Cyclopedia might not be new (was published for the first time in 2010), but besides being one of my latest buys, is the ideal read for the year in which the 100th Tour de France is ridden and is foreseen one of the most animated Giro D’Italia ever. Written by reknown cyclism journalist William Fotheringham, the book is an authentic A to Z encyclopedia about this sport. From the most emblematic cyclists to the two wheeled scoundrels, and there are lots of stories about the grand tours too, Cyclopedia is full of trivia, bicycles, components and even designers like Alex Moulton. An essential book!

O Cyclopedia pode não ser novo (foi publicado pela primeira vez em 2010), mas para além de ser uma dos últimos que adquiri, é a literatura ideal para o ano em que se realiza a centésima edição do Tour de France e para o qual se antevê um dos dos mais animados Giro D’Italia de sempre. Escrito pelo conhecido jornalista de ciclismo William Fotheringham, o livro é uma autêntica enciclopédia de A a Z sobre este desporto. Desde os ciclistas mais emblemáticos aos vilões das duas rodas, e também não faltam histórias das grandes voltas, o Cyclopedia está repleto de curiosidades, bicicletas, componentes e a até designers como Alex Moulton. Um livro indispensável!

by Álvaro Tavares Ramos
photo by Road.cc

Jack Thurston travels to Ludlow, foodie capital of the Welsh Marches, to talk about the terroir and heritage of the great bike races, with William Fotheringham, veteran cycling journalist, regular Rouleur columnist and author of best-selling biographies of Tom Simpson and Eddy Merckx. They discuss the strange attraction of the Arenberg Trench, Team Sky’s strategy for winning at this year’s cobbled classics, how the UCI is unwise to tamper too much with the established race calendar, and why it ought to be doing more to promote women’s bike racing.

Issue 37

The Rouleur podcast is brought to you by Mosquito Bikes, London’s custom made bicycle specialists. Mosquito Bikes is proud to announce that it is the UK’s first & exclusive retailer of Alchemy custom bicycles. You can see them in the flesh, along with all Mosquito’s other brands, at the Bespoked Bristol hand-built bicycle show show between the 12th-14th of April. Mosquito is at 123 Essex Road, London N1 2SN or on the web at mosquito-bikes.co.uk.

Words: William Fotheringham

It was Robert Millar who first opened my eyes to one of the bitter realities of cycling: we spend more time riding our bikes in ‘winter’ than we do in any other season. For a bike rider, winter isn’t a neat division into a three-month segment: it is when you need mudguards and tights and is the part of the year which lasts, if you are unlucky, from October to April.

Millar was the only pro I ever knew who, at his own expense, had a winter bike custom made for him by a local builder, partly on the premise that he wasn’t going to get a machine with mudguard eyes out of the sponsor – and, more to the point, that if he did and then changed teams, the sponsor was liable to ask for it back just at the point he was going to need it most. But mainly, he got that bike in the knowledge that he was going to ride it as much if not more than his race bike, and he might as well keep a bit drier while he did so.

Although I never went to Millar’s extreme of putting a tubular inside a clincher to avoid punctures, I followed his winter bike example in 1996. It felt like a curious step, asking a builder to make me a frame to the same dimensions as the bike I raced on, using the same light steel tubing but with big clearances, longer forks, and all the relevant braze-ons.

Everyone I knew had the same approach to the winter bike. They either used a racing bike they didn’t race any more with the guards attached in various unreliable ways, or they bought the cheapest steel frame they could find off the peg and lived with it. That was cycling tradition: you didn’t invest in something that was going to take the battering from water, potholes and road salt that your winter bike would have to take.

I’ve come to regard those few hundred quid (well, it was 15 years ago now) and the regular sums I’ve spent on resprays as the best investment I’ve ever made in a single item of cycling kit. And not just because taking the guards off and racing on a bike with mudguard eyes and a big fork rake, that looks a bit, well, battered, is an excellent way of winding up fellow bike riders. Mudguard eyes plus long forks equals heavy, right? Not necessarily. (Knowing smile.)

For a sport which we associate so much with summer, there is a curious amount of pleasure to be found in winter bike riding. Even this diluvian winter – where many roads seem to have reverted to a pre-modern, non-tarmacked state – doesn’t have to be hell if you have decent mudguards, substantial tyres, an obsessive regard for wind direction and air temperature and a fair collection of gloves, not to mention an old trick or two like the spare undervest for the café stop. The fact that winter kit is now the best it ever has been, across the board, makes all the difference.

I’ve come to realise that although much of the pure joy from British bike riding is to be had in summer – probably because those sensually pleasing shorts and short sleeve days are so few and far between – winter riding is the source of the most memorable experiences. The extreme stuff that sticks in the mind seems to happen when the days are short: the time when I was a kid and the water froze in the bottle on a 100-mile sponsored ride; the first and, I hope, only time I braked on an icy descent; the club run where we ended up wandering through four foot snowdrifts in our cleats chucking snowballs at each other.

There is plenty to take from this winter too: a Sunday spent dodging epic floods, topped by a half hour on an islet in a flood plain watching a mate repair two punctures as the waters rose around us; the way that constant rain made new and extreme ways of lubricating a chain a constant topic of conversation; a hilarious low speed pratfall on a sheet of black ice that materialised from nowhere; a new climb in the Welsh borders to the top of a mountain tackled (cunning laugh) with a gale force easterly tailwind in dazzling sunshine.

Winter cycling is like teenage love. You dream about the pleasure, you remember the pain.

Extract  from Rouleur issue 36. William Fotheringham is cycling correspondent for the Guardian and translated Laurent Fignon’s autobiography We Were Young and Carefree, published by Yellow Jersey.

Eddy Merckx is the most prominent mountain in the landscape. He is of course the greatest cyclist of all time, yet something within me had resisted the lure to know more about him. To climb the peak.

Fotheringham’s biography is the perfect introduction to the legend and I suspect the perfect biography for anyone with an insatiable hunger to know more about The Cannibal. The writing is precise, detailed, warm and almost tender. Fotheringham is clearly fond of his subject and of the 70s era of professional cycling.

Most interesting is the insight given on how Merckx was perceived in his time. The cult of Merckx.

The common feeling was that he was an implacable, almost inhuman, machine. The view began to circulate  during 1969  and 1970 and would be prevalent until Merckx’s decline began during 1975 and 1976. The tone was set by the French writer Lucien Bodard in 1970, in this celebrated passage. “Merckx, a super-winner in unprecedented style, walks away, without a hint of fatigue, with nothing to say, just a hint of boredom. He has robotised himself. There are no aspirations, no sense of destiny, just an awareness that he is set apart, unique. So he transformed himself into a machine with the utmost meticulousness. He is half-man, half-bike.”

Another writer of the time described him as the “man with no shadow”, a supernatural vampire.

Yet Fotheringham’s biography, with details drawn from his childhood, his wife Claudine and others close to the legend, portrays Merckx as a more complex and frail personality. A man driven by the desire for perfection and the fear of failure.

He accepted that he needed to race the criteriums to earn a living but later wondered whether his career “would have been longer or better without that”. Claudine, however was not convinced that her husband truly regretted racing as much as his did. “When he wasn’t racing and was sitting in an armchair, he would be ill from not being on his bike.” He  needed to compete, and he needed to race flat out; so he did.

and

“Never in my life have I met another man like him, a man who constantly wanted to be the best, wanted to be the first,” wrote Jean-Marie Leblanc, who encountered Merckx first as a fellow racer, then as a journalist, and later went on to run the Tour de France. “You may say: Hinault? But there were times when Hinault would let a break go, as all other cyclists do. When a move went and he was five minutes behind he would take a reasonable view. But Merckx never saw it in a reasonable light.”

The likes of Merckx will never be seen again.

Of Merckx, there is so much to know and understand.

I recommend every fan of cycling or of The Cannibal to read, Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike. The view from the mountain, I guarantee, will restore your health and rekindle your joy of cycling.

Eddy was driven on by a power that was unique to him. He never looked for glory. He just wanted to be at peace with himself.

The quote is by Eddy’s wife of forty-five years, Claudine. The quote was sourced from William Fotheringham’s superlative biography, Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike.

I go through the same ridiculous process every time, even though, deep down, I’m aware that the chances of enjoying every single moment of the ride – or certainly the feeling after it’s all over – are high.

Fretting is the default position, even when there is entry on the line. There are chimps on both shoulders, arguing the toss over the merits and demerits of racing, while I sit helpless between, like being on the night bus to Peckham when it kicks off. The spat soon gets ugly, but there is no point in intervening. What will be, will be.

It’s the same deal with the magazine. We send off the finished article to the printers, then the doubts set in: what if it isn’t as good as the last issue? How do we know we have got it right having pored over the content for weeks and become blind to its charms?

The reason struck us is the strange chain of emotions running through the office as we went to press. The editor and myself had concluded issue 36 was not one of our best efforts, and had resigned ourselves to improving next time round. Let it go and move on.

Then the publisher, Bruce, and the ad man, Andy, called us to say it was one of our finest. And the early response from those who had got the issue was the same: it’s a beauty. We are happy to stand corrected.

What the editorial and design team strive for is originality, quality and balance – and it was the balance part we were unsure we had got right. Too much historical and Rouleur becomes a museum piece; all contemporary and we have left our core values behind.It’s not until we get the magazine in our hands, having watched it take shape on a computer screen over the shoulder of our designer, Rob, that we can truly say whether it has worked or not. Thankfully, we all agreed: it has worked, and then some.

