Читать книгу Etape. The untold stories of the Tour de France’s defining stages онлайн

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But as the Tour got closer, he began to feel unwell. He suffered terribly with nerves, which led him to work with a psychologist, John Syer, in the run-up to the Barcelona Olympics. The stress would force Boardman to think himself ill, or falling ill, even when he wasn’t.

His preparation, after his triumphant Dauphiné, was typical Boardman – on the face of it, idiosyncratic, but meticulously planned and thought out. While his peers were doing warm-up road races in Europe, he rode and won a 10-mile time trial for amateurs in north Wales. Looking ahead from north Wales to Lille and the Tour prologue, he said: ‘The podium is a possibility. It’s difficult to know who will be up there. Specialists like Thierry Marie seem to be fading. Indurain has been very quiet … Rominger is lying low.’

‘Chris is very close to his best form,’ said his coach, Peter Keen. ‘He still has a slight problem with a chest infection that we’re trying to clear up. A sputum sample enabled us to find the type of microbe and he is now on antibiotics.’