motor that should be the advantage of the polka dot jersey wearer. The Spaniard could do nothing but ride his best and he could do nothing about the fact that, today, Massimo Lipari was simply riding better. It was going to be a legendary Stage finish. Système Vipère’s Velasquez had won at altitude in the Pyrenees, now Zucca MV’s Lipari was set to do the same in the Alps. The salle de presse and their editors back home were ecstatic about the copy such a day was generating.
On L’Alpe D’Huez, Fabian Ducasse bonked. In the salle de pressé, fingers went apoplectic over keyboards, but not Cat’s. Though she had been grinning transfixed by Massimo’s great bid for victory, her jaw dropped in awe as she watched Vasily Jawlensky pull away and power up the mountain, sitting calm in his saddle, his shoulders, his eyes, his resolve, rock steady. Incredibly, Vasily hugged the inside of each hairpin, riding the shorter but steeper route as if it were the easier option, the most direct route to the yellow jersey after all. Cat’s mouth remained agape in disbelief to see Fabian unable to counter Vasily’s attack.
On L’Alpe D’Huez both the polka dot and yellow jerseys changed backs, yet excitement amongst the press for the new victors was countered with compassion for the vanquished. It was gut-wrenching to watch Fabian flounder, to watch the yellow jersey himself slip away from his group, the jersey slip from him. No one helped him. Their pace had not changed. His had. Will power is one thing, grim determination is another, but limbs shot away with pain and muscles ravaged by lactic acid is something else entirely. Fabian simply could not turn the pedals with the force and effect that the other riders could. His eyes were swollen, his mouth was agape, his upper body could not pull and his lower body could not propel. Whatever was going through his mind, no matter how deep he dug within his soul, his body was emphatically on strike and he was utterly at its mercy.
On L’Alpe D’Huez Luca Jones dismounted. Now Cat gasped alarmed, having watched in silent horror her rider weaving and wavering before quitting his bike.
‘Get back,’ she murmured, ‘don’t stop. Don’t stop, Luca. Please.’ She closed her eyes, willing him to continue. Opening them, she saw the Megapac team car alongside Luca.
‘Make him get back,’ she implored, stirring the journalists around her but having no effect on Luca, ‘don’t let him stop. Tell him he can do it. Please.’
‘Let me stop,’ Luca sobs.
‘No! I will not have you fail. Get back and move. You are paid to do a job,’ the directeur, merely doing his, barks.
‘I can’t,’ Luca pleads.
‘You ride for Megapac,’ the directeur shouts, ‘you are not sick, you are lazy – ride on.’
‘Please,’ Luca pleads.
‘Last week you were the personification of success, today you are the epitome of failure.’
Luca remounts and slowly, painfully, painfully slowly, pedals onwards. He makes it up and around two further hairpin bends before dismounting again, this time sitting down on the tarmac, his fingers fixed as if still gripping the handlebars. His team car draws alongside. He looks at his directeur through his bloodshot eyes sunken deep into his skull. He is too cold, too desolate, to speak.
‘Luca, you will finish this Stage, you will not let L’Alpe D’Huez do this to you. How dare you even think of doing this to the team!’
‘My hands,’ Luca wails, ‘so cold.’
‘Piss on them,’ his directeur commands. ‘I forbid you to give up. You will not leave the Tour today.’
On L’Alpe D’Huez, Fen and Pip, drenched but warmed by Fritz’s schnapps, watched aghast as Luca Jones all but collapsed off his bike and sat shivering and hunched on the tarmac. They watched dumbfounded as he stood, stooped, rolled down his shorts a little and pissed. They watched stunned as he attempted to direct the flow over his hands. They watched in awe as he remounted. He was pushed along, from fan to fan, until his legs could take him forwards and his bike crept upwards and away. Pip chastized herself. She had been on the verge of moaning to Fen that she was wet, that it wasn’t much fun, that Channel 4 and a cup of tea were far preferable. But, having watched Luca, her triteness and selfishness appalled her. She needed to make amends. She summoned her spirit, found her voice and, with Marc and Fen and all her other new friends, cheered and urged each and every rider who passed her on their passage.
On L’Alpe D’Huez, four riders abandoned the Tour de France, bringing the number of riders retiring on Stage 14 to twelve. Luca Jones was not one of them. It took Massimo Lipari a phenomenal 36 minutes 51 seconds to climb the mountain, win the Stage and claim the polka dot jersey, a true King of the Mountains. It took Luca just under an hour to limp to the line. Ben was waiting in the team bus. When Luca crawled up the steps, Ben thought how his face was like that of a wizened old man, but how his fragility, his comportment, was that of a child. Luca looked to Ben and, just then, all the doctor felt he could do for the rider was to open his arms, into which the young rider collapsed. He sobbed, his body shaking in spasms of cold and fatigue.
On L’Alpe D’Huez, in the salle de pressé, wearing Josh’s fleece and with Alex’s sweatshirt over her knees. Cat wondered how on earth to finish her article. She was thrilled for Massimo to be wearing the polka dot jersey after an epic Stage won in 5 hours 43 minutes and 45 seconds, she was ecstatic that Vasily was now the maillot jaune of the Tour de France, having come home with a hissing, livid Carlos Jesu Velasquez two minutes later. However, her heart bled for Carlos and of course for Fabian, now lying second and nearly four minutes behind Vasily; she felt for the whole of Système Vipère who had relinquished their two prized jerseys on this horrible day. But it was Luca Jones, though, who captured her sympathy and haunted her. With no defining jersey on his back apart from his sodden Megapac strip, he was, in general, just another rider from the peloton who had suffered beyond comprehension today. To Cat, though, he was a champion. Luca had given every ounce of his physical and emotional capacity to finish the Stage for his team, for his directeur, for cycle sport, for the fans and lastly, for himself. For Cat, even those ten riders who abandoned, even the two riders coming home well over the time limit only to be sent home, were victors commanding her respect, her compassion and commensurate columns in her report.
Today, I am not writing sport reportage, my piece is not a commentary on the day’s Stage. It is my deeply personal response, as honest and emotional as a private diary entry.
‘Hey, Cat,’ Rachel’s voice crackled through bad reception on the mobile phone.
‘Rachel,’ Cat said, ‘what a godforsaken day.’
‘I know,’ Rachel agreed.
‘I mean, well done Zucca – but the conditions, Jesus! How are the boys?’
‘Too exhausted,’ Rachel said, ‘absolutely shattered and shot through to the marrow.’
‘You sound low, Rachel,’ Cat detected, ‘it must really take it out of you, too.’
‘It does,’ the soigneur confided. ‘Today Zucca have the yellow and polka dot jerseys – but the team are supremely exhausted, their bodies brutally battered. I have to pick up the pieces and it’s knackering.’
‘Would you like some company?’ Cat asked, seeing it was eight o’clock and wondering when Taverner was going to lambast her for exceeding her word limit by 100 per cent.
‘Please,’ said Rachel, ‘come by the hotel.’
‘Shit,’ said Cat, once she’d hung up, ‘my sisters.’
Cat’s sisters had trudged up L’Alpe D’Huez, very wet and a little drunk. They’d walked the finishing straight, thinking how, amidst the debris and lingering vibe, it was as if a circus had come to town and then gone again. The rain had settled into an eye-squinting mist and it justified more schnapps and a good sit-down somewhere warm.
‘I can’t believe Cat’s pissing off to see some physio friend,’ Pip said petulantly, a hearty glug of liqueur