In his pomp, Nelissen explained this transformation: ‘A sprinter has to be like that. The trick is to get me mad.’ He compared it to road rage: ‘There was a guy once who didn’t give way and he started beeping his horn at me. When something like that happens, I’m ready to jump out of the car. People have to hold me down or I would explode. Well, that’s the feeling I get when I start a sprint. That’s how I get going, get the adrenaline flowing, like fireworks going off. In the sprint, I would kill or eat somebody, but after the line the calmness returns.’
The 1993 Tour was set for a battle royal between the three supreme sprinters of this golden generation. The opening stages confirmed it. Cipollini won stage one, Nelissen won stage two, Abdoujaparov won stage three. But it was Nelissen who wore the yellow jersey for two days after his stage win, then reclaimed it for one more day after stage five. Cipollini fled when the race reached the mountains to spend the rest of July on the beach – as he always did. (The Giro represented the main dish to Cipollini; the Tour was dessert. But then he wasn’t a dessert man – he never finished the Tour.) That year, there were no more bunch sprints until two days from Paris, where Abdoujaparov won the classic sprinters’ finish into Bordeaux and then laid to rest the ghost of 1991 by winning on the Champs-Élysées.
It was all set for 1994, though Cipollini didn’t make it to Lille for the Grand Départ; he was recovering from a horrific crash at the Vuelta a España, when he was taken across the road and into the barriers by a team-mate, landing heavily on his head (he wasn’t wearing a helmet). There were fears his career could be over. It wasn’t. Like Abdoujaparov, and all the rest, he would be back.
This is where sprinters are different to retired golfers. They don’t lose their balls.
* * *
Not a lot was happening on stage one of the 1994 Tour. The riders rolled out of Lille at 10.45am; it was a warm and sunny day, in the high 20s. Chris Boardman was in the yellow jersey, having won the prologue. For Miguel Indurain, going for his fourth overall win in a row, a flat stage in northern France posed only a little more danger than a rest day. Boardman’s Gan team, which included Greg LeMond in his final Tour, took control in the later stages, after a three-man break had finally escaped with 67km to go, building a lead of almost two minutes. Until then, the bunch was fanned across the road, only coming to life for two bonus sprints, both won by Abdoujaparov.
The Gan team reeled in the break, then Nelissen’s Novemail took over. Typically for a Peter Post-run team, they had strong rouleurs like Marc Sergeant, Gerrit de Vries and Guy Nulens. Untypically, they also had French riders, mainly stage race specialists and climbers – Charly Mottet, coming towards the end of his career, Bruno Cornillet, Ronan Pensec and Philippe Louviot – owing to the fact that the sponsor was French.
With 50km to go, Sergeant, who would be the ‘last man’ in the sprint train at the end, went back to the team car to collect a helmet for Nelissen. ‘I remembered later that evening that I had got him his helmet,’ says Sergeant. ‘Willie was used to wearing a helmet because in Belgium it was an obligation. Not in France, but in Belgium and the Netherlands.’
The Novemail team took full responsibility as they approached Armentières, their royal blue jerseys forming the arrowhead as they entered the town to begin a 5km loop. At the back of the lead-out train sat Nelissen in his black, yellow and red Belgian champion’s jersey. The peloton was stretched in a long line behind. They began the loop: ‘That’s where it will get dangerous,’ said the TV commentator Paul Sherwen. ‘Lots of chicanes and road furniture. It’s going to be very dangerous out there, that’s one thing for sure.’
There were four team-mates ahead of Nelissen. But were they going too early? Sherwen thought so. ‘Too much, too soon for Novemail,’ he said as Mottet completed his turn, swung over, and Nelissen’s team was suddenly displaced by the pale pink jerseys of the German Telekom team, working for Olaf Ludwig. By now, Nelissen had only one team-mate left. Sergeant.
Sergeant stuck to the task. He didn’t drift back too far, to be overwhelmed by the peloton. He stayed near the front, telling Nelissen not to move; to remain glued to his back wheel. ‘I was his guy,’ says Sergeant. ‘He trusted me; he followed me everywhere.’ Nelissen called Sergeant his ‘guardian angel’.
Under the flamme rouge to signify one kilometre to go and there are now three Telekom riders on the front. Sergeant is fourth, Nelissen fifth. The road is narrow and twisting and the peloton, still a long, thin line, is travelling at 60kph. If you aren’t in the top twenty now, forget it. Abdoujaparov is there, so is Laurent Jalabert, fresh from his seven stage wins at the Vuelta.
At 550 metres to go, Sergeant spots a gap and makes his move. He takes Nelissen up the inside as they come round a sweeping right-hand bend with 400 to go. Abdoujaparov is on Nelissen’s wheel. Now Sergeant hits the front. Nelissen launches himself, sprinting up the inside. Abdou goes at the same time, drawing level. With 150 metres to go, they enter a right-hand bend. Jalabert is on Nelissen’s wheel, waiting for a gap.
Nelissen is sprinting, head down. He drifts a little to his right, towards the barriers, and then he disappears. One second he’s there, then he’s not. The sound is an explosion; and it looks as if a bomb has gone off.
Sergeant, having sat up to drift back through the peloton, sees nothing. It is his ears that tell him what happens. ‘As Willie passed me, my work was done. I was à bloc [exhausted]. But a few seconds later there was a huge noise – it sounded like two cars had hit each other. An extraordinary noise. In the next instant, there were people and bikes everywhere. I went through it, I don’t know how. I didn’t brake. I crossed the line, then looked back.’
In the confusion, it was thought that Nelissen had repeated Abdoujaparov’s error and clipped one of the barriers. This is what the TV commentators, as shocked as anyone, tell us. But it is not what happened; a slow-motion replay makes it clear.
It shows that, as the heaving bunch raced towards the finish, there was a man standing in the road. Wearing a pale blue shirt and dark trousers, he is a gendarme. His hands are in front of his face, as though he is taking a photograph. He is taking a photograph. He doesn’t move; doesn’t seem aware that the riders are so close. Nelissen slams into him, throwing him into the air. Simultaneously, another gendarme, 10 metres further up the road, takes swift evasive action, leaping on to the barrier. As the riders continue to stream past, the gendarme who was hit somehow clambers back to his feet and gropes for the barriers.
The photographers, camped beyond the finishing line, scurry forward to the stricken figures of Nelissen and Jalabert. The right side of Nelissen’s face is swollen and bleeding; his eyes are open and staring and his chest heaves up and down. He looks in shock. Jalabert’s face is bloody and he is spitting more; he has shattered collarbones and cheekbones, and four of his teeth are somewhere on the road. Fabiano Fontanelli is the third rider seriously injured; he too is out of the Tour.
The helmet Sergeant had collected for his leader might have saved his life, but now it created a problem. ‘Nobody could understand the system for releasing Willie’s helmet,’ Sergeant says. ‘He was breathing heavily, his eyes going left, right – it was pretty scary. I was able to help. I released the helmet.’
Not only had Sergeant collected the helmet, he had also come to his leader’s rescue. A guardian angel, indeed.
* * *
Every time you watch it, you wince. It is even more sickening than Abdoujaparov’s crash in Paris, than Cipollini’s at the Vuelta, because of the collision with the stationary policeman, who is upended like a skittle. You watch it and think: how did he survive?
‘Immediately after, for ten, fifteen minutes, there was panic,’ Sergeant says of the aftermath. ‘Willie was conscious but couldn’t remember anything from the whole race, the whole day. We all went to see him later, but he couldn’t remember anything. It was a disaster for our team: we were really focused on