Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal

by Daniel Friebe

  What this meant for other riders like Raymond Riotte was that, nearly two weeks in, the 1969 Tour already felt radically different from what had come before. Merckx’s disregard for the status quo and for the others’ cruising speed – what Alfredo Martini had said about his ‘legs [hurting] when he rode slowly – the faster he rode, the better they felt’ – manifested itself in his almost constant presence at the front of the bunch. ‘I like hard racing for a good reason,’ he said. ‘It’s that, if I ride hard, I’m the master of my own rhythm, especially in the mountains. I make the others hurt and, at the finish, I’m no more tired than them.’

  This made perfect sense to Merckx but ensured misery for the rest. Way down the field, the French debutant Robert Bouloux was cursing Merckx and Faema’s every pedal stroke. Later, having struggled to Paris in 55th position, nearly three hours behind the winner, Bouloux lamented, ‘I would have ridden a much better Tour if Merckx hadn’t been there. With him, it’s different. He’s too superior to us. You lose morale and it’s hard to get it back.’

  Another journeyman, the Bic rider Gilbert Bellone, was similarly downcast. ‘Every day, we’re already beaten before we start,’ Bellone said. ‘Even here on my own patch, in the south of France, I’m out of my comfort zone. And that’s all Merckx’s fault. That kid needs to be…handicapped. They should stick a 25 kilogram weight under his saddle.’

  The four-day interlude between the Alps and the Pyrenees threw up few surprises, a further strengthening of Merckx’s hegemony in a short time trial in Revel, plus one or two interesting dispatches. The sprint stage to La Grande Motte on the Mediterranean coast had a curious winner in Merckx’s teammate Guido Reybrouck. Curious in the sense, first, that Reybrouck had been selected for the Tour and, second, that Merckx had helped him to win. Hadn’t the Italian press supposedly identified Reybrouck as the enemy within, the saboteur of Savona? That was now inconceivable, for all that Reybrouck seemed sure to leave Faema, which he would indeed do, in 1970.

  Rudi Altig, the German who had won the first yellow jersey of the Tour in Roubaix, had also become the first rider to test positive. His urine sample after Stage 14 to Revel contained traces of amphetamines. Altig was scandalised, the German media too – not so much by his cheating as by their own belief that he was a sacrificial lamb in a big cover-up presided over, they said, by the Tour’s official doctor Pierre Dumas. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Helmer Boelsen quoted Dumas saying that ‘60 per cent of riders now and again use products on the banned list’. Meanwhile, another German journalist, Ulfert Schröder, wrote that ‘Dumas knew very well that Van Looy was doped after his stage win [in Nancy], but he exonerated the Belgian because he needed a stage win.’

  None of this was of any concern to Merckx, Van Den Bossche and the rest of the Faema men. The Tour may have been wrapped up, but it was still the Tour – the hardest endurance event in sport, demanding maximum concentration and resilience. While Merckx’s attention to detail and professionalism were already changing cycling, there were some things that not even he had the influence or foresight to alter. Van Den Bossche remembers, ‘No one had a fridge or freezer in those days. Even in the feed zones in stages, things were lying open in the sun on a white blanket. If you were unlucky and the feedzone was exposed to the sun, the rice tarts were only fit for the bin. You were only allowed to drink after 30 kilometres and before the 50 kilometres-to-go sign. We drank water and back then the idea was that the less you drank, the longer you lasted. There was no science about recovery, and hotels were sometimes terrible. If you were unlucky and your room was on the fourth floor for three days in a row, the stairs just killed you.’

  If the Tour doctor Pierre Dumas’s colleague Lucien Maigre was to be believed, Merckx could have been staying on the top floor of the Montparnasse Tower, then under construction in Paris, and still be raring to ride. Maigre had been astounded when he examined Merckx after his time trial win in Revel and 20-kilometre ride back to the Faema hotel. ‘It’s like he hasn’t raced and has been resting for the last few days,’ Maigre gasped as he prodded Merckx’s thighs.

