French Renaissance

by Jeremy Whittle

  The roads to the north are far more remote, with few settlements, a handful of cars and a slight atmosphere of foreboding. There are a handful of villages perchés, but most of them – Savoillan, Brantes and St Léger du Ventoux – are not particularly welcoming. I haven’t stopped for a coffee in any of them since persons unknown badly scored my saddle outside a café in Brantes, years ago.

  After a few kilometres, I swung off to the right and onto the steady climb to the Col des Aires, away from the Toulourenc, following the slopes of the Baronnies hills and along to the Col de Fontaube, where the view of the Ventoux’s north face, the immense scree and the strange observatory is at its most dramatic. And there, as I rolled through the hairpins coming down the Fontaube’s north side, bottles empty, skin reddening, legs weary, a mere 80 kilometres into my ride, was where it started to get to me.

  It was on the way towards the Ouvèze valley that, even at the hottest part of the day, I realised I was cold. It’s a strange sensation to get goose bumps in 35 degrees, but despite my best efforts to manage the conditions, I was cooking, slowly.

  I carried on, zipping up the gilet, tearing open a gel, gulping it down, now desperate, not for more iced water, but for hot coffee and sugar. I knew from past experience that I was now ‘bonking’, hitting the wall. I kept riding, past the raised chapel of Notre Dame de Consolation at Pierrelongue, feeling suitably inconsolable. I slowed hopefully in Mollans-sur-Ouvèze, circling the sleepy main street for a café, but mid-afternoon in August was siesta time.

  Annoyed with myself for this stupid error, I ploughed on, following the Ouvèze valley and crossing back into the Vaucluse département. In high summer the Ouvèze river is reduced to a trickle, but it remains notorious for one of the most devastating flash floods in the history of the brooding and violent storms that sometimes envelop the Ventoux. In late September 1992, a huge tempête – described at the time as a ‘giant rain-making machine’ – broke over the region, shrouding the Ventoux’s north face, which effectively became a giant sluiceway, emptying itself into both the Toulourenc and Ouvèze rivers.

  During the storm, the temperature in Sault dropped by almost ten degrees in 30 minutes. Three hundred millimetres of rain fell in nearby Entrechaux in six hours. ‘The effect could not have been worse if a dam had broken,’ one rescue worker said afterwards.

  The Toulourenc and Ouvèze converge at the foot of the Ventoux. In the path of the torrent flowing off the mountain was sleepy Vaison-la-Romaine and a busy riverside campsite, the Moulin de César, just south of the town’s old Roman bridge. The flood waters peaked during the afternoon. At least 11 people, of all those who drowned in and around Vaison, were swept away at the campsite. Video footage shows a deluge of filthy water rushing towards the bridge, caravans and campervans – some still occupied – bobbing like corks until they smash into the bridge’s stonework and shatter like glass.

  The water rose higher than any previous known flood level, tearing through houses built high above the riverbank. The frantic rescue operation wore on into the evening, with helicopters plucking soaked and frozen locals off rooftops. Vaison was devastated by the tale of one victim, a baby lost to the waters, after her exhausted mother, awaiting rescue from the torrent, could no longer cling on to her.

  More than 80 houses were destroyed and almost 50 people killed by the floodwaters of the Ouvèze and its tributaries. The catastrophic flooding of Vaison, caused in part by the angry storms that broke over the Ventoux, became one of the most infamous episodes in the region’s history.

  By the time I finally reached Malaucène, my neck and back were aching. Thankfully, the bakery at the foot of the road leading back up the mountain was open. I bought a thick wedge of tarte au pommes and click-clacked across the road to the shady Terrasses du Ventoux café where, with shaking hands, I devoured it and drained two grands crèmes in quick succession.

  I sat for a while, then filled the bidons again, mixing apple juice with ice cubes. The climb out of Malaucène and over the wooded Madeleine and down into Bédoin is no great obstacle, but my legs were like wood. I hauled myself across the Ventoux’s southern foothills, the air thick with heat as the late afternoon canicule reached its zenith. I knew that another pause could lead to a phone call asking to be picked up, so I rode on through Bédoin – ignoring the temptation to join the Lycra-clad loungers enjoying an ice-cold beer at the pavement tables – and downhill away from the mountain, towards Mormoiron, picking up pace as the final haul uphill to Blauvac – and journey’s end – loomed on the horizon.

