The day the Tour de France came to Hampshire

Clinging limpet-like from every vantage point, not one among the 20,000 crowd dared miss it.

Roads in the old capital had been blocked, offices abandoned, shops emptied and schools closed.

Beneath a cloudless sky, the Mayor could be seen making final adjustments to his camera; a former Archbishop of Canterbury was craning his neck for a better view; and street artists and musicians entertained those packed four, five and six deep on the pavements.

And through it all snaked a one-mile long public address system keeping all informed of the approaching drama.

It wasn’t just the people of Winchester who were playing the waiting game.

In Bishop’s Waltham, the elderly residents of a care home had a prime spot on the roadside to watch the spectacle while French berets appeared en vogue for a younger generation.

And in Overton, on the Andover- Basingstoke road, almost the entire 3,000-strong village seemed to be hanging over crash-barriers on the narrow main street, cheering wildly at anything that moved.

Here the parish council had encouraged shopkeepers to enter a best-dressed window contest for the occasion – and the owner of an antiques business appeared odds-on to win.

His balloon-festooned premises displayed a bike which would surely impress the judges. Moreover he offered wine – but Australian rather than French plonk since the latter was, in his view, ‘undrinkable’.

Meanwhile the music of Edith Piaf drifted over the massed ensemble outside, courtesy of his tape player.

Hampshire had never seen anything like it.

That day one million people, countless folding chairs, an assortment of bouncy castles and even giant funfairs lined a 116-mile circular route which started and finished in Portsmouth.

Even a gigantic bicycle-shaped crop circle had appeared in a field near Cheesefoot off the A272.

Meanwhile, across the globe, half a billion people were glued to their televisions, watching Hampshire in anticipation.

And it was all to see a race for madmen.

That day – Thursday July 7, 1994 – the Tour de France came to Hampshire.

Following Stage 4 of the race from Dover to Brighton the previous day, the world’s best riders emerged from Portsmouth’s historic dockyard for Stage 5, passing HMS Victory as they went.

Now the road north lay ahead – to Wickham, Bishop’s Waltham, Winchester and Andover – before arcing round to Basingstoke and back south to Portsmouth.

It was only the second time ‘Le Tour’ had visited these shores. And the first time was just a token stage down a stretch of the new Plympton by-pass in Devon in 1973 which wasn’t particularly successful.

This was altogether different.

The two stages of ‘Le Tour en Angleterre’ gripped the entire nation – and gave welcome publicity to the newly-opened Channel Tunnel.

In Hampshire, the wait for the chaingang seemed to last an eternity.

The excitement mounts as crowds await the arrival fo the peloton

To fill the time, octogenarian Alec Smith rode down Overton high street ahead of the main event to ‘win’ the Tour de France. The cheering locals loved it.

T-shirt sellers were meanwhile trying to offload their ‘Le Tour’ merchandise while dour French gendarmes tightened their advance guard around the route.

Two among the vast Winchester crowd had already fainted and still the main pack of riders – the ‘peloton’ – was nowhere to be seen.

Then a bizarre sight. A convoy of advertising vehicles entered the city, bedecked in apples, apricots, computers and Kellogg’s packets. Next came a speeding cavalcade of race officials, media and more gendarmerie, their horns blaring.

Then, like a bolt from the blue, four riders appeared, riding hard with eyeballs out.

The Mayor, despite his meticulous camera preparations, completely missed them.

Three minutes later the main peloton whooshed through.

And then it was gone, heading out towards Andover.

The excitement may have been shortlived but the peloton of 1994 had also provided a snapshot of cycling’s turbulent future.

For contained within that flash of whirring colour was a brilliant Tour newcomer destined for tragic implosion – and another heading for disgraceful infamy.

But more of them later.

First, the home favourites.

Many of those lining Hampshire’s roads simply wanted to glimpse Tour debutant Chris Boardman, Britain’s Olympic champion in Barcelona two years earlier.

Indeed, he had already won the Tour’s opening time trial in Lille on July 2 and gone on to wear the overall leader’s yellow jersey for the first three days. No Briton had worn the maillot jaune since Tom Simpson 32 years earlier.

Then there was fellow Brit Sean Yates, a seasoned Tour veteran who had postponed retirement for a chance of glory on home soil.

Alas, Boardman and Yates were merely the warm-up act for that year’s Tour.

While Italian Nicola Minali was to win the Hampshire stage, waiting in the wings for the overall winner’s prize was the son of a Spanish farmer with a quite remarkable physical engine.

The enigmatic Miguel Indurain was powered by enormous lungs and a heart so huge it only beat 28 times a minute – compared to 60-80 for a normal, untrained adult.

He had already won the three previous Tours and was destined to record a fourth in 1994.

Following the Tour’s two-day sojourn to Britain, the peloton returned to France where Indurain grabbed the yellow jersey on Stage 9.

He kept it through the Pyrenees and Alps and was still wearing it when the circus arrived on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on July 24 to conclude Stage 21 and the race.

Indurain had covered the Tour’s 2,472 miles in 103 hours 38 minutes– averaging an astonishing 23.5mph.

The following year he won again, his fifth in a row, and joined an elite band of just three other five-time winners that included the great Eddy Merckx.

Dominant: Miguel Indurain

But let’s return to 1994.

While Indurain was the undisputed master that year, the class of ’94 included two new pupils who chose oblivion upon graduation.

One was the exciting Marco Pantani from Italy’s Adriatic coast. Slight in build, he floated up mountains and finished his debut 1994 Tour in third place overall and as the best young rider.

Pantani was a megastar in the making.

He won the Tour in 1998 and, for good measure, was the victor of the gruelling Tour of Italy too, securing his place as a national icon in the process.

He was adored by fans worldwide who bestowed the title ‘Il Pirata’ (the pirate) upon him in homage to the bandana and earrings which adorned his shaven head.

Yet the life of this shy, vulnerable, complicated man was to end alone in a cheap hotel room following an apparent cocaine overdose.

Dogged by doping allegations and his reputation destroyed, he had pursued self-destruction with disturbing singlemindedness.

He left this world on Valentine’s Day 2004, aged just 34.

Meanwhile a young white-capped Texan was among the Hampshire peloton that day in July 1994.

Lance Armstrong was to dominate the post – Indurain era of cycling, winning a record-breaking seven Tours between 1999 and 2005. Yet eight years and a crushing Oprah Winfrey confessional later, his name was airbrushed from cycling history when sport’s biggest drugs scandal was exposed.

But those clouds were forming on a distant horizon that glorious summer’s day in Hampshire.

When Minali crossed the finish line in Portsmouth after four hours, ten minutes of superhuman exertion, sporting history had been made.

The county had witnessed the toughest mainstream sporting event on Earth.

Yet normal life soon descended.

A broken-down lorry had already caused a spectacular traffic jam in Overton.

And in Winchester office staff were slowly trudging back to their desks.

One was asked if his boss had minded his temporary absence.

“Oh no”, he replied. “He was the first one out to line the route!”

The Tour’s enchanting romanticism and sublime beauty had, it seemed, touched everyone.

Even Brit hero Chris Boardman, shattered and soaked in sweat at the finish line, could hardly take it in.

Surveying the masses through welling eyes he simply said: “I’ll never forget this day as long as I live.”