Put Me Back on My Bike

by William Fotheringham

  Simpson had travelled over to Europe alone, with £100 in his pocket and no support. He wanted others to follow the trail; the more English cyclists there were and the more successful they were, the greater the interest at home in cycling and in him. A major sponsor would also be more likely to come in and back the English team he wanted. It is not overplaying his stature to say that his interests and the interests of the sport were one and the same.

  The derelict land between two Ghent canals had been empty since before Simpson died. The plot in Tweebruggen, part of the Visserij district, was bought by Simpson but never developed. It was the most striking image I was to find of what he was aiming for when he died. Overgrown with willow herb and long grass, a memorial to his financial ambitions, it was as poignant as the monument high on Mont Ventoux. Simpson speculatively acquired the land, roughly a quarter of an acre, together with a Mr De Roucke, mayor of a village outside Ghent through a specially formed company, Sidero.

  Simpson had already invested in the Ghent property market, building two four-storey blocks of apartments on Maalderijstraat, a main road in St Amandsberg. The flats are still there, their slate-hung, near-vertical roofs all too clearly a product of the 1960s. They were reported to have sold for 750,000BF (£5,400) each. The Tweebruggen acquisition, however, turned out to be a misjudgement. Simpson spent a considerable sum on plans for the property, but could not get the owner of the house on the corner of the plot to sell, and his grand design was shelved for over 30 years, until Helen and Barry Hoban finally sold the land at a loss.

  Most professional cyclists steer clear of business dealings during their careers other than those which relate to their racing: team contracts, endorsements, start money and so on. There simply isn’t time to work out the best investments; it can detract from the training, resting and racing which earns the money in the first place. Simpson was clearly different, always looking out for a bit of extra cash. He kept his eye fixed on the medium and long term, as well as the short term.

  ‘Tom was business,’ says Beurick, pointing at his head to indicate that deals were always in Simpson’s mind. Simpson was a wheeler-dealer, who would buy tracksuit tops in Ghent from a company called Riksport and sell them for a profit to English cycling club lads like Ray Pascoe, who were desperate for anything which looked ‘Continental’. Beurick describes Simpson as a deugniet – the Flemish word for a lovable rascal with a finger in every pie. He still laughs about how, when he was moving from Paris to Ghent, Simpson tried to avoid paying import duty on a radio by smuggling it through customs – the radio had already been smuggled from Germany to France for him by a fellow cyclist – and, of course, he got caught. ‘He was always trying to do things, sell and buy, take things to England, not pay tax. He was like a naughty boy.’

  Land, though, was key to Simpson’s plans. By the time of his death, he had bought a farmhouse near Harworth, split it into units and was renting it out. He and Helen were also renting out a semi in Doncaster, and they owned the property in Corsica. There were other projects, too, which never quite got completed.

  When racing in Torremolinos with Jacques Anquetil, Raymond Poulidor and Jean Stablinski, he got into discussions with the race organizer about buying land for building in what was shortly to become one of Spain’s biggest beach resorts. Stablinski now regrets that they did not take him more seriously in what would clearly have been a highly profitable venture: ‘He pushed us to do it, and he was right.’

  There was more behind Simpson’s dealings than a simple love of money for its own sake. It was more of a need. His contemporaries all noted his financial hunger. It was something he spoke of in virtually every interview, and had begun early in his life. ‘He was always on the lookout to make a dollar,’ says his brother Harry. When he first arrived in Ghent, Simpson felt more than just the need to earn a living. He felt the fear that haunts immigrants: fear of having to return home empty-handed and the loss of face which that entails. ‘In the beginning, when he arrived here [in Ghent], he was very, very careful,’ notes Beurick. ‘He was worried he would have to go back to England with no money.’