And what is contained within the covers of this troublesome child, you ask? Ned Boulting opens with a fabulously written piece on the Revolution track series, with suitably wonderful images by Taz Darling. Guy Andrews, a man with a penchant for a steel frame himself, follows the development of the new Madison Genesis team, who will (whisper it) ride steel frames this season. Retro or forward thinking?

Herbie Sykes, a man who loves a good barney, sits down with Paul Kimmage, not averse to a heated debate himself – ask Lance… It is a fascinating feature on where the sport is now and where it’s heading. Our man Jordan Gibbons goes to Germany to discover one of the finest carbon wheel producers in the world making very expensive hoops from Heath Robinson machinery. And even Lance has to pay to get a set. Superb.

We have two writers new to Rouleur this issue: Olivier Nilsson-Julien talks to Dutch author Herman Chevrolet about his fascinating book on dirty deals and double-crossing in the peloton; and David Sharp spends time with time trial wunderkind Tony Martin, talking over a year of extreme highs and lows, with the always-excellent Timm Kölln recording the scars.

David Curry accompanies Rouleur regular photographer Olaf Unverzart to the Czech Republic to discuss cyclo-cross with Zdeněk Štybar as the former World Champion converts to a career on the road with Omega-Pharma –Quick Step.

Plus columnists Paul Fournel – with Jo Burt’s illustration as usual –  Matt Seaton and William Fotheringham, winners all.

Enough of the hard sell. We’re happy enough, but we’re not the readership. Let us know what you make of it.

Flemish author Herman Chevrolet's book Het feest van list en bedrog details the dealmaking and double-crossing that have existed throughout professional cycle racing's long and chequered history. Olivier Nilsson-Julien joins Chevrolet to take us through the pick of a very large crop, from 1904 Tour riders catching trains to Lance Armstrong's
$1m bonus in the appropriately named Thrift Drug Triple Crown…

The slyness and betrayal theme surfaces again – as does Mr Armstrong -  in Herbie Sykes' uncut interview with Paul Kimmage. The Irish journalist has been battling doping in the sport for over 20 years. He's still fighting. Can the Change Cycling Now movement finally make a difference?

Tony Martin's dramatic year of broken bones, Olympic medals and World Championship titles will not be forgotten in a hurry. David Sharp finds the time trial specialist in good spirits, while Timm Kolln records the battle scars.

Ned Boulting waxes lyrical on the Revolution track series, Guy Andrews follows up with the Madison Genesis team on their new steel-framed race machines, Jordan Gibbons gets to see Lightweight's sexy carbon wheels being made in Germany and Andrew Curry travels further east to the Czech Republic to talk cyclo-cross with Zdenek Stybar.

Also featuring regular columnists Matt Seaton, Paul Fournel, William Fotheringham and Johnny Green.

Words: William Fotheringham    Photo: Offside/L’Equipe

Sic transit gloria mundi. Addio Vigorelli, the under used and under loved track in Milan where the boards are to be ripped up. It’s hard not to feel a sense of loss at the disappearance of one of the last links with the great days of track cycling; the days when the crowds would queue for hours to watch the likes of Antonio Maspes, Reg Harris, Fausto Coppi and Ferdi Kübler ride within what is a monumental and somewhat pompous structure. The building harks back to the fascist days, is in the same style as the city’s Central station, and is to be retained. You will still be able to go there and ponder the wartime day in 1942 when Coppi braved the British bombs to set his hour record but it is unlikely to see bike racing again.

When I visited the track in 2005 during research for Fallen Angel, my biography of Fausto Coppi, it already bore little resemblance to a functioning velodrome. Although the immediate surroundings were no more propitious than at Manchester, it made a stark contrast with that place’s bustling foyer, the constant comings and goings of the GB team and the sold out sessions. Vigorelli’s legendary boards of north African maple were still in place, although they were clearly unusable. (The note in the dilapidated lobby recalling a Beatles concert was an amusing footnote.)

It was obvious even then that it would take a monumental effort, a fair bit of finance, and a huge drive on the part of Italian cycling if it were ever to be restored to its former glory.

In a parallel universe – one where the UCI wasn’t constantly panicking about surviving the latest doping scandal and sending legal letters to those who question its dealings (step forward Paul Kimmage, Floyd Landis and Greg LeMond) – you could envisage a future for track cycling in which velodromes such as the Vigorelli host World Cup competitions. They would be a hub for activities which draw young people into the sport. The boards would be seen as a vital way of getting youth cyclists onto their bikes free of city traffic and winter weather.

This is what is happening in Britain but, given the absence of a coherent top level plan to reboot worldwide track cycling, it is unlikely to happen elsewhere. In the litany of the UCI’s crimes against the sport it is supposed to run, killing off track cycling – by omission rather than commission – should have a prominent place, along with its disregard for women’s racing.

That the Vigorelli would not have a future was confirmed in the week that we lost another link to the golden age of Coppi, Bartali, Kübler et al. Fiorenzo Magni’s death at the age of 91 closed a magnificent innings in which he won the Giro d’Italia three times, claimed a legendary second place in the Giro with a broken collarbone and humerus, and achieved the unlikely feat of winning the Tour of Flanders three years running.

He was an energetic, bustling, determined man in his late 80s when I met him for an interview which was of immense value when writing Fallen Angel, and which eventually appeared in these pages. His memories were clear; in the ‘affair’ of the White Lady which had so divided Italy, he had come down firmly on the side of Coppi’s wronged wife Bruna, to whom he and his wife were close. After half a century, his views were still trenchant.

There was another death that mid-October week. On the day after Magni breathed his last, the Dutch finance house Rabobank announced that – after 18 years – it was pulling out of backing its professional team. In a neat reversal of what Magni had achieved almost 60 years earlier – when he brought in the first of the extra-sportif sponsors who would take over the financing of elite squads as the bike industry fell on hard times – the bike supplier Giant looked set to continue.

Given the relative health of the cycle industry compared to the frailty of finance and consumer goods, that could become a trend if more extra-sportif sponsors take fright in the wake of the Armstrong revelations. The wheel turns, as the French say, but it is at times of crisis such as these that the past becomes doubly important. Greats such as Magni will pass but the sport’s physical landmarks – Alpe d’Huez, the Stelvio, the Madonna del Ghisallo, Arenberg, and the Muur at Geraardsbergen – are a vital link to that past. Therein lies the true tragedy of the loss of the Vigorelli.

William Fotheringham is cycling correspondent for the Guardian and author of Merckx: Half man, Half Bike, published by Yellow Jersey Press.

 Extract from Rouleur issue 35, out now.

Near the end of his career, Fausto Coppi expressed regret that he had never made a second attempt at the hour record. For a cyclist who twice won the Giro and the Tour in the same year and for whom there were few races missing from his palmarès, his somewhat botched, albeit successful, attempt at the hour record during the Second World War remained unsatisfactory. The attempt was unsatisfactory in part because he was not in the best shape of his career, because of  the strictures of the war, and in part because he had not devoted himself to the effort, not wearing aerodynamic kit during the effort and having warmed up by riding the more than 90 kilometers from his home in Castellania to the Velodrome Vigorelli in Milan to attempt the record. Furthermore, the lack of international comity at the time made it difficult for non-Italians to verify the record and that along with the eventual narrowness with which he beat the record (31 meters)  cast doubt on its legitimacy. These reasons were enough to make anyone want a second attempt, but the main reason for Coppi was that he wanted to take a real shot at it after the war when amphetamines had been drastically improved, and he could use the better ‘chemicals’, as he called them. However, as it turned out, he never did take another run at the hour record, instead focusing his last big effort on the 1953 World Championships, which he won, and Coppi’s hour record would stand until 1956 when Jacques Anquetil, another rider who freely discussed his use of pharmacological solutions to the problems of cycling, would break it by 360 meters.

The most striking thing about Fallen Angel: The Passion of Fausto Coppi, however, is not this now surprising candor about doping, but rather how elusive the protagonist remains throughout the book. William Fotheringham does a good job of filling in the background, the rivals, the coaches, the love interests and the spear carriers, but throughout the book there seems to be a void at the center of the painting. Initially one feels that perhaps Fotheringham has missed his mark, that he has failed to successfully flesh out the main character. However, as the book proceeds, one gets the feeling that it is not the fault of the author, but rather a characteristic of the subject. Coppi himself was somewhat elusive, and as a quiet man who had become a great champion and hero, he remained removed from the events around him, and as the mythology that grew up around him after his death it further obscured the man at the center of the legend. This towering mythology is particularly impressive for someone who died a mere 50 years ago. One then forgives Fotheringham for the mystery remaining at the center, but still wishes that he had done more to engage with the fact that his title character was so mysterious, and to understand how that affected his life, his racing, and our understanding of it all.

Serse (on left) and Fausto (photo via  Cycling Hall of Fame)

Since we never fully get to the heart of Coppi himself, we are brought into his life by the key personal and professional relationships of his life. Growing up in a small town in Italy, Coppi had strong ties to his family and to his Catholic faith (a relationship, with the church at least, that would sour in later years). Surrounded by this strong support system, Fotheringham portrays Coppi as somewhat weak willed (a fact belied by his many victories), and suggests that it was his brother Serse who provided the necessary mental support for the elder, more talented Coppi brother, especially at times of crisis for Fausto. Although, a much less talented cyclist, Serse provided balance for Fausto as Fausto shot to the top of the cycling world. This relationship was crucial for Fausto and because of the bond helping Serse win Paris-Roubaix in 1949 to be one of the most satisfying accomplishments of his career. The efforts were not even entirely athletic in nature, because final victory took several months to certify, and Serse ended up sharing it with André Mahé. The reason for this somewhat odd turn of events was that Mahé and his other compatriots in what appeared to be the winning break were accidentally directed away from the entrance to the velodrome in Roubaix. When they discovered the error they walked in a side door and then climbed through the press box and down to the track to contest the sprint, which Mahé won. Serse then led in the peloton by the conventional method and won a sprint to the line that he initially thought was for fourth place. Given the irregularities, Serse and Mahé were, in the end following much wrangling, jointly given the victory. Fausto, for his part, would get his first and only Paris-Roubaix title the following year.

