We Were Young and Carefree by Laurent Fignon Read Free Book Online

item by item, before putting it back together. The only trouble was I was no mechanic and I never have been. As a result, in each of my next ten or eleven races I broke something, every time. The chain, a brake or gear cable, a pedal, a spoke . . . Without realising it, I was actually a danger to myself. To make me stop, my father had to lose his temper and ban any bike repairs. He was right. I won the next race without a single problem. My only win of the year.
    I must admit that back then I had no idea how to ride a bike. I often fell off. I raced any old how. I never saw anything coming and I couldn’t predict how a race would turn out. I was serving my apprenticeship, without understanding that this was to be my profession. I loved it. Sometimes when I was physically at my best I could sense moments of utter ecstasy, those rare fleeting times when you are in total harmony with yourself and the elements around you: nature, the noise of the wind, the smells. Let’s not get carried away. But I have to confess: I was happy.
    You aren’t serious at seventeen. But every time I paid a little attention I would win easily. I can’t explain why it was so easy, but that’s how it was.
    In 1978 I have a clear memory of the Ile-de-France team time trial championship over forty-two kilometres. For almost the entire race, at least twenty-five kilometres, no one was capable of coming alongside me to do a pull at the front. I was flying. But that day, in contrast to what you might believe, I had absolutely no sense that this might be my future. I had no notion that cycling might hold any prospects in the long term, but youthful passion is always the driving force for most cyclists. Cycling would turn my heart inside out and my competitive instinct would always be the winner.
    I was completely transformed. Something allowed my soul and my guts to function as one. Out training one day I had a marvellous and completely disconcerting feeling. Looking at the other guys around me, I thought: ‘I’m better than they are.’ I’ve no idea why. But it was there, inside me. I had no doubts. And that conviction fuelled my urge to progress as quickly as I possibly could.
    In 1978 I started about forty races and won eighteen. I raised my arms to the sky in one victory salute after another and took pleasure in what fate was providing. Everything worked. I won in sprint finishes, on my own, on the flat, in the hills. However the race panned out, I attacked, and I won. One day, a trainer muttered: ‘You have a gift.’ I’d just won five races in a row.
    But fortunately, I had no dreams of greater glory. I never said I wanted to ‘have a career’ or ‘turn pro’ or anything else. I was protected by my lust for life.

CHAPTER 3
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    HAPPY SCHOOLDAYS
    Clever men rarely make good sportsmen; does that mean that sportsmen are stupid?
    Right up to the end of my adolescence being shy was my Achilles heel. It took a mere nothing to make me blush. I withdrew into my shell. For a long time I struggled to contain my feelings but over time sport and celebrity cured me and instilled a simple equation in my mind: to defeat shyness you have to take risks. And isn’t taking risks an essential quality for a sportsman who wants to achieve great things?
    I knew nothing about cycling history. My father wasn’t very interested in sport and he didn’t read newspapers. At home, the television was just another bit of furniture as I saw it; I hardly ever watched it and it would never have occurred to me to turn it on if I could go outside. And let’s not forget, in that prehistoric era there were only two channels.
    Even the Tour de France barely aroused my attention, let alone any dreams. I have only two boyhood memories of La Grande Boucle . The first is from 15 July 1969. I was in the car with my parents, the radio was crackling in the dashboard and a commentator whose name I didn’t know was reporting live on Eddy Merckx’s first great exploit, the