by Paul Howard
Yet even Anquetil seems to have begun to tire of living up to his own reputation. The more Jeanine organised parties and surrounded him with people, the more he would take himself off into his woods to seek out wild boar or to watch the stars (even if Dieulois says he was always happy for company – or maybe just his company – on these nocturnal sorties). Indeed, he had become a passionate amateur astronomer. ‘I remember him following stages of the Tour with me, and he’d get this big book out,’ recalls Marillier. ‘At first, I wondered what he was going to talk about – gear ratios or something. Not at all. It was his records of the stars. He was crazy about stars. He had a telescope. He was obsessed with them. He’d say Uranus is doing this at the moment or Saturn doing that. I’d say, “What are you bothering me with that for in the middle of the race?” He’d just say it was very interesting. Ah, ce Jacques.’
By the time of his relationship with Dominique, the parties may have reduced significantly but not his passion for the outdoors and the night. ‘His life was very straightforward,’ she insists. ‘He liked being outside. He was a man of nature. A lot of cyclists are like that, by the way. When you look at them, they all need to be outside. Look at Bernard Hinault. He likes being outside, and there are lots of others.’
Anquetil himself painted a similar picture when asked by Lui magazine on the eve of his retirement how he anticipated growing old: ‘In peace and quiet like everyone else, I suppose. Another Anquetil will be born, an Anquetil who will ride 50 kilometres on the bike each week just to prove to himself that he can still do it. An Anquetil who will be able to fulfil his desire for peace and his love of the outdoors. I’ve always wanted a farm in Normandy. Now I have more land than I ever imagined. I am a man fulfilled.’
Perhaps the most crucial element of this description is the prospect of the birth of a new Anquetil and the implied discontent with elements of his existence to date that this suggests. This sense of dissatisfaction seems to have been exacerbated rather than mitigated by events after he retired, as L’Équipe’s Philippe Brunel explains: ‘I was in a restaurant with Anquetil and Pierre Chany, and Chany asked Anquetil what would he most like to be if he wasn’t who he was. Straight away he said a transvestite: “I’d like to dress up and be someone else, someone who nobody knows, so I could be somebody else.” It was quite remarkable. I think by saying that, he wasn’t just saying he wanted to be someone else, he was saying how much he wanted to be himself.’
Brunel attributes this desire to the adverse consequences of being so well known: ‘His stature and his popularity meant he couldn’t be himself. That’s why he ended up with this longing to become someone else, wanting to dress up as a transvestite or wanting to go off into the woods and hide himself away. Just to want to be someone else from time to time, to have all the things that we take for granted through being anonymous, the pleasure of being somewhere and not being recognised. That’s the true cost of fame. Eddy Merckx tells you the same thing today. You imagine Merckx in Belgium. He can’t go anywhere without people coming up to him and saying, “Hello, Eddy.” If he goes to the shops, it’s in the papers – his wife, his kids, know everything. Anquetil had to live with that too.’
For want of being able to regain his anonymity, Anquetil appears to have succumbed to the stresses and strains created by trying to reconcile two distinct lifestyles – the one dictated by his reputation, a reputation he was too proud not to live up to, and the one dictated by his own desires. For some people, this inability to choose between the two was tantamount to ensuring that his prediction of his own early death, made after his father died, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘Yes, maybe,’ accepts Marillier. ‘He knew he was taking risks. But he was also like the others, like Serge Gainsbourg . . . those who say it’s better to live intensely for a few years rather than just hang around. He certainly knew the symptoms. He’d say, “I’ve got a bad stomach.” We’d say, “Of course, it’s the whisky.” He’d say, “What do you mean?” Then he was off again. There was always this spirit of challenge, of defiance. He defied the bike, he defied death, he defied cancer, he defied everybody – that’s Anquetil.’
Dieulois agrees: ‘He had certainly been a bit negligent with his health, and, what’s more, it was in a domestic context that was a bit difficult and that had affected his morale at the time. It didn’t facilitate his determination to look after himself.’
