Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape

by Paul Howard

  Three hours later, Anquetil required some further persuasion, this time to get out of bed and make it to the start of the race – hardly surprising given the prospect of racing 270 kilometres over the unforgiving terrain of the Massif Central. In spite of puncturing after an hour and considering this the perfect excuse to stop (Géminiani only managed to keep him in the race by saying that it was an excellent way of purging himself of the previous night’s indulgences), Anquetil eventually went on to record an extraordinary solo victory. Chany recalled the scene afterwards: ‘When Jacques arrived, Raphaël, who was thinking about the purging, asked him, “Have you nothing to say to me?” Jacques replied, “Yes, you can put the champagne on ice.”’ The following evening, Anquetil won the criterium in the Pyrenean town of Quillan, prompting his British rival Tom Simpson to ask what he had done to be riding so strongly. Had he known, he might not have believed it.

  The Ronde d’Auvergne may not have been the most important of races to a multiple Tour de France winner, and this no doubt goes some way to explaining Anquetil’s singular preparation for the event, as does the legendary hospitality of the Machiavellian Géminiani. But even without such temptation, he needed little excuse to ignore the dietary rule book or to prove that it had no deleterious impact on his performance. At the Tour du Var in early 1963, Géminiani records how Anquetil was spotted by Antonin Magne, Poulidor’s directeur sportif, eating a copious breakfast washed down by white wine. ‘He may be called Anquetil, but don’t be surprised if he’s the victim of stomach cramps,’ Magne called out to his team, loud enough for Anquetil to hear. Never one to tolerate implied weakness, Anquetil won that day’s stage having ridden everybody but Henry Anglade off his wheel. ‘By way of cramps, it was us who suffered,’ Magne was told by one of his riders.

  Anquetil continued to make his rivals suffer at the Dauphiné Libéré, gaining revenge for his tribulations of the previous year with a comfortable overall victory, his first in the race. Next came the Tour de France and the much anticipated rematch with Poulidor, a rematch that was expected to be too close to call, since the organisers had reduced the distance of the time trials and also the time bonuses awarded for winning them. With a very mountainous route and a resurgence in the form of 1959 Tour winner and climbing great Federico Bahamontes (the ‘Eagle of Toledo’), Anquetil’s dominance was under attack from all sides. Indeed, Anquetil was once again put under considerable pressure from the start, thanks to the incessant attacks of Van Looy (who would eventually finish well out of the picture overall but who managed to win four stages and the green jersey). He nevertheless reassured himself and his teammates with victory in the first time trial, though at only 24 kilometres in length this provided little opportunity for him to establish a race-winning lead.

  Instead, and in unusual fashion, he had to wait until the Pyrenees to begin to assert himself. From Pau to Bagnères-de-Bigorre, via the Col d’Aubisque and Col du Tourmalet, Anquetil not only matched Bahamontes but also beat him in the sprint to win the stage.

  By the time the race reached the Alps, Poulidor and Bahamontes were left with little option but to attack if they wanted to precede Anquetil in Paris. Bahamontes was at least partially successful, winning the stage into Grenoble and riding into the overall lead at the same time. Still, on the eve of the final mountain stage, from Val-d’Isere to Chamonix, via both the Col du Petit-Saint-Bernard and the Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard, as well as the Col de la Forclaz, Bahamontes led Anquetil by a mere 29 seconds, a clearly insufficient margin to assure overall victory given the 54-kilometre time trial still to come. He would have to try to drop Anquetil again. Poulidor, meanwhile, was behind Anquetil and had even more reason to try and distance his rival. This he duly did, attacking hard on the second climb of the day. He was unable to gain a meaningful advantage, however, and by the time he reached the foot of the Forclaz he was beginning to tire.

