What Fergus Grant learned from shepherding riders at the back of the Haute Route peloton
GUEST COLUMN
A big part of magazines like this are about ‘what you can learn from the best’ but in my experience there’s much we can take from the riders at the back of the pack too. For three years, from 2014 to 2017, I was the ‘Lanterne Rouge’ of the Haute Route sportive series – amateur week-long rides across the Alps and Pyrenees of 700+km. The job required me to ride with the riders at the back in their times of hardship and coax them through to the finish.
I’m originally from Manchester but have lived in the French Alps for the past 25 years, so being a cyclist and fluent in French, I fitted the job spec perfectly. Usually, the Lanterne Rouge is the cyclist at the back of a race, but Haute Route wanted it to be ‘Mr Motivator’ who supports the final 10 or 20 cyclists. There was no real plan on how it was going to work, but the outcome surpassed expectations. People appreciated the support, the naff jokes in a Manchester accent, and the impromptu singing during slow stretches.
I loved the job and did it until 2017, when I became the speaker of the series. They needed someone who could switch easily between English and French, and be a lively orator in both languages. Since then, I’ve been the face at the start line, the voice at the finish, and the anchor at daily briefings.
Among my cherished memories is on the Haute Route Alps during my time as Lanterne Rouge. Towards the end of one event, I accompanied a Brazilian surgeon. He was very, very tired – I knew how hard it had been for him – and we were the last two to finish. Everyone was waiting. The motorbike support team were there along with everyone at the finish line preparing a Mexican wave for the final cyclist to cross the line. I decided that we should give a bit of a show and hold each other’s hands as we went over the line. Ten metres from the finish line, we did exactly that, our bikes swerved together, and we both fell!
Despite the comical mishap, the camaraderie and sentiment were palpable. You feel it a lot during a week of endurance cycling when you’ve been in the thick of it together, and surprisingly it comes from the seemingly inconsequential gestures, such as when cyclists were in pain late in the day and often couldn’t talk. I would stay with them in silence and help them over the s
