Boardman ready to do himself justice

TOUR DE FRANCE: Britain's great hope for the great race starting on Saturday talks to Robin Nicholl

The red, white and blue flag fluttered noisily high in the Alps. "C'mon Chris-s-s," screamed the holder of the Union flag. Words of encouragement that had a hidden menace for the approaching cyclist in yellow and blue.

It was not the Tour de France, but the Brits had still travelled to shout for Chris Boardman in the Dauphine Libere stage race, one of the Tour's build-up races. "They had come specifically to watch the race, and I was passing them in 15th place and a couple of minutes behind the leader," Boardman said. "I felt like apologising. I really would like to give people what they want.

"They want someone to get behind and shout for. It's like the football. I feel that, and it's a frustration if things don't go well. I wanted to do something for them."

That feeling will be as nothing when Boardman sets out on his third Tour on Saturday. The race's pressured atmosphere exposes like nothing else the anxieties of a long-distance bike racer, and Boardman has a big one. To finish. He did not make it through his first two Tours, and his main aim is to arrive in Paris in three weeks' time having survived 3,955 kilometres and 24 mountains.

After electrifying the 1994 Tour by taking the leader's yellow jersey with a debut victory in the opening time trial at Lille, he left on the 11th day in a planned pull-out.

Last year everyone was stunned by an even sharper exit. Minutes into his second Tour the pressure was on and Boardman could not resist. He finished in hospital with his wrist and ankle fractured after crashing on rain-damped roads in Brittany.

"It was a very small mistake but the consequences at 80kph were fairly drastic," said Boardman who lost 25 per cent of the mobility in his left ankle because of the spill, which put him out for three months.

"From a first-year professional to a team leader in the Tour the next year, people were just biting off more than I could chew. It's not because I am the best man for the role. There is no one else. I am a team leader who has never finished a Tour.

"I wanted these things so I allowed myself to be pushed into these positions, and I did not have the attributes needed to do them. I was not comfortable with the role I had been given, so it was good to stop and take stock.

"There was a lot of pressure to do something in the prologue time trial. It wasn't nasty or malicious but for the 1995 prologue a lot of people were under pressure. It was coming out as encouragement. They were saying 'it's still possible, it's still possible'.

"When I am in a wound-up situation I want to do something, and they are shouting 'you are only two seconds down and the corners are finished. It's still on'.

"If someone was shouting 'take it easy...wait until the bottom', maybe I would not listen. It was my decision, but in that situation it doesn't need much encouragement when I wanted to do it.

"When I am not feeling so good, team helpers are saying 'I am sure you will be fine', and I am thinking 'I don't want to hear this'. They don't realise that they are doing it."

To avoid the "emotional rollercoaster" Boardman is looking for another prologue success. "It would take off the pressure and is also a certain amount of insurance which allows me to get on with the racing.

"I am slightly better at dealing with pressure now, and there has been a lot less this year because the team has had more results, and others have had their share of pressure."

A new burden was loaded on his French team, GAN, with the scandal about the team doctor, Patrick Nedelec, prescribing steroids to two of their riders who were subsequently caught in a drug test.

"Our manager, Roger Legeay, was totally destroyed because he picked a doctor who worked with the French cycling federation and the Union Cycliste Internationale [the world governing body].

"Philippe Gaumont is only 23, and that guy could finish his career. It was not caffeine or testosterone where the point could be argued that you were making mistakes. This was clearly that they were taking something that was cheating.

"The doctor is arguing that it was therapeutic and given out of season. He has said that he should not have prescribed illegal substances but they were given it because of the state they were in at the time.

"I was gobsmacked. From a selfish point I thought if I was a million miles away from it, it would still stick. Yet most of the team have been tested for doping at least 10 times this year.

"There is nothing we can do about it, but everyone is tarred with the same brush. If I was looking at it from the outside I would probably say: 'So that's why they are riding well'."

With that hanging over them the team assemble in the Dutch town of 's- Hertogenbosch with Boardman fully aware of the job ahead, having personally surveyed the Alps.

"Climbing the Galibier mountain is going to take two hours, and there are another two climbs after that. Physically and mentally, the hardest day is into Pamplona, 260 kilometres and five climbs. It is, however, Stage 16, and the end is in sight. That makes a difference."

Boardman's idea of "an acceptable Tour" would be victory in the prologue time trial, one good day in the mountains "when I am with the leading group", and then finishing in the top 20 on the Champs Elysees.

"I know that on my day I can be the best time trialist in the world or the best track pursuiter. But as far as a race like the Tour is concerned I am not sure. There are so many good riders now the competition is ferocious, and the difference between the best and the also-rans is frighteningly subtle."

The Tour de France has received threats from the Basque separatist group, ETA, regarding the section of the race that goes through Basque country, around the Pyrenees. The Tour director, Jean-Marie Le Blanc, confirmed that he had received a letter from ETA last week containing what he called "veiled threats," but declined further comment.