They were tied together in ways which transcended teams and nationalities. The defending Tour winner that year, Lucien Aimar, for example, was owed £300 by Simpson. It was Aimar’s contract money from a race in the Isle of Man, which had been presented to him in a sterling cheque. Aimar could not change the cheque, so he had given it to Simpson, who had put it in his suitcase. Every time they saw each other, they mentioned it: Simpson was going to give Aimar the cash on the Tour’s rest day, two days after the Ventoux. He never received the money.
Today, Stablinski still does not find it easy to explain their collective grief. He can only manage to repeat this phrase two or three times: ‘We were so traumatised.’ He prefers an anecdote, to illustrate why Simpson was popular, to show how he was one of the boys – the big boys: ‘We rode a criterium at La Rochelle: Poulidor, Anquetil, Rudi Altig’ – the German Simpson beat to win the 1965 world title – ‘everyone. I knew a restaurant there, Chez Jean. We ate there, and were pretty stirred up. We stayed until two or three in the morning. I remember leaving the restaurant, and Altig, who was a bit of a joker, walked out on his hands.
‘Tom wanted to do the same, but he was all over the shop. He kept trying, putting his feet on the wall and so on, but he had loads of small change, keys and papers in his pockets and it all went everywhere. So there he was in the street on his hands and knees picking it all up, but he couldn’t find all the stuff. And the next day he kept saying “I’ve lost this bit of paper, this contract”, and one of us would pull out what he’d lost and wave it at him.’
The image is endearing: the highly paid, celebrated elite of cycling – a five-times Tour winner in Anquetil, world champions in Simpson and Altig – getting drunk, and then scrabbling on their hands and knees to pick lost change out of the gutter in a deserted street in a French provincial town. And Simpson is in his niche, among the best in his sport.
It was not just the best cyclists who felt sick at heart on July 14, 1967, the day after Simpson’s death. The man who ran the Tour de France from 1989 to 2005, Jean-Marie Leblanc, told me why. Leblanc raced modestly as a professional and met Simpson just once. At a race in the south of France early in 1966, Leblanc sat down on a bench to put on his racing kit. ‘Simpson, the world champion, sat down beside me. “Bonjour,” he [Simpson] said. “What’s your name?” “Jean-Marie Leblanc.” “Who do you ride for?” “Where do you live?” and so on.’ Even now, Leblanc can hardly believe that the world champion showed such interest in a colleague of his lowly status. He can’t help but think of Simpson as a nice guy, a man who liked to communicate, who could hunt with the top dogs and spare time for the underdogs. The French word Leblanc chooses to describe him comes from Simpson’s England: ‘un gentleman’.
Simpson’s position among the cycling elite had been earned on merit. To win his status, he had achieved results and celebrity far beyond those of any other English cyclist: five victories in the toughest single-day races on the cycling calendar – the world championship, plus four of the one-day Classics. There were many more near misses. On a good day, Simpson was capable of combining leg power, cunning and killer instinct in a way that was irresistible. His racing was a delight to watch, and there was little the opposition could do about him. Such days were not common in the Englishman’s career, but his surprising world professional road race title win, less than two years before his death, exemplified his style at its best.
The English team leader was not expected to win when he broke away with the German Rudi Altig 26 miles from the finish at Lasarte, near San Sebastian in the Spanish Basque Country: Altig was known as a faster sprinter. But Simpson used his experience and his ability to read a race and a rival. Early on he had not hesitated to race across from the main field to the large lead group which was to dominate the event, and he showed similar sang-froid in dealing with Altig in the final miles when the pair had broken clear. They came into the finish well ahead of the chasers and Simpson launched his sprint just as Altig was changing gear, in the split second when he could not readily respond.
There is no evidence to support the claim that Simpson ‘bought’ Altig, as has been rumoured. Unless this is proven, the world title will remain a testimony to Simpson’s self-belief and lucid thinking after seven hours in the saddle. By this point in a race, clarity of thought is directly related to how much energy a cyclist has left. If you are tired, you can’t think as quickly as the other man.
