BORN TO RIDE
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Stephen Roche winning the Giro, Tour and Worlds in the same year. Procycling recalls the events surrounding this never since repeated occurrence with three exclusive extracts from Roche’s new autobiography…
Critérium International 1985
After a difficult first season with La Redoute in 1984, Stephen is inspired by the arrival of new team manager Raphaël Géminiani, a larger than life character and supreme motivator with some odd superstitions…
THE MANAGEMENTISSUES AT LA REDOUTE that had rumbled on since the start of the season came to a head at the end of the Tour. We found out the news from L’équipe, rather than the team. De Muer and Thévenet were out and Raphaël Géminiani was being brought in to replace them. ’Gem was another one of the golden oldies of team management. He’d been a great rider in his time and was the man behind many of Jacques Anquetil’s greatest victories. I was suspicious of him at first, particularly after he announced at the presentation of the 1985 Tour route that I was going to win the stage to the summit of the Aubisque. Not only that, he said I would win that afternoon’s stage back over the Aubisque as well. It was a bold statement, delivered in Gem’s typically booming fashion, which was hard to ignore.
The claim showed how impulsive Gem was. He was a very strong personality, who liked to be the centre of attention and could be explosive. And he drove the team car like Lewis Hamilton. He did go on a lot about the old times but when he needed to be focused he was totally with you and I really appreciated that. He won me over very quickly, largely because he was brilliant at motivating his riders, particularly his leaders, and I reaped the benefit of that from the very first weeks of 1985.
***
I finished third in the Tour of the Med, second in Paris-Nice, and then went on to Antibes, where I live now, to ride the Critérium International. I was fighting with Sean Kelly for the overall lead, which would be decided in the final time trial. Some time before the rice, a guy from Alstom Atlantique, who manufactured the TGV trains and later built the Eurostar equivalents, had come to us as they’d just invented what they said was a revolutionary disc wheel. He’d been to most of the big teams but nobody would take it on. Géminiani, though, said we’d give it a go and that I’d ride it in that time trial. My bike was fitted with the new wheel at the back and I won it.
Francesco Moser had been the first top road pro to use a disc wheel but that had been when he broke the World Hour Record on the track in Mexico City in 1984. I think I was just about the first rider to use one on the road in Europe. There was a lot of fuss over it that day. I remember a TV journalist suggesting that the wheel had won the time trial for me. I pointed out that it may have helped but my legs had done most of the work. They were looking for a name for it and Gem suggested Discjet. I used it later that year in the prologue and time trial at the Dauphiné and won on both occasions.
Later on in the evening after that first win using the new wheel, Gem came up to my hotel room and told me: “Get dressed, you’re coming out with me tonight.”
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
“Don’t ask questions, just come.”
It was about half past ten, a very strange time for a directeur to be taking one of his riders out. We got in the car and went up to this nightclub in the back end of Nice somewhere. There were only a few people in there because it was still very early. A girl wandered over to us and sat down, and Géminiani said to her: “The other day you showed me a mouse and told me that if I pulled its tail and it squealed and I was thinking of Roche winning the Critérium International on Sunday. And I told you that if he did win I would bring him here to meet you and here he is.”
This kind of things was typical of Géminiani. He was incredibly superstitious. He had it all calculated. I finished third in the Tour of the Med, second in Paris-Nice, so it followed I’d be first in the Critérium International. I was number 21 in the race, and two minus one is one. All the signs were there that I was going to win. He sounds odd and perhaps he was, but his school, like Maurice de Muer’s, was a very good one to be in.
GIRO D’ITALIA 1987
Heading into the crucial San Marino time trial, Stephen gets unexpected pressure from his co-leader at Carrera, Roberto Visentini, which leads to him losing the maglia rosa. His problem then his how to get it back from his own team-mate…
I FELT ALL RIGHT ABOUT Visentini ghosting around behind me because I felt like I had his card marked. But where things started to get dusty, before they got dirty, was with that time trial into San Marino.
To help prepare before a time trial I always tried to ride the whole stage in advance and I did so that morning despite the fact it was raining. My problem wasn’t the rain but having Roberto sitting in the team car behind me. He kept coming up alongside me and asking: “Stefano, which direction is the wind coming from?”
“Stefano, what gear are you using?”
“Stefano, is it raining?”
