It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (25 page)

climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in a while, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in a day, over the course of a

six- or seven-hour ride. A 12-mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like.

I rode when no one else would ride, sometimes not even my teammates. I remember one day in particular, May 3, a raw European spring day, biting cold. I steered my bike into the Alps, with

Johan following in a car. By now it was sleeting and 32 degrees. I didn’t care. We stood at the roadside and looked at the view and the weather, and Johan suggested that we skip it. I said,

“No. Let’s do it.” I rode for seven straight hours, alone. To win the Tour I had to be willing to ride when no one else would ride.

The most punishing ride in Nice was the Col de la Madone, or the Madonna. It was a famously tough eight-mile climb above the city. You could almost see it from our house, beyond the

rolling hills that ringed the skyline. The Madone was too difficult to train on all the time, but it was a great test of fitness. Most people did it once or twice in a season. I did it once a month.

Tony Rominger, who for years was one of the top riders in the world, used the Madone as his training test when he lived in Monaco, and he held the record for climbing it–31 minutes and 30

seconds. Kevin Livingston, arguably the best climber on our Postal Service team, once did it in 32 minutes. At the beginning of my comeback in the ‘98 season, I had done the Madone in 36

minutes. But to win the Tour, I knew I had to whittle the time down considerably.

“I’m going to break 31,” I announced to Kevin one day.

That was big talk coming from someone who at the time couldn’t even break 35 on the hill.

“You’re crazy,” Kevin said.

But I got to 34, and then 33. Then one afternoon, I clocked in at 32:30. Right before the Tour, Kevin and I rode the Madone one last time.

It was a humid day, with just a little bit of wind, very muggy and hot. We raced toward the peak, which was in clouds, 3,000 feet above sea level. With a kilometer to go, Kevin flatted.

While he stopped to change his tire, I pedaled on. As I got to the top, I glanced at the time clock on my handlebars.

I waited for Kevin. He arrived out of breath and in a bad mood over his flat tire. I showed him the time on my computer. The implications for the Tour hit us. “Oh, boy,” Kevin said. “This

could be ugly.”

Kik knew that whenever I did the Madone, it was a serious day. I had been stone-faced over breakfast, already concentrating. When I came home she was waiting by the front door, anxious

to see how it had gone, whether I was cheerful or testy. Och was visiting us, and he waited anxiously, too.

I barged into the house, looking grim.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“The conditions were lousy,” I said.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “All I did was a 30:47.”

She threw her arms around me. Och slapped me on the back.

“Jimmy, I’m ready,” I said.

A few days later, Och went back to the States. He told everybody who would listen that I was going to win the Tour de France.

I PACKED FOR THE TOUR WITH A COMPULSIVE, NERVOUS

attention to detail. Kik and I laid out all my things and arranged them carefully in the suitcase. I insisted they be packed a certain way My bike shorts had to be rolled together so that they fit in

a neat line. My shoeboxes had to be set in the right place. Gloves were tucked into a particular corner, arm warmers into another. Everything had to be perfectly aligned, so I knew at

a glance that I had every type of clothing for every type of weather.

We arrived in Paris for the preliminaries to the Tour, which included a series of medical and drug tests, and mandatory lectures from Tour officials. Each rider was given a Tour “Bible,” a

guidebook that showed every stage of the course, with profiles of the route and where the feed areas were. We tinkered with our bikes, changing handlebars and making sure our cleats fit the

pedals just right. Some riders were more casual than others about the setup of their bikes, but I was particular. The crew called me Mister Millimeter.

In the prerace hype, our U.S. Postal team was considered an outside shot. No one talked about us as having a chance of winning. They talked about Abraham Olano, the reigning world

champion. They talked about Michael Boogerd, who had beaten me in the Am-stel. They talked about Alexander Zulle of Switzerland and Fernando Escartin of Spain. They talked about who

wasn’t there, the casualties of the doping investigations. I was a footnote, the heartwarming American cancer survivor. Only one person seemed to think I was capable of it. Shortly before

the race began, someone asked Miguel Indurain who he thought had a good chance of winning. Maybe he remembered our conversation in the elevator and knew how I had trained.