  The days on a bike that end at snail’s pace, hunched over the handlebars, after you have ridden beyond your limits, are always the most painful. Sometimes, however, they can also be the best. I hadn’t spent so many hours riding for years. Now, as well as an aching back, I also had ridiculous tan lines to show for it.

  Not for the first time, riding in the shadow of the great mountain had reconnected me. For the rest of that year, I rode regularly, for hours at a time, until, eventually, just before Christmas, the dark and chill of the British winter finally overwhelmed me.

  IV

  I was bowled over when Helen told me she was pregnant. After that, our lives changed for ever. But 1961 was a funny year, what with all the success I had early on, in the spring, and then the disappointments that came later.

  Winning the Tour of Flanders was quite something. It meant I was respected as a Classics champion and boosted my popularity in Belgium, even if I hadn’t proved myself in the Tour. After that things went downhill. I picked up a nasty bout of food poisoning that really left me in a right state.

  But then I thought, wrongly, that I was over it, so, like an idiot, I rode the Tour de France. That was a disaster – I only managed three stages, but that was three too many. And it hardly helped my bad knee either. I got that sorted out eventually with some injections from a doctor in Paris.

  Things were getting tough financially and I started to feel the pressure. I hadn’t won many races and, because I’d not finished the Tour, I only picked up seven criterium rides all year. We needed to move out of the apartment in Paris, if we were having a family, but, because I was foreign, I was struggling to get a loan from a French bank.

  I reckoned Ken Dockray, who owned a garage in Ghent, might be able to help us find somewhere to move into. I knew Ken had a lot of contacts and, as it turned out, one of his customers had a small house available. Money was still an issue, but luckily we were hardly charged any rent. That saved us, really, because we’d spent a bit moving into the house and all my savings had gone. The few contracts I’d been up for had fallen through, but I managed to get some track rides in Belgium. Otherwise, well – goodness knows.

  But we were very happy in Ghent. Helen always loved it. It became home. I picked up a 1910 Peugeot and there was even a Tom Simpson Fan Club. In December 1963, Ken got them all to come along to the t’ Kapelleke Sporting Club’s annual do. Helen and I had been invited along as guests of honour. Even though it was a bitterly cold, foggy night, there was still a good turnout.

  I stood up, told a few racing tales from that season, cracked a few jokes and signed some autographs. They even toasted my future success and wished me well.

  It was after midnight when we finally slipped away.

  Eddy

  Late on the afternoon of 10 July 1970, low sunshine bathes the southern slopes of Mont Ventoux, turning the vast expanse of white rock yellow, as evening settles on the Vaucluse. As the shadows lengthen, the colours morph to red and gold and then, at twilight, a blueish purple, until darkness envelops the mountain and all that is visible is the lonely red light winking at the top of the observatory.

  A little earlier that afternoon, his high-cheekboned face set in a rictus of determination, Eddy Merckx hunched over his handlebars and hammered power relentlessly into the pedals as he rode past the spot where, three summers earlier, his team-mate and friend, Tom Simpson, had died. When he reached the point where Simpson collapsed, Merckx falt
ered briefly, seeming distracted. There’s a striking image of that moment, at first glance disarming and baffling, but almost unbearably elegiac and poignant.

  In the photograph, Merckx has one hand on the handlebars, the other hand off the bars clutching a Faema racing cap. A shirtless man in a straw hat leans towards him, shouting encouragement, a half-timbered radio clamped to his ear. Behind him, another man has turned towards the Ventoux’s bleak ridge and the Simpson memorial, as he watches the director of the Tour, Jacques Goddet, stoop to lay a wreath. As Goddet bends down to place the flowers, Merckx doffs his cap in acknowledgement. In the background, a gendarme salutes.

  Merckx knows more about winning than almost any other athlete you can think of. He remains, for most, the greatest-ever cyclist. Only months before he died, Simpson, even though he was his team-mate, had become his rival. In March 1967, an ambitious Merckx bristled with frustration when Simpson stood in his way at the Peugeot team, yet he was reduced to tears by the death of his older team-mate four months later.

