RIP Armand de Las Cuevas
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Agreed.iainf72 wrote:50 years old. No age really
He didnt really look like a bike racer, but boy could he go up hill quickly.0 -
Armand de las Cuevas just predates my interest in cycling. Wikipedia has his palmares which is pretty good but there is a gap of a few years then he wins the Dauphine in his final year. Anyone know what happened there, seems odd that a rider capable of winning the Dauphine should retire or at least drop out of the big time.[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]0
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Reports are saying suicide. That's very sad. One of a group of riders from that era, including Pantani, Ugrumov and Luttenberger who didn't look like professional athletes at all, yet who were all super fast.
As for his record, there was a raid on an Italian pharmacy in August 1998 that implicated him, so it may have been related to that.0 -
Obituary from LIberation.
The Resurrection and the Light
Apprentice coachbuilder, aspiring cycling champion, Armand de Las Cuevas wasn't even eighteen years old when a trainer picked him up in his car from the station. The two men didn't know each other. Just a couple of minutes after climbing into the passenger seat, the young cyclist makes a stunning revelation: "I've already tried to top myself" And then a threat: "Next time, I will not miss". The failed successor of Laurent Fignon, the contemporary of Laurent Jalabert and Richard Virenque (more titled but less powerful), the rebel team mate of Miguel Indurain, deprived of podium on the Tour of Italy and the Tour de France the same year, in 1994 (respectively injured by a shock against a barrier and suffering from bronchitis), always ousted for the benefit of Marco Pantani, who looked like him from afar, bald head, life of leaks and mysteries, died on the island of Reunion, Thursday, at 50 years. This time, he didn't miss.
Born in Troyes (Aube) to a French mother and a Spanish immigrant father, Armand de Las Cuevas grew up in the Bordeaux (Gironde) region. First obstacle or first "injustice", which began a vast catalog of grievances, conflicts and failures to adapt to the job, he wanted to be a boxer but his father put him on a bike. Then he gets on the wrong side of his first team, Reynolds / Banesto, who blames him for not slaving enough for his leader. Among other things, the Frenchman was suffering from the time trial in the 1992 Tour in Luxembourg (he finished second behind Indurain, three minutes). He was exhausted by the exercise and later abandoned in the Alps, when he was finally to perform his duties as a crewman. The following year, on the Tour of Italy, he accompanied the great rival Claudio Chiappucci in a breakaway, supposedly to "break the rhythm". On the same event, he unsuccessfully requested a specialized bike for the time trial. His unfinished dream of defeating his boss. Indurain wants him out.
In orbit to win the Tour de France 1998
His second team, Castorama (1993-1995), driven by Cyrille Guimard, accuses him of stirring things up among the riders. He is suspended internally, deprived of his salary. At 23, Armand de Las Cuevas announces his retirement. He takes refuge in Guadeloupe. Rejects more than a dozen proposals to go back on a bike. Teams that do not know him yet are more attracted by this big "engine" than worried by his failures. Is he not one of the best riders in the world? The winner of the championship of France (1991) when he wanted to give up on that day, or the Clasica San Sebastian (1994) as he did not believe in his chances and his mentor, former pro Dominique Arnaud, had had to force him to recce the course, or more precisely the last descent, a vicious road that blinds riders with a small flat section.
https://youtu.be/a7uaEq7ygzo
After an insignificant passage by Casino in 1996, Las Cuevas returns to Banesto. To erase a humiliation. Can he win the Tour de France? Indurain has left the ranks. Riis is very old. Ullrich very young. Armstrong just recovered from his cancer. The French want to see a final resurrection as he has the secret and as the decade EPO conceals so much: in 1998, he won the Critérium du Dauphiné, preparation race for the Tour, before the best in the world. A few days earlier, he was struggling to follow the training of his team ... He was suddenly explosive. Dangerous like TNT. He repeats the offsence on the Route du Sud, where he distances Ullrich in the Pyrenees. But Banesto does not select him for the 1998 Tour which should have been his swansong. Fear of a scandal (which will burst more at Festina)? Or disagreement with the other strong man of the team, the Spaniard Abraham Olano, as the disgraced French affirms it? This Grand Boucle will go to Marco Pantani.
https://youtu.be/gUYA_zbzNKo
Janitor and positive at age 38
Armand de Las Cuevas embarks on a new escape. He only takes up the trade for the Italian formation Amica Chips, which collects has beens. The wages do not arrive: he strikes by finishing last of all the races. Then we lose track. Janitor of a building in Mérignac, near Bordeaux. Keeper of a mushroom farm in Reunion Island ... He takes up cycling again, modestly, amateur at 38, on events in the Indian Ocean. In 2006, he scraped in the Tour of Mauritius against a Kenyan named Chris Froome. There is still some of the old spark. But he is tested positive and suspended for six months. This former client of Dr. Ferrari, the dopeur of the stars, never caught in his days of glory falls late for a heart tonic, heptaminol, which would come from a drug against varicose veins. De Las Cuevas puts away his bike souvenir album. He sticks a big label on it: "Injustices".
Between his nebulous end and his chaotic beginnings, his career appears to be a series of crevasses. Fractured by the epoch, a bad time for the cycling, but also by the own torment of a cyclist who dreamed only of one thing: to escape and live on a boat. He sometimes tried to justify his ruined record. "My rants made were very negative for me" he said in 2010 to the website sudgironde-cycling[2]. Without necessarily delivering the key to his enigma. In 1994, in Bologna, when he won the Tour d'Italie time trial and took the leader's pink jersey for a day, Armand de Las Cuevas had betrayed his Christian faith and its mystical part, which was supposed to keep him going: "I thank the light."[1] The fuse finally blew.
-- Pierre Carrey for LIberation
[1] Reference to a comment to Italian journalists on his Bologna win
[2] http://www.sudgirondecyclisme.fr/2018/0 ... as-cuevas/BASI Nordic Ski Instructor
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I was watching an old video of Pantani on youtube last week and there was de Las Cuevas too, with his awkward hunched-over climbing style. He had the talent to win even more than he did but struggled with the mental demands of being a champion. Sad to see someone go at that young age.
DD.0