Nevertheless, and perhaps not surprisingly in the light of her being his partner at the time of his death and to some extent a reason for him to want to keep living, Dominique suggests otherwise: ‘It’s not that he didn’t look after himself, at least that’s what I think. My understanding is that Jacques was stressed by his life as a cyclist, which was so wearing, so hard. Then, later, he was also worn out by his family life, and when you put yourself under such stress, that’s the death of the body. There’s only so much a body can take, and when it’s been under strain for a whole lifetime . . .’
Dominique even perceives the delay in seeking a diagnosis as normal: ‘Of course, he would say he was tired, and he couldn’t understand why he was tired, but it was just everyday ailments. It wasn’t anything more. He was 50, after all, and with all that he still did in a day, on the farm, with the animals, rushing here and there. I’m also worn out by the end of the day. And you know how it is: you have a bad stomach, then it goes, then you think about something else, life moves on . . . After a while, maybe you say, “Yes, I’ll go to the doctor,” but then you realise you’ve things to do, so you say you’ll do it next week, and then the same happens the following week. Time passes – one year, two years. That’s how it happens. And that’s how it happened.’
After his operation to have his stomach removed, Anquetil was initially given the all-clear; at least, the operation itself was deemed a success, even if he did have to be given extra doses of anaesthetic to knock him out. This apparent success was all the excuse Anquetil needed to once again ignore medical advice: ‘The day after my operation, the nurse told me I mustn’t get out of bed. How on earth could I do that? As soon her back was turned, I went off for a wander.’
According to Darrigade, who went to visit him while he was in hospital, his menu was somewhat modified, however: lemon tea with biscuits when he woke up; porridge and an egg at 10 a.m.; a sole at lunchtime; an artichoke at 4 p.m.; and a saveloy for dinner. Yet only nine days later, he was once again fulfilling his role as directeur sportif for the French national team at the world championships in Villach in Austria. ‘He was drinking beer and eating his meals with us. He behaved as if nothing had happened,’ said one of the riders.
However, normal life only returned for a short period. On 10 October, during a trip to Colmar in eastern France, Anquetil was once more admitted to hospital. Eight days later, he was flown back to the Saint Hilaire Clinic in Rouen. Apart from the occasional afternoon spent at home, he never left the hospital again. He died, with Sophie and Dominique by his side, at 7 a.m. on 18 November 1987. According to France Dimanche, Dominique asked him if he needed anything: ‘He looked at her, took her hand and didn’t respond. His final moments were free from suffering.’
The extent of his suffering prior to that should not be understated, however. He confessed to not being able to tolerate radiotherapy, and in the last month spent in hospital he was covered in bruises, which made even the slightest movement painful. He was frequently given morphine to dull his pain, if not to send him to sleep completely. ‘She wants to knock me out,’ he told one reporter when a nurse was about to give him his next shot. ‘Otherwise it’s just too painful all over. I’m convinced it’s transferred to the collarbone and to my spinal column as well. I can tell because it hurts to touch them. Tomorrow, I’m having a scan to see if it hasn’t also made it to my liver.’
Yet he refused to let this parlous state dampen his spirits. After learning from one of the 3,500 letters he received after his diagnosis that the record for someone to live without a stomach was 42 years, he said, ‘If I can keep
going that long, I’ll have nothing to complain about.’ Darrigade also recalls his remarkable strength of character when his son Christopher had to be admitted to hospital following an asthma attack. ‘Dominique didn’t know where to go, to me or her son, both of us sick but in different rooms,’ Anquetil told Darrigade. ‘In fact, we lead parallel lives at the moment, Christopher and I. Both of us have a siesta in the afternoon, and we eat our mashed up food from little pots. This can cause problems. When I take one of his, he gets angry and comes and eats half of mine, out of principle.’
In fact, the reserve and distance for which he’d been so chastised as a cyclist had now become a dignity in the face of death that would inspire a whole legion of new admirers. Even in his reduced state, he still managed to be a source of inspiration to others: ‘I had 80 calls yesterday, but one that touched me profoundly was from a 60-year-old lady with cancer who said it made her feel better to hear me talk about having cancer – it made her feel as though it wasn’t a disease to be ashamed of.’
