Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal

by Daniel Friebe

  No, the priority now was to have the sanction lifted and Merckx’s good name restored in time for the Tour. Giacotto had set about the task even before leaving Savona. The Faema manager summoned the journalists Gianpaolo Ormezzano, Michel Seassau and René Jacobs to witness Merckx give a urine sample, which was then taken to a private laboratory in Milan for analysis. Faema were also soon studying other options, or perhaps ‘loopholes’ was a better word: Giacotto recalled that every team had been asked for its written consent to the testing arrangements presented to them on the eve of the race, and that Faema had agreed only verbally. He informed the race jury, who immediately called the Italian Procycling Cycling Union (UICP) in Rome. There was nothing doing – as far as UICP were concerned, Faema knew and had agreed to the rules like everyone else.

  It was now late in the afternoon. In Savona in the morning, an impromptu gathering of senior riders had mooted the idea of a strike, before finally deciding that the show would go on for any other rider and so should for Merckx. Under cold and grey skies, their speed in the first hour had been that of a funeral cortege. Normal service and a brisk pace had then resumed before the Dane Ole Ritter’s decisive attack on the run-in to Pavia. It was impossible to know whether some of the banners at the roadside had been prepared before or after the rude awakening of a few hours earlier. ‘Merckx, you’re greater than Charlemagne’ said one.

  Merckx’s ‘best friend’ in the peloton, Italo Zilioli, was covered in his blood when he crossed the line. Somehow, a huge shard of glass from a jar had embedded itself in one of his sandwiches and shredded his lip as he ate. As often seemed to be the case with Zilioli, when it rained, it poured.

  Merckx and his downfall monopolised RAI’s Processo alla Tappa. As Italians often do, the panel seemed to voice identical opinions while at the same time bickering furiously. The consensus above the racket was that Merckx was clean and had been wronged. The issue had already assumed such proportions that the most famous Italian journalist of all, on any subject, Indro Montanelli, was asked to wade in. ‘The other riders should go home and boycott the rest of the Giro. Merckx’s innocence is proven by common sense, if you ask me,’ he sniffed.

  Again, contempt was directed not at the alleged crime, but, somewhat bizarrely, at the anti-doping institutions and procedures. The president of the Professional Riders Association, Fiorenzo Magni, had stated rather alarmingly that, ‘Merckx’s problem has always been anti-doping.’ Magni went on to explain, ‘Other riders have said that they don’t feel protected. It’s true: anti-doping lends itself to deception. We’ll get to the point where we have to flee the hotels, where we’ll have to eat in a caravan outside. The anti-doping law is a scam.’

  Merckx, of course, had already ‘fled’ to Milan, more precisely the Hotel Royal. He was still crying intermittently, between threats to abandon cycling. At eight o’clock, his teammates left for Belgium from Linate airport. The telephone lines between the two countries had been humming all afternoon as the case rapidly turned into a major diplomatic incident. A telegram was already on its way to the Faema bosses from the Minister of Flemish Culture, Franz Van Mechelen, saying that he was saddened and had already demanded a full investigation from the Italian authorities. Another was winging its way from the Belgian Foreign Minister Pierre Harmel to his Italian counterpart Pietro Nenni, calling for a resolution of the ‘mystery of Savona’. Hundreds more, almost all expressing solidarity, had been picked up by the cleaning lady at Merckx’s home in Tervuren.

  Speaking of diplomacy, Driessens had already excelled himself. ‘Eddy was the victim of a plot dreamt up by jealous people,’ he blustered. ‘What did he eat and drink on the rest day? Someone must have put a banned product in his food or drink. In Italy you can’t trust anyone or anything.’

  Meanwhile, in the Hotel Royal, Merckx tossed and turned in his bed as Claudine slept next to him. He replayed everything that had happened in that mobile laboratory in Savona for what seemed like the hundredth time in his head. He, Giacotto and Marino Vigna, Faema’s directeur sportif, still had many questions. Why had the officials not informed Merckx that his A-sample was positive, or for that matter waited for his authorisation to open and test the B-sample, as per the protocol? How was it that some teams had known that Merckx was positive on the night of his test, hours before the rider concerned had found out – this, at least, according to Vigna? Who was behind the rumours that had circulated since the start of the Giro that Merckx would be ‘eliminated’ before Milan? What did that person know about what had occurred in the last 48 hours?

