Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal (6 page)

Dino, Dino, seriously now, should you all have known in 1967? Should you, could you not have seen what was coming?

‘We were all intimidated. We were. This kid just arrived, this big, handsome Belgian kid with high cheekbones – the face of an immense athlete – and pretty quickly we all realised that on the bike he was a brute. I say quickly but it wasn’t straight away. It took a while, a couple of years. We, we didn’t know, we didn’t…’

For once even Dino Zandegù is lost for words.

*

If March had belonged to Merckx, victories for Zandegù in Flanders and the Dutchman Jan Janssen in Paris–Roubaix forestalled hype around the new star that may have followed what, after all, had been only two inspired performances in the space of eleven days in Milan–San Remo and Gent–Wevelgem. Yes, Merckx had won again at Flèche Wallonne at the end of April, this time with a vicious solo attack, but again there was an explanation: the magic sparkle dust named ‘form’, which could come over a rider for a month or six weeks and transform him from good to great, inconspicuous to irresistible. No one was disputing that now Merckx, at 21, had a glittering future; not many either, though, were getting carried away, partly because the last, the hardest and maybe most prestigious of the Classics had opened clear daylight between the two main young pretenders to ‘Emperor’ Rik Van Looy’s throne. Walter Godefroot first, Eddy Merckx second; the line of succession had been determined by the finish line at Liège–Bastogne–Liège.

Van Looy, it has to be said, had always preferred Godefroot. First and foremost, he was a true Flandrian, like Van Looy. Godefroot’s parents had worked in the textile factories which provided work and bare subsistence for thousands of families in and around Gent. When Godefroot was 13, they scraped together the last Belgian francs that Social Security Services and the Catholic Church wouldn’t cover for Walter to go on holiday to Switzerland. ‘That way, you’ll at least get to go that far once in your life. We never will…’ Godefroot’s mother told him.

A few years later, in 1964, cycling would take him to Tokyo for the Olympics, where he won a bronze medal, which at the time he felt could have been gold with a little more help from Merckx, and in the three years since he had travelled and won all over Europe. His Liège win had now confirmed him as the best young Classics rider anywhere in the world. Or so Godefroot thought. He glanced at one
Flemish
daily’s sports pages the following day and flinched. ‘Merckx undone’ said the headline, and beneath it, in smaller writing: ‘Godefroot wins Liège–Bastogne–Liège’. The author went on to espouse Merckx’s view that he had been outsprinted only because he wasn’t familiar with the cinder track at Rocourt in Liège, which had hosted a soggy finish. Godefroot cursed as he read. He had done all the chasing behind Merckx’s Peugeot teammate Ferdinand Bracke, he had repelled every Merckx attack when Bracke was caught, and he had led Merckx into the velodrome. What else did he have to do? Maybe if he lived in the same city as clueless journalists and their newspapers, Brussels, like Merckx…

But at least Godefroot had bagged a big one. Merckx’s victory two days earlier at Flèche Wallonne now paled. Even Merckx’s Peugeot team manager, the debonair, dickie-bowed Gaston Plaud, seemed to think so. When Merckx told Plaud that he would consider renewing his contract on the condition that Plaud signed two or three Belgian domestiques to help him in the 1968 Classics, the Peugeot chief’s expression glazed over. As usual, Plaud’s mind seemed to be on other things. Food, wine, who he was meeting for dinner. If it didn’t serve up such rich material for mockery, the sound of Plaud’s voice on arriving at the team hotel every night would have driven his riders to distraction. ‘
Bonsoir, Madame. Qu’est-ce que vous avez comme spécialité de la maison?
’

The truth was that Plaud had his reasons for not trying harder to hold on to Merckx, plus two brilliant and highly marketable leaders: Tom Simpson and Roger Pingeon. Why would he kowtow to Merckx, a Belgian, at the risk of alienating that pair, respectively among the best one-day and stage-race riders in the world?

No, if Vincenzo Giacotto, another of professional cycling’s
bon viveurs
, wanted Merckx, he could have him for his new Faema team
in
1968. Before Plaud packed him off to Italy for good, he would send him to Treviglio, near Milan, for the beginning of his first major tour, the 1967 Giro d’Italia…

One Wednesday afternoon in October 2011, Walter Godefroot sits forward in his chair and shakes his head, probably much like he did when it dawned in April 1967 that some members of the Belgian press believed the real story from Liège–Bastogne–Liège was another stellar performance from Eddy Merckx.

