The Tour de France

by Paul Hansford

  Louison Bobet: 18 July 1955, Stage 11 Marseille to Avignon, 198 km

  If ever a place sums up the pain and suffering of the Tour, it is Mont Ventoux; and if ever a stage encapsulated the pain and suffering (and substances) the riders had to take to get through the race, it was Stage 11 in 1955. By the time Frenchman Louison Bobet won the stage in a little more than five and half hours, the mountain was littered with bodies that were shattered by equal amounts of fatigue and doping on a searingly hot day.

  Jean Bobet, riding in the French team in support of his brother, spoke of an apprehension in the peloton before they reached the Ventoux. ‘The peloton was quiet. Normally riding in the sun on an undemanding route, which the approach to the Ventoux is, there will be constant chattering … joking all the time, but not on this day. We knew what the Ventoux would be like.’

  The fireworks started when Ferdi Kübler attacked at the start of the climb. Raphael Géminiani warned the Swiss to take it easy, that the Ventoux wasn’t like other mountains. ‘Ferdi not a champion like others. Ferdi great champion. Ferdi win at Avignon,’ replied Kübler in his ridiculous ‘René from ’Allo ’Allo’ French. Within 10 km, Kübler was weaving across the road, mumbling: ‘Ferdi taken too much dope. Ferdi going to explode.’

  The next to falter was Jean Malléjac, who collapsed due to the heat — and the shedload of amphetamines he’d taken — and needed to be revived by the race doctors. Other riders later admitted to doping on the stage and, with the searing heat of the day, they were lucky to escape with their lives. Kübler said after the race that the Ventoux ‘killed him’, while Nicolas Frantz, directeur sportif of Charly Gaul’s team, said: ‘Gaul is the victim of attempted murder. Whoever convinced him to dope has committed a crime.’ If doping had been somewhat in the shadows of previous Tours, it emerged into the sunshine on this blistering day.

  Against this backdrop, it’s amazing anyone finished the race. But, paced by his brother, Louison Bobet made it through the carnage to attack the faltering pack. By the finish he’d gained a one-minute advantage — a stunning effort under the circumstances — but he paid for his efforts. His brother told of a ‘shapeless body’ lying deathly still in a darkened hotel room that night:

  I noticed that he hadn’t even removed his shoes, so I did that for him. Every time I touched him he groaned with pain, but I could not see him lie there with his shoes still on.

  Louison, not the most confident man at the best of times, feared his Tour was over and that his rivals would attack him the next day, but the reality was that the Ventoux had destroyed all the riders. Bobet was in yellow by Paris, winning an unprecedented third Tour in a row.

  Federico Bahamontes & Jacques Anquetil: 10 July 1963, Stage 17 Val d’Isère to Chamonix, 228 km

  The only thing that stood between Jacques Anquetil and a record fourth Tour win in 1963 was a man nicknamed ‘The Eagle of Toledo’. Federico Bahamontes already had the 1959 Tour to his name and was tipped as one of the few men who could stop Anquetil’s date with destiny. As the race headed into the final mountain stage between Val d’Isère and Chamonix, Bahamontes held a slender three-second lead — but, knowing Anquetil was the better time trialist, the Spaniard had to take advantage of his superior climbing skills to gain as much time as possible if he was to keep the yellow jersey.

  Anquetil showed his class merely by staying with Bahamontes for much of the stage, but there was one tough climb to come: the 13-km Col de la Forclaz. Both men knew what they had to do: Bahamontes had to attack Anquetil, and try to break him; Anquetil had to try and cling on for dear life to Bahamontes’s wheel and take him on the descent. And so it happened, the Spaniard advancing numerous times but the Frenchman always recovering. Whatever Bahamontes threw at the champ, Anquetil summoned the strength to match and, at the top of the Forclaz, Anquetil used his superior descending skills to take the stage.

  The win was not without controversy though. Anquetil wanted to ride a lighter bike in the mountains, but rules dictated that they could not be swapped out unless there was a mechanical failure. As the race hit the final climb, Jacques cried out about a ‘problem’ with his bike and a mechanic arrived on the scene and stealthily cut the gear cable. Anquetil immediately received a spare bike, with gearing better set up for the climb, and by the time he reached the peak, his mechanic had fixed the original bike so it could be used for the descent.

