9
down and out?
‘I looked at the blood coming from Merckx’s ear and thought that it was over for him, that he was a goner.’ RAYMOND RIOTTE
THE ROUGH TRANSLATION is ‘full throttle!’, the literal meaning more convoluted and cryptic. All that matters for now is that Claude Lair keeps saying it, over and over…
‘A fond la caisse! A fond la caisse!’
Lair is talking about a different crash from the one we’re in Blois to relive, but this clearly doesn’t faze him. And neither should it. As athletic and up-and-at-’em a 77-year-old as you’re ever likely to meet, Lair is explaining that our car is approaching the spot where the American David Zabriskie fell and lost the yellow jersey in the first week of the 2005 Tour de France. As he does so, he breathlessly interrupts himself with assorted observations on the topic that for the last seven decades has quite clearly been his raison d’être: cycling.
‘A fond la caisse! A fond la caisse! He was coming down here, down here…there’s the château on our right, the Château de Blois… Oh no, you must never stop cycling! Never! Never stop! I do 300 kilometres a week. We do 90 kilometres in three and a half hours! Three and a half hours! So he’s coming down here, Zabriskie, the American, à fond la caisse! Then, hup, on that manhole cover! Down he goes! Down he goes! The yellow jersey, on the floor! It was there, there, not where the newspapers said the next day…’
But like Lair, we can’t stop. Moments later we’re crossing the Loire on the Pont Jacques Gabriel – ‘there are three bridges in Blois! Gabriel, De Gaulle and Mitterrand!’ – and bearing down on our final destination, the real reason for our visit. Given that the previous night he had been racing in Brittany this, in all likelihood, is also the route that Eddy Merckx and his soigneur Guillaume Michiels took out of town and towards the Pierre Tessier velodrome on the afternoon of 9 September 1969. It was going to be a post-Tour track meet, a night like any other.
At least so they thought.
Claude Lair was in the velodrome that night, as he had been hundreds of times before and has been maybe thousands since. Shortly he’ll be standing on the spot where he heard the clatter of bodies and bikes.
‘It wasn’t just the worst crash I’ve ever seen, it was the worst crash there’s ever been,’ he says, his characteristic vim draining from his voice. ‘Awful, just awful.’
Merckx couldn’t say that Jacques Anquetil hadn’t warned him. Twice. First about the toll taken by the second tour of France, which began immediately when the first one ended, and consisted mainly of mammoth drives across the country followed by a circuit or track race in the evening. When it wasn’t France, it was Belgium. The races were traditional, they were lucrative and they were also more competitive than the rigged costume balls that later became the norm, and were inevitably won by the most popular rider. ‘Yah, it was a real race,’ says Patrick Sercu, Merckx’s track partner and teammate at Faema in 1969. ‘They were only 80, 90 or a 100 kilometres, but it was serious. A lot of the peloton wasn’t getting a wage, or a very small one, so they had to make their money in the criteriums. You were on the max from the first lap to the last.’
With a sizeable slice of Merckx’s appearance and prize money going to Jean Van Buggenhout, it was clearly in Van Bug’s interest to accept as many offers as the calendar allowed, and so he set Merckx a punishing schedule. Between the end of the Tour de France on 20 July and his appearance in Blois on 9 September, Merckx rode a staggering 36 criteriums. On 17 August, while Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young performed at Woodstock, Merckx raced in the afternoon in the Dordogne and in the evening in Moorslede in Flanders.
The races on home soil, and the volume of the Merckx supporters there, were the best possible barometer of how Merckx’s popularity had now definitively outstripped Van Looy’s. Numerous and intense, they also served as the ideal theatre for some of the pair’s final, bitter and bloody conflicts. Two days after the Tour, no more than a kilometre from the family grocery store in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Van Looy enraged Merckx by leeching his back wheel on the pretext that he was ‘dead’, then rocketing out of his slipstream to beat the Tour champion in the closing metres. Three days later, in Denderleeuw, the rivalry reached its zenith, or possibly nadir, when Merckx dropped off the back of the peloton and allowed both himself and Van Looy to be lapped in protest at the ‘Emperor’s’ perpetual wheel-sucking. ‘You dirty old goat!’ Merckx screamed at him, his patience finally snapping. Both were given suspended eight-day racing bans for their ‘insufficient appetite to race’. This only made Merckx hungrier in Rijmenam the same afternoon. With Van Looy again ensconced in his slipstream, Merckx produced a rabid performance, sprinting into every corner until Van Looy was unhinged.
