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Como where I kept my apartment, and we had competed against each other at the Barcelona
Olympics in '92, when he won the gold medal. He was a very relaxed, fun-loving man, a little
goofy, a joker. Some of the top Italians were more serious, or macho, but Fabio wasn't like that.
He was all sweetness.
That night we had a Motorola team meeting to discuss whether we should keep riding or not.
We were split. Half of us wanted to quit and go home and cry with our families and friends, and
half of us wanted to keep riding in honor of Fabio. Personally, I wanted to stop; I simply didn't
think I had the heart to ride a bike. It was the first time I had encountered death, and genuine
grief, and I didn't know how to handle it. But then Fabio's wife came to see us, and she said she
wanted us to keep riding, because she felt that was what Fabio would have wanted. So we sat
in the grass behind the hotel, said a few prayers, and decided to stay i n.
The next day the peloton rode in honor of Fabio, and gave our team a ceremonial stage victory.
It was another long, terrible day eight hours on the bike, with everybody grieving. The peloton
did not race. Instead we rode in quiet formation. It was virtually a funeral procession, and at last
our team rode across the finish line, while, behind us, Fabio's bike was mounted atop the
support car with a black ribbon.
The following morning we began the race again in earnest, and rode into Bordeaux. Next was a
stage into Limoges, and that night, Och came around to our rooms and told the team that Fabio
had had two goals in the Tour: he wanted to finish the race, and he especially wanted to try to
win the stage into Limoges. As soon as Och stopped speaking I knew that if Limoges was the
stage Fabio had wanted to win for himself, now I wanted to win it for him, and that I was going
to finish the race.
About halfway through the next day's stage, I found myself grouped with 25 guys at the front.
Indurain was in the yellow leader's jersey, riding at the back. I did what came most naturally to
me: I attacked.
The problem was, I attacked too early, as usual. I went with 25 miles still to go, and on a
downhill portion. Two things you never do: attack early, and on a downhill. But I went so fast
on that downhill that I had a 30-second lead in a finger-snap. The other riders were completely
taken aback. I could feel them wondering, What's he thinking?
What was I thinking? I had looked back, and saw guys were riding along, with no particular
ambition. It was a hot day, and there was no incentive to pull hard, everyone was just trying to
get closer to the finish line where the tactics would play out. I glanced back, and one guy was
taking a sip of water. I glanced back again. Another guy was fixing his hat. So I took off.
Peoooo. I was gone.
When you have 15 other guys back there from 15 different teams, they'll never get organized.
They'll look at each other and say: You pull. No, you pull! So I went, and I went faster than I'd
ever ridden. It was a tactical punch in the face, and it had nothing to do with strength or ability;
everything depended on the initial shock and separation. It was insane, but it worked.
Nobody got within 55 seconds of me again. The team support car kept coming up and giving
me reports. Henny Kuiper, our team director, would say, "You're thirty seconds up." Then a few
minutes later he'd come alongside again and say, "You're forty-five seconds up."
When he came up the third or fourth time, I said, "Henny, don't come up here anymore. I'm not
getting caught."
"Okay, okay, okay," he said, and faded behind my wheel.
I didn't get caught.
I won by a minute, and I didn't feel a moment's pain. Instead I felt something spiritual; I know
that I rode with a higher purpose that day. Even though I had charged too early, I never suffered
after I broke away. I would like to think that was Fabio's experience too; he simply broke away
and separated from the world. There is no doubt in my mind that there were two riders on that
bike. Fabio was with me.
I felt an emotion at the finish line that I've never experienced again. I felt I was winning for
Fabio and his family and his baby, and for the mourning country of Italy. As I came across the
line I glanced upward and I pointed to the heavens, to Fabio.
After the Tour, Och had a memorial built for Fabio. He commissioned a sculptor from Como to
execute a work in white Carrara marble. The team flew in from all over the world, and we
gathered at the top of the mountain for the placement of the memorial and the dedication
ceremony. The memorial had a sundial on it that shone on three dates and times: his birthday,
the day he won the Olympic Games, and the day he died.
I had learned what it means to ride the Tour de France. It's not about the bike. It's a metaphor
for life, not only the longest race in the world but also the most exalting and heartbreaking and
potentially tragic. It poses every conceivable element to the rider, and more: cold, heat,
mountains, plains, ruts, flat tires, high winds, unspeakably bad luck, unthinkable beauty,
yawning senselessness, and above all a great, deep self-questioning. During our lives we're faced
with so many different elements as well, we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a
hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]