  Despite the dirty tricks being missed by everyone, Bahamontes still cried foul about his treatment by race officials:

  They gave him another second at the end of stage 17 … I had the yellow jersey but there was no point in continuing to fight even with just four days to go … I knew the whole thing had been set up against me.

  Jacques Anquetil & Raymond Poulidor: The mountains of the 1964 Tour

  The rivalry between Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor — one that divided French cycling fans — reached its zenith in 1964, during a Tour that is still regarded as one of the best ever. A Hollywood scriptwriter couldn’t have written a more dramatic, inspiring and at times scarcely believable turn of events than what happened in the latter stages of the race.

  The first act took place the day before the fourteenth stage, on a rest day (which are typically known for their blandness). Anquetil didn’t do bland, though, preferring to live by his own set of rules, which included preparing for races with ‘a good pheasant, champagne and a woman’. On this particular day, he attended a sponsor function that included lamb on a spit and a drinking competition with his directeur sportif, Raphael Géminiani.

  Rather predictably, Anquetil started slowly the next day, and from the first climb he knew he was in trouble. ‘I had to stop,’ he admitted later. ‘I was six kilometres from the summit. I thought, “I’ll never make it”.’ A teammate tried to help the ailing champ, but by then he was at the back of the race — and it wasn’t until his drinking partner arrived in the team car that Jacques finally got his head in order.

  Responding to Anquetil’s whimper that he was going to die, Géminiani shouted: ‘Well go to the front and die there — a man like Jacques Anquetil doesn’t die in front of the broom wagon.’ (Another tale has Géminiani providing Jacques some hair of the dog by filling a bidon with champagne that was being saved for victory, but that sounds just a little too hackneyed even for this tale.) Whatever the cure, through sheer determination and more than a little luck on a hair-raising descent down the Envalira, Anquetil caught up with the leading group to save his Tour.

  Poulidor was not to have lady luck bless him in the same way that day. Moments after Anquetil re-joined the pack, Poulidor broke a spoke on his back wheel — but, rather than make an adjustment on the fly, he stopped to change the wheel. These moments of bad luck (or errors in judgement, some would say) seemed to follow ‘Pou Pou’ throughout his career, and the peloton recognised an opportunity when they saw one. The leaders took off up the road, and by the time Poulidor was back on the bike he had the added problem of having to negotiate a group of team cars that had bunched up ahead of him. By the time he finally crossed the finish line, Poulidor had seen a seemingly unassailable lead over his nearest rival turn into a two-and-a-half-minute deficit.

  Poulidor was able to claw time back when ascending the Portillon the next day, but it was on the Puy de Dôme on 12 July that the Poulidor–Anquetil rivalry played out its most spellbinding scene. The stage was an arduous 237 km, and at the bottom of the Puy there were just five riders still in contention — although eyes were only on two of them. Allowing a couple of riders to head off and contest the stage win, Anquetil and Poulidor concentrated all their efforts on each other. Poulidor’s prowess in the mountains gave him the advantage but he had to attack to create a buffer for the time trial still to come — he needed at least a minute and a half to stand any chance of winning. Like two heavyweight boxers on their last legs, the two men traded blows, bum
ping and leaning into each other as they weaved across the road. Both were on the edge of their physical capabilities but neither gave an inch on the leg-shredding 7.5 per cent gradient.

  With 2 km to the summit, Anquetil made his move and pushed ahead by no more than a wheel’s length. It was a ploy designed as much to hide the pain-stricken, ghostlike look on his face than to gain any physical advantage, and it worked. Poulidor couldn’t see the hurt etched on his opponent’s face, and the few moments of hesitation where he was unaware of how much trouble his rival was in proved decisive.

  Poulidor eventually pulled ahead and was able to take forty-two seconds from Anquetil in just 900 metres, but who knows how much time he would’ve gained if he had attacked earlier? Even Poulidor recognised his error afterwards, acknowledging that his opponent’s move had messed with his head: ‘When he went half a wheel ahead of me about two kilometres from the summit I really thought he was stronger.’