Anquetil may not have been ashamed, but he certainly had no intention of letting his suffering show. Once again, he was inspired in this by his son: ‘I went back to the house, and Christopher came and gave me a big cuddle. He asked why I was sad, and I said it was simply that I was tired, but I vowed that he would never again see me downcast. Mustn’t let standards slip!’
Richard Marillier went with Bernard Hinault to see Anquetil for the last time a week before he died. Even at that late stage, he was intent on putting on a brave face. ‘I’d called Dominique to say we’d like to see Jacques,’ Marillier recalls. ‘We could see it was the end. She said, “Yes, but he’s in hospital not at the house.” We said we’d go to the clinic, but she said he wouldn’t have that and that we should go to the chateau anyway. We got there and sat in the living room, from where you could see the steps leading to the front door. Dominique said to wait there and that an ambulance would be bringing him soon. The ambulance came and stopped by the steps. Two guys brought him out and literally had to carry him up the steps. He hadn’t seen that we could see him being carried, so he opened the double doors into the living room himself and came in as if he’d seen us just the day before. “Hello, fellas. It’s great to see you. Thanks for coming . . .” he said, as if nothing had happened. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life. He sat down between us on a settee, and there was a rugby match on TV. He said, “Let’s watch that. That’ll be great.” He had a pain-killing tube going into his arm, but he said, “I’m fine. I’ve got three cancers, but it’ll take more than that to get me. I’ll show them. You know me . . .” But you could see he was wearing himself out. Before the end of the first half, he said, “I’ve got to go, because they’re waiting for me back at the clinic. It’s been great to see you.” And off he went. Eight days later, he was dead.’
Epilogue
CONTROVERSY HAS CONTINUED TO surround Anquetil in death as in life. After being allowed a few years to develop in the French national consciousness into a lamented wise old man of cycling, the publication in 2004 of his daughter’s recollections of her childhood and the unique family relationships involved thrust the more contentious aspects of his life back onto the front pages. And not just the front pages. Sophie’s book appeared briefly in the best-seller charts, while she and her two mothers – Annie and Jeanine – went on national television to discuss their life with Anquetil. Dozens of articles appeared in both the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers, while Internet chat rooms buzzed with comment.
Although Sophie was sometimes lauded for her honesty, not all of it flattered her or her father. While the more considered comments in the mainstream press hid any disapproval behind discussions of the complexities of Anquetil’s character and the apparent consent of all those involved (or whether or not such consent could really exist), the less regulated world of the Internet saw passions soar. Some commentators criticised Anquetil for his ‘immoral’ behaviour; many more pointed the finger at Sophie for apparently seeking to make money out of her story or for tarnishing her father’s reputation.
I asked Sophie how she felt at the sometimes very personal vitriol she had encountered as a result of writing her book: ‘There was one thing that I hadn’t at all imagined, and that was that when the book came out there was a whole host of other confessional books that came out at the same time [biographies of the controversial family lives of popular French actor Yves Montand and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, for example]. In those, there are stories that are nice and not so nice, difficult to accept and not so difficult to accept, and this coincidence meant that for those who hadn’t read my book this media storm implied a pejorative side to it that just doesn’t exist in the book itself. That’s to say, all those who’ve bothered to read it realise that I’ve not at all tarnished the image of my father. On the contrary, it gives him a new dimension. It helps people understand things about him – his life, his reserve, his desire to protect himself, not liking being a public figure, wanting to protect his clan, his private life. It perhaps helped them understand him a bit more, but those who didn’t read the book and just read the press got stuck on the bit about how he had a child with the child of his wife. They don’t understand his motivations – why or how he got there. And that’s why I think it had to be somebody from inside, who lived it, who had to tell the story. Who else can truly understand his motivations if they weren’t involved? You can only come at it from outside with judgement, and I didn’t want to judge what he did. I just wanted to explain why it happened as it did.’