In addition to Serse, the main source of stability in Fausto’s professional life was his blind trainer, Biagio Cavenna. With Cavanna’s help Coppi made up for any lack of confidence he may have possessed with rigorous and scientific preparation and training, and a willingness to experiment with different methods to improve his performance. Beginning his career just as the derailleur was being introduced Coppi, along with Cavenna, would help to drag cycling into the modern era and towards modern training methods. Before Coppi, training mainly consisted of going out for a long hard ride. One simply maintained as high pace as possible for the duration of the ride. Coppi and Cavenna, however, began to understand the importance of varying one’s effort and were among the first to introduce interval training into cycling workouts.

Their innovation was not limited to the road, Coppi was willing to experiment with new methods in other areas as well. He eagerly experimented with variations in diet, both generally and specifically during races. The conventional wisdom when Coppi came onto the scene that you should eat a large, heavy meal before the race and then start eating on the bike a couple hours into the race. Coppi decided that a small meal and eating more regularly during the race was a better approach, one that would be born out with future riders. In addition, despite being raised in a conventional Italian farm family, he was willing to experiment with different diets, including new-fangled ideas from Hollywood. From this willingness to experiment with diet and training, one can understand why Coppi also embraced the new ‘chemicals’, they were widely praised by the medical community after the war and they provided another realm in which to experiment and try to improve one’s performance.

Coppi’s approach to training and diet were in contrast to his greatest rival, Gino Bartali, who was slightly older and was the established champion of Italian cycling when Coppi burst on the scene by winning the 1940 Giro d’Italia at the age of 20. In a grand rivalry that was partly manufactured to help sell newspapers and bicycle races, Bartali was portrayed as a conservative, pious Catholic, while Coppi was portrayed as a rebel and socialist, despite also being a devout Catholic. In riding style they were both successful at long breakaways in an era that still rewarded such tactics. However, even at a time when brutal stages and uneven roads made solo attacks more likely to succeed than they are in the modern era, Coppi was known for his one-man, race-winning breakaways and became known by the journalist Mario Farretti’s description of one of his attacks for victory: un uomo solo è al commando, one man is in the lead, in command. Although, Bartali long remained as the counterpoint to Coppi, Coppi’s style on the bike and his early death cemented his victory in the long term battle for Italian cycling fans hearts.

In contrast to his innovations that helped to launch modern cycling, Coppi’s personal life was marked by three, now seemingly unnecessary, tragedies caused by reactionary moral prescriptions and primitive medical knowledge. First, was his brother Serse, who died in 1951 two years after his greatest victory at Paris-Roubaix.  Like many cyclists of the time (and like Bartali’s brother), Serse died from inadequate medical care after crashing during a race. After getting caught in a crash with Fausto and other teammates at a railroad crossing and hitting his head, the severity of his injury was not understood, and Serse simply went back to the hotel to rest and sleep. Unfortunately the injury was much more serious than recognized at first and by the time his condition was understood it was too late. This tragic death of his brother and loss of a confident, supportive voice proved very hard for the elder Coppi to take, and, again like Bartali after his own brother’s racing death, he initially found it hard to continue his career.

The second tragedy, was related to his marriage, or more accurately his divorce. Having married young, during the war, Coppi’s marriage did not survive the rigors of a racing cyclist, especially one who kept competing throughout the winter by racing on the track. Having a young daughter, this separation would have been unfortunate enough, but after the war the Catholic church was trying to maintain its dwindling hold on Italian life and tried to block Coppi from getting a divorce or separating from his wife. The furor caused by the church and others who were purportedly concerned with Italian morals, pressured the government to pursue Coppi and it eventually prosecuted Coppi and his mistress for adultery. The fallout from the divorce would last the rest of his life and Coppi deeply resented the prosecution, feeling that he was only being made an example of because of his fame.

Finally, there was his own death. Coppi died of malaria after participating in a cycling exhibition in the Republic of the Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) as a favor to one of his French cycling friends. Coppi and three of his companions spent one night of their journey without mosquito netting. When they each went back to their respective homes, Coppi and two of the others fell ill and the doctors were mystified. The two French riders were (it appears, without knowing they had malaria) fortuitously treated with quinine and made full recoveries. Coppi, on the other hand, despite the fact that malaria had only recently been eradicated from Italy, was not given quinine and quickly succumbed to his illness.

Despite his many accomplishments and despite living on the cusp of the modern era, Coppi remains mysterious throughout the book. Despite, or because of, being an Italian legend, Coppi managed to keep much of himself obscured from public view. Since much of his private life was raked through the coals for all to see, it is perhaps reassuring that he managed to retain something of himself that could not be accessed by history. Even with his domestiques and children still alive and answering questions, Coppi remains a man alone, plunging ahead to the next climb, without even Bartali knowing what he is thinking, how he is feeling, or how the ‘chemicals’ are affecting him.

Boring. Tedious. Monotonous. Predictable. That, according to some, were the words that summed up this year’s Tour de France. We had the first ever British winner but apparently that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t thrill a minute, seat of the pants, tension all the way stuff. Well that wasn’t how Bradley Wiggins lived it, if the few chances we had to exchange views during the race were anything to go by. He seemed to be having quite an intense time of it.

Concern that the Tour is boring is not a new phenomenon. In fact it’s a perennial concern. In 1952, the organisers increased the prize money for second place to liven things up as Coppi romped to victory. In 1970, they were aghast when Eddy Merckx took the lead early in the race. Further back, Alfredo Binda was famously paid to stay away from the 1930 Giro because, guess what, he was making it too predictable. Jacques Anquetil was criticised for it, so too Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain.

Part of the problem is down to the nature of cycle racing on the road. An endurance sport is not always thrill a minute. Thrill a minute is an elimination race on the velodrome; the 20/20 to the Test Match that is the Tour de France. But while elimination races provide great entertainment they are rarely memorable in the longer term (unless Laura Trott or Willy De Bosscher is involved, but that’s another story). The other issue with road racing is team tactics, which are now so well honed that the outcome of many Tour stages is preordained until the (bunch) finish.

If we have expectations that the Tour is an edge of the seat ride, I blame Laurent Fignon, Pedro Delgado and Greg LeMond. It’s all their fault. Between them they created the most incredible Tour ever in 1989, with the Frenchman and the American swapping the lead time after time with never more than 53 seconds between them. I suspect that race has conditioned many people’s view of what a Tour de France should be. But it was a completely unique event, because neither Fignon nor LeMond was anywhere near their best form – both were fighting back from long-term injury of different kinds – and the big favourite Delgado set off with a 3min handicap by missing his prologue start time.

The 1989 race came two years after the Stephen Roche Tour – in which the Irishman ruthlessly hunted down Delgado in the final week – and three years after the most intrigue-filled Tour ever, the 1986 race in which LeMond and Hinault indulged in a hilariously theatrical battle with the glorious twist being that the pair were team-mates. That contest pitted a mentally strong but physically fading Hinault against a physically fresh but mentally fragile LeMond. Further back, the 1979 Tour was a thriller (ignore the 13min gap between Hinault and Joop Zoetemelk, 10min of which was added on afterwards when the Dutchman tested positive), largely because Hinault had a nightmare on the stage to Roubaix, losing three minutes after a puncture and a delay due to strikers on the course. He then hunted down Zoetemelk with the same ruthlessness Roche showed eight years later in his pursuit of Delgado.

These Tours are exceptions, however. Mostly, the race is a relentless process of physical attrition in which the first big physical test, be it a summit finish or an early long time trial, delivers a verdict that remains largely unchanged in Paris. On the whole the rate of physical deterioration in any stage race is a curve which remains the same for most of the protagonists, so in the final week it’s rare for a leader to be much better than earlier in the race. That’s why the classification is often fairly set and the gaps simply get bigger.

That can seem predictable but the fact is that there is so much else going on during the Tour that in my eyes it never is. This year’s ‘boring’ race had Wiggins calling the Twitter doubters “fucking wankers” (and worse), the tacks on a Pyrenean climb, the intriguing question of Chris Froome, and plenty more. It didn’t have the cut and thrust of the 1989 and 1979 races but few Tours do. Boredom is in the eye of the beholder.

Extract from Rouleur issue 33. William Fotheringham is the author of Roule Britannia. A history of Britons in the Tour de France, the book will be reissued in October with new sections covering the 2012 race. 

No matter what the field, science, art, literature, sport etc individuals come along that stand so head and shoulders above all that have come before or since they shine like the brightest of lights displaying an Icarus effect on all those who try to emulate them.  In the world of road cycling one man shone brightest of all – Eddy Merckx who between 1966 and 1976 was so good that the records he set will never be surpassed and his relentless desire for victory earned him the nickname of The Cannibal.  He must have been good as when I started to get interested in cycling I would profess to my dad my admiration for whoever was the top dog at the time which got the simple retort, “yes but he’s not as good as Merckx” which from an early age instilled in me an admiration for this seemingly mythical god of two wheels, so much so that one of my first objects of material desire was to own an orange Eddy Merckx bike.

In William Fotheringham’s fantastic study of Merckx he looks to find out what made him tick and drove him to such lengths to be the best and to earn him that moniker.  Who was the man behind the nickname and was he as fearsome off the bike as he clearly was on it?  I’m always interested in reading about astonishing individuals written by people who have a passion and knowledge of the subject they are writing about and this is absolutely the case with this book backed up with painstaking research into the main people, events, rivals and confidants in Merckx’s career.

