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

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There are fans of the prologue, too. Thierry Marie in the 1980s, Boardman in the ’90s, Fabian Cancellara in the 2000s. Its appeal lies in its simplicity: it’s as pure a test of speed as you can get in professional cycling.

The prologue to the 1994 Tour de France was a classic. Held in the centre of Lille over a pan-flat 7.2km course, with wide boulevards and only a few sweeping bends, it was the perfect test. It was perfect in other ways, too, since it served up a tantalising confrontation between two masters in quite different fields.

It pitched the three-time Tour winner, Miguel Indurain, against a novice, Chris Boardman, whose only experience of the Tour had been as a spectator twelve months earlier. In terms of their background, they couldn’t have been more different. Indurain was steeped in the traditions of road racing on the continent, slowly ascending the hierarchy of his team until emerging as leader in 1991, the year of his first Tour victory. The twenty-five-year-old Boardman had arrived on the continent fully formed, as the finished article – but a complete contrast to Indurain, given that he came from a very different tradition. His apprenticeship was served in the obscure backwater of British time trialling.