  In the letters Simpson wrote to George Shaw, cash is a constant theme after Simpson leaves England for the Continent. No less than a third of his first letter to Shaw from Saint Brieuc deals with prize money and primes, the prizes awarded at intermediate points during a race. ‘I arrived here on Thursday 3rd, raced on the 5th, but had two punctures and lost a crank. However I won about £2, 10s and some provisions in primes . . . I next raced on the 12th . . . I won two primes, 2,000 francs [£2], I got 35,000 for first, and a 5,000 franc bonus from my sponsor. So in two races I have made about £35.’ Simpson was, of course, referring to ‘old’ francs, as this was before the currency was revalued. Simpson’s tone is never boastful when talking about money: his manner simply suggests he was constantly aware of how much he was earning, and constantly wondering at how much money there was to be made compared with the smaller prizes on offer back in England.

  The depth of his obsession glares through as the letter continues with the most intricate details of the prize money, lap prizes and win bonuses available: ‘My sponsor is Santa Rosa, a wine manufacturer. He pays 40 francs a km [bonus] for a 1st, 30 francs for a 2nd . . . this week I ride in St Brieuc 1st – 40,000 [£40] and about 80,000 in primes. The week after in a race 1st – 50,000 with a prime every lap of 1,000 (20) but two special primes of 10,000 on the 10th and 20,000 on the 15th.’ The distance and course of the race are not even mentioned.

  The precarious nature of the profession was clearly playing on Simpson’s mind when he wrote to Shaw on May 12, 1959. The winter is still several months away, but he is already worrying about how he will get through. His winnings, he says, total £200 ‘so you will see I don’t need any money, but I am saving very hard for I may have difficulty getting contracts in the winter on the tracks. So by the time I have lived Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb [sic] in Denmark and Germany, I expect my funds will be low.’

  Simpson may have been keen to make money, but he clearly felt there were ways of getting it and behaving when you had it. A fellow English professional, Michael Wright, rode for Simpson at the world championship in 1965, but was not fit enough to help him much in the race. Wright refused to be paid, only for Simpson to insist he took the money as agreed. ‘It was the correct way to behave,’ says Wright.

  Writing on July 9, 1959, Simpson inquired about Shaw’s performance in the Tour of Britain, but not in terms which were familiar to the Corinthian British. ‘The thing is not the position you finished,’ he wrote, ‘how much did you make [sic].’ There is no question mark: this is a statement of fact. There could be no better summary of the philosophy of the professional cyclist.

  Prize money was only part of what Simpson was seeking. In the 1960s, only a small proportion of a professional cyclist’s income came from winnings and his retainer with his sponsored team. Contracts to ride ‘criteriums’ – short races held around villages and towns across France – and local track meetings were where the real money was earned. The purpose of the race was to show the stars to their public, who would pay to see them – as 25,000 did, for example, at the Château Chinon criterium after the 1967 Tour.

  The rewards were high. In August 1963, it was estimated that Jacques Anquetil, cycling’s top earner at the time, would earn £100,000 ‘in prizes, contract money and bonuses’ for his fourth win in the Tour de France. But there was no security. There were too many cyclists chasing the same team places, creating a buyer’s market for their services. In 1965, a third of the professionals in France were without a sponsor. And so a protectionist policy was introduced: the following year, French teams imposed a ceiling of four ‘foreign’ cyclists per squad. Sometimes it did not matter how good a cyclist was – in 1964, Simpson’s fellow Ghent resident Alan Ramsbottom finished 16th in the Tour de France, but he was out of contract by the end of the following season and was not paid for four months.

  Cyclists fell into three categorie
s in the 1960s. At the top were the 15 or 20 grands coureurs – Simpson, Anquetil, Poulidor, Stablinski, Rudi Altig and their ilk. They took the bulk of the money available, receiving massive appearance money, and big fees to lead a team, or in some cases negotiating a looser retainer so that they could take start money for the major races as well as criteriums. The resources they commanded meant they could eat better food, pay for medical help, buy better equipment and get a better car to drive to the races. One, Louison Bobet, even had his own plane to travel from one criterium to the next.