  After another late, downhill attack on the first Pyrenean stage to Luchon, Merckx woke the next day with no intention of attempting further heroics. He had promised Jean Van Buggenhout. A journalist had also approached him that day with the opening gambit, ‘Merckx, old chap, you’re killing the race. It’s no fun.’ The 214-kilometre stage from Luchon to Mourenx Ville-Nouvelle, over the passes of the Peyresourde, the legendary Tourmalet and the Aubisque would therefore be about consolidation, defence, following the wheels.

  Of course it would…

  The Col de Peyresourde climbs out of Luchon like aroma from a kitchen, its wisp of road rising slowly and serenely towards the pass 13 kilometres away. One rider in the peloton in 1969, Jean-Marie Leblanc, said years later that it was the kind of climb which made you want to pull to the side of the road, spread a picnic blanket on the grass and lie all afternoon among the cows. Maybe whistle a tune. Perhaps that was why the young, pocket-sized Belgian climber Lucien Van Impe was cheeping away almost as soon as the peloton left Luchon.

  ‘On the Peyresourde, people were jumping around, attacking left, right and centre,’ Barry Hoban, who was riding for Poulidor and Mercier, recalls. ‘I was riding next to my mate, Gerben Karstens, both pretty comfortable, but muttering under our breath that anyone attacking this early was a stupid idiot. Van Impe was whistling away. It was his first Tour and he was so cocky – climbing mountains was a doddle for him. Someone else went up the road, then suddenly we heard Merckx, in this deep Belgian accent: “Martin!” Then we see Van Den Bossche, big Martin, moving forward to the front of the bunch. Martin was the only guy I knew who would climb mountains in the big chainring. He’s powering away at the front, setting this tempo so that no one can attack, then about three kilometres later he swings across the road and turns around to face everyone. “R-r-r-right,” he said, with his slight stammer. “I-i-i-f p-p-people keep attacking, h-h-h-alf of the field will be outside the t-time limit tonight. D-d-d-do you understand? A-a-a-a-s for you, Van Impe, i-i-i-f you don’t stop whistling, I-I-I-I’ll knock it down your head!” Karstens and I nearly fell off our bikes laughing.’

  From behind his desk in Bornem, Van Den Bossche disputes this version…but only slightly.

  ‘All true except the last part!’ he declares. ‘I told Van Impe, a nice fellow, “Children should be at the back!” If you start threatening people, that’s not cycling any more…’

  As far as Merckx was concerned, all that mattered was that order had been restored in time for the Tourmalet, the 2,115-metre ceiling of the Pyrenees. He appeared to be honouring his self-imposed ceasefire when Van Den Bossche pulled clear of what was now just a nine-man group in sight of the summit. The prize for being first over the Tourmalet was not only a few more points towards the King of the Mountains competition which Merckx led, but also prestige of the kind that wouldn’t matter to a rider with as rich a past and future as Merckx, but might to Van Den Bossche. Merckx didn’t care; he accelerated past his domestique to cross the summit first.

  A photograph immortalises the moment when Merckx appears over Van Den Bossche’s right shoulder. Van Den Bossche’s head is turned to face Merckx’s, whose gaze is fixed, lazer-like, on the road ahead and the summit. Years later, the actor Michael J. Fox would star in a much-lampooned yet much-loved film about a normal college kid and amateur basketball player who acquires miraculous athletic abilities the day that he discovers he can morph into a wolf. His previously hapless basketball team becomes unbeatable but also increasingly irked by his ball-hogging. This culminates in a scene when the wolf runs from behind one of his teammates, robs the ball from out of his hand, and proceeds to score yet another basket. The teammate looks on, dejected.

  More or less, this is what happens on the Tourmalet.

  Merckx said later that he didn’t originally intend to prolong his attack; at the foot of the descent his advantage was just 45 seconds.
Driessens pulled alongside him in the Faema team car and told him to eat and wait for the group coming from behind. Merckx nodded. Moments later, Driessens’s vehicle had punctured, and Lomme the Liar was hopping up and down at the roadside, trying to thumb a lift. Merckx ate a rice-cake, sprayed his face with water, then turned around to scan the mountainside for Van Den Bossche and his group. He saw nothing but bare rock and road. ‘At that point, for the first time, I thought it might be worth attempting an exploit in the context of such a beautiful mountain stage. I pressed on and I dug deeper than ever before,’ he explained later.

