Tour de France has a dark and glorious history

There was plenty of space in the Team Barloworld accommodation when I arrived on July 24 to cover the final few stages of the 2008 Tour de France. There were only four riders left of the nine who had started in Brest, four of them retiring due to crashes, one marched out of the race because he had been caught doping.

I arrived in St Etienne a few minutes before the end of the 18th stage to greet Robbie Hunter, John Lee Augustyn, Chris Froome and Giampaolo Cheula — two South African, one Kenyan-British-South African and an Italian.

Just seven days before, in the morning before stage 11, Moises Duenas, the Spaniard who had been 19th on general classification, had been taken away by the French police after testing positive for EPO. The police found what Froome described in his book as a “mini pharmacy” in room 604 of the Hotel le Rex in Tarbres.

Chris Fisher, head of corporate marketing at Barloworld, had called me from France to tell me the news and read out an announcement that the company would be ending their sponsorship of the team because of the Duenas incident.

The four riders and their back-up crew were a little subdued when I arrived. Hunter and I drank beer in St Etienne, and chatted a little about Duenas, but mostly about what he and his three teammates would be doing for the last three stages.

Essentially, it was to just keep going, try to grab a surprise. They had no idea if the team had a future. But, over more drinks that night, it was let slip by a person who knew a person who was pretty high up the ladder at Barloworld that they were reconsidering their decision to stop the sponsorship.

I told Hunter the next morning as we waited by the team trucks, the name of Duenas having already been taped over on the side of the team bus.

The four riders rode hard that day, keeping Hunter close to the front. Froome rode hard the next day, on the second-last stage, to take 16th in the time trial. On the last day, on the Champs Elysees, he was on the front as the team tried to get Hunter into line for the final sprint. He took 10th. Froome finished dead last that day after having spent some time in the front. It would be the last time Froome would cross the Champs Elysees last. Now the four-time champion, he remembered that one of the “reasons to be cheerful” after 2008 was “survival”.

His book, The Climb, was written by David Walsh, one of the world’s great sports writers. Walsh is a massive fan of the Tour, but he was also a realist. As the rest of the world sang the praises of the Lance Armstrong story, his story of the 1999 win was headlined: “A flawed fairy tale”.

In a podcast with John Robbie produced by David O’Sullivan, Walsh remembered how he had been enthralled by Armstrong when he first met him when the American first took part in the 1993 Tour. He liked the cut of the man, telling others how impressive he was.

In 1999, he was less impressed. The story did not feel right. It was suspicious. When asked about doping, Armstrong said, “The problem is that you journalists don’t realise everything has changed. We are all clean.”

Armstrong would attack Walsh over the years, saying in 2004 that “extraordinary allegations require extraordinary evidence”. Except that they didn’t. In the end, his extraordinary results required ordinary evidence, and he confessed.

Speaking to Robbie, Walsh praised those who kept the pressure on Armstrong. People like Emma O’Reilly, a former soigneur on US Postal, Betsy Andreu, wife of Frankie, a former Armstrong teammate, Greg LeMond, the three-time Tour winner, and his wife Kathy, who were among the first to cast doubt on Armstrong.

Walsh kept pushing, even when the Sunday Times was sued by Armstrong for libel and had to pay £1m after two years of legal action. He kept going for more than 13 years until Armstrong confessed. Walsh kept on the story even when he was vilified as the rest of us drank the Armstrong Kool-Aid.

Walsh is back at the Tour de France again this year, writing for the Times and Sunday Times as chief sports writer. Give him a follow, and give the John Robbie podcast a listen. He tells the story of the Tour, both its dark and glorious history, the way it should be told.