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

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There are a number of premature deaths – Ocaña, Marco Pantani, Jose María Jiménez, Laurent Fignon – but only one occurred during the Tour. That was Fabio Casartelli in 1995 and I can vividly remember the room and sofa where I sat, and how I felt, when television pictures showed him curled up on the road, a pool of blood forming by his head. One chapter focuses on an emotionally charged stage three days later, won by Casartelli’s team-mate, a young American called Lance Armstrong.

The older Armstrong reappears in a later chapter, from 2003: a stage and a Tour that now have an asterisk against them and a line through the winner’s name. Despite his disgrace, I wanted to include Armstrong, partly because he is difficult to ignore, partly because nobody could argue that some of his Tours (the stage I chose in particular) were not dramatic. I didn’t know if he’d agree to an interview, but when I explained the project by email he responded within minutes: ‘You bet.’ Then I wasn’t sure what he wanted out of it, other than to talk about the 2003 stage to Luz Ardiden as though it was still in the record books; as though it still mattered. ‘Those Tours happened,’ he said, ‘despite what a bunch of dickheads say.’ Of course, you might disagree ...