Quite how anyone, and more precisely the Belgian selectors, thought the pair of them could dovetail in the national team at the World Championship in Zolder two weeks later is beyond comprehension. The ovation reserved for Merckx was, if anything, even more magnificent than the one he had received in La Cipale at the end of the Tour. That was at the start of the race. When Van Looy’s Dutch Willem II-Gazelle teammate Harm Ottenbros won in a breakaway to cause one of the biggest upsets in World Championship history, Merckx rode off the course 500 metres from the line to avoid the boos. Earlier in the race, staying onside with the fans and preventing Merckx from winning had appeared to be Van Looy’s only objectives. ‘Whenever Merckx accelerated, Van Looy jumped on to his wheel. But he did it very smartly, immediately, so that the fans didn’t notice and start booing,’ revealed the Italian Vito Taccone. While Merckx took refuge in a hotel and refused to speak for 90 minutes after the finish, finally emerging to say that Van Looy had been his ‘worst enemy’, even Lomme Driessens was speechless. ‘What Van Looy did doesn’t merit any commentary,’ he said.
Naturally, Merckx was soon back to his winning ways, including at Châteaulin in Brittany on 8 September. That night, as was often the case after criteriums and particularly this one, the drink and the camaraderie flowed at a banquet laid on by the race organiser. A legendary bon viveur even in his Tour-winning days, Jacques Anquetil was in the last weeks of his career and completing his final lap of honour around France in a daze of demob happiness. The one arena in which Anquetil could still give Merckx a run for his money, he felt, was in the bar. He took Pingeon to one side before the meal and winked towards Merckx. ‘Let’s see if the young lad can take a drink,’ he whispered. After several glasses of champagne, one or three of white and red and multiple invitations to ‘Have another one, Eddy’, Anquetil was leading the woozy congregation towards another marquee where more whiskies were waiting. Round one had been equal on points, Merckx was still standing steady, and the bell sounded for round two.
More whisky. Doubles now. Through the booze-addled blur, what looked like a photographer. The flash of a camera, a lunge by Anquetil, the sound of a lens smashing on the floor, a slur of expletives, and finally the intervention of Anquetil’s wife Janine. She had stopped both fights; Merckx had won his by technical knock-out. Janine now took her husband by the arm and headed off in the direction of their hotel, while Merckx rounded up Pingeon, Lucien Aimar and Jan Janssen and went in search of food. Pingeon was now semiconscious, or at least thought he was dreaming when Merckx ordered a bowl of onion soup liberally topped with grated cheese, a breast of chicken, then an enormous steak. The tales of Merckx’s elephantine constitution and invincibility in eating and drinking games were apparently true.
The following day, needless to say, Guillaume Michiels and Merckx enjoyed a calmer and more clear-headed journey through Brittany and into the Loire Valley than the Anquetils. With the nausea rising through his stomach, Jacques reached for the door handle and instructed Janine to pull over into a grass verge. The next noise wasn’t Anquetil retching but the door smashing into a signpost. If Anquetil had a headache before, now he was in pounding agony.
Anquetil’s second warning to Merckx came an hour or two later in Blois, once the crowd
s had started to congregate in the Pierre Tessier velodrome and with them the clouds overhead. Anquetil had ridden on the same 285-metre outdoor velodrome in an earlier meet in May, alongside Walter Godefroot among others. ‘This track is narrow, so let’s not ride more than two abreast at a time,’ Anquetil now instructed his five opponents for the night, Merckx, Jean Graczyck, Raymond Riotte, Francis Perin and Jiri Daler. The congestion and danger would be exacerbated by the fact that tonight’s was a ‘derny’ meet: each man would be riding behind a motorbike or derny, and the pace would be blistering.
It was on nights like these that Merckx cursed Van Buggenhout, as he looked again at the dismal skies, the poky velodrome and the 3,000 fans supposedly massed around the track, expecting a performance worthy of a Tour winner.
He reached for his leather skullcap, then stalled, without quite knowing why. He picked up his reserve helmet and unbuckled that before hesitating again and going back to his first choice. He then changed his mind again and reverted to his back-up. He chuckled to himself. Claudine always said he was indecisive.
