Cyrille Guimard - Riding Career

Riding Career

Guimard rode as a junior, an amateur and a professional, on the road, track and in cyclo-cross. He was national champion in all three forms: road in 1967 as an amateur, track sprint in 1970 and cyclo-cross in 1976. The riders ahead of him in the 1970 and 1971 professional road championships were disqualified and the titles not given. He said: "After those in front of me were disqualified for failing the drugs test, the federation never had the idea of giving me the titles.". Guimard was then president of the riders' union (see below) and the resentment that that created was why he was not named champion, he said, while others in the same position had been.

Guimard was a sprinter who won nearly 100 races in eight seasons. He won stages of the Tour de France in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1974 - four of them in 1972 - although he finished the race only twice. He came 62nd in 1970 and seventh in 1971, the only year in which he didn't win a stage. He wore the green jersey of leader of the points competition in 1972 and won the combativity award in the 1972. He also won the points competition of the Vuelta a España and the Six-Days of Grenoble in 1972.

Guimard's most striking Tour de France was in 1972, when he wore the maillot jaune of leadership and matched Eddy Merckx in the mountains. Fighting to keep the lead on long climbs created pain in his knees, one of which he injured in 1969 in an accident with a car while he was training. Merckx won two stages in the Alps and Guimard the next. Merckx tried to dispose of him on a 28 km stage to Mont Revard but Guimard, instead of cracking, won by 10 cm as the Belgian raised his hands thinking he had won.

Guimard was in second place and leading the points competition two days from the finish in Paris when he was forced to withdraw. Merckx gave his green points jersey to Guimard on the podium in Paris.

There were concerns about Guimard's treatment during the race, and reports that he had to be carried to his bike each morning because he could no longer walk. The team official caring for him was Bernard Sainz, sentenced to three years in 2008 for doping athletes and practising as an unqualified doctor. Sainz was sentenced to be jailed for the first half of the sentence and to be released on probation for the rest. He produced no evidence of medical training at his trial. He wrote in his autobiography:

It was at the time of our collaboration that the first accusations of doping came. An absurd rumour with a life as long as the Loch Ness monster because I saw it reappear in the Journal du Dimanche on 30 April 2000! For 30 years, people have been saying that I pushed Cyrille beyond his limits and that his knees ended up cracking in the 1972 Tour de France because of my methods. As is often the case, people talk and write, claiming to know everything when they know nothing.

The two men met when Sainz was assistant manager of Gan, the team for which Guimard rode with Raymond Poulidor. Sainz was at Guimard's side throughout the 1972 Tour. In 1973, Guimard was caught in a drugs test at the end of the stage from Avignon to Montpellier. Knee pain ended Guimard's racing and he moved into team management.