How I Won the Yellow Jumper (13 page)

Faced with a sunset in Provence, perched on the warm stone of a ruined fort in a rare moment of calm, as the race swooped through the flatlands that divide the two great mountain ranges, a thought articulated itself: this really is quite a lot better than Bedford, isn't it?

I am not claiming that my Francophilia is even remotely exotic. It simply means that I conform to a determinedly middle-class stereotype. You just need to observe the long lanes of traffic queuing on any given day of the week to get on the ferries at Dover. There you will find the busy-looking couples of middle England, fretting in and around their Volvo. He is trying to affix the GB sticker without creating any air
bubbles, she is organising the passports and reservations into a sensible folder. There are the mildly bored kids in their early teens gazing through the rear-seat windows into the quayside drizzle. France is the impassioned, year-on-year, genetically self-fulfilling love affair of the English middle classes. It's in the script.

‘Have you got the traveller's cheques?'

‘They're in the glove compartment.'

‘We should aim to get to a bank before eleven. You never know when, or how long, they'll close for lunch. Where are the passports?'

‘In the glove compartment.'

‘Good. Excellent. All set then. There'll be a
péage
coming up soon. Have we got some euros?'

And so on. Beam deflectors, Michelen guides, nougat. The cricket on the World Service, crackling into oblivion as the Parisian Périphérique draws near.

Back in the early eighties I had been just such a child, on just such a journey. The first trip abroad I ever made was through Calais, and down through France. I was astounded, the first time we stopped for a toilet break, to be introduced to ‘pétards', or ‘little farts', literally translated.

They are, for those who don't know, miniature sticks of dynamite bundled together in bright red little packs of ten or twenty, which you could buy at tabacs. I swiftly discovered that four of them, stuffed in the passenger-door ashtray of a Datsun and ignited, would blow the door clean off its hinges, and cause apoplexy in the middle-aged parent attempting to steer his right-hand drive car down the wrong side of the road.
On that same trip, too, I was introduced to the bidet, and even established what they were used for. Not before I had established beyond any doubt what they weren't used for, I have to confess.

But it was the sight of kids only a couple of years older than me riding motorbikes without helmets, playing pinball with such precision and flair that they could even lift the table three inches in the air and drop it down again without activating the tilt mechanism, and speaking actual French that impressed me most. This was a grown-up country, with real genuine cool. Authentic, original cool. I was from Bedford, had two spots on my chin, and wore a pacamac. I yearned to be French, with all that might bring with it.

‘Lucky bastards.'

‘Who?'

‘The French. Lucky bastards.'

Someone always says it. It's a recurring mantra, a leitmotif of my working life on the Tour de France. It's the signature catchphrase. Somewhere just south of Lyon it will get aired in the airless car for the first time, and from that day on, it is a thought that is verbally expressed daily, sometimes even
hourly.

The Hexagon, as cycling's sentimentalists delight in calling it, has it all. From the green lush north, to the pines and sand of the west, with two vast mountain ranges and the French Rivieira thrown in for good measure. And even if the French have got questionable taste in leisurewear, they've got the Tour de France by way of compensation. Even those French people, who don't care about cycling, still care enough to know that it's on. And who might win it. They have to. It's in the small print of their contract, part of their duties as citizens of the republic. Like passing the time of day with neighbours in boulangeries.

One day we were in a pretty town called Saint-Fargeau. It was a typically beguiling little place, complete with a trickling stream, an oversize château, a chocolatier, and an esoteric museum (in this case, for some inexplicable reason, it housed France's foremost collection of early gramophones). We were filming a day ahead of the Tour's arrival. At about four o'clock, we headed to a bar to watch the closing kilometres of that day's action. The next day, the circus would descend, and Mark Cavendish would claim yet another stage win.

The TV was on. In the far corner of the bar, a Canadian
family perched around a Formica table heavy with Coca-Colas. They were chatting a little too animatedly about their plans to visit the Museum of the Gramophone. Aside from them, the bar was not exactly buzzing. There was a barmaid polishing glasses in the manner of an extra from
'Allo 'Allo
. But she wasn't the only cliché in the room.

There was the most perfect example of an Old-Boy-At-The-Bar. I sat next to him. He actually wore a beret and a red neckerchief. I was delighted. We both stared at the screen. A hundred kilometres to the west, a helicopter was pulling back to reveal a long peloton, stretched out at the front end into single file. HTC-Columbia was beginning to get the chase organised. My friend was watching, absent-mindedly chewing his lunch. By way of conversation, I asked him if he was enjoying his salami sandwich.

‘
C'est bon, votre pain
?' I enquired smilingly.

There was a pause of quite extraordinary length during which he chewed and gave the impression of utter indifference to my question. I held my smile. It began to hurt.