For me what became clear was that Merckx is and was clearly a quite, anxious, and humble man and I’m reminded how often this is actually the case, warriors on the pitch are often quietly spoken off it, perhaps not needing that big personality as they have already shown the world what they are capable of and need no other outlet for their expression.

Merckx was born a Flandrian but moved at an early age to Brussells so spoke both French and Flemmish, although as Fotheringham explains he was not as comfortable in either of them as he was in his Bruxellois dialect, mostly French with some Flemmish mixed in.  These linguistic differences matter in Belgium to such an extent that it became a national issue there what language his wedding vows were in and when he met the King not what they said but what language they said it in.  I found the whole issue and explanation of Flandrian culture in the book really fascinating perhaps because of where I’m originally from as explained thus:

One parallel for Flanders’ place in cycling would be rugby and South Wales. In both sports and regions … a people who feel themselves exploited and outsmarted have come to use sport as a means of demanding recognition of their worth and separate identity

picture credit: velorunner

Merckx announced himself to the world as a 20 year old in 1966 by winning the classic Milan-San Remo one day race with less that a year’s professional racing behind him, a race he would go on to win a further 6 times in the next 10 years as part of his collection of over 30 Classics victories.  It is incredibly difficult to compare sportspeople from different eras as tactics, teamwork, sports science, training methods etc all make comparisons difficult but it is unlikely that we will ever see such a complete rider as this again.  He was not a pure sprinter but won sprint finishes, not a pure climber but won on the mountain tops making him the complete all rounder.  What really set him (and still sets him) apart was his remorseless desire to attack which he would do seemingly against all better judgement and in almost every circumstance imaginable.  His approach became clear when asked by a TV journalist after one attacking victory:

Did you have it in mind to go for the win today? His answer

Why do you ask me that ? Why do you think I’m here ? To watch the others win ?

For Merckx it was clear that he aimed to go for the win every time he raced.  This of course gave his rivals severe problems and effectively left them racing for second place.  His main early rival the Italian Gimondi was one of the youngest winners of the 3 Grand Tours as well as winning Paris Roubaix and Giro di Lomardia but was left helpless by the emergence of Merckx and between 1968 and 1972 did not win a single head to head confrontation in a major race which left him to reflect:

I had had a vertiginous rise and suddenly I had to be happy winning far less. I can’t say that I hated him.  It was tough.  I had trouble adapting to the problem he set me because all he wanted to do was win.  That was all.  I had to change my mindset.  There were a couple of years when it was very hard to get used to .  I had to begin again from nothing, take the initiative less in a race because when he was there it was hard to get a grip on things.

Cycling is a sport in which your ability to live with pain and suffering will to some extent differentiate between those who are successful and those who aren’t and Merckx was someone who could suffer more than most as Fotheringham painfully details throughout the book with several wince inducing examples.  His style as well was not one for the purists but was based on power:

He wobbles his shoulders, grapples with the bars, stands on the pedals, moves his hips like a madman…  He doesn’t fight like a stylist but like a thug.  It’s like the difference between a boxer sparring and a whirling Apache horde.

picture credit: velorunner

Yet despite this insatiable appetite for the battle and victory a clear sense of honour and the right way do do things comes across in the book.  In the 1971 tour Merckx was a long way behind his bitter rival at the time Ocana and was seemingly going to be beaten.  Ocana crashed severely and was out of the race effectively handing the victory to Merckx who felt that his win was devalued claiming he didn’t win it by fighting for it claiming he would “rather finish second than win in this way”.  A few years later while he was badly injured he refused to pull out so as to ensure that Bernard Thevenet’s victory could never be doubted.  Despite the bitter rivalry between the two they became good friends after finding themselves sat next to each other on a flight.  Ocana asks Merckx “are we going to glare at each other for all our lives” and they proceed to have a long drinking session together and after Ocana’s retirement it is Merckx who helps him find buyers for his business venture.

Like all the brightest of stars however they eventually burn themselves out and this is clearly what happened to Merckx who from the moment he turned pro and adopted an almost manical intensity to his training and racing schedule with one estimate that he trained for 15,000 miles a year, raced about 30,000 and travelled another 80,000 and did this consistently every year competing in 1,413 races between 1967-77.  With such a prodigious workload it is inevitable that as strong and tough as Merckx was it would take it’s toll.  I found the last few years of his career sympathetically and heartfelt in their description but also painful to read of this great man stepping down from the temples of the gods and becoming mortal.  Even at the end though it was carried out with dignity, he could have carried on for 5 years picking up paycheques for appearance fees but that was clearly not his style, he had to be the best and when he could no longer be that then he no longer wanted to compete.

This book is a truly fascinating read, not just for cycling fans, but for all those fascinated by those who burn brightest and in winning over 400 races including the hour record, world championships, one day classics and grand tours Merckx shone the brightest of them all.  What marks the book though is not simply the record of these achievements but the look into the man himself and what made him The Cannibal.  In doing so Fotheringham has produced a gem that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Picture: by Ricardo Guasco

For my money, I could have listened to Roche for a few more hours. Fotheringham’s encyclopedic cycling knowledge was interesting, but Roche’s reminiscences on the minutiae of cycling were more my cup of tea. Roche could never have been described as a “hard man” of the 80’ pro scene like fellow countryman Sean Kelly. His tactical astuteness, however, comes through his autobiography in spades. In ’87 it all came together: the careful gear selections, route reconnaissance’s, mid-stage deal making combined with an ability to actually improve in stage races to bag the feted Triple Crown. Only Merckx before him won the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the World Championships in the same season and nobody’s done it since.

Stephen Roche in full flight via Numeris Flickr stream

Roche’s headline successes came with (or at times in spite of if you read the shenanigans of the ’87 Giro) the Italian Carerra team. Carerra were one of cycling’s super teams, up there with Molteni, Brooklyn, La Vie Clair, Banesto and possibly (depending on how 2012 goes) Sky. You’d expect an Italian team to look good on the road, but these guys on their Batagglin/Campagnolo bikes really stood out. This was the era before carbon, clipless pedals and integrated  lever shifting yet Carerra’s bikes looked so lithe.  The chrome forks and spokes, narrow Colombus steel tubing and skinny anodised rims look elegantly dated against today’s pumped-up, slippery carbon machines.  These bikes marked the end of an era. Fitting in a way since the ’87 Tour at 4231kms and 26 days was the last of the epic tours. In contrast, the 2012 edition will see “just” 20 days of racing over 3000km.

Carerra Jeans – Vagabond team Batagglin bike

Roche gave some interesting insights during the talk. For example, his hatred of a dirty bike. He expected his bike to be spotless for every ride; even grime in that hard-to-reach area between the bottom bracket and the chain ring was unacceptable. He talked of being forced to ride Le Coq Sportif shoes with “unforgiving plastic soles” on arrival with ACBB in Paris (a well organised “feeder” team for Peugeot). This aggravated a knee problem which combined with a fall on the indoor track in ‘86 was to dog him during his later professional years – effectively neutralising his ’88 season. Kit spotters will have noticed that Roche is always pictured wearing leather Vittoria shoes. Roche would probably choose to forget the denim-look lycra shorts (Carerra are a jeans label) worn at the end of his career: further proof that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Stylish riding by Roche in the ’87 Giro d’Italia

The conversation rumbled on and I was struck by the clarity with which Roche remembered events. It wasn’t just that these were fresh in his mind from writing his autobiography; it was as if he was telling you about last Sunday’s ride, yet this was 25 years later. In the decisive stage of the ’87 tour, crossing Galibier,  Madeleine and finishing at La Plagne, he’d broken early, to be reeled back.  He described key moments on the infamous ascent of La Plagne, how he’d “half wheeled” Spanish climbing expert and yellow jersey wearer Pedro Delgado on the lower slopes to give the impression of strength. Then, once Delgado was away, choosing the exact moment Roche described to chase, with a super human effort, to limit his losses to Delgado. The lack of race radios, the rudimentary motorcycle held chalk boards showing the time gap all playing to his favour.

I always thought Roche was also one of the more stylish riders of the era along with Robert Millar, Luis Herrera, Malcolm Elliott and Laurent Fignon.  A mixed bag I know, but these were riders with style and panache. During the question and answer session, I got my chance to ask him who he thought was the most stylish rider in the peleton. I was surprised by his answer. For him, style was about winning and being able to mask your pain; less about how you looked. He thought for a while and said

“I know he’s got the Mod thing goin’ on, but Brad Wiggins is able to not let other riders know he’s hurting.”

Fotheringham then suggested Fabian Cencellara who always looks the part, particularly in the Leopard Trek strip. Roche scoffed immediately,

“the man rides with a mirror on his bike to look at himself! All those silly attacks at the world championships! What was he thinking?”

Cancellara “rides with a mirror on his handlebars”

In his novel “Swimmer”, Bill Broady observers someone “swimming out of their skin” to break a record. The swimmer in question felt it was the other way around: “I had to swim back into my skin” she counters. Roche must have felt something similar as the race doctors administered oxygen and wrapped him in a foil survival blanket at the summit of La Plagne. If the physical hurdles were obvious, the psychological ones were perhaps less so.

It’s worth remembering that during the ’87 Giro, Roche’s own team mate, Roberto Visentini rode against him and formed alliances with many Italian riders on opposing teams.  Having your own team mate ride against you isn’t unique (think Hinault and Lemond or more recently Armstrong and Contador) but it’s certainly difficult. During the book signing I asked Roche whether it bugged him that everyone went on about the Tour win rather than his Giro win. “Not really, it’s what they want to hear about” he replied phlegmatically. “Born to Ride” redresses the balance.

