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LABOURDETTE: TWO LIGHTNING STRIKES ON THE DAY OF MY VICTORY ON THE 1971 TOUR.
B.Labourdette had his day of glory on the 1971 Tour with his victory in the Luchon-Gourette half-stage on July 14.
B.Labourdette takes us back to his victory under the floods of Soulor and Aubisque.
"This day of July 14th included two half-stages, at the time all stage races had this type of day and thus offered more cities to be listed as stage cities of the Grand Tours.
In those days, we had to get up very early in the morning.
From now on, the half-stages have disappeared and it was our national badger, Bernard Hinault, at the riders' event in Valence d'Agen that changed the riders' rest conditions.
So it was the first half-stage of the famous 14th of July.
We started from Luchon and our leader Luis Ocana wearing the yellow jersey had given up the day before after a fall in the col de Menté.
I had attacked at the foot of the Soulor pass 25km from the finish line; it was a Dantesque day with a thunderstorm that enveloped the entire ascent of the Soulor, its short descent, the ascent from the Aubisque balcony and the descent to the Gourette station where the finish line was.
I rode out in the rain and the lightning of a huge storm.
I won this morning mountain stage in front of the biggest climbers of the moment as the classification shows :1. Bernard Labourdette (Fra) 2. Eddy Merckx (Bel) at 1'32" 3. Lucien Van Impe (Bel) at 1'34" 4. Joop Zoetemelk (Hol) 1'35" 5. Cyrille Guimard (Fra) 1'39"
6. Vicente Lopez Carril (Esp) at 1'44" 7. Désiré Letort (Fra) at 1'49" 8. Joaquim Agostinho (Por) at 1'51" 9. Leif Mortensen (Dan) at 2'20" 10. Marinus Wagtmans (Hol) at 2'57".
Also, during this half-stage two spectators were struck by lightning; everyone thought that one of them had died and a few months later the enthusiasts present on the slopes of Soulor and Aubisque saw this spectator again, whom they thought dead; he told them: yes it is me, I had a long stay in hospital.
During my victory in the Tour à Gourette in my Pyrenees, in apocalyptic weather and on our national holiday the storm struck two spectators, one of whom reappeared a few months later when he was thought to have died. «
