Book was still his favourite film (joint first with The Exorcist, followed closely by 9½ Weeks). He especially loved the scene where Kaa hypnotizes Baloo. He had been riding in the middle of the bunch when the magnetic pull of the nine Système Vipère riders leading the race had lured him through the pack. The Viper boys rode in a long sinewy formation, taking turns at the front to confront the headwind before peeling off to take a rest in the slipstream of the eight team-mates. Judging the wind like migratory birds flying long haul, they chevroned themselves across the road when the wind decreed it. It was textbook team riding. To ride in such formation brings a rhythmic security, even a certain vicarious peace. To observe a team working so adeptly is thrilling – for spectator, seasoned hack or fellow racer. And so it was for Luca Jones. With the ‘Bear Necessities’ song on his mind, his eyes were drawn to the snakes slithering around the lycra torsos of the accomplished team. His directeur would want to know what the fuck he was doing, taking chances at the front, especially after his tumble the previous day. Hunter and Travis would have liked him to have looked over his shoulder to locate them. What if they needed him? But Luca was fixated on Système Vipère. For a few miles, he eschewed his Megapac colours and imagined himself to be a Viper Boy, a member of the highest-ranked team in the world. He did not feel a traitor to Megapac but an honoured young citizen of the peloton. The fantasy not only sustained him on the long, arduous Stage, it kept him out of danger too.
‘How on earth does one relate the drama of six hours, twenty-four minutes and sixteen seconds in only 500 words?’ Cat complained, mainly to herself but loud enough to amuse Alex and touch Josh.
‘Practice,’ Alex defined.
‘Passion,’ Josh added.
COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN VUILLARD
Chris Boardman gladly relinquished his yellow jersey today. On a day when crashes made nightmares of the dreams of a handful of key riders in the Tour de France, Jesper Lomers won the 260 km second Stage from Rouen to Vuillard and took the yellow jersey. ‘He’s welcome to it,’ Boardman said. ‘Sprint mayhem and mass pile-ups? I’d rather make it to Paris in one piece.’ With the long straight roads which dominated the Stage discouraging lone attacks, the peloton surged forward together at a high speed, riders occasionally going for a sortie at the front merely to give their fresh legs a stretch and their sponsors a few metres’ exposure before slipping back to the pack. A touch of brakes can cost a rider up to twenty places, but to keep off the brakes keeps the pace fast and dangerous. As the peloton journeyed from Rouen through the Eure to Calvados, a consistent north-easterly wind propelled the bunch even faster and Lomers won a clean sprint to take the Stage in 6 hours, 24 minutes and 16 seconds. Consuming two out of the three intermediary sprint bonuses, Cipollini retains the green jersey on points, today resplendent in matching shorts.
For five riders, the Tour de France ended way before the Stage finish in the heart of Basse-Normande. Jalabert and Olano most notable among them, retired gracefully. Pietro Calcaterra, an esteemed domestique for Zucca MV and key lead-out man for Stefano Sassetta, was scraped off the road and helped back to his team car, too devastated to cry. He had landed heavily on a knee already bandaged from his collision with Kelme’s Fernando Escartin yesterday. ‘Though the pain from his knee must be excruciating, it doesn’t even register against the agony he feels at the termination of his race,’ said Rachel McEwen, his soigneur.
Lomers’s victory is a popular one. Though the crowds love Stefano Sassetta for his flamboyance, it wins him few friends in the peloton. Jesper Lomers, universally respected, may find that his triumph today is redefined by Sassetta as a veritable gauntlet. Demoted yesterday for dangerous riding and held up today by the crashes, Sassetta will be tasting blood tomorrow; primed, charged and desperate for a good ride.
<ENDS>
‘Brilliant!’ Cat says quietly to herself, stretching her fingers out and glancing around the salle de pressé, the majority with heads down, cigarettes hanging from lips, fingers scooting in organized chaos across keyboards. ‘I’m pretty pleased with that. I had a good day. I hope Rachel likes her soundbite. Oh God, poor Pietro Calcaterra.’
Poor Pietro Calcaterra indeed. But his girlfriend was waiting for him at the team hotel. Her tenderness dressed his injuries far more curatively than the stitches from the Zucca MV doctor; her support settled his psyche much more quickly than his meeting with his directeur; her embrace was infinitely more soothing than Rachel’s massage.
Poor Jesper Lomers, therefore. On paper, as all the journalists were busy lauding, Jesper won not just the Stage but the yellow jersey too. However, though he has a wife, she is not here. Nor was she at home. She had left no message on his mobile phone. Jesper craved her congratulatory embrace but he had to settle for his directeur’s praise, his team’s delight, the deluge of attention from the media. Though Jules Le Grand did not particularly like Anya Lomers, banned mere girlfriends of riders from the Tour and actively disapproved of the presence of wives during the race, today he would have welcomed her. The key sprinter of his Système Vipère team should be euphoric, buoyed by his victory and hungry to keep the maillot jaune for the team. Instead, Jules observed him at the team supper looking detached.
If I offered him the maillot jaune in one hand, Jules contemplated, his wife in the other, I fear I know which he’d choose. Wives are more disruptive, more harmful to my Viper Boys than the crashes. They can cause my riders more pain, more suffering, than back-to-back mountain Stages.
‘Women!’ he hissed with venom under his breath.
Fabian Ducasse heard him. Women indeed! he smirked to himself. I am Ducasse. I am a national hero. I can have any woman I want.
Système Vipère are having supper when Cat gathers her laptop and cables and goes to send her article down the line.
What a day!
She returns to the main hall and searches out Josh.
‘Coffee?’ she asks.
‘Can’t,’ he says, looking frazzled.
‘Alex?’ she offers. He’s typing so hard he does not answer, so she does not press.
‘I’m through,’ she says apologetically to Josh who regards her accusatorially as if she can’t possibly be a bona fide journaliste then.
‘Lucky you,’ he says, not unkindly.
‘I thought I’d phone Maillot,’ Cat whispers, ‘see if they’ll take an article. I so want that Feature Editor position, I thought some earnestness now wouldn’t go amiss.’
Alex and Josh nod politely but she sees they’re too engrossed in their work to be especially interested in her career development so she goes to the hotel to make her call.
‘Sutcliffe.’
‘Andy? This is Cat – um, McCabe.’
‘Hi Cat, how’s the Tour?’
‘Fine, brilliant – have you seen my daily reports?’
‘All two of them?’
‘Oh. Um. Well – I’ve had an idea for an article for Maillot, can I run it past you?’
‘Are you sucking up to me?’
‘No! Well –