Stephen Roche’s autobiography “Born to Ride”

Being the youngest of four children, hand-me-downs were a fact of life – not that any of my siblings ever got a new bike either. Uncle Ted would scour the local tip for abandoned frames and wheels, take them back to his workshop and somehow fashion usable machines from piles of junk. Scrapheap Challenge had nothing on Uncle Ted. His creations were invariably painted in the same disgusting shade of green paint liberated from his workplace, sported Sturmey Archer three-speed hubs and weighed more than dad’s Mini, but they did the job.

Until I joined a cycling club, that is. Then it became abundantly clear that Uncle Ted’s clunker would have to go and be replaced by something racier. Much parental badgering ensued – threats issued, tantrums thrown – until they relented and allowed the princely sum of £50 to be withdrawn from my savings. Cash in pocket, I headed for the nearest decent cycle emporium in the glittering metropolis that is Swindon.

A host of gleaming lightweights awaited, mostly too big or too costly for a 13-year-old, but the smattering of machines within my price range looked adequate. Falcons, Raleighs and Carltons vied for my attention. They were all distinct possibilities. And then the Swindon Cycle Centre came up trumps. The moment I saw it, I knew it was the one.

The shade of Molteni orange paint used for its 19-inch frame is a colour that remains deep in my affections. Steel-rimmed 26-inch wheels didn’t so much spin as grind their way round, but Weinmann centre-pulls were a step up from the stopping capabilities of my old clunker. It had those curious ‘mudguards’ – lengths of dull silver metal extending a few inches either side of the brakes that deflected no road muck but rattled incessantly. Five gears, courtesy of French company Huret, seemed plenty to me.

But none of these things informed my choice. What counted – more than the wheels, more than the gears, more than those infernal chrome guards – was the picture on the headtube: a diamond-shaped sticker, framed by World Championship bands, containing a portrait of the greatest rider in the World, the impossibly handsome Eddy Merckx. The sticker repeated on the downtube for good measure.

It was hardly what you would describe as ‘lightweight’, but Eddy and me travelled far and wide on increasingly lengthy club runs, into the hills of Somerset or the Cotswolds, and we got on just fine. Youth Hostelling excursions into Wales or Dorset were a regular feature once proper mudguards, rack and saddle-bag were added. We tackled five-mile time trials every Wednesday evening, recording PB’s week after week. Come the winter, the gears were stripped off and a donated fixed wheel with 40 spokes and no chrome whatsoever (it appeared to have spent several years at the bottom of the River Avon) was fitted. Not once were we defeated by a climb, although one snowy descent at Easter saw us flying into the hedgerow at speed due to my inability to stop.

But Eddy was with me. We were fine.

My legs were growing ever longer and skinnier. The seat post had reached its limit before long. Me and Eddy would have to part company. It was years later I discovered my bike was made under licence by Falcon Cycles in England and had no input whatsoever from the great Belgian, apart from his picture on the frame. Not that the news clouded my feelings about my first racing bike. Me and Eddy had something special.

But it was over. The next machine would have be a step up: self- assembled, one piece at a time, with every component hand-picked by me. No walking into a shop and picking some factory-built, mass-produced mount. The next time would be different…

Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike by William Fotheringham, is published by Yellow Jersey. Bespoked Bristol, the handmade bike show, runs from Friday, March 23 to Sunday, March 25. 

Serse and Fausto Coppi (image courtesy of http://www.corvos.nl)

Although they’re no longer with us, it’s worth heading back into the archives to remember the special relationship enjoyed by the Coppi brothers, Fausto and Serse. So special, that they each seemed one half of the whole and therefore incomplete without the other. As is so often with identical twins, they often completed one another’s sentences. Had he lived, Serse, the younger brother by four years, would have been 89 years young on Monday, 19th March.

The brothers  - the youngest of five children – were born into a Piedmontese farming family and even as youngsters, despite their age difference, the boys were close. They were described by family members as being like night and day. Fausto was well-behaved, reserved even, while Serse was never still, less obedient and much the merrier of the two.

After being separated during the war, the brothers rode together for the post-war Bianchi team, Serse acting as one of Fausto’s domestiques or gregari.  But any assistance he provided on the road was overshadowed by their relationship which was best summarised by Dino Buzzati in 1949:

Here’s the fascinating hypothesis – that Serse is Fausto’s lucky charm, his guardian spirit, a sort of living talisman, a little like the magic lamp without which Aladdin would have remained a beggar. Who knows – perhaps the secret of his champion brother lies with Serse? If Serse were to give up cycling, perhaps the magic would disappear, and Fausto would find himself suddenly without strength, like a limp rag. Partners then – they are so close that neither is capable of living without the other.

Serse Coppi (image courtesy of Cycling Archives)

Serge lacked his brother’s application, though he possessed the same powerful legs, and even won the Paris-Roubaix Classic in 1949, albeit in controversial circumstances. History books show there are two winners that year: Andre Mahe who was leading, but was accidentally sent off course, and Serse, who crossed the line first.

Team mates fondly remember Serse as being charismatic and a larger than life character who played practical jokes and loved to party, particularly with the ladies with whom he enjoyed some notable success. He was allegedly well-hung [ahem - Ed] and, given that cycling attire leaves little to the imagination, we can assume the allegations were correct.

Sadly less than two years after Buzzati’s article Serse was dead. The crash occurred in the 1951 Tour of Piedmont, near the Turin Velodrome. One cyclist misjudged a bend, put his wheel in a tram-line and fell taking Serse Coppi, and others, down with him. Serse banged his head on the pavement but got up and rode to the finish before going to his hotel room, which he shared with his brother. He later complained of feeling unwell and, despite any obvious injuries, his condition quickly deteriorated and he was taken to hospital where he died, in his brother’s arms, before they could operate.

Fausto Coppi drawn by Claudio Pesci

It’s said that Fausto never recovered from his brother’s death. He had persuaded Serse to race so that they could be together and had been riding in the Tour of Piedmont in preparation for the Tour de France where he’d have been riding in support of his more famous brother.

Fausto’s contemporaries and family are unequivocal that Serse’s death was a turning point in the life of Fausto - nothing was ever quite the same again. To quote William Fotheringham, from Fallen Angel – The Passion of Fausto Coppi:

The disintegration of Fausto’s marriage, his disastrous divorce, his long, painful decline, even his premature death, all seemed to stem from this initially banal crash on a tram-line in Turin.

On Fausto’s premature death in January 1960 from malaria, contracted while in Burkina Faso, the boys were reunited and now lie side by side in their home town of Castellania where there’s also a museum, as shown in the video below, and one or two other things, dedicated to the two of them.

Laurent Fignon: When We Were Young And Carefree

By Laurent Fignon (Yellow Jersey Press/Random House/2010)

Translated from the French by William Fotheringham

Review by Jeffrey Morseburg

The late Laurent Fignon rarely gave journalists or their readers what they wanted.  In fact, in that fateful summer of ’89, Tour de France journalists gave him the “lemon award” for the most uncooperative cyclist.  It seems the ink-stained wretches didn’t appreciate his recalcitrance, his brusk manner or the fact that if provoked, he could shove or even spit on sportswriters.  However, in the book that Fignon finished just months before his untimely death from cancer, he begins with the story that virtually every cyclist wants to hear – the tale of his heartbreaking loss to Greg Lemond.  The story of the closest Tour de France in history serves as a prologue for the story of Laurent Fignon’s life and cycling career. Perhaps in the end Fignon has the last laugh, for those who only want to know how he felt to lose to Lemond in that final time trial stage of the Tour will simply read the beginning of the book and never get to know the real person and he will remain enigmatic as ever.

Fignon Would Always Be Reminded of that Fateful Stage of the 1989 Tour...

Fignon was born in Paris, but grew up in Tournan-et-Brie in the Marne countryside east of the city, where he could play in the forest every day.  He writes that other than reading, he had a difficult time sitting still as a youngster, a trait that defined him his entire life.  Fignon was not one for sitting in front of the television or at interminable family gatherings – he had to be active.  Another thing that defined him were his glasses.  He was shy and always stood out because of his thick spectacles, which clearly caused him to suffer some persecution as a youngster.  Perhaps a sense of grievance from being singled out for something so trivial helped to serve as fuel for his later triumphs.

Fignon was always enthusiastic about sports, but football (or soccer) was his first love.  His father was a blue-collar worker with a prodigious work ethic who had little time to follow sports. Because the Fignons lived in the countryside, cycling was a common form of recreation.  The blond rider began racing along the bike paths with his mates at fifteen and took out his first racing license the following year, in 1976.  Like a number of great champions, he showed immediate promise as a junior and was soon winning half his races. At eighteen, he tried college briefly, advanced to the senior ranks as a rider and then served in a special sporting unit to complete his compulsory military service.

He was not destined to spend a long time as an amateur, for Fignon was as hyperactive in his cycling as he was in the rest of life. He drew notice for his victories as well as his aggressive, attacking style. He had problems with the “combines” that tend to rule French amateur racing and this is where we see his intransigence, his implacability, his “friend or foe” nature first come out.  When he would get into a breakaway, Fignon knew he was the strongest and so he wanted to win, or else he would get even my making sure the members of the combine didn’t emerge with a victory.