  What Poulidor appears not to have known, and what Géminiani says he and Anquetil were both aware of, was that the new road over the Forclaz had been closed due to a landslide, obliging the riders to use the old unmade road. At the same time as spelling doom for an already fatigued Poulidor, this allowed the ever-resourceful Géminiani to put into action an illicit plan to facilitate Anquetil keeping up with the inevitable acceleration by Bahamontes. According to Géminiani’s recollections in Les années Anquetil, he had chanced upon news of the change of route the previous evening. Concerned as to what this would do to Anquetil’s morale when combined with an assault by Bahamontes, he planned to reassure his man by effecting a change to a lighter bike at the foot of the climb.

  In 1963, however, a rider could only change a bike that had suffered some kind of mechanical failure. This was not enough to deter Géminiani, as Ignolin recalls, even if he appears to cast doubt on this having been a planned move: ‘Yes, I remember the Forclaz in 1963. There had been a landslide, so we didn’t go up the main road. We went up the old road. It wasn’t really a road. It was just a track. It was no longer maintained, and there was no tarmac left. There was mud everywhere: in the chains, on the wheels, in the gears. Jacques was not happy – he was behind Bahamontes at the time. Géminiani said, “Don’t worry. We’ll sort it.” Then he told the mechanic Jacques had a problem. Of course, there was a commissaire in the car, but he managed to say to the mechanic to take a pincer and cut the gear cable so that Jacques could have a new, clean bike to finish the stage on.’

  Whether Géminiani should be congratulated for having planned all this in advance or for having simply reacted quickly when he saw what was happening, the effect was the same. ‘It all happened so quickly, the commissaire didn’t see anything, and Jacques went on to beat Bahamontes to the stage win in Chamonix,’ Ignolin explains.

  Following this up with victory in the final time trial, Anquetil ended with a margin of victory over the Spaniard of three and a half minutes. In doing so, he became only the second person, after Bobet, to win three Tours in a row and the first ever to win four overall. Poulidor was a disconsolate eighth.

  Anquetil’s achievement in having not just won a Tour that had been designed to reduce his advantage over his rivals but in having out-ridden Bahamontes in the mountains (two stage victories to the Spaniard’s one) meant he received a far warmer welcome than in the previous two years. ‘The most beautiful of his victories!’ declared L’Équipe, moved also to resurrect the comparisons with Coppi that had littered his earlier career:

  Above all, he demonstrated that he didn’t have to rely on the time trials to win, as he also won two mountain stages. All that remains for him to do now in order to be compared with Coppi is to win an important one-day race. At 29, he can still make this dream come true, all the more so having shown this season, through his stage victories, that he’s far from having fulfilled his potential. That’s no mean feat after such a career.

  Yet still not everybody was happy, especially Parisian tabloid Ici Paris: ‘Jacques Anquetil a superchampion? Everybody agrees this to be the case. It’s just a shame that his bored and distant demeanour gives the impression to the public that he’s the cat’s whiskers, not to say the eighth wonder of the world.’ The paper was particularly peeved that Anquetil had rejected its overtures to have him photographed next to Sheila, a pretty pop star of the time. ‘What’s she doing next to me?’ he had asked. ‘A charming young lady, who couldn’t help but add a touch of glamour to his victory,’ was the paper’s disingenuous reply. ‘He almost flew off the handle. The photographers thought back to another great champion, Louison Bobet, who would never have turned down such a delightful picture opportunity. But Bobet is a gentleman, and therein lies the difference,’ it concluded.

  This widespread public perception of Anquetil as cold, not to say arrogant, appears to have been at odds with his standing among his peers in the world of professional cycling, who hardly had a bad word to say about him. ‘There’s always been a “Daddy” in France. First Bobet, of course, and then Anquetil, following on,’ recalls Brian Robinso
n, who rode with both. ‘Anquetil was the Daddy then. He was a guy with more star quality than anyone else apart from Coppi. He had a presence, a real good presence. He was a gentleman. If he said something to you, that was it. He was very laid-back.’

  Ignolin is similarly complimentary: ‘He was a great champion, and I admired him a lot. To find myself in the same team as him was a highlight of my life. I did the three big tours with him, and he won them all.’

