Bernard Thévenet

File:Montreal World 1974.jpg

Thévenet in Montreal in 1974

Bernard Thévenet (Template:IPA; born 10 January 1948) is a retired professional cyclist. His sporting career began with ACBB Paris.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He is a two-time winner of the Tour de France and known for ending the reign of five-time Tour champion Eddy Merckx, though both feats are tarnished by Thévenet's later admission of steroids use during his career. He also won the Dauphiné Libéré in 1975 and 1976.

Origins

Thévenet was born to a farming family in Saône-et-Loire in Burgundy and lived in a hamlet called Le Guidon (The Handlebar).<ref name="L'Équipe, France, 12 July 2003">L'Équipe, France, 12 July 2003</ref> It was there in 1961 that he saw the Tour de France for the first time, on a 123 km stage from Nevers to Lyon. At the time Thévenet was a choirboy in the village church. He said: "The priest brought forward the time for Mass so that we could watch the riders go by. The sun was shining on their toe-clips and the chrome on their forks. They were modern-day knights. I had already been dreaming of becoming a racing cyclist and that magical sight convinced me definitively. It was never that magical when I was actually in the peloton of the Tour!"<ref name="L'Équipe, France, 12 July 2003" />

From the age of six he went to school on the rack of his sister's bike. He got his own bike a year later and pedalled the 10 km round journey himself.<ref name="Cycle Sport, UK, May 2000">Cycle Sport, UK, May 2000</ref> His first adult bike, not a racing machine but a sporty cross between a racer and a touring bike, came as a present for passing school examinations at 14. His parents needed him on the farm too much to be keen on his racing,<ref name="L'Équipe, France, 12 July 2003" /> but they knew their son's ambitions.<ref name="Cycle Sport, UK, May 2000" /> Thévenet rode his first race and his parents found out only when they read the local paper. There was a row and the club president intervened by inviting the parents to see their son's next race. Thévenet won it.<ref name="Cycle Sport, UK, May 2000" />

He was champion of Burgundy in 1965 and 1966 and French junior champion in 1968.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1967 the manager of the ACBB club in Boulogne-Billancourt Mickey Weigant, drove to his house to enrol him. The ACBB was an accepted development team for professionalism, particularly for the Peugeot team. During 1968, he rode for the amateur team of Jean de Gribaldy, Cafés Ravis-Wolhauser-de Gribaldy, which won the amateur Route de France. After that Thévenet did his military service in 1969.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Professional career

He turned professional with Peugeot-BP-Michelin in 1970. He rode the Tour de France for the first time in 1970, as a last-minute stand-in. He said: "I wasn't even a reserve in 1970 but, because two riders<ref>Ferdi Bracke and Gerben Karstens</ref> in the team had fallen ill at Peugeot, the directeur sportif picked me two days before the start." Gaston Plaud had to call a neighbour in the village because neither Thévenet's nor many other families had telephones.<ref name="L'Équipe, France, 12 July 2003" /> Thévenet had left to train with a friend, Michel Rameau, and his mother got a message to him at Rameau's house.

Thévenet asked the advice of Victor Ferrari, a friend who rode the Tour in 1929. Thévenet said: "He was probably afraid that I'd hesitate and he said: 'You're not going to say No, are you crazy? Go on, go...'"<ref name="Vélo, France, undated">Vélo, France, undated</ref> Thévenet remembered:

I can remember perfectly getting to Limoges [for the start]. I was anxious and scared at the same time, but full of pride. I was given a new suitcase, seven jerseys, six pairs of shorts, overclothes, sweaters, shirts and so on and so on. Everyone else had a brand new bike, but not me, because I wasn't on the team's entry list.<ref name="Vélo, France, undated"/>

Thévenet won a mountain stage ending at the ski resort of La Mongie, most of the way up the Tourmalet in the Pyrenees. He said: "That evening, it was all clear [j'ai compris bien des choses]. That I'd saved my season and, because of that, my job, because the obligatory two-year contracts for new professionals didn't exist then."<ref name="Vélo, France, undated"/>

In the 1972 Tour he crashed badly on a descent and was temporarily amnesic. As he began to regain his memory, he looked down at his own Peugeot jersey and wondered whether he might be a cyclist.<ref name="Vélo, France, undated"/> On recognizing the team car, he exclaimed: "I'm riding the Tour de France!"

He refused to abandon the race and four days later won a stage over Mont Ventoux. In the 1973 Tour, he finished second, behind Luis Ocaña, but in 1974 he was forced to abandon the Tour on Stage 11 due to illness.

