Roche paints the Emerald Isle yellow

The Official Tour de France Centennial 1903-2003 

By 1 July 1987, as the riders prepared to start the Prologue of the Tour de France in a still-divided Berlin, Bernard Hinault had retired, Greg LeMond was recovering from gunshot wounds sustained in a serious hunting accident and Laurent Fignon was suffering from a catastrophic loss of form. Cycling had entered a period of transition, and the Tour de France was more open than ever. 

No Tour had ever had so many stages (25), and none had seen so many different riders wear the yellow jersey; eight, an all-time record, with nine changes of leader. The powerful Ditch rouleur Jelle Nijdam won the Prologue, before Poland’s Lech Piasecki became the first East European to lead the Tour. Switzerland Erick Mächler took over from him, but the real race hierarchy was established during the incredibly long Saumur-Futuroscope time trial (87.5 km/54 miles). Ireland’s Stephen Roche won it, but France’s Charly Mottet took the yellow jersey, and wore it through the Pyrenees, after swapping it briefly with by his Système U team-mate Martial Gayant. 

The mountain time trial on Mont Ventoux was eagerly awaited, and the French time trial specialist Jean-François Bernard relegated the brilliant Colombian climber Herrera to second place by nearly two minutes. Bernard took the yellow jersey, and looked likely to wear it all the way to Paris until he punctured the next day on the road to Villard-de-Lans, and was dropped by the leading group. Delgado won the stage but the race lead passed to Stephen Roche. The following day, Delgado used the climb up to Alpe d’Huez to wrestle the yellow jersey from the Irishman. A day later, on the climb to La Plagne, the suspense reached fever pitch. Laurent Fignon launched a formidable attack, suddenly striding up the general classification. In his wake, Roche and Delgado rode themselves to the verge of collapse, and at the finish the Irishman had to be given oxygen. But he recovered fast enough to leave the Spaniard behind the next day on the descent from Joux-Plane and clawed back 18 seconds. At the start of the final time trial, the yellow jersey was just 21 seconds away. Jean-François Bernard won the stage convincingly, but the real race was behind him. Roche, second, ended the day with the race lead by the tiny margin of 40 seconds. He had won Ireland’s first Tour victory in a year in which he was simply irrepressible, winning the Tours of Italy and France, and then, on 6 September, the World Championship. Only Eddy Merckx, in 1974, had achieved a similar feat.

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