a car crash aged just 26.
There was no catharsis as such but the loss of Jules and the time spent with Jérémy placed his own navel-gazing into some sort of perspective. As a double Tour de France winner he was well off financially, and objectively his problems were trivial. While Justin Jules would grow up without his father, Jérémy Fignon was healthy, and he knew that he and his wife Nathalie were extremely lucky. If he never won another bike race he was still being paid extravagantly to do something that had been his great passion. He resolved to train hard in the winter and to give it another go. If the results came then so be it but at least he’d have nothing to reproach himself for if they did not.
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His masseur, Alain Gallopin, had noted the change in approach. Fignon was more enthusiastic and less narcissistic, and he managed to convince him that Milano-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix were worthwhile targets. The conviction had sustained Fignon through his winter training, and the form had started to come at Paris-Nice. He’d flown under the radar there, and he’d deliberately stepped off the gas during the time trial. He’d finished fifth all the same, and he had been getting better by the day.
And so, this hazy milanese morning, to the Classicissima. The previous year Erich Maechler had become the first Swiss winner, and he would be the top favourite having just proven his form by winning two stages and the overall at Tirreno-Adriatico a few days before. Other favourites would include the winner of the previous year’s Paris-Roubaix, Belgian hero Eric Vanderaerden, and the evergreen Irishman Sean Kelly. The hosts had Moreno Argentin and nobody gave the French riders a prayer. Notwithstanding the sentiment provoked by the recent death of Jacques Anquetil, they had landed precisely one Sanremo in the preceding 25 years. That had been the infamous 1982 fuga bidon, a lucky break that went the distance, led home by the neo-pro Marc Gomez, and there was nothing to suggest they’d be playing La Marseillaise on the Via Roma.
As the sun burned off the Po Valley fog at Pavia, the day’s break was established. By the time the peloton had reeled in the last of them, the Dane John Carlsen, he’d been out for 240 career-defining kilometres.
Gert-Jan Theunisse and Steven Rooks, PDM’s Dutch flying squad, clubbed at the Poggio for all they were worth. They were intent on eliminating the speed merchants, and by mid-point most had been detached. Still, however, Kelly refused to yield. It was now or never.
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Seen from a distance, the rebirth of the cyclist Laurent Fignon closely resembled a shooting star. It – he – appeared briefly on Theunisse’s right and then, as panic enveloped the rest, became white heat. Only the dashing Fondriest was able to bridge across, and the two of them reached the city limits together.
Maurizio Fondriest was a second-year professional. He was still a rapier, and Fignon had witnessed his finishing prowess at the previous year’s Volta a Catalunya. He was extremely fast but if he could be duped into a long sprint he might just run out of gas. Fignon put himself on the front and then, as the cavalry closed in, pulled just enough to keep them at arm’s length. A kilometre from home he ushered Fondriest through and the youngster, having sat on, duly acquiesced. He was panicking now, and as they reached the 400-metre mark, Fignon half-wheeled him into launching his sprint. He knew that if he could sit tight for the first 250m, his strength and stamina would outlast Fondriest’s top-end speed.
It was a brutal two-up but 25 metres from the line, the gallant young Fondriest finally sat up. Laurent Fignon’s time in the wilderness was over. Three weeks on from his renaissance, Fignon began Paris-Roubaix as one of the favourites. He was easily the strongest in the race but the peloton contrived to allow Dirk Demol and Thomas Wegmüller, survivors of the morning break, to stay away. Fignon finished third.
He won a very different Milano-Sanremo the following year in 1989, this time in splendid isolation. The race, the first of the UCI’s new World Cup, began under a deluge which would persist for over four hours. Fignon escaped in the company of the Dutchman Frans Maassen and then dropped him halfway up the Poggio. Three months later he added a consummate Giro d’Italia. Laurent Fignon had become accustomed to winning again.
GRAND TOUR PODIUM FINISHES
Laurent Fignon might have been just as famous for losing the 1989 Tour de France as for winning it twice in other years but he was still one of the most successful Grand Tour riders in the history of the sport. We’ve counted up the total podium finishes in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España, and the Frenchman is in joint 14th place, with three wins (two Tours, one Giro), two second places and a third. That’s a long way behind Merckx and Hinault, who had double figures with wins alone, but it put him about level with his contemporary rivals Pedro Delgado (just ahead of him in 13th place) and Greg LeMond, who is in 17th place with three wins, a second and two thirds. Fignon’s place is currently also under threat from Nairo Quintana, who is currently on two wins, two seconds and a third. One more Grand Tour win and Quintana will level with Fignon.
RIDER 1. 2. 3.
- Eddy Merckx (BEL) 11 1 0
- Bernard Hinault (FRA) 10 2 0
- Jacques Anquetil (FRA) 8 2 3
- Fausto Coppi (ITA) 7 2 0
- Miguel Indurain (SPA) 7 1 1
- Alberto Contador (SPA) 7 0 0
- Gino Bartali (ITA) 5 5 0
- Felice Gimondi (ITA) 5 3 4
- Alfredo Binda (ITA) 5 1 0
- Vincenzo Nibali (ITA) 4 2 2
- Tony Rominger (SVI) 4 1 1
- Chris Froome (GBR) 3 4 0
- Pedro Delgado (SPA) 3 2 3
- Giovanni Brunero (ITA) 3 2 1
- Laurent Fignon (FRA) 3 2 1
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