Yet it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise that such revelations would inspire a media frenzy. Even in France, where individual privacy is respected far more than it is in the UK – article nine of the Code civil enshrines this right to privacy in French law – a sex scandal or an illegitimate child can still make the headlines. It may not have been until after the death of former president François Mitterrand that the papers felt comfortable discussing his numerous affairs and a hitherto secret daughter, but discuss them they did (even if the most widespread reaction was a Gallic shrug accompanied by the slightly unbelieving and rhetorical question ‘only one secret daughter?’).
Of course, there are very few stories that can compare to Anquetil’s, but those that do have been at the centre of considerable scrutiny. Last year’s marriage between a 24-year-old Argentinian man and his 82-year-old wife made it all the way round the world. One notable aspect of the relationship, lost behind the headlines stressing their age difference, was that Reinaldo Waveqche claimed to have fallen for Adelfa Volpes after going to live with her after his mother died when he was only 15. As with Anquetil and Annie, the older partner had for some time played the role of parent.
The same is true of Woody Allen and his relationship with his erstwhile stepdaughter, now wife, Soon-Yi Previn. The extent of his role as a father figure has been widely debated. In Marion Meade’s biography of Allen – The Unruly Life of Woody Allen – Soon-Yi herself is quoted as saying, ‘He was never any kind of father figure to me. I never had any dealings with him.’ Her brother, Moses Previn, disagreed: ‘He was a 12-year boyfriend to my mom, and then he started going out with my sister. How could he do that?’
Regardless of the intricacies of Allen’s role as a parent, the criticism of his behaviour has been almost unanimous. Meade suggests that as well as legal fees running into millions of pounds and the loss of his children after a vitriolic custody battle, his audience as a film-maker has also abandoned him. ‘There are some things people never forget,’ explains one commentator. ‘I don’t think Woody’s scandal will ever go away. It has cost him his primary audience. Women in particular abandoned him. The technical definition of incest doesn’t matter so much as the fact that he meddled with the family, and you can’t do that.’
Yet although this description could also apply to Anquetil, he has, by and large, escaped such opprobrium. It is not without irony, however, that the very media activity that Pour l’amour de Jacq
ues aroused, and the relative lack of condemnation that Sophie suggests is evidence that more people are now able to understand her father, has provoked a degree of frustration, sadness, even outright contempt from those close to Anquetil – often vented towards Sophie.
Dominique is diplomatic when I ask her about it but would clearly rather Sophie’s book had never been written: ‘When Sophie wrote her book, she called her father a sultan, and I said, “Wait a minute. Your father wasn’t a sultan. He didn’t have several wives. That’s got nothing to do with it.” So she changed the title. Yet the journalists and the papers saw sultan and picked up on it, and they had no right to do that. A lot of people took against the book, and a lot of people who were his friends took against Sophie after what she wrote, as it wasn’t entirely kind to her father. She should have respected . . . I let her do what she wanted. Perhaps she needed to do it for herself, but I think it was a lack of respect for her father to have written about his life.’
Most of the people I spoke to for this book were happy to discuss all aspects of Anquetil’s life – in some cases happy to demonstrate that their friendship transcended his obvious failings – yet were disappointed that Pour l’amour de Jacques had brought it all out into the open. A lot of people questioned her motives. She says that there were several reasons for writing the book, including a long-standing desire to write, wanting to quell rumours by having someone from the family to tell the story – but not Annie, her mother, who she says had also thought about writing a book – and because her husband encouraged her. Even Jeanine told me she wasn’t greatly enthusiastic about it: ‘My son and I didn’t like the idea very much.’ But then, with what seems to be typical resilience, she brushes all the controversy to one side: ‘Hey, when I think about all that, when I’m a bit downcast, I remind myself I didn’t waste my time in a factory all day. I just think about the good times. I had an exciting and enjoyable life, and a wonderful place to live. I got to meet de Gaulle, to meet artists. My life was made richer by all that. As for all the little domestic squabbles. Bah!’ (This classic, untranslatable French expression of indifference is, of course, accompanied by another Gallic shrug.)