  In the middle were the bons coureurs, several hundred of them, classy cannon fodder, support riders to the stars. Usually they had contracts with a team, but sometimes their team place was purely on a verbal agreement or a handshake, and sometimes they were contracted for only nine months of the year. These were riders such as Hoban, Denson, and Ramsbottom, for whom much depended on their relations with the big stars as well as their ability to win. Their existence was precarious, because there was always another cyclist waiting to take their place, probably willing to accept less for a foothold on the ladder.

  In the bottom layer were the petits coureurs. One was Simpson’s teammate at Peugeot, Peter Hill. He describes a life close to the breadline in 1967: ‘I got 650 [Belgian] francs – [£65] a month. You could just live off it. My mother-in-law took 12 francs a day for board and lodging, and then I had to pay petrol. Some guys were earning less. There were even Belgians who got a bike and a jersey. There was never any chance to make money.’

  Even the most successful careers could end in financial and personal disaster. At the end of 1966, the pioneering Irish cyclist Shay Elliott, well known to Simpson and all the Ghent community, was bankrupted by a failed hotel venture and a divorce. Elliott had been a devoted teammate to Jacques Anquetil, and had worn the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, but returned to Ireland with next to nothing.

  Simpson himself was made aware of the ruthless, ephemeral nature of the profession in 1961, when he injured his knee and missed much of the season. He wrote about that year in Cycling: ‘I was almost dead and buried once I stopped winning. I thought I was finished. I only got seven [racing] contracts during the season. Fortunately for me, I had a contract with a cycling firm [his retainer with the St Raphael team], otherwise I would have been almost broke.’ That was the year when Simpson won the Tour of Flanders, one of the biggest one-day races on the calendar, yet he says: ‘My winnings totalled about £500 during the year. Barely enough to live on.’ Appearance money would make up the rest.

  Memories were short in cycling: before the world championship win in 1965, Simpson’s contract value had declined to £80 per race – after the victory, as world champion, his fee more than quadrupled. Small wonder that Simpson was earning as much as he could as quickly as possible, and investing heavily. Small wonder that he desperately wanted to keep his place at the top.

  How much Simpson earned revolved around his agent, Daniel Dousset, who acted as a go-between for the riders and organizers, controlling the contracts for the races and the appearance money the riders received. Dousset operated in France where there was one other agent, Roger Piel. Belgium was the fiefdom of Jean Van Buggenhout. Italy was run by Mr Cinelli.

  It was a cartel. If a cyclist was not on one of the agents’ books he had no appearance money: nothing to live off other than prize money and whatever his team might pay him. As a result, the rider–agent relationship was one of dependence on the rider’s side, exploitation on that of the manager. Dousset or Piel could always find new riders; the riders had nowhere else to turn. It was effectively a form of tied labour.

  Half-Brazilian, half-Breton, the thickset Dousset had something of the mafia ‘Don’ about him, with his slicked hair and smart suits, his machine-gun style of speaking and dark glasses. And a little of the boxing promoter Don King, perhaps, in the way he operated. His nicknames among the riders summed up how they saw him: ‘Monsieur 10 per cent’; ‘Monsieur Rockefeller’.

  ‘Dousset was a money merchant, quite ruthless,’ says Ramsbottom. ‘He made a fortune. He wasn’t a likeable person. Some riders loved him, but I could see how much he was creaming off. He took his cut of what we got, you’d be going to events and there’d be 60 riders, doing it day after day, and you’d think, “He’s sat back there, and we’re doing this.” But you had to go with them.’

  The appearance races tended to have a script in which the local rider or the Tour star would win; this is well known. There were also said to be times when Dousset would effectively fix a major race, by ordering the riders contracted to him to produce a certain result, or by telling them to combine against a rider who was out of favour and prevent him from winning. All he needed to do was to offer contracts, or threaten to withhold them. Dousset was clearly fond of Simpson, most of the time. ‘He liked flamboyant, extrovert guys because he could market them,’ says Helen Hoban, adding, ‘There were times though when Tom would rub him up the wrong way. Tom went skiing when he was world champion, broke his leg and Dousset went off his rocker.’