By his third senior season, Fignon was racing in the colors of the French National Team.  It was in the Tour of Corsica that he first met Cyrille Guimard and Bernanrd Hinault, two men who were to loom so large in his future.  This event, which took place through the rustic Corsican countryside, was open to amateur national teams as well as professional equipes.   Guimard was the director of the state-supported Renault-Elf-Gitane team and the cycling genius who had discovered and molded the young Hinault.  In the Corsica tour the wily manager immediately recognized Fignon’s potential.  He was one of the few amateurs who was able to ride with the top professionals in the mountains and Guimard told him that he would “keep an eye on him” that season.  During the tour Fignon was also able to observe the great Hinault up close and he irritated the older rider by following him closely in the race.

Fignon Showed Off His New Renault After Inking His First Contract

Guimard signed Fignon to a contract for the 1982 season, the rider happy to find that his best cycling friend Pascal Jules would be on the Renault team as well.   From his first days as a neo-pro, Laurent Fignon showed the personality traits that would make him one of the world’s best cyclists.  He showed up to the training camp with miles already in his legs so that he would be competitive from the first races of the season.  While he was impressed by how quickly Hinault burned off the winter fat as well as his confident control of “his” team, Fignon was not overawed by the veteran rider and had the temerity to give as well as he got in the dinner table repartee that is part of cycling. Cyrille Guimard, Renault’s director, could see he had a rare talent on his hands and showed confidence in Fignon by encouraging him to win the Grand Prix de Cannes and the Fleche Azureene, two early season events held on the Mediterranean coast.   He was assigned to ride the demanding Giro d’ Italia in support of Hinault and in his first national tour he wore the pink jersey as leader and then helped Hinault to victory through his tireless work in the mountains of Italy.

Ironically, After Cycling, Fignon Joined the Media, Becoming a Television Analyst n

In 1983, Fignon was assigned to help Hinault win the Vuelta de Espana, Spain’s national tour, which was then held early in the spring.  Hinault was having problems with his knee and rode the entire race in pain. For the first time in years, he was vulnerable and left behind by his rivals.  On the stage from Salamanca to Avila Fignon helped unleash the wounded but still dangerous “Badger,” and Hinault vanquished the other leaders with an epic eighty-kilometer attack that filled Fignon with awe. Because Guimard felt his charge was too young to do two of the arduous three-week national tours in the same season, Fignon was not scheduled to be on Renault’s team for the Tour de France. But when Hinault was diagnosed with tendonitis, he found himself in the hardest race of them all.  It was a real education and the lessons came quickly.  He ended up with badly blistered hands after putting a death grip on the bars in his first experience on the cobbles of Northern France. Then he “bonked” badly on the Team Time Trial.  On the team’s orders he had consumed only artificial food with a high glucose content on the morning of the TTT, which produced an overload of insulin.  During the first part of the ride he became hypoglycemic and he was only saved when his teammate Bernard Becaas gave him all the food he had in his pockets. As a result, Becaas was soon out of food himself and then dropped from the rotation on the time trial.   Such are the cruel lessons of cycling.

After the first mountain stage Fignon found himself second to Peugeot’s veteran Pascal Simon, who was four minutes clear, but it had become apparent to the bespectacled Renault rider that he was capable of winning a major tour, even though he was only twenty-two.   Guimard, however, wanted to hedge his bets with Renault’s Marc Madiot, and the lack of confidence drove Fignon to distraction.  Poor Simon broke his shoulder on the tenth stage, but continued to lead the race in a valiant display of courage that was on the cover of every paper.  In the 15^th stage time trial, Fignon narrowed the gap between him and Simon to a minute and inherited the Maillot Jaune of race leader when Simon had to retire on the 17^th stage.  Initially there was a feeling that Fignon was backing into the victory, but when he won the 21^st stage time trial, his class was obvious. I was able to witness his Tour victory and when he rode into Paris, it was clear to all that a new champion had been discovered.  At the post-race celebration Hinault graciously congratulated him, but Fignon could see that all was not well between the Breton and Guimard.

Fignon, The Way He Would Have LIked to Be Remembered, in the Maillot Jaune of the Tour de France

By 1984, Bernard Hinault’s relationship with Cyrille Guimard had run its course and he teamed up with the brash entrepreneur Bernard Tapie and the innovative Swiss coach Paul Koechli to start a new team called La Vie Claire (“The Clean Life”).  Fignon’s emergence in the Tour de France probably hastened Hinualt’s decision to break with the man who had managed his career for ten years.  In any event, after only two years of professional cycling, Fignon now found himself the unchallenged leader of the Renault team and Guimard set an ambitious goal for him – to win the Giro d’ Italia and Tour de France in the same year, a task only great champions like Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault had achieved.

Fignon Felt He Was Robbed of Certain Victory in the 1984 Giro d'Italia

Unfortunately, in contrast to the Tour de France, the Giro always had the reputation as being a difficult race for a non-Italian to win.  The 1984 Giro d’Italia left a bitter taste in Fignon’s mouth that later victories never fully washed away.  Late in the race, when Francesco Moser, the Italian hero, was being distanced in the mountains, the organizers cancelled a high-altitude stage with five mountain passes “due to snow.” This left Moser in a close second and in the final time trial the organizers allowed a helicopter to fly in front of Fignon in the time trial, inhibiting his progress and providing a convenient tail wind for Moser, who started just ahead of him. Moser ended up winning by a little over a minute,  a pyrrhic victory at best.

Moser Triumphed in the Last, Disputed Stage

In spite of the Giro, 1984 was still Laurent Fignon’s year.  He won the French Professional Championship in the late spring so he started the Tour de France in the red, white and blue maillot of France. With Hinault back in decent form, the race ended up being a battle between the two former teamates.  Hinault won the short prologue time trial, but the powerful Renault team won the team time trial. A long escape left Fignon’s teammate Vincent Barteau in the yellow jersey, which he kept all the way through the Pyrenees. Fignon won the first two individual time trials and then answered every attack Hinault could make on the 17^th stage, an epic run from Grenoble to the historic climb up the Alp d’Huez. The pony-tailed young rider had the confidence to counter attack and opened a gap on the fading Hinault, which put him solidly in yellow.  Riding like he had wings, which isn’t uncommon when a rider is wearing the maillot jaune, Fignon then won two stages in the Alps and then the final time trial, widening his victory margin to an exceptional ten minutes over Hinault.  By winning five stages, Laurent Fignon was a dominant winner of the Tour de France. Everything seemed to be coming up roses.

Fignon Dominated the 1984 Tour With Five Stage Victories

Like most tour winners he partied through the post-Tour criterium circuit, where much of the rider’s annual salary is still made.  The criteriums are an opportunity for fans all over Europe to see the Tour riders close to home. The races are a show the riders put on, with the local hero usually emerging triumphant. Looking back, Fignon is blunt and admits that all the sudden fame and adulation went to his head and that he became even more difficult after his tour victories. He had grown stronger mentally and was able to withstand the tremendous pressure of being in the spotlight, but he remained aloof and never had the likeable personality of Greg Lemond or some of his other rivals.

After the 1984 Tour de France he felt invincible and thought he could win a number of grand tours at a trot.  The harder and more difficult a race was, the more he enjoyed it. Unfortunately for Fignon, he was not destined to experience a long era at the top the way that his former teammate Bernard Hinault or Belgium’s Eddy Merckx did.  Instead, the 1985 season became a disaster for Fignon when he was diagnosed with a inflammation of his achilles tendon.  This necessitated an operation, which removed the tendon sheath.  Unfortunately, this was followed by a staph infection, another surgery and a long, painful rehabilitation.  Fignon recovered slowly, but never felt that his power output was the same.

Fignon and Guimard Signed Systeme U Supermarkets for a Four Year Deal. They Kept the Renault Colors for Their Kit and Added Raleigh as Bicycle Sponsor.

At the end of the aborted 1985 season, Renault shocked France by pulling out of all its sports sponsorships.  This led Fignon and Guimard to form a partnership, a sports promotion company to own and run the old Renault equipe, the first of the European teams that were set up in this manner. They signed the market chain Systeme U to a three year contract and everything seemed to be looking up for Fignon.  He made a good comeback early in 1986, stupidly losing Paris-Camembert to the Dane Kim Andersen and then soloing to victory on the Mur de Huy climb to win the Fleche-Wallonne classic.  Then it was a trip to sunny Spain for the Vuelta which turned into another disaster with a serious crash which inflicted knee and chest injuries on him, but he made the mistake of gutting it out and had a painful ride to 7^th on the general classification.  Fignon started the 1986 Tour de France, which was billed as a race between Hinault of La Vie Claire, his teammate and heir apparent Greg Lemond and Laurent Fignon, the comeback kid.  This was not to be. Fignon was not fully recovered and pulled out during the Pyrenees stages with a infection.  He confides to the reader that he finished the season in the blackest of moods, full of anger at Guimard because of the shortcuts he was making with the team, because of course now any economizing could put francs in his own pocket.  Fignon also “cracked mentally” and was full of loathing for himself, not the best place to be for a sporting star.

By 1987, there were serious problems with the relationship between Fignon and Guimard, the team owners.  Fignon felt that while Guimard was the best strategist and trainer in the business, he was out of his depth when it came to administration. As far as Fignon, he was clearly battling depression, though he never puts a name to the malaise that plagued him for years.  He rode the Bremen Six Day to get in shape, struggling to keep up with the track specialists he felt were riding on adrenaline and amphetamines.

The 1987 Vuelta was a search for form, an up and down race for an up and down athlete. Fignon never really found his legs, but he won the demanding Avila stage and finished a credible – for anyone other than a former tour winner – third.  In his book he dishes out contempt for the Columbians who he claims paid Systeme U not to attack on the windy final stage so the German rider Raimund Dietzen would not overatke their climber, Luis Herrera.  Although Fignon is forthright about the drugs – amphetamines and cortisone –  that he admitted using in some events, he denies that he took anything when he was declared positive after the Grand Prix de Wallonie in May of 1987.  He blamed the dueling laboratories for the dark doings and in those days, there was no test of a “B” sample to confirm or refute the initial findings.  The riders knew there would be a test at the event, so he assures the reader that he would never have gone all out to win had he taken something.

