One word will stay in memory to describe this day – BRUTAL!
The race would include two Olympic gold medallists from the Alpine world – Jean-Pierre Vidal (Slalom) and Fabrice Guy (Combiné Nordique) and double Formula One world champion Alain Prost. The two Olympic champions finished in around 8 hours but no sign of the name Prost among the finishers today.
For me it was an inexplicably bad day right from the start – feeling practically ill but with no apparent reason except perhaps the cold and wet – which apparently discouraged 3000 from even starting. The only sense of achievement was in simply surviving despite all of this. If my 9hrs 16mins seems like a long time then goodness only knows what the last finisher felt like after 18hrs 56mins. He would have been pedalling until close to 3am the day after the start! (assuming he started at close to 8am). I thought that there was a time limit where you were prevented from continuing – but he was not alone crossing the finish line so there appears to be no mistake in the results table.