  Dousset put it like this: ‘A champion has to fight for his place constantly. The public continually demands new feats. This is a fast-moving time, and everything is quickly forgotten.’ The agent was the first person to get to Simpson when he won Bordeaux–Paris, and he kissed the rider fondly. He knew what the victory was worth, to both of them. It put Simpson back among the elite after a spell with no big wins.

  Cyclist and agent had to exploit successes quickly and fully. Simpson spent three weeks covering 12,000 road miles after winning the world title in 1965, racing 18 times at £300–£350 per race. This was not excessive for the time: Jean Stablinski, for example, recalls racing 48 times in 42 days after one Tour. Once the time spent travelling – in an age with few motorways, high-speed trains or extensive air networks – was added to the equation, the workloads now seem lunatic in their physical and mental demands. Simpson’s schedule after his first Tour, the 1960 race, shows how relentless the business was. He finished in appalling physical condition, but in the next few days he was racing: in Normandy, Milan, Turin, Sallanches in the French Alps, Lyon, Belgium for a week, Nice – after a 24-hour drive – and finally Central France. Not surprisingly, he ended up exhausted and ill – and checked himself into hospital for a week.

  Interviewed in ‘The World of Tom Simpson’, the British No. 1 sums up the little world in which he was making his fortune: ‘Professional cycling is a bit of a rat race, but if I’m one of the top rats I can bear it.’ That was the situation which led to his death. Cycling was a better way of earning a living than working in a factory in England, but it was only worthwhile if he maintained his earning power.

  The 1967 Tour came at a critical turning point for Simpson: he had been a professional for eight years, and ‘had given himself another two in which he needed to put away a further £60,000’, recalls Colin Lewis, Simpson’s room-mate in the 1967 Tour. It amounted to the final push before retirement, or perhaps a brief, lucrative second career riding winter six-day races on the indoor velo-dromes. Simpson had more than his appearance money at stake in that Tour though. After five often frustrating years in the French Peugeot squad, he had reached a verbal agreement to ride alongside his close friend Felice Gimondi, the 1965 Tour winner, in the Italian Salvarani team in 1968. He would take Vin Denson with him. The size of his retainer with them would depend on his performance in the Tour.

  The start of the year had gone well for Simpson, with the biggest stage race victory of his career, in the Paris–Nice ‘Race to the Sun’, and two other stage wins in the Tour of Spain. Fine victories as they were, however, these were not the kind of results which would draw the crowds to a village in central France or a track side in Brittany. They did nothing for his market value. 1966 had been a disaster, and he had not won a really big race since the Tour of Lombardy at the end of 1965. His public profile was slipping, and with it his market value. Hence Dousset’s concern when Simpson rode the 1967 Tour de France
in a restrained manner, merely holding on to the leaders rather that producing the popular do-or-die moves which were his hallmark. Overruling his instincts and riding a tactical race was, as he had told Harry Hall, the best way to ensure a high finish overall. Jean Stablinski, however, felt Simpson was making a mistake. He told him: ‘You are the kind of rider who can wear the yellow jersey, win a stage, raise hell, but you can’t last 22 days of racing.’

  Dousset clearly put pressure on Simpson during that Tour. He told Simpson he needed to make a greater impact on the race, the very evening before the fateful Ventoux stage, when the pair had dinner in Marseille. ‘They went out together and he [Simpson] came back at 9.30, which I remember vividly because it was late for him,’ says Colin Lewis. ‘He was concerned about something Dousset had said to him, and made a phone call to someone when he got back,’ Lewis continues. ‘He was a bit agitated. When he calmed down, he started talking about how important the stage was the next day, how it was a make-or-break day.’

  Before his death, Dousset said that he had told the British leader that as far as he, Dousset, was concerned, the British leader was having a bad Tour. The scale of appearance money values which he would draw up for the criteriums would depend on the Tour result. If Simpson did not perform, Dousset told him, he would not receive his usual fee for the round of criteriums after the Tour. Simpson needed either to finish in the first five or win a stage. Even though Simpson was unwell, the manager had in effect held a gun to his head.