  Bobet, on the other hand, alienated himself to a degree from his fellow cyclists, as Chany later recalled: ‘He had a certain conception of prestige and of life. He was there to be a champion. He had respect for himself. He was proud, verging on being conceited. When he became a star, when he had his plane [at the end of his career, he had a plane that he flew in to races], when he was at his peak, frankly, he was difficult to put up with some days.’

  Jean Milesi, another former teammate of Anquetil’s, has a favourite anecdote that does much to suggest Anquetil’s relative humility compared with his erstwhile rival was genuine: ‘It was a stage in the Tour, and I did a café run to pick up some drinks and distribute them around teammates and maybe a few friends from other teams if there were any left. I had a beer left, so I thought I’d give it to Jacques, but we came to a small hill, and to get to him at the front I had to cycle past the whole bunch while climbing this hill. When I got to him, I offered him the beer, but he said no. He was riding alongside Pierre Everaert, who said, “Do you realise what he’s just done, riding past everyone to give that to you? The least you could have done is take the beer from him.” By this time, I’d dropped back a bit, but Jacques decided Pierre was right, so he dropped back down the bunch to say thank you for the beer and to drink it. It was a good job I hadn’t already given it to someone else.’

  Even in the heat of battle of the famous 1964 Tour, the Tour he came closest to losing, and with Poulidor the most likely beneficiary, Anquetil still found time to help out other riders. Profiting from the skirmishes between the two rivals, little-known French rider Georges Groussard had managed to lead the race for eight stages and was still in yellow as the race spent its last day in the Pyrenees. ‘The day before I lost the jersey, a stage with four cols, Bahamontes had attacked straight away. At the top of the last col, the Tourmalet, he still had a five-minute lead, and I’d only had a lead of about two, two and a half minutes on him overall. So we went down as fast as we could, and Anquetil was helping us in the chase. But when we got to within two minutes of Bahamontes, he went to the back of the group, and he didn’t want to work any more. He knew he was close enough to him to overhaul him in the time trial the next day, and he wanted to save his energy.

  ‘The result was that we were no longer closing in on Bahamontes, and I was about to lose the jersey, so I went to find Anquetil at the back of the bunch, and I said, “I helped you the other day, so can you help me today? I know full well you’re going to take the jersey from me tomorrow, but I’d very much like to keep it tonight.” So he came to the front and started to ride again, and he made such an effort that we managed to start closing in on Bahamontes. Everyone else thought that if he was riding, we’d better ride with him, and I kept the jersey. Voilà. And I was very happy, as I’d much rather lose the jersey to Anquetil than to Bahamontes, and I had an extra day in yellow. He was very smart. He knew that one day he might need a favour, so he was happy to return one.’

  Poulidor, meanwhile, found himself in the unusual position of receiving brickbats rather than plaudits. He was even whistled and booed as the Tour finished in Paris, an experience which he said helped him understand how Anquetil felt when exposed to a similar reaction, even if it was for different reasons: ‘Yes, I was whistled for finishing eighth. They whistled me because I’d lost and had been a disappointment. They booed him because he won too much. He was a metronome. All he was interested in was winning, by one second, two seconds – it didn’t matter. He had a watch in his head.’

  Of course, because Poulidor had been targeted as a result of his failure to win, he had the opportunity to rectify things (Anquetil never felt inclined to lose a race simply to elicit sympathy from the public). This he duly did, taking a comfortable victory in the Grand Prix des Nations. ‘The 1963 Tour was a great disappointment to me,’ he recalls. ‘For that I wanted to ride the Grand Prix des Nations, and I won it with incredible ease. After that, the public loved me even more – this popularity would never leave me. It was revenge for me.’ It wasn’t vengeance against Anquetil, however: ‘No, it was just vengeance against the fans – the same fans who’d whistled me a few months earlier. It was a reconciliation.’