If neither Merckx nor Anquetil was relishing what lay in wait, the local press had been doing its best to whip the people of Blois into a frenzy. La Nouvelle République had declared that the meet promised to be ‘sensational’ and would see the first ever head-to-head encounter between Anquetil and Merckx behind a derny. ‘The Normand has the advantage from an aesthetic point of view, but he’ll have to reckon with the fighting spirit, the panache and efficacy of the Belgian champion,’ said the paper’s preview.
In 1970, Claude Lair was to inherit the position of velodrome director, but for now worked as a mere mechanic and track supervisor. A fine amateur racer himself, he idolised Merckx, but didn’t dare to approach him as the Belgian ummed and ahed over his headgear. ‘He was the president, the grand patron,’ says Lair. ‘I didn’t speak to him, but I heard Anquetil harping on about the track: “Don’t ride three abreast! Don’t ride three abreast!” The track here’s narrow – only four metres. When you’re going at 80 kilometres an hour, which they do behind a derny, that doesn’t leave much room for manoeuvre.’
The evening programme consisted of three ‘legs’ of 50 laps, all ridden behind a derny and with various sprints and spot prizes distributed throughout the races. Merckx, as usual, had pepped up as soon as he climbed on to his bike and won the first leg. He then set off behind his French derny rider, 56-year-old Fernand Wambst, for the second match. The other riders and the pacers buzzed around them like hornets. The skies darkened. The 3,000 bayed.
Claude Lair is now positioned exactly where he was that night, midway down the home straight.
‘One of the riders, I can’t remember who, and his derny man had punctured, and I was here trying to get him going again. Then, BOOM!’
Lair swivels and points to a corner of the track 50 metres away, next to the tiny changing rooms. ‘There!’ he says. ‘There! The Czech rider Daler’s derny man, Marcel Reverdy, touches the balustrade there, falls down the track and Wambst can’t avoid him. BOOM! They all fall down, and I run over to try to get Reverdy’s derny off the track. I see Wambst and you can tell that he’s dead. Then I see Merckx…’
Raymond Riotte and his pilot managed to avoid the crash and completed another lap while looking fretfully over their shoulders at the carnage behind them. When they swung into the home straight again, the track was still littered with bodies and bikes, and it was clear that the racing was over. Riotte pulled up close to where Merckx and Wambst lay and gulped.
‘It was so upsetting,’ he says. ‘I saw Wambst, then looked at the blood coming from Merckx’s ear and thought that it was over for him, that he was a goner. That night we’d been all nervous as soon as we got there and saw the track. It was too narrow for the number of people racing. You were rubbing shoulders and touching the other people’s pedals all the time. Then, when the crash happened, we all got the fright of our lives.’
First aiders from the Red Cross were quickly lifting an unconscious Merckx and Wambst’s already inanimate carcass on to stretchers. Reverdy was also badly hurt, as was an eight-year-old boy who had been watching from behind the balustrade that the derny had hit then scraped along. When he picked up Reverdy’s derny, Lair noticed that a pedal was missing. He found it lying in the track 10 or 20 metres from where the pilot had lost control. Reverdy’s own derny had been in for repair, and he had borrowed this one from a friend, Pierre Morphyre. A police investigation later ascertained that a pedal had been loose and became detached during the race, ultimately causing the crash. Reverdy was later fined 600 francs by the Tribunal Grande Instance de Blois for negligence, and Morphyre 400 francs. For his involuntary sins, Reverdy would spend over a week in hospital with a broken nose and fractured skull.
Merckx had also been rushed to the Hôtel Dieu de Blois hospital. When he regained consciousness, he was still oblivious to what had befallen Wambst. Guillaume Michiels had been standing in the track centre, five metres from where Merckx smashed into Jiri Daler. Merckx asked Michiels for news of his derny man. ‘He’s the same as you,’ Michiels lied.
Merckx’s life was not in danger. As for his cycling career, well, for a few hours it was too early to tell. The doctor diagnosed severe concussion and scalp wounds. Claudine and both of his parents hurried immediately from Brussels to see him the following morning, but visiting time was restricted to a few minutes. On waking, Merckx had worried about how Claudine would take the shock; she was pregnant and due to give birth to their first child early in the New Year. After a restful second night and more satisfactory checks from the doctor, she and Jean Van Buggenhout were both reassured, and informed local reporters that Eddy no longer feared for his future as a cyclist. In fact, in the warmth of the sunshine that streamed through the window, he could already feel the lure of the road.
