Laurent Fignon obituary
French cycling champion best known for his epic defeat in the 1989 Tour de France
by William Fotheringham
The Guardian - Wed 1 Sep 2010
Laurent Fignon, who has died of cancer aged 50, won the Tour de France twice, but was also widely celebrated for losing it, in the narrowest defeat in Tour history. He was a charismatic cycling champion with trenchant views on his sport, the last Frenchman who seemed capable of living up to national expectations in the Tour, which he dominated with such insouciant ease in 1984 that the cycling magazine Vélo published his photograph that July along with a one-word caption: l'Ogre.
Nicknamed "the professor" after an abortive attempt at university studies, and with distinctive looks – long blond hair, thick-lensed spectacles and a John McEnroe-style headband – the Paris-born Fignon had the cycling world briefly at his feet after winning five stages in his Renault team's total of 10 (out of a possible 23), at the age of 23. His fellow Frenchman Bernard Hinault, who had dominated cycling for six years, finished more than 10 minutes behind, and had never looked Fignon's physical equal. On one occasion, Fignon was asked how he felt when Hinault attacked. His answer was: "When I saw him going up the road, I had to laugh."
The dominance was brief, although the expectations survived a little longer. Fignon's place in cycling history is based on the celebrated role he played as the runner-up in the greatest Tour ever, in 1989. By then he had spent four years trying to regain his best level after two achilles tendon operations in 1985. His battle with the American Greg LeMond was a tense affair, with the two men swapping the lead for the three-week duration of the race until Fignon carved out a 50-second lead before the final stage, a time trial into Paris.
Fignon felt his advantage was sufficient, but he was suffering from an abscess which made it virtually impossible for him to sit on his bike, and LeMond was using radical new aerodynamic handlebars. Fignon crossed the line on the Champs-Elysées and subsided in tears on the cobbles, having lost by just eight seconds after almost 88 hours of racing – still the narrowest margin in Tour history. It was a brutal defeat, a magnificent comeback for LeMond – who had come close to death in a shooting accident the previous year – and its impact turned the Tour into a truly global sports event.
Fignon won other major races – the Milan-San Remo Classic in 1988 and 1989, the Giro d'Italia in 1989 – and suffered a controversial defeat in the Giro in 1984, when the organisers pulled out all the stops to ensure a home victory. But his impact extended beyond his victories and his great defeat. In 1985, when Renault pulled out of sponsorship, he and his manager, Cyrille Guimard, came up with a novel system of managing team finances. Previously, teams had tended to belong to the sponsor, and were vulnerable when a backer lost interest. Instead, Guimard and Fignon set up their own company to run the team and own its assets, selling advertising space on the team's jerseys and cars to a main sponsor. Most professional cycling teams are run in this way today.
He was also one of few cyclists to reinvest their winnings in their sport. After retirement in 1993, he set up a promotions company to run events for cycle tourists, and he bought the second-biggest race in French cycling, the Paris-Nice "race to the sun", in 2000. As an organiser, he was unable to compete with the Amaury Sport Organisation, which has a virtual monopoly on major races in France, including the Tour, and he eventually sold Paris-Nice to them in 2002.
Subsequently he scaled down his promotional ventures and put his energy into developing a training centre in the Pyrenees. He also published his memoirs, Nous Étions Jeunes et Insouciants (2009), which I translated into English this summer under the title We Were Young and Carefree. The book was painfully honest about his attempts to get back to full fitness after his operations, spoke mercilessly about former rivals and described an epic drinking session with Hinault and an occasion on which Fignon lied to his manager to enable a team-mate to use his hotel room for a romantic assignation with "an unofficial Miss France".
Fignon's main premise was that cycling was "a living, breathing art", a world that created "complete men rather than just sportsmen", and that it had been robbed of much of its magic by the demands of sponsors and the widespread use of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin, which he contrasted with his own amateurish use of cortisone and amphetamine.
He worked as a television commentator on the 2009 and 2010 Tours, in spite of his illness – the harsh croak of his voice will remain my enduring memory of this year's race – and in one of his last interviews, in January, he was typically forthright about his health: "I don't want to die at 50, but if there is no cure, what can I do? I'm not afraid of dying. I just don't want it to happen."
He is survived by his second wife, Valerie, and by a son, Jeremy, and a daughter, Tiphaine, from his first marriage.
• Laurent Patrick Fignon, cyclist, born 12 August 1960; died 31 August 2010
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