  Having also won the Grand Prix de Lugano, another Anquetil speciality, Poulidor was then partnered with his great rival for the Baracchi Trophy, giving him a clear opportunity to become the first man to win all three time trials in the same season. ‘The unheralded French pairing of Anquetil and Poulidor condemned to total victory,’ trumpeted L’Équipe. Yet although Poulidor had the satisfaction of appearing stronger than his rival, with Anquetil not taking turns at the front for the final quarter of the event, this was a pyrrhic victory, as they were beaten into second place – by nine meagre seconds – by the obscure pairing of Joseph Velly and Joseph Novales.

  Could Anquetil really stomach the thought of helping his rival to a unique achievement that should by rights have been his? Certainly, Anquetil’s apparent insouciance in defeat casts doubt on the assertion by Marcel Bidot that he and Poulidor could have worked together in the Tour to their mutual long-term advantage: ‘I regret Antonin Magne being opposed to Poulidor being selected for the national team in 1961. Raymond would have helped Anquetil and most likely they would both have won one or more Tours. Together they would have dominated cycling for ten years.’

  With the continuing exception of the world championships – where Benoni Beheyt’s controversial victory over teammate Rik Van Looy overshadowed Anquetil inexplicably conceding his own chances by sitting up in sight of the line, even though he was well clear of the bunch – it seems as though Anquetil was not doing a bad job of dominating everything on his own.

  FOURTEEN

  Fourteen Seconds

  FOR ALL THE MASTERY Anquetil could apparently exert over his chosen profession, he was increasingly aware of the uncertainty and fragility of life itself. Maybe it was because he was so intent on being in control of every aspect of his life that he feared the chaos of existence. Maybe it was the other way round, exerting control wherever possible in an attempt to counter the vicissitudes of fate. Certainly, no one should be in any doubt about the extent to which his control of his family life mirrored his mastery on a bike. In Pour l’amour de Jacques, Sophie wrote:

  He was Master Jacques, a feudal lord, a sovereign surrounded by his vassals for whom he ensured protection and happiness in the kindest and most generous way. He rarely gave an order, rarely imposed his will, was neither capricious nor moody, but when he made a rule it could never be queried. And it wasn’t, of course. The first of these rules was: no one apart from Nanou could tell him what he should or shouldn’t do.

  Whatever the precise psychology behind this apparent contradiction, Anquetil was confronted with death – the most painful and uncontrollable event of all – just as he was celebrating his most successful season to date. He had already been closely exposed to the death of his idol Coppi in 1960, as well as to those of his fellow Norman Gérard Saint (in a car crash) and most recently his former soigneur Robert Pons (another road accident). Now it was the untimely turn of his father, knocked down while crossing the road. Anquetil was on holiday in New Caledonia at the time and flew home immediately for the funeral in Quincampoix. On the way back, he told Jeanine that he was certain he wouldn’t live to be as old as his father, who was 56 at the time of his death. ‘When his dad died, it was the same year as Kennedy – 1963,’ she recalls. ‘When we were flying back from holiday in the plane, he told me, “I won’t last as long as him.”’ His later behaviour would go a long way
to giving the impression that this had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Having recovered from the grief of losing his father, however, Anquetil had his mind firmly set on fulfilling a less ghoulish prediction, one of the few cycling ambitions to have so far escaped him in spite of having made a concerted effort in both 1959 and 1961. The plan was to once again try to become the first man since Coppi to complete victories in the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in the same season, a feat Coppi had accomplished twice (in 1949 and 1952).

  First, though, Anquetil had to face up to the apparent progress of Poulidor, who beat him in the admittedly hilly time trial in Paris–Nice before losing the chance to take his first overall victory as a result of a fall. Anquetil finished sixth, for once content to let his rival take the limelight while he laid the foundations for the bigger fish he hoped to fry later in the season. Nevertheless, his withdrawal from the Critérium National due to the snowy conditions – and his impotence in the face of another Poulidor victory as a result – seems to have been sufficient to goad him into an unlikely response. Flying in the face of more than ten years of diffidence and indifference to one-day classics, Anquetil surprised both his immediate adversaries and the whole of the cycling world with victory in the Ghent–Wevelgem one-day race.