Looking Back - The 1997 Tour de France, episode 2: Building up

Friday, July 4, 1997

In those days, as a teenager, I did a lot of my own cycling but watched far less. In many ways my cycling season, with regards to the television, began and ended with the Tour. The rest of the year was football. Sometimes I would go out of my way to watch Paris-Roubaix, but there was little beyond that. I lived for the Tour and my month of July belonged to it; set to a soundtrack of the voices of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.

It was those three weeks in July that I would record the half-hour highlight show on Channel 4 every night. The excitement would rise up when that title track by Pete Shelley would play at the start of the show. It was each week that I would read the latest copy of my dads issue of Cycling Weekly. Scanning the results; reading the reports. It was that month in which I would take to the streets outside my house, on my own bike, pretending I was in the race. I'd sprint for an invisible line on the road, pretending it was the top of an epic Alpine climb. In my head I'd hear the commentary of Phil and Paul, urging me on to an imagined victory.

A lot of what happened in the early months of that cycling season, before July, didn't matter. As far as I knew the usual names would make up the list of favourites for the 1997 Tour. And that was pretty much true in this case. There was no chance of Indurain regaining his title, of course. The big Spaniard had walked into a Spanish hotel in Pamplona on new years day and announced his retirement. I would miss him. I had been a Greg LeMond fan the year Indurain broke out and won his first Tour, but by 1996 I was rooting hard for a sixth straight title. It didn't happen. He cracked hard on stage 7 and in many ways the era ended right there. Now I was looking for a new hero.

Bjarne Riis won that '96 Tour, but it was his young Telekom team mate, Jan Ullrich, who stole the show in the final days. In the 63.5km time-trial on the penultimate stage he put 2 minutes 18 seconds into Riis. In doing so he marked himself as a phenom talent in the making. One for the future; the next Indurain. It was impossible not to like him. But was 1997 too soon for Ullrich, or would this be the year he took over the sport? All eyes were on Riis and the upstart Ullrich and how that dynamic might play out as the '97 Tour approached. Riis was the team-leader, of course, but how far might Ullrich push it? Would he ride for him at all? And should he start strong, would Riis accept the fate of time? The Dane was 33 years old now. Ullrich was 23.

And it wasn't the only potential for inter-team rivalry. At ONCE there was Laurent Jalabert and Alex Zulle. Both in their prime years and both hungry. Zulle in particular was due. He had finished 2nd to Indurain in '95, when Jalabert was 4th. He won the 1996 Vuelta after Jalabert had won it the year before but thanks to Indurain, and some misfortune, the Tour always eluded him. Both had poor Tours in '96, and Jalabert had gone home early, but in the spring of '97 the pair were in fine form. Jalabert won the Mallorca Challenge and Paris Nice and was 2nd at the Tour of the Basque Country behind Zulle. Zulle meanwhile was 3rd at  Flèche Wallonne, a race won by Jalabert.

Yet it was Richard Virenque was most felt stood the best chance of ending the 12 year drought without a French Tour winner. He had made the podium for the first time the year before, but had been quiet this spring. A pure climber, the route of the 1997 Tour looked to suit him. There was 125.3km of time-trialing, but once the Tour entered the mountains, it wouldn't leave again until they were complete. There was no break with flat stages in the middle. They would hit the Pyrenees, the Massif Central and the Alps. Only a time-trial and a rest day in Saint-Étienne would break the climbing rhythm. And that kind of racing might prove ideal for Virenque. And one other man: Marco Pantani.

The little Italian had suffered a horrific crash back in 1995 that had threatened his career. He spent 1996 recovering and working his way back, and by 1997 he returned. He started the Giro that May but withdrew citing a shortage of form. He then turned his attention to the Tour.

Others expected to contend included Tony Rominger, Evgeni Berzin and Abraham Olano. Olano, the Indurain lookalike, was now riding for Indurain's old Banesto team. Spanish hopes soared.

Everything looked well poised. That was until 15 days before the race was set to begin when misfortune once more hit Zulle. He crashed and broke his collarbone. Not wanting another opportunity at the Tour to slip away, he had five pins and a plate inserted in a frantic bid to make the start.

He returned to training the next day and would line up in Rouen for the prologue.

The 1997 Tour was set to begin.