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

50 страница из 104

Abdoujaparov was his polar opposite: a dour Uzbek. He was the Tashkent Terror, a stern-faced warrior. While Cipollini was tall, bronzed and dashing, with his chiselled jaw and mouth full of white teeth, the dark-haired, razor-cheeked Abdoujaparov was compact, powerful and dangerous; outrageously fast but a menace in a bunch sprint. There was nothing malicious about Abdou. It was just that with elbows out and head down there was no telling where he would go; he weaved left, right, seemingly out of control.

But the main victim of Abdou’s erratic sprinting was Abdou himself. He was involved in one of the most infamous crashes in Tour history, on the Champs-Élysées in 1991. Head down, he was heading for the win when he veered dramatically, and wholly unnecessarily, to the right, colliding with one of the Coca-Cola advertising bollards, which jutted out from the barriers. It was as if his bike was swiped from under him. It was stopped dead by the obstacle while the sprinter was catapulted from his bike and tossed to the road like a rag doll.