Sean Kelly lost the Tour de France yellow jersey after holding it for just one day in the 1983 edition before being targeted by thieves on the final day in Paris and losing it again, this time for good. His leader's jersey was stolen and while the former World No 1 had many huge days ahead of him, he would never wear cycling's most famous jersey ever again.
In this piece he talks us through what he believes "was one of the worst days ever on a bike" and just why that 1983 Tour was typical of his fortunes in the French Grand Tour during the peak years of his career. While he told stickybottle he managed to improve his performance in the Tour as his career progressed, his best years were behind him at that point.
Advertisement
A combination of chasing far too many wins early in the year - often following a "crazy" schedule - coupled with the specific challenges of racing in France in July and very bad advice in his early years - all conspired against him on the Tour, he said, during his years with Sem/Kas from 1982 and 1988.
But two days that stick in the mind from the 1983 Tour - where he won the points and sprints classifications by massive margins - were stage 10 in the Pyrenees, when he wore the yellow jersey, and the final stage.
"At the end of the Tour in Paris on the final stage, I put my suitcase into the car and I went into the hotel just to say goodbye to the people on the team, the mechanics and so on, And I came out a half an hour later and the car had been broken into. The suitcase was gone, with the yellow jersey that I wore on the one and only day."
Kelly said while the police "came around and took some notes" from him and personal details, he never heard anything from them again. The Tour organisers heard of his plight and presented him with a replica yellow jersey when the 1984 Tour route was presented.
"So I have a yellow jersey, but it's not the one I carried up the Pyrenees," he said. "It was disappointing obviously it was the official one I wore during the stage, and all of that. But I suppose I still have something exactly the same, even if it's not the real thing."
Harsh realities of Tour de France yellow
Asked what the stage was like the day he held the jersey, Kelly replied: "It was horrendous… horror - one of the worst days of my life on a bike. I was on one of these days in the Tour where you might get a bad day. The heat really got to me and, I suppose, fatigue after doing too much in the early season, which I realised later in my career.
"But really the heat was an issue; the heat of July in the Tour. And, though I was in the yellow jersey, I was in trouble on the early climb."
The problem for Kelly that day was that the climbs - big ones - came early and often, with the route including the Col d'Aubisque, Col du Tourmalet, Col de l'Aspin and Col de Peyresaude.
"When I got into trouble early, I had all the photographers around me, and the TV motorbikes, and you want to tell them to fuck off, though you can't," he laughed.
Looking back on it now, he says he does not believe the occasion, riding in cycling's most famous jersey, got to him on the day.
Related News
"I don't think that was it," he said. "I'd experienced it a number of times beforehand and after it again… where you can get through two days very well in the heat, but then on the third day, when it really starts to hit a lot of people… That was really my problem in the Tours."
He added the day before he took yellow - on stage 9 - the stage was a six-hour 222km race from La Rochelle to Bordeaux in very hot conditions, which emptied him of reserves even before he went into the race lead. While he moved up into 2nd overall - behind Kim Andersen (Coop-Mercier-Mavic) - on that stage into Bordeaux, Kelly said he was already getting worn out.
Then came stage 9 - 207km from Bordeaux to Pau - where Kelly won the bunch sprint for 3rd place behind breakaway men Philippe Chevallier (Renault-Elf-Gitane) and Gerard Veldscholten (TI-Raleigh-Campagnolo). That ensured he took yellow - by just one second from Andersen - while he also had the lead in the points classification.
However, once in the yellow jersey, Kelly then faced defending it in the Pyrenees on the 201km stage 10 from Pau to Bagnères-de-Luchon, won by Robert Millar (Peugeot - Shell - Michelin). Kelly placed 18th on the stage, lost 10:11 and slid down the general classification to 4th, some 6:13 behind new yellow jersey Pascal Simon (Peugeot - Shell - Michelin).
Aside from the summer heat in France, Kelly said he really only realised as his career progressed - and maybe his best years were gone - that he was simply doing far too much racing in the early season. In 1986, for example, when he finish 2nd in the Tour of Flanders – to Adrie van der Poel – he started Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco in the Basque Country the following day. He won three stages and the overall there, before also winning Paris-Roubaix 48 hours later.
He told stickybottle he crammed in that level of racing - and travel between events - in what was an exhausting schedule for many years. And by the time he arrived at the Tour in July, he had spent far too many pennies to be still at his best.
"That was certainly part of my problem in the Tour," he said. "I felt much better in the Tour later when I was with PDM but I wasn't at the level as I was when I was with Kas those four or five years previously. But you just learn those things as you go through your career."
Kelly said the big DS figure in his early career - Jean de Gribaldy - had convinced him he could recover better between races than was actually the case.
"He always preached 'you can never get tired tired physically; you'll get tired mentally listening to the journalists asking about racing too much'… He said the journalists would talk about burnout and if you listened to them you would become burnt out, but his idea was that, physically, you couldn't get burn out. That obviously wasn't true; a load of shit, bullshit. But my problem was, Kas wanted to do all the races…. The schedule was totally crazy stuff."
However, while his stint in yellow was brief, just one day, in 1983 he won both the points classification and intermediate sprints jersey - a separate classification at the time - but very large margins. After losing yellow, he raced in the green jersey the following day, keeping it all the way to Paris.
In the end, he won the points classification with a tally of 360 points, some 216 points more than classification runner-up Frits Pirard (Metauro Mobili–Pinarello). Kelly won the hot spot sprints classification with 151 points, almost double the 77 points of classification runner-up Pierre Le Bigaut (COOP–Mercier–Mavic). The race was won overall that year by a 22-year-old Laurent Fignon (Renault–Elf), with Kelly 7th overall at 12:09.
