Le Grand Triomphe

A lot of people have been bugging me lately (assholes!) to finally give my take on what happened at the Tour de France back in '97. I've been talking things over with my French lawyers (French Lawyer Jacques: "Oh ho ho! You should not tell thees story, you American pigdog!" French Lawyer Pierre: "Oh ho ho! Go ahead and tell thee story, American pigdog. See if I give two sheets about you and your stupid, stupid American boollsheet!") and they seem to be keen on it, so here goes.

It all started in France.

(Fade in on Albany Dan in France)

Actually, that's not true.

(Fade out on Albany Dan in France)

It all started in front of the TV.

(Fade in on Albany Dan in front of the TV)

As all my friends know, I'm a huge fan of bike racing. Huge.

I got into it in college. One night, after the ingestion of some substance or another (beer? floor wax?), I sat on the couch, and somehow landed on TFC, The French Channel. I never realized we had it, and I didn?t technically speak French, but as soon as it came on, I was enmeshed in hour-long cheese documentaries and game shows like ?Who Wants to Look Surly?? and the ever popular ?!?.

But late at night, when all proper channels have sunken into the depths of pure hucksterism with their Ginsu Blenders and dehydrating fat creams, is when TFC is at its best. All they showed was cycling.

And so it was that I found myself that night, in my sixth consecutive hour of TFC viewership, transfixed slack-jawed by all the spinning wheels. I watched for hours, my head going around in tight, quick circles, and my hand brushing away all form of human contact.

"Hey, Danno, I got tick..."

"Shut up! I'm watching a race here! Sacre bleu!"

"Dude, you wanna order a piz..."

"No! No food! Go away!"

"Oooh, Danno. You're so sexy. Let me show you my ti..."

"If it's not traveling at 30 miles an hour on a goddamn Schwinn, I don't want to see it! Fromage!"

And so it went. Racing was a revelation. I spent days asleep on my bed and nights awake in front of the TV. Occasionally I?d break to do some research on the Internet or to take a leak or something, but that was pretty much it. Shit, I even dreamed about winning the Tour de France. I was obsessed, studying the intricacies of international bike racing and all the top racers.

Vibrato-style? That's the technique in which a racer going downhill finely vibrates his handlebars left to right in order to increase tire grip. Giusseppe Molinaro? He's the five-time Italian champion from the 50s. Frank Schmitt? He's the German racer from the late 70s who wore number 27 and was born with five testicles.

And then there was Joseph Obukabwa. Joseph Obukabwa was da man -- with a da. He was the son of Edward Obukabwa, the Ghanaian folk hero who rode back and forth 47 times on his eighth-hand bike from Togo to the Ivory Coast during the war for independence in '57. After the war, Edward developed a case of what was called "terminal hemorrhoids." It's a slight misnomer; the hemorrhoids didn't kill him directly, but they slowed him down to such a point that he couldn't get out of the way of the speeding, sun-baked Peugeot that plowed him down on the streets of Accra in late 1976.

Shortly after the war and capitalizing on his popularity, Edward opened a company whose title loosely translates as "Trans Ghana We Deliver Packages." Again, the "we" was a bit of a misnomer, as the only courier the company employed was Edward himself. That fact necessarily limited Edward's income, so he wound up spending a lot of time on the bike, and little time at the bank.

Luckily for the racing world, Edward Obukabwa managed to scrape up enough money to give his then-three-year-old son, Joseph, a bicycle exactly 18 months before he died. Joseph was riding it, albeit awkwardly, by the time he was five. By the time he was 17, he was the best damned cyclist Ghana had ever seen.

Even though he was winning impromptu and informal races throughout the country, he couldn't afford to hit the international circuit. The money just wasn't there. He owned and ran the company his father left him, but even after all the years, there still wasn't all that much money involved in say, riding for over 100 miles just to deliver a box of grapefruit. In '91, right around the time of the Gulf War, he struck on the idea of hiring more couriers. The business grew and grew, and eventually he had enough money to get to the qualifying races. And to buy a 50-foot yacht.