  Ironically, given that the pair had come close to a bitter feud during that Paris–Nice, Merckx was the only high-profile rider to attend Simpson’s funeral on 18 July 1967. That was partly because the rest of the British rider’s peers were on that day racing to Bordeaux in stage 18. Merckx, however, was absent from that year’s Tour.

  He once described his tangle with Simpson in the spring of 1967 as being ‘put in my place’. Merckx had taken over the lead in Paris–Nice with a solo win in Château-Chinon, although at that time he was not yet the insatiable ‘Cannibal’ that he later became, even if few, including Simpson, could doubt he was the coming man. Simpson, eight years older, was smart enough to see the writing on the wall. Yet he was one of the few riders ever to fend off Merckx’s terrifying ambition and then hold on to win.

  Their duelling during that Paris–Nice came to a head in the climbs overlooking Toulon when Peugeot team manager Gaston Plaud told Merckx to sacrifice his own chances in support of Simpson. ‘I broke away on Mont Faron,’ Merckx remembered, ‘and Plaud came to me and said, “Tommy’s arriving – can you wait for him?” ’ Merckx agreed to do so, and then rode in support of his team-mate. ‘I made the descent, full gas, and then at the finish, Tom said, “You can win the stage.” But he won Paris–Nice.’

  Merckx later said that the decision to wait for Simpson on the Faron had been ‘totally’ against his wishes. Now, some 50 years on, sitting in a hotel bar in Ghent, Merckx can afford to look back wistfully.

  ‘He flicked me!’ he says, deadpan, of Simpson’s racing in that year’s Paris–Nice, before a big smile creases his face. ‘Tom had a lot of character, he was very British,’ Merckx says.

  ‘But Tommy was also one of my best friends.’

  He pauses and shifts in his seat.

  ‘You see, Tom’s problem was that he had too many business interests. He bought a lot of land in Corsica and, because of that, he didn’t train enough to go to the Tour – and he wanted to win the Tour.

  ‘He was too busy with Corsica,’ Merckx says bluntly. ‘That’s the reason that he died.’

  V

  Eddy’s a great rider. In fact, he’s got the makings of a brilliant rider, but by God, he’s stubborn. He’s been sulking for two days now, bloody ignoring me. I’m here to lead too, though, I’m here to race – I can’t say to him, ‘After you – on you go . . .’

  I’ve got to take my chances – God knows he wins enough already. Plus he’s a lot younger than me – he’s got plenty of years ahead of him to show what he can do. ’Course, he doesn’t see it like that – he just thinks I flicked him. Getting into the break on the République was just good racing – it was not an attack on him. He wasn’t there – what am I supposed to do? I’d warned him what might happen. I can’t hang around for him if he’s not up there.

  Trouble is, there’s three of us here now – me, Roger and Eddy. We can’t all be top dog, we can’t all be leaders. But plaud’s not bothered about what Eddy wants, maybe not as much as he should be. Sometimes I think he cares more about the wine list at the hotel each night!

  Maybe the atmosphere will be better at dinner tonight. We came down off the Faron into Hyères together, and I let Eddy win. I had to really – he put in a decent ride for me. I know I can win overall in Nice and he’s been like a bear with a sore head since he lost the jersey in Bollène.

  I don’t know if he’ll stay at Peugeot after this, though. He wants new riders here, more Belgians, but the French like doing things their way. You need to fit in, to be one of the lads, if it’s going to work out for you. I’ve learned that over the years.

  If I win in Nice, it will only make it harder for him to stay here. But I know that it will make things better for me and I need to win. What with the plan for Corsica and everything, I need the money. If I want a better contract, whoever I race for, I need to do well this year. And not just in Nice. I really need to do well in the Tour.

  I shine my shoes and put on a tie to meet Eddy Merckx, just as I would to meet Ali, Pelé, Nicklaus, Charlton. Something tells me they’d all expect it. Merckx, Ali, Pelé, Sir Bobby – they are the names that typify a golden era of sport, an age of relative innocence, before live TV, corporate marketing, image rights and merchandising – and corporate doping – took over.