  It was a masterstroke by Anquetil, the grandest and most significant example of his superiority over Poulidor under the most testing of conditions. Two days later he won the final time trial, winning a record-breaking fifth tour and equalling the great Fausto Coppi’s achievement of the Giro/Tour double.

  Eddy Merckx: 15 July 1969, Stage 17 Luchon to Mourenx, 214 km

  When Eddy Merckx made his long-awaited Tour debut in 1969, the Belgian had already won the Giro d’Italia, Paris–Roubaix, three Milan–San Remos and a world championship. The twenty-five-year-old had proved he was a supremely gifted rider, but even the most seasoned of cycling observers couldn’t have predicted how Merckx would dominate his first Grand Boucle. It wasn’t just that he bossed the field that year, but the manner in which he achieved it; his ultra-competitive streak and ‘race from the front’ ethos surprised, shocked and demoralised the field.

  The racing rulebook says that with an eight-minute lead and seven stages to go, you play it safe, don’t take any chances, and victory in Paris is all but assured. But on the mountainous stage from Luchon to Mourenx, Eddy decided to make a statement — to his teammates, as well as the rest of the field — so there would be no doubt as to who was the best rider in the Tour.

  The yellow jersey had been worn by a procession of riders over the first two weeks before Merckx grabbed a stranglehold in the mountains to gain eight minutes on Roger Pingeon and Felice Gimondi by the start of stage 17. The race through the Pyrenees looked to be a tight, defensive affair but, as was often the case with Eddy Merckx, his competitive streak got the better of him and he launched an audacious attack 130 km from the line. Helped by some hard riding by teammate Martin Van Den Bossche, Merckx took off at the bottom of the Col du Tourmalet, with only Pingeon and Raymond Poulidor anywhere in sight. Not content with just destroying his rivals, Merckx also broke Van Den Bossche, dropping him before the top of the Tourmalet. To attack a teammate was not the done thing in racing, especially one who was working for you, but Eddy was pissed off with the Dutchman for accepting an offer from another team and he was showing his disapproval by emasculating him on the bike. ‘I feel bad about it now, but back then I wanted to teach him a lesson,’ said Merckx, whose well-known tendency to be a cold-blooded bastard has clearly mellowed with age.

  After freefalling down the Tourmalet, Merckx set about building a big lead and, with every stroke of his pedals, his advantage over the chasing pack grew. He was blowing apart the Tour kilometre by kilometre, and his opponents had no reply. ‘The Cannibal’ legend was born as he took on the Col d’Aubisque alone and finished nearly eight minutes ahead of second place.

  The head of the Tour, Jacques Goddet, wrote of the Merckx performance that day:

  Is he trying to humiliate the other riders, who seem to creep along behind him, by destroying them? Is it a kind of cyclopathic vanity that drives him to conquer all he surveys[?] He is a champion ruled by pride, that much is certain.

  Whatever it was that drove Merckx that day, it took him all the way to Paris in yellow and ushered in a period of domination never before seen in professional cycling.

  Eddy Merckx and Luis Ocaña: 12 July 1971, Stage 14 Revel to Luchon, 214.5 km

  Stage Eddy ‘The Cannibal’ Merckx had been making mincemeat of the Tour since bursting onto the scene in 1969, feasting on his rivals to take out two consecutive Tours. One man who was determined not to be on the menu in 1971 was Luis Ocaña, a mountain specialist who could also handle himself in a time trial.

  The Spaniard’s plan was to attack Merckx hard and early and not allow him to build a lead. He took fourteen seconds from him on the Puy de Dôme, followed by ninety on the next mountain stage. But it was what Ocaña did to Merckx — and the rest of the peloton — on stage 11 from Grenoble to Orcières that made the entire world sit up and take notice. He tore the race apart, putting five and half minutes into second-place rider Lucien Van Impe and eight minutes into Merckx in a little under 20 km. (Ocaña rode so fast, he put more than two-thirds of the field outside the elimination time bracket.) It was a ride for the ages from the Spaniard, and a clear sign that he had what it took to beat Merckx.

  The champion wasn’t going to take the butt-whipping without throwing a few punches himself, and Merckx clawed some time back over the next two stages, setting up the defining ride in both men’s Tour careers: stage 14 between Revel and Luchon on 12 July.

