Put Me Back on My Bike

by William Fotheringham

  Tom Simpson was a victim of the system of exploitation and insecurity, but he had no illusions about what he was doing, and cannot be held up as an innocent. He was working the system as hard as he could, and it backfired.

  Down the motorway from Ghent, on the other side of the French border, lies the little town of Valenciennes, home of Jean Stablinski.2 Stablinski had much in common with Simpson: he was also an immigrant. Christened Jean Stablewski, he was the son of one of the Poles who moved to northern France in the 1920s to work in the mines and factories. Like Simpson, he was one of the grands coureurs; like Simpson, he was never really a man of the Tour de France, but a world champion and a consistent, popular winner of one-day Classics. They often travelled together to the criteriums. He speaks fondly of the Englishman; he liked talking to Simpson, who was one of the riders he sought out in the peloton for conversation when a race was quiet.

  The small, dapper Stablinski is clearly enjoying a prosperous retirement. The car is big, but not ostentatious. The chintzy, lavishly decorated house is one of three on a plot of land he bought just before he gave up racing – the others have been sold. The coffee is served in thin, delicate china cups; the table on which the pot sits is ornate, in the 17th-century style. He is clearly a man of some stature in the local community: after talking to me, Stablinski’s next meeting is with the mayor of a town nearby to discuss organizing a minor cycle race. After he hung up his wheels, he worked as a team manager, launched his own range of bikes, and did a bit of PR for a local firm. Now, he spends every July at the Tour de France glad-handing corporate guests and supervising the anciens coureurs. These are the old stars who work in the hospitality village and the guest cars, serving up pithy anecdotes and explaining racing tactics to deputy marketing managers from Coca Cola France, Nike and Crédit Lyonnais. Doping is not a topic he likes to discuss, but he will talk at length of his racing exploits and memories of Simpson.

  Stablinski has not given up riding his bike, despite being slave to it for 15 years. He goes out for short rides, but makes a point of never carrying a bottle of water in the cage on the frame, so that he can stop in a café for a beer, which was something he never could do when the next race was always on his mind.

  Financial security, status in the community, freedom to choose your own obligations: Simpson might have enjoyed these things in Corsica rather than northern France, but it is only necessary to visit Stablinski to see the future for which the Englishman was striving on that hot afternoon in July 1967.

  More than anywhere else apart from Mont Ventoux, Simpson left his mark among Ghent’s elegant cafés, big, curlicued churches like wedding cakes, trams and quiet net-curtained backstreets. As well as the remains, finished and unfinished, of his ventures into the property market, his bust still stands in the entrance hall to the indoor cycling track in the sportpaleis. It is nicknamed the Kuipke, the ‘hip bath’, because of its terrifyingly steep, Wall of Death-style bankings.

  Beurick – who else? – was the driving force behind this permanent memorial in the days when Ghent was mourning its adopted son. A couple of months after Simpson’s death, Beurick organized a race – starting, naturally, outside Den Engel – and managed to persuade Simpson’s fellow professionals to turn up for nothing and without prize money. He raised 85,000 Belgian francs. ‘In memory of a great gentleman’, says the inscription on the pedestal, although on the day I visited, the great gentleman was adorned with plastic beer glasses and screwed-up programmes from a rock concert held there the previous night. Outside is a quiet park, which has hardly changed in the 40 years since it was used as the backdrop to a Belgian television film of Simpson, who appears in full ‘Major Thompson’ get-up of bowler hat, sharp suit and umbrella. Through the artificial grottoes and groves of trees he strolls, to a peaceful seat where he reads a Daily Express, which is leading with a story on the Cuban missile crisis. He plays the part to perfection.

  The ‘Sportpaleis’ was where Simpson raced on his first visit here in 1958. Impetuous as usual, he did not ride to the preordained script and humiliated the locals. The outraged organizer threatened to shoot him if he did not get off the track, and added that he would never ride another amateur race in Ghent – but, as a professional, Simpson became a regular here.

  British and Australian cyclists still come to Ghent to race – in 2001 it was home to the British national champion Jeremy Hunt – but they have never come again in such numbers or with such widespread local support. If there is a little reminder of the two-wheeled community which thrived here 35 years ago, it comes in November when British fans flock over in numbers to the Ghent six-day.