  The night had brought no rest and the morning came abruptly. Merckx rose wearily from his bed and pulled on grey slacks, a light green turtle-neck, and blue jacket. At nine o’clock, he and Claudine drove in their white Mercedes to the airport to collect the secretary of the Belgian Cycling Federation Maurice Moyson, and took him back to the Hotel Royal.

  At around the same time, all over Europe, people were waking up and opening their newspapers. In Belgium, Merckx may not yet have equalled the popularity of Van Looy, but there was nothing like a foreign conspiracy to whip up a bit of patriotic fervour. In Francophile Wallonia, La Dernière Heure spoke of ‘a Machiavellian’ affair and the high probability that someone had spiked Merckx’s drink or food. The other big Walloon paper, Le Soir, questioned the legitimacy of the mobile lab unveiled amid such fanfare before the Giro. Le Soir pointed out that only three labs were officially recognised by the International Cycling Union, and they were in Rome, Paris and Gent. The French paper Le Parisien Libre also noted that, in France, A and B tests also had to be carried out in different laboratories, which hadn’t been the case here.

  La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Bruno Raschi had been the unhappy witness of a ‘bitter episode’, having gone with Giacotto to break the news to Merckx. La Gazzetta ran a picture of Merckx in tears on the hotel bed on their front page, the headline ‘Merckx forced out (positive in a medical test)’ and six pages of reports. La Stampa led with the more dramatic ‘Merckx disqualified: requiem for cycling’. Italian writer Giovanni Arpino complained in an editorial that ‘Because of an error or maybe even some ploy concocted by a third party, that greatest rider of our age, Merckx, a man as clean and pure as water, has to abandon the Giro and in all probability the Tour. Let’s say grazie to the organisers and the doctors.’

  The centrepiece of that paper’s coverage was a photograph of the product believed to have been found in Merckx’s urine. It contained the banned substance fencamfamine, was sold commercially as Reactivan, and was produced by a pharmaceutical company called…Merck.

  Midway through the second day after cycling’s apocalypse, Tuesday 3 June, a routine had already started to set in. It consisted of meetings, interviews, more tears, multiplying conspiracy theories, sleepless nights, postponements of Merckx’s return to Belgium and more threats to abandon cycling – and it lasted three days. It was also utterly inconclusive except as a gauge of Merckx’s standing in Belgian and in international sport. That and, possibly, as a challenge to the received wisdom that dope testing was a force for clarity and credibility in a sport dogged throughout its lifetime by cheating.

  Merckx’s problem was that with every fanciful new theory, every unwavering yet seemingly unfounded pronouncement of support by an official or leading commentator, old resentments began to spawn. At times it could all look and sound like a conspiracy to absolve Merckx, not to condemn him. Shortly after he had fetched Moyson on 3 June, the president of the International Cycling Union (UCI) Adriano Rodoni flew in from Switzerland. He immediately wrapped an arm around Merckx, who was again sobbing. ‘Eddy, if I hug you, it’s because you’re an honest lad. I don’t make a habit of embracing Judas,’ Rodoni whispered in his ear, within earshot of Belgian reporters. The next day, one Flemish paper issued a heartfelt ‘Grazie signor Rodoni’ on behalf of its readership, while another railed against Giro organiser Vincenzo Torriani for not turning a blind eye, even if Merckx’s sample was positive. The weekly magazine
Sport 69 alleged that Torriani had orchestrated Merckx’s demise out of spite towards the Tour de France and its director Félix Lévitan, who would again be deprived of the sport’s biggest star in July. There had been talk of Lévitan postponing the start of the ’69 Tour by three days, until after Merckx had served his one-month ban. Alas, this would be ‘impossible’, the Tour chief admitted.

  On 3 June, the University of Liège carried out a sociological study measuring the impact of the scandal on the Belgian public. Its conclusion was that, of recent ‘world events’, only the assassination of President John F. Kennedy six years earlier had been of a similar magnitude.

  As a pure soap opera, a true Italian telenovela, it was utterly gripping, and by the hour the tales were becoming more and more outlandish and tantalising. Some stories were old, like talk of an ancient and undetectable Oriental plant that had been fuelling Merckx and Faema for months, while others briefly spiked curiosity before losing the interest of even those who had peddled them in the first place. One went that Merckx’s urine had been borderline positive after his time trial win in Montecatini Terme on Stage 4. The sample that Faema had taken themselves in Savona and sent to the Istituto di Medicina Legale di Milano, meanwhile, had come back negative. The experts said this couldn’t be explained by the normal degradation of the fencamfamine in the original sample, as its concentration had been so high that the Milan tests should also have been positive. The second opinion, though, had been mandated only by Merckx and Faema and had no official value.