Altig later revealed that Simpson had ‘played dead’, telling him he had no strength left and luring him into a mistaken feeling of security. Such tricks were all part of the game, and the German seemed impressed rather than aggrieved with Simpson’s cleverness. He made it clear that Simpson was no fluke winner.
Simpson’s cunning is frequently overlooked. It won him his first Classic, the Tour of Flanders in 1961, less than two years after he had turned professional. He was up against a faster and vastly more experienced man, the Italian Nino Defilippis1, in his 10th year as a professional, with seven Tour de France stage wins to his credit. Defilippis was outwitted when Simpson pretended to sprint for the finish and stuck his tongue out to give the impression that his legs were fading. Once the Italian had made his effort and overtaken him, Simpson attacked on his blind side, to win by inches.
Defilippis, is clearly still frustrated 45 years on that he did not win, and claims that Simpson pretended he was struggling (as he did with Rudy Altig in the 1965 world championship). ‘He said to me, “don’t drop me Nino, you can get 10 metres on me in the spirit.’” The Italian also claims that the finish line was moved 100m after the pair crossed it to begin the last lap. When he crossed the line Delilippis thought he had won, and Simpson agreed, the Italian claimed, although this is not borne out by the Briton’s face in photographs of the finish sprint.
What is clear is that Simpson out-thought the Italian, and he showed similar saugfroid in dealing with the French icon Raymond Poulidor at the finish of Milan-San Remo in 1964. Poulidor was slower than Simpson on paper but three years earlier he had won this race, which the Italians call La Classicissima, the Classic of Classics. Simpson manoeuvred him into the windy side of the road and kept in the shelter. The killer instinct ensured there was no mistake.
Simpson’s single day in the yellow jersey in the Tour de France of 1962 best illustrates the obsessive way in which he would pursue a goal. In this case, the target was the prestige, high public profile and lucrative appearance contracts which would go to the first man from outside mainland Europe to lead the great race.
A cyclist with a speciality – time trialling, sprinting or climbing – can use his particular skill to win the maillot jaune by targeting, say, the first time trial of the race. This tactic would win Chris Boardman the jersey in 1994, 1997 and 1998. For the non-specialist such as Simpson, however, there is only one way to earn the maillot jaune: attack, and gain time on the rest. Then repeat the process if necessary. It is physically tiring because of the repeated efforts on a daily basis, and mentally stressful because there is no time in the race when the yellow jersey hunter can relax.
Early in his debut Tour, 1960, Simpson had missed the yellow jersey by a single stage placing: one day he finished third, when second place would have sufficed. Two years later, 12 stages passed before he took the race lead in the first mountain stage at Saint Gaudens in the Pyrenees. That equates to some 1,500 miles of making moves, following moves, watching the other contenders to make sure none steals a march, and doing daily arithmetic: how many minutes do I need? How many seconds can I lose or gain here?
Simpson wore the yellow jersey for a single day, but that barely matters in the broader context of his place in cycling history. The impact reached as far as his home town of Harworth: his mother recalled the postmistress coming to the house in order to tell her: ‘You must send him a telegram, because he’s the first English boy to do this.’
*
Each of Simpson’s big wins had its place in the record books: his historic day in the yell
ow jersey was followed by sixth place overall, making him the first man from outside cycling’s European heartland to come close to the podium in the Tour. He would be the first to win both the world professional road title and one of the great single-day Classics, in the modern era at least.
In the context of what had come before, it was sensational. When Simpson turned professional in 1959, only once had a British team even started the Tour de France: the Hercules squad in 1955. Only one of its number, Brian Robinson, had made the breakthrough into the European circuit, in winning a stage of the Tour in 1958. Of the single-day Classics Simpson won, only Bordeaux–Paris had previously fallen to an Englishman – but that was in the heroic days of the belle epoque 60 years before.
Here too, Simpson captured the imagination of fans in a new way: cycle racing as he understood it – the world of the Tour de France and the great European single-day Classics – had no roots in Britain. When he turned professional in 1959, the only other Englishman on the circuit was Robinson, who was more self-effacing than Simpson on and off the bike. Only the Australian Hubert Opperman, who finished 12th in the Tour and won the Paris–Brest–Paris marathon in the early 1930s, had come from outside Europe and conquered the cycling world in similar style. But no New Worlders followed Opperman’s trail, as other British cyclists would seek to emulate Simpson.