  The Ghent outing is a tradition among British cyclists, particularly in the south of England, which dates back to trips organized by Cycling magazine in the 1960s to see Simpson ride the race – 120 of them, for example, in 1965. It is only appropriate that when the British fans enter the ‘hip bath’, they walk past the statue of the man whose feats prompted the magazine to bring over their predecessors.

  Simpson’s death had an even greater public impact here than in his home country. Belgian television devoted a whole evening’s viewing to the man it described as ‘English by birth, Belgian at heart’. They ran through his last interviews and the best racing moments of his career. The memorial service in St Amandsberg’s Catholic cathedral was packed. ‘In the streets, in the cafés, they talk of nothing else’, wrote Marcel de Leener in Cycling.

  Once Simpson had gone, the British cycling scene in Ghent slowly withered. Hoban and Helen stayed on in Mariakerke until Hoban retired from racing in 1981. When they returned to the UK, both Simpson’s daughters stayed on in their adopted homeland; Joanne now lives in St Amandsberg, close to Den Engel, while Jane’s home is Laarne, on the outskirts of Ghent.

  The Simpson Grand Prix ended in the early 1970s, when Beurick fell out with the president of the supporters’ club, Mr Pauwels, who wanted to rename the race after himself. The Velotel Tom Simpson closed in 1976 and was turned into a disco. It burned to the ground a few years later. Beurick is still looking for the trophies, record books and photographs he left in Den Engel when it was sold.

  Ramsbottom moved back to England; Denson and his wife Vi closed their bar and did the same. Beurick went through a period of disillusionment and depression after Simpson’s death. He then offered his services to Graham Webb, tipped as Simpson’s successor, bringing him to Ghent and looking after him when he turned professional. After winning the 1967 amateur world championship, though, Webb failed to produce the goods; both men brought Beurick only disillusionment. Meanwhile, as the willow herb grew on the corner of derelict land between the two canals in Ghent, Daniel ‘Rockefeller’ Dousset enjoyed a prosperous retirement in a villa in the south of France.

  Sallanches, September 6, 1964

  On the rain-soaked finish straight in the heart of the French Alps, three men are sprinting for the world championship. The Dutchman Jan Janssen is first, in his trademark dark sunglasses in spite of the near dark. As he raises his arms to the sky in celebration, the Italian Vittorio Adorni and Raymond Poulidor of France are a few bike lengths behind.

  Tom Simpson is sprinting too, head down, back bent, 20 metres behind Poulidor. As so often, he is the moral winner. He has had cuts down his side and a bent pedal since his crash on the fourth lap, but was the only favourite who bestirred himself to chase what would have otherwise been the winning escape.

  For 42 of the 165 miles he rode alone in the soaking wet, gradually closing the gap, but when he rode up to the last survivor, the Frenchman Henri Anglade, the other favourites were close behind. Janssen, Poulidor and Adorni had saved their energy while Simpson had exhausted himself, and they rode past him with ease.

  The Englishman knew his only chance was to try again; painfully he escaped the bunch, and in the final straight he closed on the three leaders. If they had hesitated even for a moment, he would have overtaken them; instead they sprinted for the line, and he was left hanging. So near, bu
t so far.

  This frustration is painfully familiar: in 1959, with a mere three months’ professional racing under his belt, he managed fourth. In 1961, he was ninth. Last year, in the little Belgian town of Renaix, he could have won if the Irishman Seamus Elliott had cooperated when they escaped the field. Simpson had offered £1,000 to Elliott to help him but to no avail; today he would have given £4,000 to anyone who would help him win. There were no takers and, once again, no medal. Next year, he tells himself, it will be different.

  1 Beurick’s links with English cycling pre-date this encounter; according to one cyclist, Malcolm Smith, cyclists from England were living at and racing from, the Café Den Engel as early as 1957, while Beurick acted as Great Britain team manager at a race in Bruges in August 1958, in between Belgian national service duties.