He was pestering me all the time. When I’m doing this kind of thing, I’m in my own world, my little bubble. I don’t want anybody talking to me. I especially don’t want anybody asking me questions. I could feel the frustrations building inside me. I wanted to tell him where to go and to leave me alone, that if he wanted to find out which way the wind was coming from he should get on his bike and ride it himself.
When we had finished the recce we went back down to our hotel for lunch. On days like that I would have everything set up just as I wanted. My whole day was planned around my time trial. Three hours before my start, my lunch was prepared. I came down to the table that had been set for me and all of sudden Roberto sat down too and start eating. And he just kept on talking and talking and talking and talking. He asked me the same things all over again: “Stefano, after 5k there’s a little climb, what gear did you go over on?” He never stopped.
Those moments were very precious to me. I was in my own world, going over the course in my mind, sitting lost within myself. Tension would be building up inside me – lots of nervous energy. When I started to ride, I would feed off that, use it to help me get a good result. But on this particular day I was so wound up that when I got to the start line I had no energy left. Everything was gone. I was totally wasted.
I ended up riding a really poor time trial. I couldn’t lift the pace at all and Visentini put almost three minutes into me, which was a huge gain for him. But what made it difficult to take for me was getting across the finish line and seeing everyone hugging and kissing Visentini, telling him how great he was, that he would win the Giro now.
I couldn’t believe it. I was devastated after flopping and losing my jersey, and no one could give two hoots. I’d putting money in the pockets of these guys with all the races that I’d won over the previous six months, I’d been keeping the jersey afloat for the last ten days in the Giro and now everyone was basically saying: “Visentini is our man!” I was disappointed to say the least with that reaction. But that was nothing compared to how I felt when I got to the hotel and started watching the TV.
Visentini was having a conversation with a journalist, who was saying to him: “Any rivalry in the team is now over. Roche is now two minutes back. That means that Roche is going to ride for you, Roberto. And I suppose that you’re going to be quite content to return the favour and ride for Roche at the Tour de France…”
And Roberto turned to the journalist and said: “No, no, no! Stephen is going to ride for me here, that’s true. But I’m not going to be riding the Tour de France. I’m going to the beach!”
Now, that might well be your plan, but a wise man would know that you don’t bloody well say it because that’s really asking for trouble. I was sitting on my bed, with Eddy [Schepers] next to me on his, watching Visentini and saying to each other: “This guy is saying bluntly that I’m going to ride for him and he isn’t going to pay me back. That’s just not on.”
Eddy started looking at the roadbook. Visentini had taken all the chances he’d had to attack me up to that point, but because he was Italian he could get away with a lot. However, being Irish, a foreigner, I knew all too well that I had to be very careful how I managed myself. I couldn’t do anything that could be seen as attacking the local hero, so I sat down with Eddy and looked at stages still to come.
We decided it was going to be difficult to do something to get rid of Visentini on the high mountain stages because he was climbing as well I was. Also, he’d be expecting me to respond there. But the real problem for me was that I couldn’t be seen to be attacking him. So how could I get around that?
We debated this for a while, looked at the mountain stages, and then at the medium mountain stage that preceded them up to a town called Sappada. Although there was one flat stage before that, we knew that Roberto would still be very tired going into the Sappada stage due to the huge effort he’d made in his time trial. Posting the time he had, it was clear he hadn’t kept anything in reserve. His strategy was clearly to give 110 per cent in the time trial, knowing that the days that followed weren’t particularly hard and that he would be able to recover and be ready for the key mountain stages.
We assumed that Roberto wouldn’t be expecting me to attack or be in a breakaway group on that stage into Sappada. But we were still stuck with this dilemma of how to attack without being seen as doing so. We decided the only way around that was to wait until some other guy went away and the I could maybe try to follow. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the only hope I had…
TOUR DE FRANCE 1987
The 1987 Tour was one of the most unpredictable ever, with fortunes changing almost every day. Having won the Mont Ventoux time trial, Jean-François Bernard thought he had the race sewn up, but the race was about to take another twist
THE STAGE START WAS IN Valréas, just to the north of the Ventoux, where Jean-François Bernard had given us all such a hiding in the time trial the day before. That morning I chatted briefly with photographer Graham Watson and one or two others and bullishly told them that Bernard wouldn’t be in yellow that evening. I know there would be attacks coming because we’d all seen the effort he’d put in the day before and we all knew that he tended to be inconsistent. But there was also a good degree of bluster in my comments. While I wanted to show that I wasn’t beaten, that I had plenty of fight left in me, I think as much as anything I was talking myself up in my own mind, trying to convince myself that Bernard was still beatable and that I was the man who could do it.