It would've been hard not to be captivated by his story even if I didn't have the roommate I did at the time, but he pushed me over the edge. Taylor was the son of sixth-generation Vermonters and an heir to the family fortune, which was built on women's need for breast support (his father is the one with the shit-eating grin in all the Supportomax bra ads who points his finger and says, "Now that?s a nice-fitting bra!").

Despite Taylor's decidedly upper-class American upbringing, he had a fascination for Ghana, a country he'd never visited, probably never will visit, and certainly couldn't find on a map. None of our mutual friends knew where this fetish came from, but before I got into racing, goddamn, was it ever obnoxious. He would only drink imported Ghanaian sodas with Americanized names like ?Cantaloupah!? and its sister drink, ?Apricotasty!? He would only ever read books about Ghana or written by Ghanaians. He would always try to get us to commit to spring break at Lake Volta, which is apparently ?the world?s biggest fucking manmade lake! Seriously! The biggest fucking manmade lake in the world! It?s supposed to be awesome!?

Given my general lack of desire to hear a list of Ghana?s top exports for the eighth time, our relationship had degraded to the smile-and-nod point. It wasn?t a bitter or awkward thing; neither one of us particularly cared.

But once racing came around, everything changed. TFC did a feature on Joseph Obukabwa one night. It was built around his out-of-nowhere victory at the Stuttgart Rally ten months before, and it showed him alternately zipping along on his custom-built orange Rigas Sportswinder, and chatting with all sorts of people on the street. He seemed happy and friendly and like he was just enjoying his new found stardom.

I was intrigued, so I went looking for info on him. There wasn?t that much, and nothing I found was in English. I recognized the Ghanaian flag on a couple pages though, so I figured Taylor would know. He did.

?Yeah, totally, dude. I know who he is. He?s fucking AWESOME! He?s from Tamale, which is kinda near Togo. I?ve always wanted to go. They export a shitload of bauxite and manganese from there.?

He went on and on, telling me the whole story. By the end, I really felt like a true racing fan because I finally had someone to root for.

?That?s an amazing story,? I said. ?Jesus, I wish I had the money to go see him in person.?

?Actually, my folks?re sending me to France next month to check out the Tour. Looks like Joseph?s gonna qualify for the first time this year, so they said they?d buy me a ticket. I get in about a week before the end of the race, so I?m gonna take the train to Lodeve and try to meet Joseph in the hotel there ? he?s supposed to be a helluva nice guy. Then I figure I?ll head up Mt. Roche to watch some of the race ? it?s an awesome spot ? then head back to Paris for the end of the race. There?s a huge Ghanaian population in Paris. You?ll love it. Y?know, you should come. I could probably get my folks to spring for you, too.?

That was all I needed to hear. Twenty-seven days later, there we stood at JFK, each with a ticket for Ghanair Flight 7 to Paris by way of Liberia. Some 30 hours later, we touched down at Orly airport, headed straight to the train station, and bought tickets to Lodeve. Of course, this being France, there was a rail strike underway, so it took us another day and a half to get there.

When we finally arrived somewhere around 9 PM, the racers had already been in town for three or four hours and I didn?t have the energy to go chasing after them. I figured I?d get some sleep and try to see them at breakfast.

The next morning, I woke up and threw on some clothes, consciously avoiding taking a shower (Hey ? when in Rome?). I was out of my room exactly thirteen minutes after waking up.

As I made my way down in the elevator, I could hear the screaming from three floors up. Muffled at first, it grew louder and more intense, reaching the peak of its crescendo when the doors opened on the first floor.

?Where the shit is my mothershit helmet? Who stole my helmet fuck? Who wants to keep me from WINNING??

Joseph Obukabwa was stalking from table to table in the dining room 15 feet to my left, pointing fingers and flipping breakfast trays at the other riders. A boal of oat bran landed dead center in French Rider Claude Lemerde?s lap, and Argentina?s Augusto Spinozo got scrambled egged in the face.

OK, I thought. So he?s a little stressed. He was expected to blow everyone away and he was stuck in the closest race in Tour history. The margin between Joseph and Canadian Fritz McAllister was less than seven seconds overall ? amazingly close ? and they had each won the same number of legs. I?d be tense, too.

Joseph exploded when McAllister walked into the room. ?It was YOU!? he raged. ?You stole it! You know you can?t win to Joseph!?