  2 Sadly, Jean Stablinski died in July 2007.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘If It Takes Ten to Kill You, I’ll Take Nine’

  ‘YOU BIG-HEADED BASTARD,’ was Colin Lewis’s first thought when he met Tom Simpson. Lewis was an amateur in the Milk Race round Britain event in 1964; Simpson was appearing in a circuit race at the Herne Hill stage finish. Simpson’s verdict on the Milkmen was typically succinct: ‘They look like a bunch of old men.’ Lewis was not amused. Later that year, when the pair met again, Simpson struck the amateur as ‘a miserable bastard, very egotistical’.

  Yet if Lewis’s large personal archive of magazine articles, photographs and cuttings about Simpson is anything to go by, he has since become fascinated by the man and the contradictions he presents. His memories of Simpson are stored on 12 hours of audio tapes, the fruit of a week-long trip to a Greek island to get away from distraction and to let his mind travel back.

  Lewis ended up getting closer to Simpson than most. In the two weeks he spent sharing a room with the world champion before his death on the 1967 Tour, the insights Lewis gained into Simpson’s personality made him realize he had got the champion all wrong. ‘I warmed to him,’ says Lewis. ‘I started to respect him for his attention to detail. Everything was down to a T.’

  It is said of professional cyclists that their quality comes out in the way they organize life on the road. Simpson was an object lesson to Lewis, who was in his first year as a professional. Everything he did before and after each day’s stage was methodical, measured, to save energy and reduce stress. After the stage finish, for example, Simpson would empty his jersey pockets onto a table in the room, and would then divide the clothing into what could be worn again and what had to be washed. Jersey and shorts were folded up and put in the suitcase. This was in contrast with the more relaxed approach of Vin Denson, with whom Lewis was initially supposed to share. No sooner had Denson turned up at the start than he was involved in some larks with a group of Italian riders, who had drilled a hole in the hotel room wall and installed a fish-eye lens to watch the activities of a couple on honeymoon. The team manager, Alec Taylor, did not feel this was the right example to set a new professional, and made Lewis room with Simpson.

  Lewis was struck by Simpson’s ambition. He still says that he has never met a more competitive person than the British leader. As a boss, the ex-world champion was demanding – ‘but he had every right to be,’ says Lewis. ‘He was going for the top three, with a makeshift team. He was a star, and he expected everything to be right.’ He would spend at least an hour and a half being massaged each night by his soigneur Gus Naessens – a red-faced, sweaty Belgian of 18 stone or more, with a deep booming laugh and poor English – who did not seem interested in Lewis, but would occasionally grunt at him. Lewis’s nightly session with the team’s Dutch masseur Rudi Van der Weide would take a maximum of half an hour.

  As the name domestique implies, the relationship between star and two-wheeled helper was feudal – and still is today. Lewis had a brand-new cotton racing hat with Great Britain on it, of which he was very proud. (‘I’m a hat man,’ he says now. ‘I love those cotton racing hats.’) Riding along one day, Simpson asked him for the hat, and Lewis asked why. Simpson replied, ‘I want to have a shit in it.’

  There are no toilet stops on the Tour de France, so answering nature’s call is an improvised affair. Simpson stopped, went behind a lorry by the roadside, did what had to be done, and the hat played its part, as hats still do to this day. As Lewis remembers the episode, with a mixture of amusement and disgust, he recalls that, to add insult to injury, he was the one who had to tow Simpson back to the bunch afterwards.

  Today, Lewis is a dapper 59-year-old, as slender about the midriff as when he raced as a professional. It seems a long way from the glamour of the Tour de France to repairing punctures and adjusting gears in his small, neatly kept cycle shop off a main road in the Devon resort of Paignton. There is the usual cluttered workshop out the back, a picture on the till desk of Colin, arms in the air, winning a big bike race back in the 1970s. Next to it is a child’s first bike, waiting for repair.

  When I began racing in the 1980s, I would often come up against Lewis, the terror of the south-west for all that he was then in his forties. He was a man with a certain aura: he had ridden the Tour de France and was one of the Holdsworth team who had dominated professional racing in Britain in the early 1970s. Lewis was also legendary for his ferocious competitiveness. There was a story that he once knocked another rider off for not pulling his weight on a club ride.

  Lewis’s urge to ride his bike is still there. A couple of months before we met, Lewis competed in a mass ride through the Pyrenees following the course of a Tour de France stage over three mountain passes, and was highly placed. When we met, he showed me the start sheet for the next weekend’s event, which included most of the stiffest hills on Dartmoor. Even as we talked, he was worrying about fitting in his training ride that evening.