‘We were too immersed in our own careers to see what was going on,’ he murmurs by way of an apology. ‘To an extent, we only realised that had happened when it was too late…’

As the 1967 season wore on, it was coming to resemble a series of auditions, on a bigger scale and with higher stakes than Merckx’s in front of a judging panel of Nino Defilippis, Vincenzo Giacotto and Teofilo Sanson at Cervinia in April. Most sports thrive on duality, rivalry, and cycling was no different, but there was also something inherent in what racing represented that compelled its followers to look for one superior being, a clear champion, and which somehow made them most comfortable in one’s presence. Thus, the periods most clearly defined in the collective memory were those which were also synonymous with just one rider: in France, the Louison Bobet or Anquetil eras; or in Italy, those associated with Costante Girardengo, Alfredo Binda and Fausto Coppi, for all that Coppi’s battles with Gino Bartali had promoted Coppi’s deification. By contrast, times of transition, as one regime petered out and another readied itself to elect a leader, often gave rise to the most exciting racing but also a sense of general unease. In the early 1960s, there had been two rulers, Jacques Anquetil in major tours and Rik Van Looy in the Classics. By 1967
that
pair was going but not yet gone – and wouldn’t until someone truly stood up and stood out from the crowd.

Merckx was one pretender among many, although no one really believed that he could compete with the best in the mountains of Italy. That taster session at Cervinia led him and those watching to believe that his horizons may yet be broader than just the Classics, but three Italians he had beaten at Milan–San Remo, just for instance, had far greater pedigree on climbs much harder than what he had faced that day.

Had he needed it, a fourth Italian, Italo Zilioli, could also have told Merckx all about the fickle plight of the great white hope. Barely ten days in, it had already been a miserable Giro in an annus horribilis for Zilioli. Having burst on to the scene with a series of prestigious wins in 1963 Zilioli’s career had been stuttering ever since. Now attacking through the sleet two kilometres from the top of the Blockhaus climb, he thought he had saved his Giro and was homing in on a prestigious stage win. Then had come a noise,
that
noise, a glimpse of Merckx bearing down, a frantic and fudged attempt to change gear, a look up, and the final realisation that his predator had come and gone. Merckx’s ability to hold off a chasing peloton on the flat had caught Zilioli’s eye three months earlier at Paris–Nice. Never, though, did the Italian think him capable of the same thing 2,000 metres above sea level. Once, Zilioli’s team manager had asked him why he always brought the same book,
Letters of Condemned Italian Resistance Fighters
, with him to races. Zilioli had replied, ‘Because in moments when I feel desperate, when I feel the unluckiest person alive, I read a few pages and it helps me to understand what desperation really feels like.’

Zilioli can’t remember what he read that night, but will never forget the headline in the following day’s
Gazzetta dello Sport
: ‘Italian
disappointment:
Belgian sprinter wins in the mountains’. As insults went, for a climber like Zilioli, it was a cracker.

‘No wonder I looked miserable as sin when a photographer asked me to pose with Eddy just after I’d seen that,’ Zilioli says now. He goes on, ‘Of course Eddy won again two days later. With hindsight, that should have been another penny dropping…’

Only with hindsight?

As the man, Zilioli, said, Merckx won again two days after his maiden grand tour stage win on the Blockhaus, this time in a bunch sprint in Lido degli Estensi. The boy, it seemed, could do everything – within reason; after a farcical stage to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, won by Gimondi but declared null and void because too many of the riders had been pushed up the final climb, the cream rose to the top on the final mountain stage to Tirano. Either that or, if the rumours were to be believed, a ‘
santa alleanza degli italiani
’ or holy Italian alliance allowed Gimondi to attack the race leader Jacques Anquetil after the Passo del Tonale and easily set up overall victory. Any Italian ‘in’ on the deal was said to have pocketed a tidy sum in return for declining to help Anquetil’s chase.

While Gimondi was heading for his second major tour title and a first Giro d’Italia to add to the Tour de France he had won on his début in 1965, Merckx, alas, had capitulated on the Passo del Tonale. At least he was in good company; Franco Bitossi had started the Giro with big ambitions, won the first mountain stage on Mount Etna, but was now in freefall down the general classification.