The Briton brought more than novelty value with him. The 1960s were the time of world-beating British exports such as the hovercraft and the Mini, when pop culture was centred on Carnaby Street, when the Beatles and the Stones were shooting to stardom. For all his working-class roots and down-to-earth nature, Simpson brought a small part of the aura of ‘swinging London’ to cycling.
Europe’s affection for the English interloper also had its roots in the Second World War and the Liberation, still recent events in the early 1960s. Simpson was quickly nicknamed Tommy, with all its connotations of the plucky British soldier fighting on a foreign shore. (Ironically, he actually preferred Tom, a name handed down through his family.) L’Equipe’s headline after an early Simpson near-miss in the 1960 Paris–Roubaix was explicit in its D-Day reference: ‘The landing of a Tommy’, using the same word, debarquement, as referred to the Normandy invasion. His Churchillian V-sign after winning the world championship was greatly appreciated, as was the fact that he shared his birthday with the war leader.
At a time when Britain was regarded as insular and aloof, people appreciated the gesture Simpson had made in crossing the Channel to immerse himself in a very un-British sport. Antoine Blondin’s article in L’Equipe on the day Simpson won his yellow jersey was headlined ‘Roule Britannia!’ and made much of the fact that the Englishman was the Frenchman’s ‘beloved and traditional adversary’. But Simpson’s adaptation to his chosen métier had to be total if he was to overcome the obstacles in his path. First, there was the language barrier. From inarticulate loneliness when he first moved to France, Simpson mastered cycling’s three main languages. Initially with the help of his wife Helen, he quickly acquired fluent French: the first step in working out how the sport functioned. He later picked up adequate Flemish and Italian.
Simpson’s best source of information early in his professional career was Robinson, his flatmate and teammate at the Rapha squad between 1960 and 1961. Simpson would constantly ask questions, and sometimes Robinson would take advantage of him. ‘Sometimes I’d fit him up,’ chuckles Robinson. ‘We were in a restaurant once with some French guys and he wanted to say “Where is the toilet?” so I told him “Où est la chiotte?” which means “Where is the shithouse?”, and he yelled it out across the restaurant. Tom got his own back by telling the French lads “The English word for bottle is bollocks”, so when they came over to the Isle of Man they asked for a “bollocks of wine, please”.’
In French, cycling’s lingua franca, he reached a level of fluency where he could earn the admiration of a Frenchman, in this case L’Equipe’s Jacques Augendre, who told me: ‘In 1966 Tom broke his leg skiing, and it cost him a lot of money, so he needed to do a good Tour. “Le Tour paiera la fracture,” he said: the Tour will pay for the break.’ This is a pun on the wordplay between fracture and facture, the French word for bill. It would be sophisticated even for a Frenchman.
The unwritten rules of European professional cycling also had to be learned. These covered the full spectrum, from respecting the moments in a race when it was the convention not to attack – during a collective toilet stop, or at a feeding station – to accepting that in exhibition events the local favourite had to be allowed to win. Simpson had an impulsive nature, which he had to learn to master: early in his career, for example, he would fall foul of promoters simply for competing too enthusiastically.
One incident sums up both Simpson’s shrewdness and the nature of the system he entered: during his first world road championship in 1959, only weeks after he turned professional, he was one of the winning break and was offered money by the eventual winner, André Darrigade, if he would assist the Frenchman. Simpson turned down the cash, knowing that if Darrigade won, as indeed he did, the Frenchman would owe him a favour. Two and a half years later, as his teammate, Darrigade would help him take the yellow jersey in the Tour.
Simpson’s achievement in getting to the very top of cycling can be put in simple perspective. The sport was as distant and alien to the Harworth miners among whom Simpson grew up as Test cricket would be to a fisherman in Saint Brieuc. Five years after welcoming him with ‘Roule Britannia’, Blondin summed up in his obituary the pleasure and satisfaction the Europeans had gained from watching Simpson’s progress: ‘He was our pride.’