Word was also going around that riders who knew the roads in the Vercors very well were saying that the stage to Villard-de-Lans would be very difficult to control. There was some talk about the location of the feeding station that I’d discussed with [Davide] Cassani and Eddy [Schepers] the night before. I spoke to Paul Kimmage, who was riding for RMO, and warned him to pay attention at that point. There were also plenty of rumours that Système U were planning something. I heard later that a journalist had asked Laurent Fignon after the Ventoux time trial if he viewed Bernard as his successor. In typically prickly fashion, Fignon responded: “Does that mean you’ve got me dead and buried already?” He said that he was ready to “spring some surprises” and later confirmed that he, Charly Mottet and the rest of the Système U team had spent the previous evening poring over the roadbook, just as we had done. They had decided that the feeding station at Léoncel was the ideal place for an offensive of some kind.
When we got under way, the speed was very fast immediately. There were breaks going off left, right and centre. I even tried to get away once or twice myself, but Bernard marked me closely each time.
When you’ve got a good feel for race strategy, you know that something is happening when you see different teams sending riders up the road. You ask yourself: why are they doing that? One possible reason is to have someone ahead who can offer support to a leader later on. The other option is that teams are doing it to make their rivals ride behind, freeing them up from the responsibility of having to set the pace and allowing them to stay fresh.
That day we were all sending team-mates up the road, me included. Jeff, as everyone called Bernard, was doing it as well. But it quickly became apparent that his team, Toshiba, were overdoing it. Every time there was an attack, a Toshiba rider was in it. In the end Bernard had three team-mates up the road and found himself a little bit isolated. I half-joked with him at one point: “Jeff, you’ll soon have more riders up the road than you do back here.” He replied gruffly: “Don’t worry, it’s okay.”
Bernard’s three Toshiba team-mates were in a break of about 20 guys that finally got away before the first of the day’s four climbs, the Col de Tourniol. That did leave him a little isolated, but it was good sign for us because if the shit did hit the fan then we suspected he might struggle to find support. I had Eddy Schepers up in that break too. He was just sitting in the wheels mostly, saving himself to help me later on in case I got across to him.
Although we didn’t know it at the time, Bernard’s problems increased when he punctured just before we passed over the summit of the Col de Tourniol. He quickly got a wheel from his team-mate, Jean-Claude Leclercq, and got back onto the back of the bunch as we descended into the feeding station at Léoncel. But taking Leclercq’s wheel meant he was another rider down. Two more of the Toshiba riders had already fallen back, leaving him with just two team-mates in the peloton coming into Léoncel.
Feeding stations can always be a bit dicey, and this one was a real mess because it was on such a small road. There were soigneurs and musettes everywhere. So it was an ideal place for something to go wrong. As we approached it, the speed was getting faster and faster. It was obvious something was going to happen.
There was no attack as such as we went through the feed, but there was no easing of the pace either. Laurent Fignon and Charly Mottet were on the front of the line with their Système U team-mates Martial Gayant and Marc Madiot. I was up with them too, and so were some of the other big guns. The bunch got lined out, then someone let a wheel go, no doubt because they couldn’t maintain the furious speed being set by so many big names. There was a split. Those of us at the front immediately saw that Bernard wasn’t with us. In fact, he was the only top guy who missed the move.
There’s no doubt he was unfortunate because his chain had unshipped at that key point. But the simple fact was that, after his puncture, he had been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and didn’t have the team support with him to help right things.
All of a sudden the top 15 riders or so in the Tour found themselves altogether – apart from Bernard, of course. Generally, the first thing you would do when you got into a break would be to look around and see who was with you. But what was strange about this break was that no one bothered to look and see who was and wasn’t there. All that mattered was that Bernard was missing.
EXTRACTED FROM BORN TO RIDE BY STEPHEN ROCHE
PUBLISHED BY YELLOW JERSEY
PRESS PRICED £18.99
COPYRIGHT © STEPHEN ROCHE, 2012
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