?Eh?? asked McAllister, genuinely confused.

?Very, very lucky, you, that I have another helmet in my room. You have yours on today, dicknut!? Joseph kicked over a serving tray and stomped out.

Now, yeah, I know that probably wasn?t the best time to go looking for an autograph, but I?d come all the way from New York (by way of Liberia) primarily to meet him, and I figured, I dunno, maybe some fan support would cheer him up or something.

?Hey, Joseph,? I said as he was about to walk by. ?Hey, I just wanted to say hi. I?m a big fan of yours. I?ve heard all about you. I admire what you?ve been through.?

?You get out of my way, piss-shit!?

?What?? I asked, genuinely surprised that he didn?t want to talk to me. ?C?mon, man. I?ve come a long way. The least you could do is give me an autograph.?

That stopped him. ?You want autograph? OK.? He took my pen and paper, scrawled something quickly, folded the paper in half, and handed it back to me.

I opened the paper. It said, ?I FUCK YOU MOTHER!?

I gotta be honest: I wasn?t too happy about that. I felt like a tool, like I?d been duped. All those little clips I saw on TV made it sound like he was this nice guy, genuinely glad to meet everyone, all of that stuff. Turns out he was just a dick. I think the only feeling that could possibly have been analogous to this would have been Bill Clinton saying he was a Republican.

I decided right there that, despite my better judgment, I was gonna support the Canadian. Don?t take that fact lightly; supporting a Canadian goes against everything I stand for, but in light of what had just happened, I felt it was justified. I just wasn?t gonna tell any of my friends when I got home.

I went back upstairs and got Taylor, who was just on his way out the door. I told him what happened, but he wouldn?t believe me.

?Nuh-uh,? he said. ?There?s no way. He?s supposed to be really cool! And Ghanaians are known to be a warm and outgoing people!?

?I?m sure most Ghanaians are perfectly lovely people,? I said, ?but this one?s a dick. C?mon. Let?s go out to Mt. Roche.?

The brief period when the racers are at the top of Mt. Roche is probably the most exciting and the least covered part of the race. At its peak, the road is running through a crevasse so narrow that there?re no shoulders on its side. Of all the fatalities over the years in the Tour de France, just over 60 percent of them happened within 100 meters of the peak.

The networks used to use a camera car during this part of the race, but after American Danny Alpert was pushed off his bike by his Cold War rival Anatoly Dubavchik in ?76 and run over by a crew from NBC, race organizers banned all cameras from the top of the mountain.

That same lack of hospitality to the press made the top of Mt. Roche dangerous and exciting. Since there were no more cameras around, if ever a rider was going to give a competitor a shove or a friendly bitch-slap or something, that was the place he was going to do it.

Better yet, there generally weren?t any spectators around ? something I learned from the 50 or so condensed Tours I watched during the two months I spent on the couch. Since there aren?t any shoulders, you actually have to climb up about twenty feet to get any safe view, and for a French person, the body odor in such thin air can be fatal.

This year, there wasn?t anyone there. With two hours before the racers headed out, Taylor and I started our hike up the mountain. Now, scroll up to the top of the page. See that big picture up there? The one with that circular thing and all the cigarette butts in it? That?s mine. As a result, what should?ve been a half-hour hike took an hour and 45 minutes.

I opened up my backpack and took out the bird watching binoculars I had gotten for a bar mitzvah present but had only used to look into other apartments.

I looked back in the direction of the hotel. In the lead by about 50 seconds were two racers, Joseph Obukabwa and Fritz McAllister. They were about a kilometer from the base of the mountain and both were sprinting hard. They were probably seven or eight minutes away.

I told Taylor and he started chanting, ?Jo-seph! Bu-ma-ye! Jo-seph! Bu-ma-ye!?

?Dude, they can?t hear you yet,? I said.

?Oh. Sorry.?

As the road looped and whirled, we?d lose track of them periodically, only to see them a little bit bigger and hurtling at us.

And then there they were, fifty, forty, thirty meters from the peak. Taylor was chanting and screaming in my ear again. The tires were a blur. The riders were blurs, overlapping one another.