  One minute Merckx was comparing his case to that of the Bologna football team, four of whose players had tested positive in 1964 then later been absolved. The next he was recalling that he had filled a test-tube labelled with the number 6 in Savona, and wondering whether it hadn’t been mistaken for a 9. He was then distracted by talk of a traitor within his team, whom Van Bug had supposedly identified. The culprit, said some, was a masseur due to leave Faema at the end of the season. Others, including La Gazzetta dello Sport, referred to but didn’t name a Faema rider who had already won several Classics himself, and had privately announced in the days leading up to Savona that he would ‘wage war against Merckx in the future’. The only man who fitted that description was Guido Reybrouck. Merckx claimed that he had ‘specific suspicions’ and was considering legal action against one individual, but wouldn’t reveal who this was.

  The juiciest morsel of all came from a priest. He had watched Merckx arrive for mass at the Duomo in Parma on the morning of his positive test and park his bike outside. Noticing that the bottle cage on Merckx’s bike was empty, the priest assumed that Merckx had taken his drink inside with him, safe from would-be saboteurs. The next time he looked, he was startled: a bottle had appeared, yet Merckx hadn’t stepped outside the cathedral. Some form of skulduggery – and not, for instance, an innocent member of the Faema staff going about his normal duties – could be the only explanation.

  It was all enough to give anyone a headache, and indeed the maelstrom in Merckx’s mind wasn’t abating. Peace could elude him even in the midst of success beyond other riders’ wildest imagination; in times of crisis, his brain became an infestation of dark thoughts and anxieties. Van Buggenhout said that he was ‘almost a broken man’. On Thursday 5 June, after three infernal nights at the Hotel Royal in Milan, he and Claudine finally began the car journey back to Brussels with the intention of arriving in Tervuren almost ‘incognito’ the following day. There was little chance of that: 24 hours later, on the first sunny day of the week in Belgium, the white Mercedes was cheered as it pulled into the Merckxes’ driveway. La Gazzetta called it a reception ‘worthy of a cosmonaut’. ‘He needs more rest than if he’d finished the Giro,’ Claudine told journalists as she wrestled him through the herd and through the front door.

  At around the same time, Felice Gimondi was applying the finishing touches to his second Giro d’Italia victory in the mountains above Trento. The last week of the race had been ridden in a wretched ambiance, with the riders climbing off their bikes on the stage to the Marmolada and effectively forcing its cancellation due to bad weather. This led to their own directeurs sportifs branding them ‘whingers’ and much worse, and others claiming that this had been a belated gesture of protest after an ultimately limp reaction in Savona.

  ‘I don’t care who wins the Giro,’ Merckx had said – and neither, it seemed, did anyone else.

  From a strictly practical point of view, the situation as Merckx returned to Belgium was that he was banned from all races and awaiting the outcome of UCI president Adriano Rodoni’s ‘personal’ investigation. Once Rodoni had admitted, in an interview with the Corriere dello Sport, that the now infamous mobile laboratory laid on before the Giro by Hewlett Packard did not conform to UCI regulations, the die appeared to be cast. In France, a group of riders led by Jean Stabilinski had already announced that they would go on strike if Merckx received preferential treatment. While in Belgium, Georges Vanconingsloo and Emile Bodart, among others, demanded to know why there had been no fuss about their apparently very similar cases. Jan Janssen in Holland said much the same thing. Merckx was in an ‘alarming state of depression’, ‘even lower than in Savona and Milan’ according to Van Bug. But intuition – as well as Rodoni’s embrace in Milan, plus the incongruous fact that he was the president both of the UCI and the Italian Cycling Federation who had officially imposed the sanction – proved the best guide. On 14 June, after a meeting with the Belgian cycling federation, the members of the UCI’s board of directors announced in a communiqué that they:

  Accepted the results of the tests carried out by the Italian doctors.

  Granted that the Italian Federation had the right to suspend the rider Eddy Merckx according to the results of their tests.