  For all the fire in his belly, Lewis is not a man who is in cycling merely for what he can get out of it. As I sit in the back of the shop, a local schoolboy in full racing kit drops in. Lewis makes him welcome, chaffs him a little, drops a couple of hints about what he should be doing. The lad doesn’t buy anything, merely shoots the breeze for half an hour or so, and then rides on. He has gained his little whiff of the Tour de France, however distant, and Lewis has given it to him without a hint of unwillingness.

  I had known Lewis for some 15 years from races here and there, and the diatribe he directed at me when I first called about Simpson came as a shock. Lewis did not mind me telephoning. He was not angry with me in any way, but he could not prevent the fault lines of anger, running back 34 years, coming to the surface. His vexation with the whole business had been fed by the conflict which had sprung up with Simpson’s widow Helen and her husband Barry Hoban three years previously when Lewis was interviewed by David Walsh for the Sunday Times. He still has the letter from Helen accusing him of betraying Simpson’s memory. As a result, Lewis did not know what to do when I called him. The unspoken questions were not hard to imagine. Should he talk to me and risk further conflict? Did he want to be accused of blackening Simpson’s name again? Was it worth raising the old ghosts?

  Like many British cyclists, Lewis had begun racing abroad with a certain degree of naivety about performance-enhancing substances. At the world championships in Sallanches in the French Alps in 1964, he had finished 16th in the amateur race and was watching the pro race when, just as things hotted up, he heard a big-name French rider yell into the pits that he wanted la moutarde on the next lap. ‘I thought the guy wanted a mustard sandwich and couldn’t work out why.’ La moutarde is cycling slang for a bottle containing a stimulant for the end of a race.

  A season spent racing in France taught Lewis a little more about the ways of the continent – he would see riders injecting themselves at the start of races, and accepted that this was part of the European game. Nevertheless, he was taken aback at the 1967 Tour when one of the first things he was asked by his soigneur, Van der Weide, was whether he used drugs. ‘No,’ said Lewis. Did he want some? asked the soigneur. ‘N
o,’ was the answer.

  Lewis saw enough on that Tour, from his privileged position as Simpson’s room-mate, to convince him that the British team leader was a regular, indeed a heavy, user of amphetamines. Firstly, there was one evening he and Simpson came back to the hotel room after a stage. ‘It had been hardish but not terribly hard. He went into the shower first, took his jersey off and put six tablets on the table. He used to keep them wrapped in foil.

  ‘I’m in the bed, waiting to shower, he comes out and one [tablet] has fallen on the floor. He’d lost one tablet, and was accusing me of taking it. “Where’s my stuff? If you want stuff, ask me, don’t steal it.” We scrabbled on the floor and it was under the table. It had dropped off and rolled underneath. He was contrite about it: “I’m glad, you don’t need this stuff.”’

  Lewis does not like talking about Simpson’s doping. He talks in rapidly delivered single sentences when the subject is raised and tends to eat his words. He seems slightly annoyed – not at me for asking the question, but at the subject itself. Perhaps Lewis is even posthumously angry at Simpson for having made him face Hobson’s choice: say things about the champion which people will not want to hear, or cover up for him. The whole process feels as easy as pulling rusty nails out of a board.

  Other former contemporaries of Simpson’s are also prepared to discuss the subject. Alan Ramsbottom, who raced with him in Ghent, recalls that while he went on the Tour de France with one suitcase, for his kit, ‘Tom went on the Tour with a suitcase for his clothes and another with his stuff, drugs and recovery things.’ I cross-checked with Lewis, who remembers the same thing. Ramsbottom adds: ‘Tom took a lot of chances . . . He took a lot of it [drugs]. I remember him taking a course of strychnine to build up to some big event. He showed me the box, and had to take one every few days.’

  Another who believed that Simpson was a regular user was the doctor who attempted to revive him, Pierre Dumas. ‘Did he really go for the drugs?’ the doctor was asked of Simpson. Dumas’s reply is unambiguous. ‘He was well known for it, like [Roger] Rivière, all those guys.’