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

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‘I didn’t see Jalabert in the hospital. I saw a man on a stretcher, but had no idea it was Jalabert. I just saw a lot of blood.’

Nelissen didn’t see the policeman, either. Nor did he hear from him. In his interview with Truyers in the winter of 1994, Nelissen said: ‘People say he was given a camera by a girl behind the barrier and he took the picture to do her a favour.’ Even if that were true – and it was never proven – Nelissen remarked that it was ‘very sweet of him, but not allowed. He was there to secure our safety, which didn’t happen.

‘It’s unfortunate, but he didn’t do it deliberately. Therefore I didn’t want to press charges, even though there was a lot of pressure from the team. That would just have caused a lot of misery and pain. For him, it would have been terrible; he would have lost his job, his house. That, I would have never wanted. I don’t want him to pay for the rest of his life.’

Gendron, the gendarme, worked for the French army unit CRS-3 in Quincy-sous-Sénart, though Nelissen understood that he moved – or was moved, perhaps – to the south of France with his wife and young child after the incident. The crash in Armentières was the subject of a subsequent police investigation, but Gendron was cleared of any wrongdoing.