Free How Cav Won the Green Jersey by Ned Boulting Page B

never look at those France Télévisions Citroëns in the same light. They have always been driven recklessly. This year’s Tour, despite the appalling incident with Flecha and Hoogerland, featured a definite, and marked return to the bad old (good old) days of driving at 100 kph down the wrong side of a road. Recent Tours had seen this desperately dangerous practice phased out by the police. But for some reason, this year, it returned, and the TV Citroëns led the charge, in particular from Bourg d’Oisans to Grenoble on the penultimate transfer. A thirty-mile stretch of occasional dual carriageway turned into a massive game of chicken with oncoming caravans and the sudden appearance of central reservations. My palms grow sweaty at the memory of that awful drive. Sitting in stationary traffic, you would suddenly become aware of blue flashing lights in your wing-mirror. Three or four police cars would come charging down the (almost empty) wrong side of the road. The trick was to pull out and slipstream them. It wasn’t particularly legal. But it got you to your final destination fast, which, after three weeks on the road, was pretty much all that mattered to any of us.
    The French TV cars, needless to say were the most fearless. They instinctively took their place at the front of the convoy, just behind the police vehicles, as a matter of national pride. I once had the temerity to position myself at the sharp end of the race in a spot that was rightfully theirs. I was nearly deliberately rammed. It was like being a Saunier Duval rider trying to mix it with Lance Armstrong’s US Postal Big Blue Train. Not a good idea.
    We waged war on them last summer, just as they seemed intent on waging war with the rest of the world. On the descent of the Plateau de Beille, stuck in an immobile snake of traffic, I opted to pull on my running shoes and see if I could get to the bottom of the mountain quicker than Woody and Liam in the Espace. Most of the time, I was running past stationary cars. But sometimes the line of traffic would move, and cars would overtake me slowly. On one such an occasion, I was passed by a France Télévisions Citroën, whose driver saw fit to spray me, quite deliberately, with windscreen wiper fluid. Already running on frayed nerves, I was instantly incensed. But the traffic came shuddering to a halt round the next corner, and at once I was granted the opportunity to make my feelings felt. I caught up with the offending vehicle.
    There were four lads in the car, in their early twenties. They looked like production juniors. I tapped on the window. They wound it down. With exaggerated calmness, but with clunky French I asked them whether or not they would agree that France Télévisions had had an excellent Tour behind the wheel, when taken as a whole, and that their minor act of hooliganism just added a slight blemish to the impression of considerate driving which had so typified their corporate approach.
    I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I asked them. They looked sheepish enough. I asked them if they wouldn’t mind me noting down their registration. They looked worried. I told them that I would take the matter further the next day. They looked genuinely petrified. Or I imagined that they did. But on reflection, perhaps they were just upset at the sight of my puffy red face dripping detergent and runner’s snot from the end of my imperious nose onto their upholstery.
    I withdrew my righteous head, and felt as if I had planted a blue and yellow Vacansoleil flag on the moral high ground of the Plateau de Beille.
    I’d done it for Johnny. We’d all done it for Johnny.
    The day of his slicing, he stood on the podium and wept, as much in pain as in shock. I think the pride would have come later, if it came at all. That night he had thirty-three stitches to his wounds. But still he rode on. He carried the claret-spattered polka-dot jersey on his shoulders through the next two stages, then lost it, only to