‘
Non
,' came the surprisingly honest reply. ‘
Trop sec. Il manque du beurre
.'

He glanced a little savagely at the barmaid, who shrugged her indifference back at him. He looked profoundly irritated. After all, there's nothing like a dry, unbuttered salami baguette to take the edge off your enjoyment of the Tour.

Undaunted by his overt unwillingness to engage in light-hearted bar-banter with the sunburnt English fool sitting beside him at the bar, I ploughed on.

‘
Vous aimez regarder le Tour
?' I offered, throwing a sideways nod in the direction of the TV screen to eliminate any room for misunderstanding. There was another, even longer pause. I became unsettled. Was this a deliberate snub? Had he failed to understand my French? It turned out that he was formulating his reply. When it came it was succinct and left
little margin for ambiguity.

‘
Non
.'

Munch, munch. Dry crumbs tumbled from his lower lip onto the counter below. It made me thirsty just to watch him.

I allowed what I considered to be a dignified length of time to elapse before I threw in the towel and left some money on the bar for my coffee. At the door, just before I stepped outside into the glaring sun, I glanced back at the hunched shoulders and silhouetted shape of the beret that belonged to my taciturn friend at the bar.

Then the perversity struck me. Despite his protestations on both counts, there he was. Eating his dry sandwich. Watching the Tour. As if he had no choice.

In the end, that's the point I suppose. There's no getting away from a race which prides itself on getting round all parts of the country as often as it can. It is, after all, the Tour de France. Not the Tour de Anywhere Else. (Although there is a curiously irritating habit for minor races in far-flung non-francophone countries to name their races using the French conjunctive ‘de'. The now defunct Tour de Georgia is the worst offender. A fine race, I have no doubt, but an ill-judged name.)

So, to be fair to the French, they did the ‘de' bit a long time before anyone else had even grappled with the concept. And they still lead the way. Strange though this may sound, it sometimes slips your mind when you're on the race that you're in France, such is the international bubble that you inhabit. It's only when you chance to look in detail at the faces in the crowd that you remember what this event means to the host nation. The hours spent waiting at the roadside, enduring baking sun or torrential rain, putting up with the unbearable clamour of the tannoys and the frenetic hell of the Caravane Publicitaire. Grandads, old dears, families with youngsters decked out in as many free sponsored hats as they can get their heads in; some of the lengths gone to just to catch a glimpse of a mediocre
French cyclist coasting by at 30mph.

The closest equivalent to this kind of patient enthusiasm for a sport in which the home nation so massively underachieves is the British Wimbledon obsession. There is a common currency in the Henmanite campers outside SW18, and the dedicated Tour fan who will travel hideously overcrowded roads just to get a glimpse of Laurent Brochard. Except that, where the queues outside the All England Lawn Tennis Club might be a mile long, on the Tour de France they stretch over hundreds of miles.

And yet, one of the curiosities I have become familiar with over the years has been this: there appear to be two parallel Tours.

One is the global game, the Armstrong-driven explosion of blue-chip sponsored, mega-corporate transatlantic teams with a diversity of nationalities among the nine men on the team and their followers, as well as the hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. The other Tour is French. Decidedly, resolutely, determinedly French.

It comes down to national pride, I guess.

On the morning of 6 July 2005, everyone in the media village was glued to TV monitors, tuned to their respective national broadcasters. It was an important day, one that had been widely talked about, particularly in the French press. That day, every major station in Europe would be carrying live pictures from Singapore where the result of the bidding process for the 2012 Olympics was about to be announced.

Certain that London was the outsider, and a little indifferent to it all anyway, I was scooting around the place mopping up little errands here and there, trying to stave off a late-morning hunger. The race was still hours from the finish line. As the announcement drew close, however, curiosity got the better of me. I stopped by a makeshift studio, which had been erected by RTBF, the Belgian TV station. I stood under an awning as
a drizzle was beginning to fall, fingering a small Paris 2012 souvenir badge, which I had been handed and had placed in my pocket as a keepsake.

‘The International Olympic Committee . . .' Pause. ‘Has the honour of announcing . . .' Longer pause. Across the tented village of the media compound, I could hear the simultaneous translations into Spanish, Italian and German. ‘That the games of the thirtieth Olympiad in 2012. Are awarded . . .' final pause. ‘. . . to the city of London!'

Londra!

The camera cut to a side shot of the hall, with the most undignified jumping-up-and-down going on from the British delegation. Where I was standing too, there was an audible reaction, reaching us from further afield.

London!

A large crowd had gathered along the finishing straight, even though there would be a long wait before the race was due to finish. They had made their way there hoping to watch the announcement on the big screen, and then share in the inevitable party, which would follow Paris's triumph.