After His Injuries and Accidents, Fignon Spent Years Searching for Form.

The 1987 Tour de France was another struggle and Fignon began to feel that the victories of 1983 and 1984 were from a different epoch.  How soon the fans and journalists seem to forget! He could not find any form, finishing a pathetic sixty-forth in the dramatic Mount Ventoux Time Trial. His son had been born the previous day and yet all he could do was weep.  This was the first Tour Fignon did with pulse monitors and after he threw his away, when the journalists had written him off, his legs came back and he finished sixth on Alpe d’Huez and won on the mountainous stage at La Plagne.  By Paris, he had salvaged some pride and finished seventh, with almost all his time lost in the time trials he used to win.

Laurent Fignon Won the 1988 Milan-San Remo Classic

In 1988 there were glimpses of the old Laurent Fignon.  He and his trainer Alain Gallopin cooked up a plan to target the early season Milan-San Remo Classic, one of the five “monuments” of single day racing.  They felt it suited Fignon, who found its 180-mile distance to his liking.  While the course is not difficult by professional standards, the famous Poggio climb comes late in the race and, if a rider is powerful enough, he can launch himself from the pack and occasionally, with a measure of luck and great fortitude, hold on for victory.  The hyperactive Fignon cooled his heels for most of the long race until his much-admired friend Sean Kelly, whom he had confided in, suggested that it was well time to move up through the huge peloton.  When they hit the right spot on the climb, Kelly, who was riding at the front, allowed a gap to open and Fignon got out of the saddle and shot away, though he soon discovered the Italian Maurizio Fonderiest was glued to his wheel.  Fortunately Fignon had enough power to easily dispatch the talented younger rider in the long sprint.  The season, however, soon turned difficult for the Frenchman, who was now sporting his famous pony-tail.  He struggled with the illnesses that habitually plagued him in the colder part of the season and then broke a bone in his hand in a massive crash in Belgium during Liege-Bastogne-Liege, a classic that he had always wanted to win and and that had eluded him.  The less said about Fignon’s ’88 Tour de France, the better.  From the start he was pedaling squares and his book has a memorable recounting of the cause of his troubles – an enormous tapeworm that made an auspicious debut – and he dropped out mid-way through the “new look” tour which was disaster, resulting in the sacking of the promotional team.

By 1989, Fignon’s relationship with Guimard was growing strained and the team was becoming less competitive.  Bjarne Riis joined the Systeme U equippe as a domestique, and Fignon praises the Dane’s cycling instincts and strength in his book. The veteran Pascal Simon also joined the squad.   With his pony tail flying in the breeze, Fignon opened his season with another win in Milan-San Remo.  In the 1989 edition of this epic race, he went before the Poggio climb and finished alone – “the only rider in the photograph” as the Europeans like to say.  Italy was finally welcoming for Laurent Fignon for whom the memories of the old Giro debacle were still so vivid!  The 1989 Giro d’Italia was a tough race, one that would bring out the best in the stronger riders. Fortunately, the Italian organizers resisted any urges they may have had to lighten the load. And, Systeme U’s team leader finally seemed to be back on form after so many dark episodes. Fignon was thrust into second on the general classification after Stage 13, where he trailed only the great Columbian climber “Lucho” Herrera up the mountain.  He then moved into the maglia rosa, the pink leader’s jersey, after the epic 14^th Stage, where the riders battled the weather as much as themselves and the terrain. On that stage, Fignon attacked the leader, Erik Breukink of the Netherlands, on the classic Passo Campolongo climb. The cold weather finally turned warm for the last days of the race.  In 1989 Laurent Fignon was at least partially able to vanquish the uneasy ghost of the “stolen Giro” of 1984 as he collected the winner’s bouquet in the sunshine of Milano.

The see-saw battle of the 1989 Tour de France is the opening chapter in Fignon’s book and it is a well known story to cycling fans who are in their forties or older.  Greg Lemond had won the Tour de France in 1986, finally triumphing over Bernard Hinault, his proud, stubborn teammate and mentor. Then, incredibly, he was shot in a freak hunting accident the following spring.  It took two years to come back from the mishap and by the end of the 1989 Giro d’Italia, Lemond was just beginning to find some form.  So, when the Tour started, both of the major protagonists – Lemond and Fignon – were looking for redemption on the roads of France.  The other possible player in that fateful tour was the Spaniard Pedro Delgado, but he missed his start time for the prologue and his race and morale were finished before the race began.

In July of 1989, Laurent Fignon was then the world’s number one ranked rider. He was confident that his attacking style would see him come out on top once the race entered the great mountain stages.  Lemond, the American, was on ADR, a weak team, because in the typical “what did you do for me today” manner, almost everyone in European cycling had abandoned him after his accident.  Lemond took the maillot jaune after the Stage 5 Time Trial, only to lose it to Fignon after Stage 10 in the Pyrenees.  Despite Fignon’s attacks on Lemond’s conservative style in the press, the American minimized his loses in the mountains and then recaptured the leader’s jersey after the Stage 15 Time Trial.  Fignon rode aggressively again in the Alpine stages and took back the maillot jaune on the Alpe d’Huez.  Despite Lemond’s win on the 21^st Stage from Villard-de-Lans to the Rhone Alps town of Aix-les-Bains, he trailed Fignon by fifty seconds with only one stage remaining.  The last stage of the 1989 Tour was not the usual informal procession into Paris, but a short, flat 25 kilometer (15.5 miles) time trial from historic Versailles into the French capitol, that finished on the Champs de Elysse.  While there was no doubt that Fignon’s once formidable time trailing skills were no longer a match for Lemond’s strength in this discipline, neither Guimard nor his rider Fignon felt that there was any danger because the distance was so short.   We all know that their confidence was misplaced, for Lemond’s determination and his choice of an aerodynamic helmet and triathlon bars helped him take 58 seconds out of his French rival.

The pictures of Fignon, despondent as the realization that he has lost the Tour de France hits him, were flashed around the world.  The American tried to congratulate and console his rival, but to no avail.  He was in state of shock. The oh-so-close loss to Lemond was the subject of great soul-searching by Fignon and the French cycling world.  This was the dawn of the aerodynamic era in cycling and equipment choices – disc wheels v.s. spoked wheels, smaller front wheels, triathlon handlebars v.s conventional or “cowhorn” bars – haunted all of us who raced or ran teams in the era.  Did a rider lose because he was slower or because he had chosen a front disc wheel on a day with cross winds?  Were the triathlon bars even legal?  Should Lemond have been allowed to start on them? Should Systeme U have protested the outcome or would that have damaged the credibility of the race? Did Fignon’s front disc give him some advantge over Lemond’s choice of a spoked front wheel?

The Uneasy 1989 Tour de France Podium

It is clear that Lemond’s choice of equipment did help him in that final stage, the race that came to define him. My friend John Pierce, the veteran cycling photographer, gave me some unforgettable shots of Lemond’s ride and you can see that he pulled out all the stops, leaning his bike over at perilous angles on the corners.  Lemond ended up as Sports Illustrated’s Man of the Year, one of the rare times a stick-and-ball athlete didn’t win.  Fueled by his need to prove the cycling world wrong, Lemond rode the fastest time trial in history, averaging 53.59 kilometers per hour (33.33 mph). However we can’t forget that Fignon did ride the time trial with the pride the maillot jaune should give a rider and was a credible third on the day. His ride also broke the old records for a road time trial.  For the rest of his life the proud Fignon would have to hear questions and jeers about July 23, 1989.  He was referred to as “Monsieur Eight Seconds.”   This wasn’t fair, because Fignon had ridden aggressively, taken the fight to his rival and only lost by the slimmest margin in history.  The 1989 Tour de France should be remembered for the great battle it was between two men who had each won the race twice and who were fighting to regain what they saw as their proper place atop the podium, but only one of whom could win.

After the epic 1989 Tour, there were fewer and fewer moments of cycling success for Laurent Fignon and many more dark days.  In the book he admits to occasional drug use and he says that when he was caught for amphetamines at the Grand Prix de la Liberation in Eindhoven, he was guilty and had actually used them a few days before the race, which he knew would be drug tested.  By 1990, the four year contract with Systeme U had run its course and he and Guimard had signed Castorama as their sponsor.  The cycling world was changing and this new sponsor expected the riders to serve as brand ambassadors as well as cyclists, a role that Fignon was uncomfortable with.  In 1990, wearing the new uniform, he was fourth in the early season Paris-Nice, the “Race to the Sun,” and then won the three-day Criterium International.  He dislocated his pelvis in a crash early in the Giro d’Italia. The tour was another disaster and he withdrew from the race.  In 1991 his relationship with Guimard, which had been getting worse, ruptured and the director began slagging his rider in the press.  He had to battle Luc Leblanc for supremacy on his own equipe and the Castorama team’s infighting was the subject of endless articles in the pages of l’Equipe and the cycling press during the Tour de France, where Fignon still managed a 6^th place finish.   The year ended with he and Guimard splitting forever, dividing the assets of the team.

