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 Willie for stages and the yellow jersey. But in the evening I thought about the fact I had gone back to get him his helmet. I think that was really important.’
In hospital in Lille, Nelissen woke at one in the morning, still in the emergency department. ‘What am I doing here?’ he asked his wife, Anja. Then: ‘Did I win?’
There was a body in the bed next to him: Jalabert. Later he was shown the TV footage of the crash, and asked: ‘Is that me?’ He then asked the doctor how he was still alive. ‘Typical reflexes of a sprinter,’ the doctor said. ‘As soon as he feels something, he tenses all his muscles.’ Apart from his facial injuries, Nelissen suffered three displaced discs in his back. He was lucky.
The inquest began. ‘The policeman had his hand over his eyes, possibly taking a picture,’ said Jean-Marie Leblanc, the Tour de France director, the next day. ‘Nelissen was not looking, but he apparently did not make a mistake. It was the policeman’s behaviour which caused the crash.’
The policeman, twenty-six-year-old Christophe Gendron, suffered a double leg fracture. He was arguably even luckier than Nelissen. He was taken to the same hospital. He was not allowed to speak to the media, so he couldn’t deny reports that he had been taking a photograph on behalf of a little girl in the crowd. It was said that she had asked him, and he had taken her camera across the barrier.
A few months later, the recuperating Nelissen gave an interview to the Belgian journalist Noël Truyers. He was having some problems with his fingers. He had tried to assemble a wardrobe but couldn’t do it, and in the end smashed it with a hammer. ‘Everything about the crash I only know through what other people told me and from what I saw on the telly,’ Nelissen said. ‘The mechanic has thrown away my bike. The forks were broken, the frame was in two pieces. The rest is somewhere in my house: shoes that I cannot wear any more; shirt and shorts that seem to have come out of the shredder; my helmet broken into four pieces …
‘Damn, I regret this fall,’ Nelissen said, ‘because I’m sure I would have won the stage.’
It was almost overlooked, but Abdoujaparov, for once, was blameless: he sailed past the wreckage to win the stage. That was what seemed to irritate Nelissen most. ‘Everybody says that I couldn’t get past Abdou. Come on, guys, Abdou was dying, and I was just getting the 53x11 [gear] up to speed. It was the first time I used this particular gear. I had tested it a few times before, and now I wanted to score big time. You would have seen quite something …
‘They also say that if I hadn’t crashed into that policeman, I would have crashed into