In the 1975 Tour, Thévenet attacked Eddy Merckx on the col d'Izoard on 14 July, France's national day. Merckx, who was suffering stomach pain from a punch by a spectator, fought back but lost the lead and never regained it. Pierre Chany wrote:

Those who were there will be slow to forget Bernard Thévenet's six successive attacks in the never-ending climb of the col des Champs, Eddy Merckx's immediate and superb response, the alarming chase by the Frenchman after a puncture delayed him on the descent of the col, the Belgian's attack on the way to the summit of the Allos, his breath-taking plunge towards the Pra-Loup valley, his sudden weakening four kilometres from the top and, to finish, Thévenet's furious push. The end of the race was frenetic. Has Eddy Merckx's long reign in the Tour de France come to an end on the Pra-Loup. Some think so; others believe that it will happen tomorrow.<ref>Chany, Pierre, L'Équipe, France, 1975, cited L'Équipe Magazine 16 July 2005</ref>

A British writer, Graeme Fife, wrote:

Thévenet caught Merckx, by now almost delirious, 3km from the finish and rode by. The pictures show Merckx's face torn with anguish, eyes hollow, body slumped, arms locked shut on the bars, shoulders a clenched ridge of exertion and distress. Thévenet, mouth gaping to gulp more oxygen, looks pretty well at the limit, too, but his effort is gaining; he's out of the saddle, eyes fixed on the road. He said he could see that one side of the road had turned to liquid tar in the baking heat and Merckx was tyre-deep in it.<ref>Fife, Graeme (1999), Tour de France, Mainstream, UK, p45</ref>

Beside the road, a woman in a bikini waved a sign that said: "Merckx is beaten. The Bastille has fallen."<ref name="Cycle Sport, UK, May 2000" /> Thévenet - who had taken the climb on the larger chainring<ref name="Cycle Sport, UK, May 2000" /> - went on to win the Tour, which that year finished on the Champs-Élysées for the first time. Merckx finished second, three minutes behind.

Thévenet won his second and last Tour in 1977. That winter he was hospitalized with a liver ailment he attributed to long-term use of steroids. Several months later Thévenet lined up for the 1978 Tour de France but had to abandon the second mountain stage in an ambulance.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He left the Peugeot cycling team after 1979 and signed for the Spanish team Teka, where he won two races and a six days race with the Australian rider Danny Clark.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

He returned to a French team in his final year, 1981, where he won a stage in the Circuit de la Sarthe.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Doping

Thévenet said "I have never taken drugs; they wouldn't be any use."<ref>Perez, J. Cyclisme, Thévenet: "Je ne me suis jamais dopé", France-Soir, France, 3 February 1977</ref> However, he was caught taking drugs,<ref>de Mondenard, Jean-Pierre (2000), Dopage, l'imposture des Performances, Chiron, France, p167</ref> in the 1977 Paris–Nice.<ref>de Mondenard, Jean-Pierre (2000), Dopage, l'imposture des Performances, Chiron, France, p185</ref>

His 1978 season was a shadow of his years of winning the Tour de France. He had trouble finishing even minor races. When a journalist at the radio station France Inter wondered aloud if Thévenet's repeated poor performances might be due to doping, Thévenet and his team-mates refused to talk to the station.<ref name="Mondenard, Jean-Pierre 2004 p331">cited de Mondenard, Jean-Pierre, Dictionnaire du Dopage (2004), Masson, France, p331</ref>

Thévenet went to hospital, where tests showed serious trouble with his adrenal glands. He admitted taking steroids and called for an end to drugs in the sport. "I was doped by cortisone for three years and there were many like me," he told Pierre Chany in Vélo-France.<ref>cited de Mondenard, Jean-Pierre (2000), Dopage, l'imposture des Performances, Chiron, France, p25</ref> The steroids had been prescribed to him by François Bellocq, the Peugeot doctor, who had qualified only in 1976.<ref>Bellocq, who insisted until his death that steroids "re-balanced" the body, used another doctor to sign his prescriptions until he could sign his own.</ref> Thévenet told Chany:

We were all convinced we were doing the right thing [être dans le vrai] and we were certain we were a step ahead of the rest so far as what we were doing to prepare for competition. The young doctor with our team had taken the time to explain to us how the body reacted to effort, which nobody had done before him. His words convinced us of his competence, and maybe we were overconfident, but I had the feeling that he was taking us out of the continual experimentation [l'empirisme habituel] to get us on a more methodical and scientific road. From then on, everything that was said around us seemed to come from ignorance, jealousy or malveillance. I was at ease with myself, satisfied deep down that I was doing my job seriously. That was how it was from 1975 until just recently.<ref name="Mondenard, Jean-Pierre 2004 p331" />

Retirement

Thévenet became directeur sportif in 1984 of the La Redoute team of Stephen Roche, then of RMO in 1986 and 1987. He became a television commentator and opened a company selling cycling clothes bearing his name. He was asked whether it was hard being a racing cyclist; his reply was that being a French farmer was harder.

