Fignon, triumphs and defeats of the cycling “professor”

He was not an easy man, Fignon. He accepted the rules, but he had a vice that caused him several problems: he always wanted to understand, to confront, even when the reality of the world of cycling was not that of a boy’s dreams.

A changing cycling

Another important thing should be remembered: that Fignon raced on an impervious ridge of two eras, that is, between the early 1980s and early 1990s. A ridge that, due to the explosion of blood doping and new technologies, marketing and the invasive growth of sponsors, has split the history of cycling in two. There is a before and there is an after. And Fignon passes right in the middle of it, proving on his skin that his world was definitely changing.

“I never thought it was better in my day than it is now. It was just different, that’s all. However, I think I went through the short hippy period of cycling… Let’s say we were more on the side of the rebels than on the submissive side. We were the living ones. Sometimes, it’s true, half dead. But we have never been robots! Crazy but full of dignity… ”writes the French champion, called“ the professor ”because he wore round intellectual glasses. He was also blond, with long hair pulled back, so very showy in the group. One who stood out, in short.

The harsh reality of professional cycling

A book that can be read in one breath. Because cycling, and therefore sport, is told without rhetorical embellishments. As it is in reality: that is, full of fatigue, sacrifices, responsibilities. All this in an age when you are not yet structured. Friends go to parties and you have to work out and go to bed early. Eat a certain way. Don’t run after girls, especially with a view to racing. There is also luck, the destiny that changes the life of a champion. Just a fall, a tendonitis, a bronchitis, to get out of the radar of success. Talent is not everything. It takes an iron will, and above all good health. We always tend to give cycling a romantic, sentimental, very heroic aura, but then, in the life of a runner, there are many gray areas, sometimes incomprehensible to the fans themselves: money, contracts to be respected, the fear of decline. , the envy, the fickleness of success, the cold, the rain, the scorching heat.

Fignon spares us nothing. His fierce arguments with Cyrille Guimard, the all-powerful sports director who led him for nearly a decade. The not easy coexistence with a champion-legend like Bernard Hinault. The dislike of him for Greg Lemond and then for Luc Leblanc, world champion in 1994 in Agrigento.