?Jo-seph! Bu-ma-ye!?

Joseph was trying to bumaye him. As the two racers, still wait out in the lead, passed underneath us, I saw Joseph look at McAllister, grab the hand pump from off his bike?s frame, and jab it into McAllister?s spokes like something out of Ben Hur.

McAllister?s back wheel bucked up and he went flying, skidding on the road like a hockey puck. He went headfirst into the wall and started writhing around. Joseph pumped his fist quickly and rode on.

I looked at Taylor and asked, ?Did you see that? Holy shit!?

?No, I missed it. What happened??

?Fucking Joseph jammed something in Fritz McAllister?s wheel! That?s why he wiped out!?

?Oh, c?mon, man,? Taylor said. ?He wouldn?t do that. Besides, you know what fucktards Canadians are. He probably just fell asleep or something.?

Taylor just didn?t want to believe it, but I did, and I gotta say, I was pretty pissed. I mean, Christ, this was the Tour de France! And worse than that, it happened to the guy I was rooting for!

The official line was that McAllister had fallen, suffered a concussion, and wasn?t gonna be coming back. Since there were no cameras and no other witnesses, and since McAllister had been knocked stupid by the fall, I wasn?t about to step forward.

I can just hear everyone moralizing now. ?You should?ve said something, Danno! You should?ve told someone!? I know. Piss off. I should?ve, but didn?t. Instead, I plotted my revenge.

We went back to the hotel, packed up our stuff, and headed to Paris, where we had four days to kill. Taylor said he wanted to visit Ghana?s embassy ? ?The biggest Ghanaian embassy in the world!? ? and to hang out in Little Accra, also known as Ghanatown. I told him to have fun and went to claim a spot on the Champs-Elysees.

I found a spot 100 feet before the finish line, which was on my right. It was perfect ? not only close, but unrestrained since the people who put steel barricades in place were on strike.

I spent the next four days executing my plan in my head, performing feats of algebra that would?ve left my math teacher blind. I was pausing and rewinding in my mind, watching everything play out before it actually did. The area took shape around me. Luckily for the French racing world, the only two groups of laborers not on strike were the grandstand assemblers and the bunting hangers. By the time the big day came to pass, there was seating for thousands and red, white and blue bunting everywhere.

But more importantly, I was uber-ready.

The racers were due to pass by at 4:00, with Joseph Obukabwa considerably far ahead. By 6 in the morning, there were already a thousand people in the stands around me. By 7, there were 5,000. By 8, the stands were packed with French people, all wearing berets, cursing at one another and eating Brie. I tried to talk to this one chick, but she just spit in my face. Really, it was almost for the best, because I had a job to do.

At about 3, they started making announcements over the PA system telling the crowd how far away the racers were. With each subsequent update, the crowd volume went up, as did the acid in my stomach. I was getting nervous.

What seemed like just a few seconds later, the announcer said that they were just five minutes away. I pulled out a pair of sunglasses, put on my blankest face, and stared at a predetermined spot in the road twenty-five feet to my left.

I stared and stared and stared and stared. The noise was like a wave, getting louder the closer Joseph got.

That's just like the French, I thought. Always rooting for the wrong guy.

I started counting down in my head.

As soon as Joseph hit the spot, I threw myself forward, and my plan into action. Sprinting, I took onetwothreefourfive quick, giant strides straight ahead with my shoulder down. On the sixth, like a linebacker blindsiding a quarterback, I made contact. Hard.

Joseph Obukabwa was thrown into the crowd by my flying shoulder. As the stunned fans attended to him, I hauled ass after his bike and hopped on.

I pedaled and pedaled, and, pumping fists in the air, broke through the finish line tape. Flashbulbs went off everywhere. ?WOOOO! This one?s for you, Canada,? I yelled.

It was a thing of beauty, really. Not only did I get to punish a guy who deserved it, but I also got to delude myself for a little bit into thinking I won the race. It was a helluva feeling ? I was already thinking about all the chicks I?d be able to pick up.

For a short time, as Joseph Obukabwa was slowly getting to his feet and I was savoring my last minutes before getting hauled off to French prison, all was right in the world.

Posted by albanydan at April 08, 2002 02:08 AM