There was far more to Simpson, however, than a whiff of Carnaby Street, une belle gueule (a nice face) as the French put it, a place in the history books and a set of results which for a Belgian or an Italian would have been worthy rather than exceptional. Where Simpson touched heartstrings among the press, fans, organizers and his fellow cyclists was in his approach to a race. As the French put it: ‘He left no one indifferent.’
His tactics were straightforward and uninhibited: it was better to try to the utmost, fail and be visible rather than wait and hope. This had been his way even when he had begun racing as a schoolboy. Now, as a professional it guaranteed headlines, and made his public profile higher than that of Robinson, his early mentor. In one of his first one-day Classics, the Paris–Roubaix in 1960, for example, Simpson was a newspaperman’s dream. He led for 25 miles and looked a certain winner until his strength deserted him three miles from the finish. The valiant foreign newcomer, cruelly deprived within an ace of victory, accepted defeat by murmuring the words ‘I nearly got it’. He exemplified le fair-play, the quality so admired in the English. In terms of his public profile, it was a critical afternoon’s work: this was the first race to be shown live on Eurovision, and a whole new audience watched the heroic near miss.
The press would sympathise so much with Simpson’s approach, even if he was unsuccessful, that they sometimes painted him as the moral victor. Pierre Chany, the doyen of French cycling writers in the post-war years, certainly felt that way after the hilly Liège–Bastogne–Liège Classic in 1963. Simpson began attacking 60 miles from the finish, and was swept up within three miles of the chequered flag. He should have won, but finished 32nd, prompting this from Chany: ‘Sensitive souls will have shed a tear for Simpson, caught by an alliance of 30 adversaries when he deserved victory 100 times over. Fellow travellers such as ourselves can only pity the fate of this extraordinary battler, audacious in competition, generous in his efforts, and whose merits are never officially recognized. This man does not receive his due. He is the victim of a curse.’
Throughout cycling and, indeed, sporting history, fans and the press have always found it easier to empathise with a valiant, unlucky battler who gets the occasional big result than with a less charismatic winner. In the 1960s, Raymond Poulidor, who never won the Tour, was more popular than Jacques Anquetil, who won it five times. In the early 1990
s, Claudio Chiappucci was preferred to the robotic Miguel Indurain. After his disastrous spring of 1963, Simpson earned the epithet l’eternel malchanceux – the eternal accursed. In cycling it is not a pejorative term.
On the other side of the Channel, there was pride aplenty in Simpson’s achievements, but it was of a different order: he was the lynchpin at the centre of an entire sport. His funeral in his home town of Harworth was attended by 5,000 mourners, both ordinary fans and the elite of the sport. They stood shoulder to shoulder in a thundery downpour on the little knoll around the 12th-century church, listening via loudspeakers to a service which included Psalm 121: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills’.
A vast procession of cyclists wheeling bikes followed the coffin through the village streets. Some 400 wreaths were piled outside the cemetery a little way away from the church. It could not match the crowd which covered a Ligurian hillside seven years earlier for the funeral of Simpson’s boyhood hero Fausto Coppi, but it was a huge turnout for British cycling.
In his editorial in Cycling, Simpson’s close friend Alan Gayfer expressed the anguish felt by British cycling fans at his loss: ‘Tom Simpson, our own Tom, is dead – what on earth shall we do without him? I am still trying to think straight, to conceive of a world of cycling without the lively face and straightforward comments of “Mr Tom” to guide and to lead.’ The final two verbs are key. Simpson was a sporting ambassador for Britain when he was in Europe. In his home country he was both the figurehead and ambassador for the sport.
When Simpson left for Brittany in 1959 to begin his career in Europe, British cycling was just emerging from the internecine dispute of the post-war years between the proponents of road racing, the British League of Racing Cyclists, and the establishment, the National Cycling Union, who felt that large bunches of cyclists on the roads would alienate the police and the car-driving public. Road racing, European style, had been banned in Britain at the turn of the century: time trialling and track racing had developed instead.
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