  Merckx gained an incredible six minutes on Pingeon, Van Den Bossche and company on the ascent of the Col d’Aubisque. They were eight minutes behind at the summit. From there 70 kilometres lay between Merckx and the finish in Mourenx. Driessens had finally jumped in with the journalists from the Gazet van Antwerpen, but his balding dome and clenched fist were now mere background ornaments. Merckx was out on his own, in every sense. After 15 tricky kilometres in which he let slip nearly two minutes, he recovered and began gaining time once more. Within minutes of him crossing the finish line, Driessens had of course pounced and planted a kiss upon his cheek. He then turned to the press and announced that only his intervention had prevented Merckx from abandoning the Tour when his legs had started to burn with 50 kilometres to go. Later, he decorated that version further: ‘Eddy came close to the car and screamed, “I want champagne!” So I took some fruit juice, added a bit of sugar, then shook the bottle. Eddy drank it thinking that it was the elixir of victory and off he went again, stronger than ever.’

  The road-kill, dragged home by the Italian Michele Dancelli, seven minutes and 56 seconds behind Merckx, alternated stupor with black humour.

  ‘Now we know why he’s so much fresher than the rest of us: he’s back at the hotel resting and we still haven’t finished the stage,’ quipped Raymond Riotte. The Frenchman has since tweaked this to, ‘He was in the shower and we still had 15 kilometres to ride!’

  Barry Hoban also saw no other option but to laugh. Hoban was widely attributed with the joke which did the rounds over the subsequent stages before Paris.

  ‘Did you know that Poulidor and Gimondi both copped a 50-franc fine? They hung on to the wing-mirror of a lorry and climbed the Tourmalet without even turning the pedals?’

  ‘Oh yeah? And what was Merckx doing in the meantime?’

  ‘He got fined 50 francs as well. He was towing the lorry.’

  In the television commentary box, the former rider René Vietto’s analysis was harsh but possibly accurate. He called it a ‘Tour de résignés’ – a ‘Tour of resigned riders’.

  There was now no mystery about the outcome of the Tour, or probably the three or four to come, but some were still puzzled by Merckx’s attack and more specifically its timing. Why, in particular, had he denied his teammate Van Den Bossche the privilege of being the first man over the Tourmalet? Speaking to Rik Vanwalleghem over 20 years later, Merckx went into more detail about a secret he would reveal a few weeks after the Tour. ‘I still feel guilty about not letting Van Den Bossche go over the top of the climb first that day. But on the previous day he’d really got my back up. He came up to me and, straight out, told me that he had received an offer from the directeur sportif of Molteni, Giorgio Albani, and that he would be leaving our team [in 1970]…It was a pretty inappropriate time for Van Den Bossche to do what he did, and it really annoyed me. That is what made me think only of myself at the top of the Tourmalet. I knew I had done wrong, but in the situation, it proved stronger than I was.’

  So, Martin Van Den Bossche, is this true?

  ‘It’s a lie as big as the Mont Ventoux!’

  He shakes his head, then continues, ‘Nobody knew! I had signed for Molteni the night before in Superbagnères, where we slept, but nobody knew!’ he says. ‘My monthly wage was going to be four times what it was with Faema. But, again, nobody knew! Why would I have told Merckx? After that Tour, we even met in Kampenhout and he thought I was going to sign for Faema, but they weren’t offering me a rise, and I already had the contract with Molteni…’

  On a night when the world was already hailing Merckx as greater than Fausto Coppi, and his ride to Mourenx as one of the finest ever seen in the Tour, Van Den Bossche went looking for his captain.

