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

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But TI-Raleigh had another problem, as Van Vliet tells me. ‘We thought Zoetemelk was going well, he rode well in the time trial, so he was in a good position. But that stage, Zoetemelk was not so good. We wanted to make the stage. But when Zoetemelk couldn’t hold the wheels, you have a problem.’ What of the truce? ‘I think for this stage Hinault was even more afraid than Zoetemelk,’ says Van Vliet.

If Hinault was afraid, he was doing a good job of hiding it. And the cards were falling in his favour. ‘We were riding for Zoetemelk to win,’ Van Vliet says, ‘so we had to wait for him.’

Once the break was established, Hinault was committed. When, with 20km to go, Kuiper attacked, opening a ten-second gap, it was Hinault who hunted him down. Delcroix was still there, and he wouldn’t help, sitting on Hinault’s wheel. But gradually Hinault closed the gap to Kuiper, so that all three were together with 9km to go. The bunch was now two minutes behind. It was one of those rare days at the Tour when the race was being turned on its head; where it was perhaps not being won, but could be lost. Aware of this, TI-Raleigh, the team that had, in Hinault’s description, declared war, were chasing hard. Zoetemelk sat at the back of a string of team-mates, splattered by the water and mud thrown up by their wheels, looking thoroughly dejected.