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

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The difficulty in contacting Nelissen owes nothing to his reluctance to speak. He is no recluse. He is simply – unusually for a Belgian ex-professional – no longer involved in the sport of cycling. He was for a while; he ran a youth team for six years. But no other door opened, partly, he thinks, because he only really worked with two team directors, Peter Post, who retired, and Jean-Luc Vandenbroucke, with whom, he says, ‘I was constantly fighting.’ He still follows the sport ‘very closely, but if you look around my living room, you won’t find any cycling memorabilia, apart from the trophy for my second victory in de Omloop [Het Volk]. Even my Belgian jerseys I gave away.’

He is still regularly asked about Armentières. It is what he is remembered for. Which is ironic, because he still remembers nothing. ‘It has never come back. What I do remember now are the kilometres leading up to the finish. A lot of twisting and turning. Very fast. But the fall … nothing.

‘My first memory is waking up in the hospital. I had no idea what had happened. I knew – because I was hospitalised – that something had happened to me. But I couldn’t figure out what it was exactly. I had no broken bones or anything like that. How? Why? I had no idea. In the early morning, people started coming in, but I didn’t really speak French back then. So it was still a bit unclear. There was a television in the hospital that you had to keep going by putting coins in it. Believe it or not, that started showing the images of the race, and just when the sprint was about to happen I ran out of money! So even then I didn’t see the crash.