Remembering Laurent Fignon

It seems strange that an athlete’s career can be summed up not by the thrill of his greatest victory but by the agony of his worst defeat. Yet, that’s how a lot of knowledgeable cycling fans sum up the career of Laurent Fignon, winner of two Tour de France’s, one Girod Italia, three classics and a lot more. Among the current riders, only Alberto Contador has the better palmares.

I don’t get tired of watching the video of the 1989 Tour de France when Fignon, who was widely expected to hang on to his 50sec lead going into the final stage, a 34km ITT, was beaten by Greg Lemond by 8sec. But my perspective on the American and the Frenchman has come full circle 21 years after.

Back then,Fignon was portrayed by the (US) media as arrogant and aloof. His comments like, “When I saw (then 4-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault) attack like that I began to laugh” or when he said that his domestiques are paid not to make friends with him but to ride for him, didn’t help his image at all.

But the defeat, shown “live” worldwide, made him a popular and sympathetic public figure. This “defeat” is just one of the mysteries of cycling, where the runner up gets more love than the champion. Raymond Poulidor, who was 2nd 3-times and 3rd 5-times in the Tour is more popular than his rival 5-time Tour champion, Jaques Anquetil. Jan Ullrich, who came in second 5-times, is a more sympathetic figure than the 7-time champ, Lance Armstrong. Go figure!

There is no other sport that celebrates a defeat more than the victory than in cycling. The reason could probably be found in the early days of the sport, when the first professional cyclists were blue-collar workers. For the common folk, it was easier to identify with the humanity of a loser than the supernatural abilities of the champion. Fignon was a superman in the first three years of his career but a Clark Kent in the last eight.

Last week, Fignon, 50yo, passed away, eighteen months after announced that he had digestive cancer. To his credit, he didn’t let his disease get the best of him and he continued to work as a TV analyst for the Tour last July, his voice soft and throaty. He also wrote a book which he detailed the use of performance enhancing drugs.

You can always tell that a person is well loved when outsiders speak highly of you. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, union leaders, heads of French political parties all spoke about the courage of Fignon in the face of cancer. The Secretary General of the French Communist Party added that Fignon’s “talent and generosity have written a magnificent page in the history of French cycling”.

Just after he announced that he had cancer, Fignon told a close friend that although he wanted to live longer, he “wasn’t afraid to die”. For a man who stared at death for a year and a half, losing in one of the most spectacular way in sports is nothing.

Finally, I was sad to learn last week that one of my favorite actors, 65yo Michael Douglas, has stage 4 throat cancer. I first met Douglas as Steve Keller back in the 70’s when he was partnered with Karl Malden in the TV series, “The Streets of San Francisco”…… It’s a mistake to give a persona non-grata status to Gloria Diaz (and Floyd Mayweather for that matter), for it will only revive her moribund acting career (if you call it that). Try deadma instead.