Thévenet became race director of the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2010 after the organisation of the race was taken over by the Amaury Sport Organisation.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Honour

Thévenet was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur on 14 July 2001.

Major results

1968

7th Overall Tour de l'Avenir

1969

1st Stage 8 Tour de l'Avenir

1970

1st Mont Faron Hill Climb

1st Stage 18 Tour de France

9th Overall À travers Lausanne

1971

2nd Overall Étoile des Espoirs

1st Stage 2 (ITT)

3rd Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

3rd Trofeo Baracchi (with Roger Pingeon)

4th Overall Tour de France

1st Stage 10

6th Overall À travers Lausanne

6th Critérium National de la Route

1972

1st File:Jersey green.svg Overall Tour de Romandie

1st Prologue & Stage 3b (ITT)

1st File:Jersey yellow.svg Overall Tour d'Indre-et-Loire

1st Stage 1

2nd Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

1st Prologue (TTT)

2nd Overall À travers Lausanne

2nd Critérium des As

5th Grand Prix des Nations

6th Trofeo Baracchi (with Jean-Pierre Danguillaume)

7th Critérium National de la Route

8th Overall Grand Prix du Midi Libre

1st Stage 3

8th Overall Escalada a Montjuïc

9th Overall Tour de France

1st Stages 11 & 17

1973

1st File:MaillotFra.PNG Road race, National Road Championships

2nd Overall Tour de France

1st Stages 7b & 20b

2nd Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

1st Stage 3

2nd Circuit de l'Aulne

3rd Overall Vuelta a España

1st Stage 11

3rd Overall Tour de l'Aude

1st Stage 1

4th Grand Prix des Nations

5th Overall À travers Lausanne

6th Liège–Bastogne–Liège

7th Overall Escalada a Montjuïc

9th Overall Grand Prix du Midi Libre

1st Stage 4

1974

1st File:MaillotVolta.png Overall Volta a Catalunya

1st Stage 4 & 7b (ITT)

1st Critérium National de la Route

4th Overall Paris–Nice

1st Stage 2

5th Road race, UCI Road World Championships

6th Giro di Lombardia

6th Grand Prix des Nations

7th Gran Premio di Lugano

9th Circuit de l'Aulne

Vuelta a España

Held File:Jersey yellow.svg after Stages 2 & 3

1975

1st File:Jersey yellow.svg Overall Tour de France

1st Stage 15 & 16

1st File:Jersey yellow-bluebar.svg Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

1st Stage 5

1st Stage 4a (ITT) Paris–Nice

1st Stage 2 (ITT) À travers Lausanne

2nd Liège–Bastogne–Liège

3rd Overall Four Days of Dunkirk

3rd Paris–Camembert

3rd Grand Prix des Nations

4th Overall Escalada a Montjuïc

4th Bruxelles–Meulebeke

5th Critérium des As

6th Road race, UCI Road World Championships

1976

1st File:Jersey yellow-bluebar.svg Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

1st Stages 4 & 5

1st Stage 5a Four Days of Dunkirk

1st Stage 2 Tour du Limousin

2nd Overall Étoile des Espoirs

2nd Overall À travers Lausanne

2nd Giro di Lombardia

2nd Circuit de l'Aulne

4th Tour du Haut Var

5th Overall Grand Prix du Midi Libre

5th Overall Escalada a Montjuïc

5th Grand Prix des Nations

5th Trofeo Baracchi (with Jean-Luc Vandenbroucke)

6th Grand Prix de Monaco

1977

1st File:Jersey yellow.svg Overall Tour de France

1st Stage 20 (ITT)

1st File:Jersey yellow.svg Overall Escalada a Montjuïc

1st Stages Stages 1b & 1c (ITT)

1st Tour du Haut Var

1st Circuit du Cher

1st Maël-Pestivien

2nd Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

1st Stage 7b (ITT)

2nd Overall Grand Prix du Midi Libre

3rd Overall À travers Lausanne

5th Critérium des As

9th Grand Prix des Nations

1980

1st La Poly Normande

8th Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

8th Overall Vuelta a Andalucía

10th Tour du Haut Var

1981

1st Critérium Professionnel de Châteauroux

1st Stage 4a (ITT) Circuit de la Sarthe-Pays de la Loire

2nd Overall Tour du Vaucluse

1st Stage 1

Grand Tours general classification results timeline

Grand Tour	1970	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975	1976	1977	1978	1979	1980	1981
A gold jersey Vuelta a España	—	44	—	3	DNF	—	—	—	—	—	14	—
A pink jersey Giro d'Italia	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	31	—	—
A yellow jersey Tour de France	35	4	9	2	DNF	1	DNF	1	DNF	—	17	37

Legend

—	Did not compete
DNF	Did not finish

See also

• List of doping cases in cycling

External links

• Template:Usurped
• Template:Cycling Archives
• Official Tour de France results for Bernard Thévenet