It was twenty five years ago today ...

le petit braquet

..when Stephen Roche put in that epic finish at La Plagne to close the gap to Pedro Delgado and ensure that he still had a chance of winniing Le Tour. As the Tour had unfolded, I had been thinking more nd more about going to France to see the final stages. However due to some incredibly bad planning on the part of both my wife and I, we had managed to have our first child just 4 weeks previously, and then moved house less than a week prior. These are two events that you will see listed in any top five of the most strain-inducing events in a person's lifetime and I felt really guilty about abandoning my wife and child to p*** off to France. This performance by Roche tipped things over the edge for me and I now felt that I had to go, an Irishman winning a first Tour was never going to happen again! I broke the news to my wife and to my great surprise (and one of the reasons we will complete 30 years of marriage in October), she just said "no problem", she knew how much this would mean to me.

As this was all pre-internet and pre-Ryanair, I went to the Aer Lingus offices in town on the Thusday to buy a ticket for a flight to Paris on the Friday evening. From memory this cost about 200 punts which was a huge amount of money back in 1987. On the same day, Roche had managed to pull back another 18 seconds out of Delgado with an attack on the descent of the Joux Plane to finish second on the stage, and further justifying my decision. My next problem was to find a tricolour. As this was before our football success and in an era when the tricolour was normally seen in the possession of Sinn Fein/IRA types this took a bit of hunting down.

On Friday evening, me and my tricolour flew to Paris Charles De Gaulle, hired a Ford Fiesta at exorbitant cost, and drove the 250 km to Dijon. This was my first experience ever of driving a left hand drive car and a couple of time I made the classic mistake of grabbing the window winder as I attempted to change gear!

When I arrived in Dijon quite late, I tried a few dodgy looking hotels for accommodation as I reckoned that the better places would have all been taken. Even these were full so I pulled into a car park on the outskirts of Dijon to sleep in the car for the night. I parked beside a Peugeot 205 which had 4 guys in it who looked as if they were settling down rather uncomfortably for the night. Guessing that they were also Paddies, I knocked on the window and offered one of them a bed for the night in my car to try and relieve a bit of the congestion. It turned out that they were two guys from Dublin and two from Cork who had me t on the flight over and and decided to share the 205 to cut costs. It's suitability as accommodation for the night had unfortunately not entered the equation.

We hit the course early the next day but the day seemed to pass in a flash. Unfortunately Sean Kelly had been forced to abandon after a crash earlier, but we gave special cheers for Martin Earley, Robert Millar, Phil Anderson and also for any of the the survivors of the gallant but ill-fated ANC team. We had now reached the top 10 with the the 3 minute gaps and suddenly there was Roche appearing in the the distance and then passing us in that elegant style of his. He was so focussed I doubt if he heard anything of the small group of Paddies screaming support at the the top of their voices. One of our number had the presence of mind to put a watch on so we knew when Delgado passed that Roche was putting time into him We then had an anxious wait trying to listen to radio commentary in French to confirm that he ultimately beat him by just a minute to take the maillot jaune with 40 precious seconds to spare!

We had a celebratory meal, complete with obligatory escargots (a first for all of us), before deciding to head to Paris that night. On our way out of Dijon we noticed the Carrera team bus parked outside a hotel so we pulled in and decided to have a beer on the terrace outside. We were only there about ten minutes when an official TdF car pulled up and out gets Stephen Roche! This was many hours after the stage had finished and he had only just finished the round of press conferences and tv appearances which went with his status as a Tour winner. I know people have had problems with his difficult attitude in the past, and we would have understood perfectly if he had just waved and headed straight for a well deserved rest in his bed. However to his eternal credit in my eyes, when he saw our group, he came straight over to our table and shook hands with all of us, thanked us for coming and stayed for a little chat! This really topped off a perfect day!

The next day in Paris was a complete party. As we made our way to the Champs Elysees, we met Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen and exchanged some banter about our availability to give Robert Millar a push up the slopes. We were also interviewed by RTE, but my less than favourable comments about Charlie Haughey (apparently the real winner of the 87 Tour) were not broadcast. Unfortunately before we left for home, none of us took contact details and I've never met any of them since. I'd love to meet up with any of the others who shared that day 25 years ago, so if by some miracle any of the above rings a few bells, then please pm me.

Keep_Her_Lit

Great story! Enjoyed reading that.

kenmc

class. great story, would be cool if you met up with the lads via here. hard to believe there was a time before the internet, google maps and sat nav ...
thanks for sharing

bren_mc

wonderful story. hope you find the other lads!

spokeydokey

Happened to be watching it today

SHOVELLER

Really enjoyed that post.

I was on the Champs Elysee today wearing Roche's 25th anniversary jersey cheering on Nicolas and Dan.

In fact I got closer to Wiggins than either of them. Still a hugely enjoyable day and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the sport.

87 must have been amazing here.

aindriu80

what a fantastic memory !! Its great that we won it, i hope its not another 25 years till the next time

wav1

Its funny the way things change but yet still very much stay the same.1987 and that very w/end the race was on in Robinstown as it was this year except Sunday that year.The easiest race of the year to get a ''pot'' as about eighty percent of the field packed halfway to retire to the local pub to watch Rochey on tv from Paris.Also that day the Dubs and Meath were battling it out in the Leinster Final at Croke Park,where the biggest cheer of the day was reserved for himself when it was beamed from the scoreboard that he had secured Le Tour.There was a huge homecoming,so much so that he had to cancel the last leg of it,to Meadowmount in Dundrum,due to the crowds that had descended on the place and also to attend a special live RTE show which was entitled''Stephens Day'' and had guests from the Irish cycling world including Se O Hanlon and Pat Mc Quaid.They showed footage from the race on the show to the strains of the Christopher Cross song''Ride like te wind''.Still cant hear that song without thinking back.We attended the ''Worlds'' in Mendrisio back in 2009 and he was parked up in a camper van with his parents and they duly obliged with photo calls for us.The real funny thing is that the occupant of the next camper van was the one and only Eddy Schepers still by his side 22 yrs later.As i said some things change but they very much stay the same.

feck sake lads

yeah great story and a class act was steven roach,
he didn't hold back on his views of wiggins winning the tour :D

letape

That was a really enjoyable post to read! The closest I got to Stephen's win was when he came back to meadow mount in an open top bus following his tour win in 87. They were amazing times to follow cycling in Ireland.

TheBlaaMan

spokeydokey wrote: »

Happened to be watching it today

Thanks for posting this. Its a long time since I remember seeing he 'extended' version of the climb, and not just the last dramatic moments.

I enjoyed watching it again !