‘Crazy Heart’, they called Bitossi. His family had been the very incarnation of the Tuscan idyll, before mass tourism and before ‘Chiantishire’, with their farmhouse in Camaioni on the banks of the River Arno, 15 kilometres upstream from Florence and a short boat
crossing
from the nearest road. One day, though, Franco couldn’t recall exactly what age he was, he had run out of the house to find his mother shrieking at the water’s edge. His younger brother Al was missing and, when he heard his mum scream, little Franco was certain that he had drowned in the Arno. As his mind raced, his heart pounded at double, treble its normal speed. Al was fine, and found within minutes, but the drumming under Franco’s ribcage continued. It would abate soon enough, but also return with distressing regularity once Franco had decided to pursue a career in cycling. Crazy Heart’s first two seasons in the professional peloton had been hellish, yielding zero victories and innumerable variations on the same, tragicomic scene: a flash of heels, a blur of jet black hair, Bitossi clear of the field and then, moments later, stationary at the side of the road, hunched over his handlebars. Gradually, though, after numerous threats to give up, and races like the 1966 Coppa Agostoni where he had ridden rings around Merckx and Gimondi, been forced by palpitations to stop ten times, yet still nearly beaten them, he had reconciled himself to the problem and by doing so eased its symptoms. A barnstorming start to the 1967 season even had some wondering whether he might be the next ‘
campionissimo
’, but the Giro and in particular the Dolomites and Alps had cut Bitossi down to size, just as they had Merckx.

As they struggled on together up the Tonale, flanked also by Merckx’s teammate Ferdinand Bracke, Merckx coughed, wheezed and cursed the journalists who had kept him answering questions in the freezing cold after the previous day’s stage to Trento. Whenever the gradient became steeper, Bitossi looked across at him and jotted mental notes.

Four days later, the Giro had finished with Gimondi the winner and Merckx in ninth position. Bitossi opened
La Gazzetta dello Sport
and
read attentively. One of the godfathers of Italian sports journalism, Bruno Raschi, had reviewed the previous three weeks’ action and judged each of the main protagonists individually. Bitossi looked for Merckx’s name. ‘He has shown his limitations in the mountains. The young Belgian will never win a major stage race,’ it said.

Bitossi shook his head. Raschi might be a good journalist, but he knew nothing about cycling…

‘I couldn’t believe it when I read that, what Raschi said about him not winning the Tour. I mean, based on what I’d seen, it was obvious what the kid could do…’

While others dozed or dithered in denial, Crazy Heart Bitossi, at least, had not missed a beat.

By the end of July 1967, international cycling’s crowded constellation had abruptly found itself with one star fewer. What a way, though, for its glimmer to go out; the recent winner of Paris–Nice, Tom Simpson, had collapsed and died on Mont Ventoux at the Tour de France.

Simpson had perished midway through a race in which his Peugeot teammate Roger Pingeon’s talents had shone brighter than ever before. The pair had ridden in different colours at the Tour, race director Félix Lévitan having taken the controversial decision to revert to the old formula of national teams, but that hadn’t lessened their Peugeot manager Gaston Plaud’s delight at Pingeon’s excellent start to the Tour and his horror at Simpson’s death. Plaud made an easy target for ridicule but the man had virtues beyond his ability to pick the right suit and tie or bottle of Beaujoulais nouveau. He had a heart.

If only he’d been in charge on the Ventoux, or had convinced Tommy to quit the Tour the previous evening. He had tried, lord knows he had tried. Even on the Ventoux, when Simpson’s cheeks had appeared even more wan and sunken than the night before, Plaud
had
ordered Tommy to call it quits. He didn’t know about the five amphetamine pills that Simpson had supposedly been balancing on his tongue in the morning, and boastfully showing the other riders, or exactly what he’d drunk during an emergency stop in Bédoin at the foot of the Ventoux.

The fact remained that Plaud’s dynamic dichotomy – the happy-go-lucky yet immensely driven Englishman, and the talented French dilettante – had been cut in two, leaving just Pingeon. Peugeot’s third man had been Merckx, and Plaud suspected that he had already signed with the Italian start-up Faema during the Giro. Merckx learned of his friend and mentor Simpson’s death back home in Belgium, when it flashed on to the evening news. He was distraught. Ever since he had joined Peugeot the previous year, Simpson’s friendliness and willingness to dispense advice had been in marked contrast to the antipathy of his previous team leader, Rik Van Looy. Merckx immediately made up his mind to travel to Simpson’s funeral in Harworth in England a few days later. He would be the only rider from the continent to attend the burial.