  Considered the irreproachable record of the incriminated rider and the negative results of tens of tests that he had undergone in the past.

  Doubted that Merckx had wanted to dope voluntarily.

  Gave him the benefit of the doubt and immediately lifted the suspension of which he was currently the object.

  And so on and so on…

  In Tervuren, Merckx read the statement and felt a surge of relief. Then he looked again, digested, and the anxieties returned in torrents.

  Benefit of the doubt?! He knew which three words the public and his peers would retain, and what was their implication: Merckx had been ‘let off’ because he was Merckx. Not because the test had no validity, and should never even have been carried out in conditions like the ones in Savona. Not because he had never cheated. His instinct was correct, and at the Tour of Luxembourg, the peloton manifested its discontent in a mini-strike, while the defending Tour de France champion Janssen vented his frustration at the Tour of Switzerland. ‘I have nothing against Merckx. I actually have a lot of admiration for him. But this decision is an injustice towards Adorni, Motta, Lucien Aimar, myself and lots of little riders who were punished without being able to defend themselves,’ Janssen argued. Today, incidentally, Janssen’s summation is more succinct. ‘He cried like a baby so they let him off,’ the Dutchman says.

  Merckx was wounded but, as Walter Godefroot had already noted, he was never more dangerous than when he was down. ‘When everyone else is hurting, they slow down. When Merckx is in trouble…he attacks,’ Godefroot says. With the Tour de France just a fortnight away, and his pride throbbing, Merckx now pummelled his bike like rarely before. He had recommenced training on 10 June, four days before his ban was officially overturned, and now alternated 220-kilometre training sessions behind Guillaume Michiels’s scooter with criteriums in Caen in France and Bruges. At both, the cheers outnumbered the jeers. He then finished a weary 32nd in the Belgian National Championships won by the new prodigy Roger de Vlaeminck, having bashed his left knee on a gear lever. The next day, he rode a 110-kilometre criterium in the afternoon and a track-meet in the evening; on Tuesday, he reported for the start of another criterium but caused such an onrush of autograph hunters that he missed
the start and had to withdraw; on Wednesday, he rode 160 kilometres with teammates; on Thursday, Merckx covered 270 kilometres alone; Friday was speed work behind Michiels’s scooter, cut short to 50 kilometres by a torrential rainstorm; and on Saturday, he rode ‘à bloc’ for 40 kilometres in the morning, ‘tranquille’ for another 40 in the afternoon, then readied himself for what would be his third outing of the day in the evening: the Tour de France prologue time trial in Roubaix.

  8

  first man on the moon

  ‘That bloke needs to be…handicapped. They should stick a 25 kilogram weight under his saddle.’ GILBERT BELLONE

  ONE OF THE first to notice the change was the new Giro champion Felice Gimondi. ‘Oooo, ciao Eddy, ciao!’ Gimondi had called to his old bête noire from the other end of the lobby where both of their teams were staying ahead of the Tour de France prologue time trial in Roubaix. Merckx had looked over, smiled sheepishly, then carried on walking.

  It was normal after what had happened, explained Lomme Driessens. Those words – ‘benefit of the doubt’ – still grated loudly and painfully in Merckx’s mind, along with the less-than-charitable statements of one or two colleagues over the past four weeks. There was no malice towards Gimondi in particular; Merckx had even used the column he was writing in La Dernière Heure to urge his fans on the first stages of the Tour in Belgium not to direct their anger about what had happened in Savona at the Giro winner. No, Merckx’s was simply the dazed air of a man who had woken one morning to a world different from the one he’d known for the previous 24 years, and who was still tip-toeing into his new reality.

  Marino Vigna, the Faema directeur sportif, had not seen him since Savona. Vigna emerged from a contentious meeting about dope-testing procedures on the Thursday before the race with the news that there would be three tests after every stage at the Tour. Depending on the day and what the Tour doctor Pierre Dumas had written in a sealed envelope labelled with the number of that stage before the Tour, he would summon either the top three riders on general classification, the first three finishers that day, or three riders picked at random. Dumas had declined Merckx’s exceptional request to test his urine every day, no matter where he finished, but confirmed that the sanction for a first positive test would be just a 15-minute penalty rather than a disqualification and ban. ‘Well, that means you’d better win by over fifteen minutes, in case they stitch you up again, like in Italy,’ Vigna told Merckx.