  Merckx and I meet in Ghent, Tommy’s old stomping ground, the day after David Bowie died. Ziggy Stardust and the Cannibal may seem odd bedfellows but they are cultural contemporaries. Bowie announced himself with ‘Space Oddity’ in July 1969, the same month in which Merckx won his first Tour de France. But this is 2016. Ziggy is dead and the Cannibal is on crutches. Merckx greets me, struggling for mobility after an operation on his troublesome hip.

  Bowie was 69 when he died and Merckx is only recently 70. On this day he looks his age. Wearing a suit – he is meeting later that day with the Quick-Step board which sponsors the World Tour team – he moves uneasily through the café of the Sandton Grand Hotel on one crutch. After we shake hands, I fuss over him a little as he settles into his chair. It’s quickly clear that he doesn’t want any help. ‘You know, I was on the trainer this morning,’ he says defiantly.

  As well as his relationship with Quick-Step, Merckx has other business interests. In conjunction with ASO, the parent organisation of the Tour de France, he has been the promoter of the Tours of Qatar and Oman, both new races in new territories. And even on one leg, the Cannibal keeps going. ‘I can ride,’ Merckx reiterates. ‘This morning I did a few minutes on the home trainers. Now they say I have to spend two or three days doing nothing. I listen to the doctor these days. Now I only ride for fun.’

  Even when he retired from racing after a gruelling career punctuated by multiple injuries, as much as by success, he didn’t really hang up his wheels. ‘I love sports – all sports. Football, tennis – and cycling. I had a bit of a break when I retired but then I started riding again. Cycling is still the best, even though it was also my job.

  ‘I ride with my friends, but sometimes I also ride by myself. I’ve just been in Monaco for a week and I rode alone. But people see me and want to take a picture, or ride along for a while.’

  By the time Merckx reached the Ventoux stage in the 1970 Tour de France, he had already acquired an aura of invincibility. His victory on the Ventoux was both demonic in its doggedness and, in that late afternoon sunshine, three years after the death of his British team-mate, hugely poignant.

  Merckx’s mood at the start that day was doubly mournful. He had left the stage start in Gap wearing a black ribbon to mark the death only 24 hours earlier of Vincenzo Giacotto, his mentor and manager of the Faema team. ‘I was good friends with Giacotto, because he took me to the Faema team.’ But in terms of paying tribute to Simpson, Merckx had nothing planned. ‘You can’t know how the race will pan out,’ he shrugged.

  Unusually for a mountain stage, that day’s start time had been pushed back, ensuring an even more funereal atmosphere as the peloton arrived at the foot
of the Ventoux late in the afternoon. ‘It was the first time on Ventoux since Tom had died and the organisation was very worried about the heat,’ Merckx said.

  The route took the peloton south, away from the Alps, through Séderon, Montbrun-les-Bains and Sault and then over the Abeilles climb. The bunch descended into Villes-sur-Auzon, speeding towards the intermediate sprint at Mormoiron. There, as Cyrille Guimard led a breakaway, the riders glanced up towards the Giant and took in the scale of the challenge.

  ‘Ventoux’s a very special mountain, because you can see it from so far away – the great bald mountain,’ Merckx says with a theatrical flourish. ‘And in the peloton, once you see it, everybody goes quiet.

  ‘They’re all scared. Everybody’s afraid. It gets so quiet you can hear a fly buzzing through the peloton. That’s how I always remember it.’

  With Merckx himself reeling the break in, there was now little any of them could do to prevent the inevitable. So it was, that, 13 kilometres from the summit and in lengthening shadows, the Belgian accelerated so strongly that, by Chalet Reynard, there was only one possible outcome. ‘I was alone on the mountain for a long time because I attacked in the trees,’ he remembered. ‘The last rider with me was Joaquim Agostinho, but before the Chalet, I broke away from him.’

  It’s hard to imagine any rider of the modern era attacking the Ventoux as aggressively as Eddy Merckx did on that afternoon. The powerful Agostinho, whom Merckx had been wary of since the previous summer, was no pushover, but Merckx simply powered away from the Portuguese. His aggression towards the gradient was almost animalistic. As the sun dropped into the Rhône valley, Merckx’s supremacy proved overwhelming to his rivals.