  The Pyrenees were cloaked in dark, foreboding rain clouds before the stage began and, as the leaders reached the summit of the Col de Menté, the heavens opened. Torrential rain and hail turned the road into a mountain stream and it was a hard slog for the remaining riders to fight their way to the top. As both men began their descent, they took their feet from the pedals and dragged them on the ground for extra braking power. Merckx was the superior descender, but Ocaña was able to follow his line until the Belgian crashed on a particularly tight left-hand turn. Ocaña hit the deck as well, and as Merckx replaced his chain and remounted, Joop Zoetemelk and Joaquim Agostinho ploughed into the Spaniard. Doubled over in pain and splattered in blood, Ocaña couldn’t stand, let alone get back on his bike, and he ended up having to be airlifted to hospital, his Tour in tatters.

  Merckx refused to wear the yellow jersey he inherited at the end of the stage and was moved to say, ‘Whatever happens I have lost the Tour. There will always be doubt.’ (Although privately Merckx intimated Ocaña was knackered and trying to claim a moral victory by retiring in yellow and not seeing the race through to the end.)

  The events on the rain-drenched mountain proved significant in both men’s careers. Merckx looked mortal for the first time in a Tour, and many believe he would’ve lost to Ocaña if it had gone the distance. But the Spaniard’s untimely crash maintained Eddy’s shield of invincibility and he went on to take three of the next four tours. Ocaña, on the other hand, was crushed by the defeat in 1971. Although he would go on to experience a Tour victory himself, his 1973 win came when Merckx was not taking part — again denying him the chance to say he had beaten the best there ever was.

  Bernard Hinault & Greg LeMond: 1986 Tour de France

  As far as drama and excitement both on and off the bike are concerned, the 1986 Tour, where a physical and psychological battle between teammates was waged on the roads of France, takes some beating.

  In return for helping Bernard Hinault take a record-equalling fifth victory the year before, Greg LeMond had been promised payment in kind by the Frenchman.

  ‘The ’86 Tour will be for you,’ Hinault told LeMond. ‘I will be there to help you.’

  The problem was Hinault’s definition of ‘help’ — ‘I said I’d help LeMond win the Tour but he’s got to earn it. He must be worthy of the yellow jersey’ — was a little different to LeMond’s, who at the end of the race said he felt ‘burned’ by the Frenchman’s actions. Whether LeMond was naive or Hinault went back on his word we’ll never know, but what observers
were treated to was high drama as the two favourites traded blows all the way to the finish.

  Hinault began ‘helping’ LeMond by attacking at will on the way to the mountains and grabbing a five-minute lead over the American with a strong ride to Pau in the Pyrenees. LeMond was confused and told journalists that Hinault was out to get him. He might not have been wrong. The intrigue was heightened the next day when Hinault attacked again, only to falter on the final climb to Superbagnères, where LeMond enlisted teammate — and fellow American — Andy Hampsten to pull him clear for a stage win. With members of the same team forming alliances and attacking each other, the race was becoming part sporting event, part Shakespearean drama.

  Hinault lost the yellow jersey to LeMond the next day, but he continued to attack at the beginning of stage 18 on the way to L’Alpe d’Huez. Hinault claimed it was to burn out LeMond’s last remaining rival Urs Zimmermann, while others felt it was simply another assault on the American. Either way, the two ended up shoulder-to-shoulder on the mighty d’Huez — but the mouth-watering clash to finally see who was the strongest never materialised (maybe Hinault knew that he couldn’t match the strong American if they went toe to toe). They rode together smiling and laughing, with Hinault raising LeMond’s arm near the finish, perhaps to distract the American just enough to ensure Hinault won the stage by a wheel.

  But the happy domestic scene was just a sham. Hinault said he’d sacrificed his chances of glory to drag LeMond up the mountain and win the Tour. LeMond claimed Hinault had asked for one last victory in the mountains and that he could’ve dropped him kilometres earlier if he really wanted. The upshot was that France won the battle but America won the war.

  With a couple of stages left, LeMond stressed about a crazed French fan sabotaging his victory on the road to Paris but, aside from a fall in the time trial (which Hinault won but not by a significant amount), there was no more drama as the twenty-five-year-old became the first American to win the Tour de France.