“Armstrong” was his answer.

The first stage of the Tour was the brief Prologue, a time trial of eight kilometers in Le Puy du Fou, a town with a parchment-colored chateau and a medieval theme park. The Prologue was a

seeding system of sorts, to separate out the fast riders from the slow and determine who would ride at the front of the peloton. Although it was only eight kilometers long, it was a serious test

with absolutely no margin for error. You had to sprint flat-out, and find maximum efficiency, or you would be behind before you ever started. The riders who wanted to contend in the overall

needed to finish among the top three or four.

The course began with a sprint of five kilometers, and then came a big hill, a long suffer-fest of 700 meters–a climb you couldn’t afford to do at anything less than all-out. After a sweeping

turn, it was a flat sprint to the finish. The course would favor a bullish rider like me, and it had also been perfect for the great Indurain, who had once ridden it in a record time of 8:12.

All told, it should take less than nine minutes. The biggest factor was the hill. You didn’t want to spend all your energy in the first 5K sprint, and then die on the hill. Also, there was a strategic

decision to be made: should I take the hill with a big chainring, or a smaller one? We debated the matter on and off for two days.

Johan was calm and exacting as he plotted our strategy. He broke the race down into wattages and split times, and gave me precise instructions. He even knew what my heart rate should be

over the first sprint: 190.

Riders went off in staggered starts three minutes apart. Reports drifted back from the course. Frankie Andreu, my teammate, sacrificed himself with an experiment when he tried to climb the

hill using the big ring. It was the wrong decision. By the time he reached the top of the hill, he was done, blown. He never recovered.

Olano broke the course record with a time of 8:11. Then Zulle beat that with an 8:07.

It was my turn. When I’m riding well, my body seems almost motionless on the bike with the exception of my legs, which look like automated pistons. From behind in the team car, Johan

could see that my shoulders barely swayed, meaning I was wasting no extra energy, everything was going into the bike, pumping it down the road.

In my ear, Johan gave me partial time checks and instructions as I rode.

“You’re out of the saddle,” Johan said. “Sit down.”

I was pushing too hard, not realizing it. I sat down, and focused on execution, on the science and technique of the ride. I had no idea what my overall time was. I just pedaled.

I crossed the finish line. I glanced at the clock.

It read “8:02.”

I thought, That can’t be right.

I looked again. “8:02.”

I was the leader of the Tour de France. For the first time in my career, I would wear the yellow jersey, the maillot jaune, to distinguish me from the other riders.

At our campers, I got giant bear hugs from my teammates, and the biggest of all from Johan. An ESPN camera crew arrived for an interview, but I could barely get through it. My mouth felt

tight, and I was afraid I would break down on the air. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t get the words out. “I’m just in shock,” I said, hoarsely. “I’m in shock.”

Out of the crowd, I saw Indurain. He pushed through and came toward me, and gave me an affectionate handshake and hug.

There is really no time to celebrate a stage win in the Tour. First you’re hustled to drug testing, and then protocol takes over. I was ushered to a camper to wash up for the podium ceremony,

and presented with the yellow jersey to change into. As much as I had prepared for the Tour, this moment was the one thing I had left out. I hadn’t prepared for the sensation of pulling on

that jersey, of feeling the fabric slide over my back.

Back home in Nice, Kik watched on TV as I stepped onto the podium in the yellow jersey. She jumped around our house, shrieking and shaking up the baby, and making the dog bark. Finally,

I got down from the podium and went into our team camper, where I used the phone to call her. “Babe,” I said.

All I heard on the other end of the line was, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” and she burst into tears. Then she said, “Damn, honey, you did it.”

There was a second supremely sweet moment of victory. As I made my way through the finish area, I passed the Cofidis team. Assorted members of the organization stood around, the men

who I felt had left me for dead in a hospital room.