Laurent Fignon Racing for Gatorade in 1992

Fignon spent the last few years of his career riding in Italy, racing as joint leader of the Gatorade Team with the inconsistent Italian rider Gianni Bugno, who was the reigning World Champion.  The thought was that the older rider could win races and help steady Bugno, so he could fulfill his potential. Fignon found Italian fans more enthusiastic and the team support much better south of the Alps. Unlike the fair-weather French fans the Tifosi respected former champions, even ones who were in the twilight of their careers.  Fignon was becoming less and less motivated and saw many changes in the sport that were not to his liking.  The over-commercialization of the sport bothered him and he saw that an entirely new class of drugs was becoming more and more prevalent.  He rode the Tour de France in support of Bugno, who finished third, and Fignon managed to look like his old self on one long breakaway on the lengthy race between Strasbourg and Mulhouse, where he held off the charging peloton.   In 1993 he won his last major race, the demanding Ruta Mexico, which took place early in the season.  Increasingly discouraged by his lack of form, lack of motivation, troubled personal life and the spread of EPO and human growth hormone, Laurent Fignon dropped out of the Tour de France in 1993 and soon called it a career.

For the record, Laurent Fignon believed that there was a dramatic difference between doping in the 1980s and the spread of EPO in the 1990s.  He agreed with the “cycling at two speeds” theory that Greg Lemond and others have propagated.  While he was no choirboy himself, he felt that doping in the past could not make up for a lack of talent, a lack of training or a lack of motivation. Drug use was haphazard and inconsistent and perhaps often ineffective. However, once EPO spread through the peloton, riders of lesser talent who were more willing to take risks with their health were able to beat those who were more talented.  Fignon cites the case of Bjarne Riis, who he felt was a solid rider with a “big engine,” but not talented enough to win the Tour de France without the EPO he has admitted taking.  Like Lemond he feels the tremendous average speeds of the early 1990s peloton was evidence that something had fundamentally changed.  Now, in online discussions, I have seen others attempt to refute this evidence.  Others feel that the truth may be somewhere in the middle, that by the early 1990s, even though they were still relatively young, Lemond and Fignon were reaching the end of their careers and were hampered by serious injuries and a lack of motivation, while they attributed their decline to increased drug use.  Fignon is honest enough to say that he may have been tempted to use EPO himself had he been much younger when it began to make its presence felt in the early 1990s.

Fignon with his Second Wife, Valerie

Fignon clearly loved the sport of cycling and never left it.  He feels that the trend Greg Lemond started towared specialization damaged the grand old sport.  He didn’t like the modern way where riders race much less and train in private rather than racing themselves into condition.  Fignon liked to see the same faces, the big riders all year long. He disagreed with the shorter stages and reduced distances of the classics and semi-classics, feeling that the longer, more arduous events bring out the class in riders.  Fignon rejects the idea that the demanding races of old provided an excuse for doping, correctly pointing out that EPO use was becoming more rampant just as races were being scaled back.  He also lambasts the French Cycling Federations re-organization and lack of support for local clubs that were once the backbone of French cycling.

The Two Old Duelists: Fignon and Hinault

Fignon became a cycling analyst for French television and was known for being outspoken and blunt.  He is seldom less than honest in his book and despite the ugly way his relationship ended with Cyrille Guimard, he is fair enough to give the great manager his due.  Fignon is fair and respectful to Bernard Hinault, whom he criticizes for his impetuosity.  His critique of Lemond as too calculating is well known.   To Fignon, Lemond was always marking his rivals, seldom going on the attack, and he also felt that Lemond changed the orientation of the sport, to make it more commercial. However, other than these men, Fignon does not go into much detail about most of the riders from his era or assess many of the riders from more recent times.  His description of Lance Armstrong, when he was struggling with cancer and abandoned by almost everyone in cycling, is quite moving.  The French rider really knew how fickle the French cycling world could be. Fignon was famously private and his personal life is no more than alluded to in this volume.  We Were Young and Carefree is about his cycling life with a short epilogue about his experiences in promotion in retirement.  It is a well-written, honest and thoughtful book and William Fortheringham, a veteran cycling writer, makes the translation smooth and seamless.  It’s a great look back through the rear view mirror at 1980s cycling.

Rating: 5 Stars

The last three weeks have seen an incredible Giro d’Italia which was eventually won by Ivan Basso after an extended tussle (in cycling – extended means 3 weeks) with heroic Australian, Cadel Evans. Evans, the current world champion, is a man who wears his suffering like a badge of honour. A perennial runner-up in the Grand Tours, he is a walking advert for the fact that cycling is like a chess game. You need a team around you and a strategist in the car behind you to win a tour (mostly). Evans never seems to quite have a team to get him on to the top place on the podium. Basso, on the other hand, had an excellent Liquigas team behind him. This support seemed to push him up the steepest mountains (the steepest mountains on the Giro are 1:20 climbs – ouch). Mind you, Basso is an advert for the constant drugs controversy in cycling. Only two years ago he was banned for doping offences and now he’s back and winning major events. All cycling fans have got to be uncomfortable with that!

World Champion – Cadel Evans

Tomorrow sees the start of my favourite of the Tour de France curtain raisers: Criterium Dauphine Libere. This is a week long tour which covers many alpine passes that are familiar from the Tour de France. A highlight this year is an ascent up the legendary Alpe d’Huez. With its 21 hairpin bends and 21% maximum gradient, this climb has been the theatre for victories by the greatest climbers – Zoetemelk, Pantani, Armstrong, Schleck and Sastre have all been winners here.

Alpe d’Huez – I think I’ll leave this to the professionals!

As a bonus: the Dauphine is always commentated on by Eurosport’s ”voice of cycling” – bon viveur- David Duffield. “Duffers” has been commentating on Eurosport for years but now he only rarely gets an outing. His commentary generally focusses on the wine and gastronomy of each region and is a joy to listen to on a warm summer’s day.

The Tour de France brings: the excruciating spectacle of top level sport suffering, sportsmen at the very peak of conditioning and some of Europe’s most beautiful mountains, glaciers, rivers, lakes, gorges and towns into my front room.

This year, the highlight will be the massive climbs in the Pyrenees. The magnificent Col de Tourmalet will be climbed twice and the clever money has to be on Alberto Contador (already a double winner) to dominate these stages.

In addition, Lance Armstrong will be returning for his second year after coming out of retirement. Team Sky will be bringing many british riders to the event including last year’s 4th place hero, Bradley Wiggins. Explosive British sprinter, Mark Cavendish, will be hoping to win the green jersey or maybe repeat last year’s wonderful final stage victory on the Champs Elysees.

Wiggins – Britain’s best!

For me, the Tour de France is the big event of the summer. Why not give it a try?

Find out more (Because these places tell the story much better than I could):

Alpe d’Huez   http://www.grenoblecycling.com/Col-AlpedHuez.htm

Tour de France 2010  http://www.letour.fr/2010/TDF/COURSE/us/le_parcours.html

Col de Tourmalet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_du_Tourmalet

Bradley Wiggins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Wiggins

Mark Cavendish http://www.markcavendish.com/

Or if you fancy some great reading:

“Put Me Back on my Bike” by William Fotheringham tells the harrowing story of British cycling hero Tom Simpson. It ends with Simspon’s tragic death while climbing the iconic Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France. The Ventoux has a memorial to Simpson on the spot where he died that day.

“Le Tour” by Geoffrey Wheatcroft is a fantastic account of the history of the Tour de France.

“French Revolutions” by Tim Moore is a lovely account of Moore’s decision to get his bike and ride the route of the 2000 Tour de France. What a nutter!

“It’s Not About the Bike” is the autobiography of Lance Armstrong. His life story includes the journey from testicular cancer sufferer to Tour de France winner.

“Rough Ride” by Paul Kimmage is a fairly depressing but riveting read about how a domestique (team support rider) suffers in professional cycling. It describes an almost inevitable journey into using stimulants in the world of late 1980′s/ early 1990′s cycling. 

“In Search of Robert Millar” by Richard Moore is a biography of Britain’s greatest road cyclist (pre-Wiggins). It tells of his journey from King of the Mountains winner to a virtual recluse. Nowadays his superb insights are read as e-mails on Eurosport’s wonderful live coverage with David Harmon and Sean Kelly.

The Tour de France climbed Mont Ventoux yesterday, and the British riders found their way to pay their respects to Tom Simpson, the British cyclist who died on the climb in 1967, a mile short of the summit, suffering from a mixture of heat exhaustion, dehydration, stomach problems (he’d been ill for several days), amphetamines and alcohol. The best account of that fateful day is in William Fotheringham’s biography Put Me Back On The Bike, which makes it clear there were other causes as well; professional insecurity and Simpson’s burning desire, which quite often pushed him beyond his physical limits.

Simpson was the first British cyclist to make a real impact on professional cycling, and is probably still Britain’s most successful racer, winning among quite a lot of others the World Championships, Paris-Nice, and classic one-day races such as the Milan-San Remo (not won by another UK rider until Cavendish’s win earlier this year). The first, too, to wear the leader’s yellow jersey in the Tour, with a best finish in sixth place.

Yesterday David Millar threw an inscribed Garmin team cap to the foot of the memorial, while Charly Wegelius added a water bottle. Mark Cavendish removed his helmet. Bradley Wiggins, who had gone past at the business end of the stage about half an hour before, Twittered afterwards that he’d had a photo of Simpson taped to his bike.

Shed a tear today for Tom. I had a little extra strength today from somewhere. Had a photo of the man on my top tube.

And I hadn’t realised until yesterday that Simpson’s daughter, Joanne, had shared the same house as Bradley Wiggins’ dad, Gary, when Gary Wiggins was competing professionally in Belgium.

The most exact epitaph for Simpson came earlier this year from David Millar, who’s had his own problems with drugs. In his introduction to Simpson’s recently re-published autobiography, Cycling is my Life, he described the memorial as a poignant reminder of “how close he got and how far he fell – Tommy Simpson, cycling’s very own Icarus.”