The crash had occurred on Tuesday, and Merckx would leave hospital on Saturday. King Baudouin had dispatched a Pembroke military plane to fly to Blois and bring the nation’s wounded hero back to his homeland. At 13h30, the priceless cargo flew out of Le Breuil aerodrome north of Blois, bound for the Melsbroek air base, where Lomme Driessens was among those waiting to greet him. A short ambulance ride home, a quiet afternoon among friends and family, and Merckx was soon heading to bed for another night of rest. Before the light went out, he turned to Claudine. ‘Did they bring my bike back? We’ll have to get it…’
Perhaps understandably in the circumstances, it had been the last star-studded track meet studded with stars of the road ever to be organised at the Pierre Tessier velodrome. Claude Lair as a coach and the same concrete track went on to nurture leading French sprinters Florian Rousseau and Frederic Magne, but very soon the site will have seen its last action. Its location on a flood-plain has forced the authorities to step in and build a substitute velodrome just a few hundred metres away, slightly closer to Blois’s elegant town centre. The new track will be longer at 285 metres and significantly wider at seven metres.
If that sounds like one cyclist’s paradise, Lair has turned his home into another on the opposite side of town. With his sick wife away in Lourdes, he had planned to ride 20 kilometres to catch the Tour de France on its way to Châteauroux and a second stage win in 2011 for Mark Cavendish. Instead, his ballbearing eyes will dart between the two television screens he has rigged up in his basement to watch the Tour, one tuned to the Eurosport channel and the other to French state broadcaster France 2. One of the three rooms on Lair’s first floor is a shrine to professional cycling that would make museum curators jealous. He announces proudly that he has all 480 copies of Miroir du Cyclisme, the French bike fans’ bible launched in 1961 and discontinued in 1994, and also a full collection of its nominal successor Vélo Magazine. Among his most cherished possessions is a photo of Merckx signed when he came to Blois during the 1969 Paris–Nice. ‘The greatest champion of all time!’ Lairs says, pulling the picture from one of his scrapbooks.
‘Ah, yes, that made some noise, that crash,�
� he says. ‘It was a shame that the track meets died after that. They started asking for too much money. They’d get to the velodrome, do a rough head count of the people in the stands, then think they were getting short-changed and ask for more in their envelope. They became too expensive. They shot the goose that laid the golden egg.’
Now slightly hard of hearing, Lair races these days on a tandem in the handisport category. At the time of writing he is the oldest competitive cyclist in France.
‘I worked for thirty years in the Poulain chocolate factory in Blois, but now it’s just cycling for me,’ he says, surveying the shelves and cabinets crammed full of trophies and memorabilia. ‘Cycling has been my life…I still ride! Three hundred kilometres a week! Oh, no, you must never stop cycling. Never! A fond la caisse!’
Twelve days after the crash in which, by his own admission, Merckx had ‘flirted with death’, it appeared to be business as usual as he completed and won a criterium in Schaerbeek on the north side of Brussels. He was a little groggy, a little short of kilometres, but all seemed well given what had come before. Wambst’s death had nonetheless upset and shaken him, and even more Claudine, who had known about the perils of derny racing ever since she used to accompany her father to the track as a young girl. As for the road, as Merckx had said in the clinic in Blois, he hoped that 9 September would soon be and remain in his career ‘nothing but a bad memory’.
On 28 September, he excitedly watched Herman Van Springel win Paris–Tours from his living room in Tervuren. The following day he started and abandoned a criterium in St-Genesius-Rode. Merckx’s next big test, his last of the season, would come at the Trofeo Baracchi two-man time trial in Bergamo, northern Italy on 2 October.
The Baracchi was a prestigious but strange event, ridden in pairings often irrespective of trade team allegiance and covering a mammoth distance of 120 kilometres. Merckx had won back-to-back editions in 1966 and 1967 with his Peugeot teammate Ferdinand Bracke. The 1969 race would be his first official competition since Blois – criteriums didn’t ‘count’ – and Merckx had been due to partner his compatriot and Faema teammate Julien Stevens. Stevens, though, had also crashed at a recent track meet and been forced to pull out. Over several days at race HQ in Bergamo, discussions dragged on about who would replace Stevens as Merckx’s partner, with Merckx requesting Van Springel. The final decision, though, fell to organiser Mino Baracchi, and he liked the idea of rewarding local lad Davide Boifava for a brilliant first season among the pros with the plum role of partnering Merckx. Merckx raised no objections.
Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal Page 15