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

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Few Tours have started with a bigger favourite than Bernard Hinault in 1980. Le Blaireau (The Badger) had won the previous two, including 1978, his début. That year, although only twenty-three, he rode with such impressive authority, even leading a riders’ protest at the end of one stage, that an aura was already starting to develop. The timing was right. In the same year that the great Eddy Merckx retired, a new patron was needed, and here was Hinault, waiting in the wings, poised to stride confidently to centre stage.

He didn’t have to wait long. A year after his first Tour and first win, Hinault returned and dominated. To underline his superiority, he even claimed the traditional sprinters’ finish on the Champs-Élysées. To win there, in the yellow jersey, showed more than strength and speed. It showed panache and defiance. It was a two-fingered salute. And it was completely unnecessary. Hinault entered Paris with a lead of three minutes over the second-placed Joop Zoetemelk (which in the record books is thirteen, after Zoetemelk was subsequently docked ten minutes for a doping offence). His win in Paris was Hinault’s seventh stage of the 1979 Tour. He was at the zenith of his powers.