  ‘I said, “Eddy Merckx, today a small rider expected a big gesture from you.” He didn’t respond and I never brought it up again. It didn’t change the relationship as far as I was concerned, but I can’t speak for him. It was just that I kind of expected a gesture at that point. I wasn’t complaining. It was just that Eddy was so far in the lead [in the King of the Mountains competition]. He didn’t need to take the points. There are so many cols in a Tour, but the Tourmalet is such a monument. I don’t know if a helper wasn’t supposed to say something like that. I just don’t know, and I don’t really know what the others in the team thought, either. We never spoke about such things. Eddy himself didn’t talk much. He almost never talked about personal things. I almost never went to his house. There was no problem, either before or after Mourenx, but I could never get close to him.’

  The next day’s media coverage was a litany of superlatives, which has been reproduced often enough. The flavour was now familiar: Merckx was going where no man had been before, just like Neil Armstrong was about to do in a few days’ time.

  The most famous homage of all came from Jacques Goddet in L’Equipe. ‘Merckxissimo’ was his headline.

  The ‘Martian’, as his mate Crazy Heart Bitossi now called him, gained more time at the Puy de Dôme. Two days later, before the race-ending final time trial, Merckx’s former teammate Christian Raymond says that his wife and daughter Brigitte came to visit him in Créteil in the southern suburbs of Paris.

  ‘My daughter asked me why Merckx always had to win, and I tried to explain that it was normal, because he was the best rider. She went quiet for a minute, then looked at me quizzically and said, “Well, then, he’s a real cannibal…”. I liked that name, “The Cannibal” straight away, and mentioned it to a couple of journalists that day. They, evidently, liked it too.’

  Merckx was poised to live up to the new moniker and win the time trial into the old Cipale velodrome when, suddenly overwhelmed by the noise coming from the track, he almost rode straight past the entrance and into the crowd. The next few seconds, as he regained composure to win the stage by nearly a minute and the Tour by close to 18, would be and forever remain, by his own reckoning, the sweetest of his career. After a kiss from Claudine, one from mother Jenny and another smacker from Driessens, Merckx thanked his teammates one-by-one then joined them for a lap of honour. ‘Eddy, Eddy!’ chanted 25,000 spectators. The Faema ensemble circled the track two or three abreast with Merckx and Driessens, riding the special yellow street-bike he’d had prepared for the occasion, waving to the crowd on the front row.

  In Belgium, special trains had already been chartered, and would ferry thousands to greet the hero in Brussels the next day. In previous Tours, the Walloon radio reporter Luc Varenne hadn’t even been allowed a press motorbike; before the 1969 Tour, sensing the nation’s excitement, his bosses had laid on an aeroplane.

  At just gone nine o’clock French time Apollo 11 prepared to make its landing on the moon. Belgian state TV would be blessed with a pundit par excellence, having scheduled a double video link-up – one to Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon’s surface and another to Merckx in a studio in Paris. Unfortunately, Jean Van Buggenhout had forgotten to pass on the message, and Belgium’s most popular citizen was celebrating with its Prime Minister and his teammates in a restaurant on the other side of town. Merckx’s friend, the TV journalist Théo Mathy, was dispatched to find him, a terrifying slalom through the Paris traffic ensued, and Merckx finally arrived on set, like a superhero, having cleaved his way out of a broken elevator.

  ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind…’ said Armstrong.

  If Savona had supposedly marked the
Belgian public to an equal degree as the assassination of JFK, TV and radio networks were now faced with an on-the-spot dilemma: for some, if not all, Merckx was the first news item and events in outer space the second.

  The following day, what seemed to Merckx like the entire Belgian population congregated in Brussels to see the prodigal son return and ride through the city in an open-top car. He and his Faema teammates were then received by King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola at the Royal Castle of Laeken. With tears in his eyes, Merckx presented Baudouin with one of his yellow jerseys from the Tour before the gathering moved inside.

  ‘It was a quiet thing,’ recalls Martin Van Den Bossche. ‘The king asked us a couple of questions: were you thirsty, that kind of thing. We were there about two hours. Then the queen asked whether everyone there was married. I was the only one who wasn’t, so she wished me a lifetime of love and prosperity. After that they started handing out cigarettes. I was the only one who really smoked, but only cigars, so they went to get cigars with the royal crest on them. I got two. After that it was thank you, thank you, thank you and goodbye.’