Ballerini had lost Paris–Roubaix, but in the process he’d won himself a new fan across the English Channel. I don’t suppose, in that precise instant, he would have cared one iota, though, because he was utterly inconsolable.
Franco Ballerini was a big, handsome guy with a unique way of riding across the cobbles. He had this straight-armed, slightly rocking, metronomic style that was completely different to the others. He also wore those wonderful, fluorescent Briko glasses, and I’d often find my teenage self trying to imitate him. Physically he was the Italian cycling archetype, but as a racer he was made-to-measure for the northern classics. In 1994 he was second at Gent–Wevelgem, third at Paris–Roubaix and fourth at Flanders. He was always among the strongest, but he tended to lose because he wasn’t particularly fast. In order to win he needed to drop everyone else, and of course that’s the hardest thing to do in cycling. His greatness lay in the fact that through all the disappointments he never buckled, and he never lost his conviction that one day he’d win Roubaix.
By 1995 he was riding for Mapei. They had Tony Rominger, Museeuw, Abraham Olano, Fernando Escartín and a young Frank Vandenbroucke, and were developing into the best team in the world, a team that would dominate cycling for almost a decade. Talking of which, it kind of makes me smile when cycling journalists refer to Sky as the ‘ruination of cycling’. In actual fact, there have always been wealthy, immensely powerful teams, and history tells us that they’ve generally been extremely good for the sport. The Bianchi, Peugeot, Molteni, Raleigh and Renault jerseys are iconic not because they’re particularly beautiful (though to my mind some of them are), but because they are synonymous with a moment in time. Sky are just the latest iteration of the superteam.
1996 Mapei jersey
I digress. Ballerini won Het Nieuwsblad (Het Volk, as was) in the freezing rain, and had really good form. However, three days before Roubaix he crashed at Gent–Wevelgem and dislocated his shoulder. He put the shoulder back in himself, but Ballerini’s Law seemed to have struck yet again. He hung around the hotel with his arm in a sling, praying that he’d recover in time, but when he went to bed on Saturday night it was 50–50. He agreed to give it a go the following morning, but he was kidding himself. He hadn’t been able to use a knife and fork for four days, let alone train for a 266-kilometre bike race over the cobblestones of northern France. The odds were stacked against him, to say the least.
But he was fresh, if nothing else, and it turned out that this was his day of grace. First one of his team-mates, a beast of a rider named Gianluca Bortolami, towed him across to the lead group. Then on Templeuve, a cobbled section 30-odd kilometres from Roubaix, Ballerini simply put on another gear and just rode away. From the best classics riders in the world.
It’s often the commentary that characterises the most iconic sporting moments. Just as Sergio Agüero’s title-winning goal for Manchester City has become indivisible from Martin Tyler’s commentary, my abiding memory of that race is David Duffield’s singalong voiceover. As Ballerini rode around the velodrome alone, old Duffers put on his very best Italian accent. It went something like, ‘Fran-co-Ba-lle-rini-born-in-Fi-ren-ze …’ Duffers’s accent was rubbish, but that didn’t matter at all because the moment was magical – and if I’m honest, it still is. Through all the stresses and strains of my own cycling career and post-career, that episode still brings a smile to my face. It’s the unadulterated pleasure of cycling, pure and simple.
Ballerini celebrating after winning his second Paris–Roubaix.
Ballerini won Roubaix again in 1998, and it’s no coincidence that he chose to retire there in 2001. By then he was 36, and he rolled into the velodrome alone in 32nd place. He was caked in Paris–Roubaix mud, and that was entirely appropriate given that the race had defined his cycling career – and vice versa – for the preceding 15 years. You’ll often see bike riders zip up their jersey as they approach the finish line, the better to expose their sponsor’s name to the TV cameras. Ballerini, though, did the opposite. He unzipped his jersey, because he wanted the world to see his undervest. On it, in large blue letters, were printed two words:
MERCI ROUBAIX.
Just perfect.
With unzipped jersey in the Roubaix velodrome at his last major professional race, in which he finished 32nd.
By the time I turned professional I’d seen Ballerini’s exploits ad infinitum, so when I was selected for the 2003 Paris–Roubaix it was a dream. I was 22, I’d got round Flanders the previous week, and I was about to join the Paris–Roubaix pantheon. I was with FDJ, and our protected riders were Jacky Durand, Christophe Mengin and Frédéric Guesdon, a previous winner. Our DS was Marc Madiot, whom I’d watched win it on TV, and before the race he gave us this big, dramatic, stirring team talk. He explained what it signified, the legend behind it, all the stuff I’d been daydreaming about since I watched Duclos and Ballerini slugging it out ten years earlier. To say I was excited would be an understatement.
So I knew all about it, knew every sector of the pavé, knew all the theories about riding it because I’d seen it on TV so many times. Nobody else really knew the first sectors because they were never televised, but I’d spent the preceding days reeling the names off to anyone who would listen. And indeed to anyone who wouldn’t. I was a proper nerd.
Although Ballerini had retired, a lot of my boyhood heroes were still racing. Museeuw was there, Peter Van Petegem was there, Erik Zabel and Fabio Baldato were there … About 10 kilometres from the first sector I was near the front and, I have to say, doing a decent job. I was staying out of the way of the champions while simultaneously keeping Durand out of trouble. I’d have been about 20th, then suddenly there was a massive crash just behind me. It wiped everyone out, so now you’d a select group of 20. Essentially it was comprised of everyone who was anyone – and me, Bradley Wiggins, who wasn’t.
I wasn’t trying to mix it up at the front because I had no place there, but by the time we reached the entrance to the Arenberg I was feeling really pleased with myself. That’s because the Arenberg is … well, the Arenberg, and I was in the lead group with the best of them. Then, wouldn’t you just know it, 100 metres into the forest the guy in front of me, Kevin Van Impe, got his front wheel stuck in the gutter. He hopped it out, but his back wheel stayed in. He slid off in front of me, and I had no chance whatsoever. I just clattered straight into him and flew straight over the top of the bars.
I’d gone into ‘The Trench’ with the champions, and come out of it with a little group of back-markers. I had a buckled back wheel, and my knee and elbow hurt like hell. I couldn’t hold the bars, let alone ride over the cobbles, so I had no choice but to climb into the broomwagon. Paris–Roubaix had broken me in two, but I was immediately transported back to A Sunday in Hell, a documentary film about the 1976 race that I’d watched fanatically as a kid. There was a shot of two riders in the wagon, and they were telling the driver what had happened to them. Now here I was doing exactly the same thing. It sounds perverse – well, it actually is perverse – but I took some pleasure in that because in some way I was standing on the shoulders of giants. Giants in the sagwagon, but giants all the same.
The Arenberg, Paris–Roubaix 2014.
I went back the following year, and again in 2005. I packed in both times, and by then the ‘romance’ of Paris–Roubaix was starting to wear thin. As a spectacle it was great, and I never failed to appreciate the grandeur of it. The problem was that actually riding it was ridiculous, a shit-fight I had not a prayer of winning. However hard I tried, something always went wrong. I couldn’t figure it out. I seemed to be one of the hopeless, anonymous dozens that get sent there to make