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

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But in the first half of the 1980 season, he was on track. He could do no wrong. A few weeks after his win at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Hinault rode and won the Giro d’Italia. So when he appeared in Frankfurt for the Tour de France, and won the prologue, it seemed the script was already written. There was little point in talking of other contenders.

* * *

Thirty-three years later, almost to the day, I am sitting with Bernard Hinault in an outdoor café in, of all places, the Chelsea Flower Show in London. As incongruous a setting as any, the equivalent might be meeting the Dalai Lama at a bare-knuckle boxing match. Refined gentlemen and women, on a break from wandering around the display gardens, drink cream teas in the café, unaware, certainly, that there is a Badger in their midst. A Badger sipping cappuccino from a paper cup.

His presence is explained by the fact that Yorkshire will host the start of the 2014 Tour de France. They have a specially commissioned Tour-themed garden, beside which Hinault obligingly poses alongside various dignatories, as well as the Tour director, Christian Prudhomme. At one point, Prudhomme spots a rucksack with the Tour de France logo, worn by an elderly man, ambling from garden to garden in the company of his wife. Prudhomme leaps after him, stops the couple, then summons Hinault. Hinault strides over, shakes hands, smiles genially – he speaks not a word of English.