Free Rough Ride by Paul Kimmage Page B

carried on. I started the sprint early to avoid being boxed in; the tyre was softening but holding. The Polish rider Lech Piasecki passed me like a bomb but as the line approached, no one else arrived and I thought: 'Christ I'm going to get a medal.' But then a Danish rider, Weltz, passed, then a Belgian, another Dane and an Italian, Maurizio Fondriest. I crossed the line and counted. Six. Sixth in the world. The sixth best amateur in the whole fucking world. I was overjoyed. It was the summit of my career.
    I watched the pros ride next day. I visited the pits after the race and received congratulations from Roche, Kelly and Earley. Kelly was the last to leave for his hotel. A man of few words, he turned to me just before getting into the team car, and said, 'De Gribaldy will be talking to you.' This was music to my ears and I returned to Wasquehal a happy man. I met 'de Gri' on the eve of the pro-am classic, the Grand Prix d'Isbergues, at the small hotel where his team was staying. He made me wait for half an hour but then sat down beside me at a table in the bar. He looked at me and said I would have to lose some weight and then asked me some details, including my age. I had expected him to produce a contract for me to sign and had already decided I would not sign for less than £600 a month – de Gri was a notoriously bad payer. But he produced no contract and made no promises. He just said we would meet again after the race, which I was riding with the Irish national team. Three-quarters of the way through I was following French pro Jacques Bossis down a narrow gravel-lined descent. There was a sharp right-hand bend at the bottom, which I failed to round and ran off the road. The front wheel dropped into a sharp dip in the ditch, throwing me over the handlebars, and I landed face down at the roadside. I don't remember much, just the pain from my back and left wrist and the sensation that someone had kicked me in the mouth. I spent five days in hospital in Béthune with a fractured vertebra and left wrist. I had expected de Gri to call at the hospital with my contract, but he never came. I left hospital dejected. Raphael packed my things and we went home to Ireland – to wait.
    The phone rang six weeks later. It was Mollet. He was sending me a professional contract with a new French team, RMO. I would be paid £700 a month and the contract was for two years. I put the phone down and danced a jig of joy. The struggling was over. All the sacrifices had paid off. I had made it.

7
BRAND-NEW ANORAK
    The first team meeting took place at a ski station at Grand Bornand, on the slopes of the Col de Colombier. RMO, a firm specialising in temporary employment, gathered together the eighteen cyclists who would wear their colours in the professional peloton for 1986. It was a mixed bunch of old-timers, established names and new pros, four of whom had been taken on. Two, Jean-Louis Peillon and Bruno Huger, were French. Per Pedersen was Danish and I was Irish. It was hard for Pedersen and me to integrate. He spoke no French, and shyness prevented me from using the bit that I knew. I spoke only when I was spoken to and tried to smile as much as possible. I wanted desperately to be accepted. I felt so awkward, so out of place, just like my first day in school.
    In the mornings we would ski cross-country. I had never skied before and spent the whole week slipping on my arse. This helped my integration as I was a source of constant amusement to the suave French, who had learned to ski in childhood. I tried to fall as little as possible, not because I was afraid of getting laughed at but because it was excruciatingly painful. The vertebra I had broken while riding my last amateur race three months earlier had not quite healed. No one knew I had cracked a vertebra, and I wasn't telling them. I had fought all my life for this pro contract and I feared that the revelation of a back problem might discourage my new sponsor from employing me. So