Racing for the Hell of It (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine July 2002

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Racing for the Hell of It (Cont.)


	Beligium's Christof Marien before the start of the Ouagadougou-Ouahigouya leg. European cyclists nabbed the lead early and never let go. (Roger Lemoyne)

WHEN JÉRÉMIE OUDRAOGO WAS SIX OR SEVEN—his exact birthdate is unrecorded—his father, Sibri, took him into the bush, a day's walk from their farm. Stand up straight, Sibri told him, like a man. Then he took a long knife and made three quick horizontal cuts on Jérémie's right temple, just behind the eye. He repeated the cuts on the left side. Jérémie winced, but held back his tears. The scars that eventually formed would forever identify him as a Mossi, a member of the largest and most powerful tribe in Burkina Faso.

The Mossi had fended off Muslim raiders in the 16th century, slave traders in the 18th, and missionaries and colonists in the 19th before Ouagadougou finally fell to the French in 1901. The colonizers imposed brutally high taxes that pushed many Mossi to sell their livestock and go to work on French-owned coffee and cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast. Jérémie's forebears were among the few who somehow clung to their land, tending their little plots of millet, sorghum, and peanuts, suffering the vicissitudes of rainfall and drought.

At home, one of Jérémie's duties was to fetch water for the family, which was already quite large: He is the second oldest of nine brothers and sisters by his father's first wife. (Now close to 60, Sibri has sired some 20 children with four wives, and shows no sign of letting up.) In the rainy season, April to June, this meant a quick trip to a well in a nearby field, not far from the family's cluster of mud-and-thatch huts, one hut for each wife.

Every year the rainy season ended and the well dried up. Then Jérémie had to get water from the other well, five kilometers away through the bush. In the morning he would take a green plastic container, tie it to an old blue Peugeot one-speed that was the family's only transport, and ride dirt paths to the well. The bike was too big for a seven-year-old, so he would stand on the left pedal and stick his right leg through the frame to reach the other pedal, holding the handlebars with his skinny arms.\

It was years later on the same bike, a vélo ordinaire with a single speed and dubious brakes, that Jérémie entered his first race, in the nearby town of Boussé. He was 18, tall and strong by then, and he went along with a bunch of friends, turning his handlebars upside down so his rattletrap steed would look more like a racing machine. There were 40 riders there, on all kinds of bikes, and after riding around and around in a cloud of dust, he came in fourth. He won 300 francs—about 50 cents—the easiest money he'd ever made.

From then on Jérémie competed whenever he could, at the dusty races in small towns all over Burkina Faso. Most were multilap events through town streets, usually unpaved. Jérémie was a smart racer, and he clawed his way through the local scene. "He is très intelligent," says Victor Duchene, a wizened 69-year-old Belgian who volunteers as the Burkina Faso team trainer. "And he is malin"—clever, and a little ruthless.

In 1996, barely 21, Jérémie was selected at the last minute to ride the Tour du Faso with the national "C" team. A German won that year, but Jérémie placed 16th—not bad. Two years later, facing a tough international field, he finished third overall, astonishing everyone but himself. On the final day, the Frenchman who won looked at Jérémie's bike in disbelief: It was a rusty old Peugeot, with ancient shifters and a gummy chain, the front fork painted Rasta red, green, and yellow.

His stunning performance earned Jérémie a spot on a club team that also provided him with his beloved Rasta bike. As one of the top five or six riders in the country, out of some 350 licensed racers, he commanded a stipend totaling $55 a month—enough to live on.

He began training full-time, often in the company of Hamado Pafadnam, who was his teammate and best friend. A poor boy from the northern town of Kaya, Pafadnam was big and gentle and had a killer sprint. Jérémie was wiry and resilient, but Paf was the closer, the one who could win races. The two became inseparable, training every day on the road northwest of Ouagadougou. In local and national races they made a powerful combination. "When we rode together," Jérémie remembers, "nobody could beat us."

But Jérémie wanted more; he has always dreamed of bigger things. Every July, he spends his days in a firemen's bar in central Ouagadougou, glued to the live TV coverage of the Tour de France. Sitting there in the dark, nursing a Sprite or a Castel beer, he'll watch the flickering images on the ancient set, which is enclosed in a metal cage to prevent theft. It's a 10-kilometer ride from his home on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, in the Tampui quarter, but the bar gets good reception. Over the years he has watched Indurain, and Ullrich, and Armstrong—all the greats. But no black African has ever made the starting line.

Maybe Pafadnam will be the first. He's going to ride for a semi-pro team in Spain for the 2002 season—the first Burkinabé racer to go to Europe. Jérémie is a little envious of his friend, but he wishes him the best. So he'll sit back and see how Paf fares abroad. And maybe his chance will come someday, too. But time is running out. He is 27 already. He has to make a move soon. When the Tour de France stage finishes, Jérémie pulls worn bills from his pocket, pays, and rides home to his wife, Kadi, their infant son, Evarice, and their two-room cinder-block house on a cratered, nameless street in Tampui. There's a curtain for a door, a piece of corrugated metal for a roof, and inside—against one wall—a long, low table laden with trophies.

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