“That was for you,” I said, as I moved past them.

WE SET OFF ACROSS THE NORTHERN PLAINS OF FRANCE.

I was the first American riding for an American team, on an American bike, ever to lead the Tour de France. That morning, I looked at the date: it was July 4.

Suddenly, I got nervous. The yellow jersey was a responsibility. Now, instead of being the attacker, I would be the rider under attack. I had never been in the position of defending the

jersey before.

The opening stages of the Tour were the terrain of sprinters. We hurtled across the plains on flat and monotonous roads, playing our game of speed chess on bikes. Nerves were taut; there was a

lot of maneuvering and flicking in the peloton, close calls, and a couple of classic Tour crashes.

Handlebars clashed, hips bumped, tires collided. There was less to contend with at the front of the peloton, so that’s where we tried to ride, but so did every other team, and the road was only

so wide. With almost 200 riders jockeying for position, it was tough to avoid collisions. The main strategy in those first few days was to stay out of trouble–easier said than done. In the

position battle, with such constant movement, you could get spit out the back before you knew it. The year before, Kevin had crashed twice in the flats and found himself 15 minutes down

before he ever reached the mountains.

Our team setup consisted of two following cars and a van. In one car were Johan and the crew, with our reserve bikes on top, and in the other were team managers and any sponsors who

happened to be along for the ride. The van carried all the bikes and our bags and assorted other equipment. If someone got a flat tire, a mechanic was available, and if we needed water or food,

the crew could hand it to us.

Johan directed the race tactically from the car. He issued time checks and status reports and attack orders over a sophisticated two-way radio system. Each Postal rider had an earpiece and a

small black radio cord around his collar, and was wired with a heart monitor so that Johan could keep track of how our bodies were performing under stress.

All day, every day, my teammates rode in front of me, protecting me from wind, crashes, competitors, and other hazards. We constantly dodged overeager spectators and photographers

and their various paraphernalia: baby carriages, coolers, you name it.

In the second stage, we came to a four-kilometer causeway called the Passage du Gois, a scene of almost surreal strangeness. The Passage is a long, narrow, blacktop road across a tidal marsh,

but the brackish water floods at high tide, covering the road and making it impassable. Even when the road is passable, it’s slick and treacherous, and the edges are covered with barnacles

and seaweed.

The peloton was still bunched up, full of banging and maneuvering, and it would be a tricky crossing. The first teams across would have the safest passage, so most of the Postal riders

gathered around me and we surged near the front. Along the way, some of our teammates got separated and wound up in a second group. Frankie and George got me over with no mishaps,

but it was frightening; the road was so slippery under our tires that we hesitated to so much as turn the wheel, and we fought a crosswind that made it hard to keep the bike straight.

Behind us, other riders weren’t so lucky. They rode straight into a massive pileup.

Somebody hit his brakes, and suddenly there were competitors lying all over the blacktop. Bikes flew up in the air, wheels spinning crazily, and riders tumbled to the ground in a huge chain

reaction. Guys lay prone on the asphalt as the rest of the peloton bore down on them, and more riders fell. We lost Jonathan Vaughters, who banged his head and cut his chin wide open, and

had to abandon. Jonathan had averted disaster the previous day in another crash, when he vaulted headfirst over his handlebars–and managed to land on his feet. He earned the nickname

of El Gato, “The Cat,” from the peloton for that, but now he was out. Tyler Hamilton came away from the crash with a sore knee.

As it turned out, the Passage du Gois was one of the more critical moments of the race. By getting across the Passage early, I picked up valuable time, while some of those bodies scattered

behind me in the road were Tour favorites. Michael Boogerd and Alex Zulle fell more than six minutes behind–a deficit that would become more and more telling as the days wore on.

Over those first ten days, we had just one aim–to stay near the front and out of any more trouble. I was seeking a balance: I wanted to remain in contention, while staying as fresh as