As I was saying....

...before I was so rudely interrupted.  

Well, what a cock-up that was.  Regular readers of this blog, who I estimate number about three, will have noticed a distinct lack of posts.  And a distinct lack of news about my efforts in L'Enfer Du Nord. 

To cut a long and deeply depressing story short, I had to pull out with about a week to go when it became clear that the shoulder injury I picked up in the Alps in March was not going to heal any time soon, in fact it was getting worse.  

A week's, probably ill-advised, surfing in Devon was the final straw. 

There followed a long period of gloom, and not much on-bike time -- since even relatively short rides would result in numbness and an inability to perform relatively simple tasks, like eating or brushing my teeth.  

I didn't feel much like writing.

But, it's slowly getting better. To the extent that I've entered a longish (155k) sportive in September as a kick-start to my training for 2010

As to the blog - keep checking back.  I was spurred into posting by two things - first, Richard Lee's rather nice Cycling Art blog, which features a link to here -- shamefully showing no new contributions for two months.

And second, this fabulous picture from Stage 3 of the Tour.  Bernard "Le Blaireau" reminding a misguided protester why he was justly regarded as the hardest man in the peloton, and why nobody ever tried to take liberties on his watch.

Chapeau, Bernard -- a blow for old blokes everywhere.

Dry Season

I'm staying off the beer, in a half-hearted attempt to get my ailing body into some sort of shape.  Still allowing myself the odd glass of wine with food.  

There's no sense losing all proportion over this; and anyway, I've been heartened by reading "Sex Lies and Handlebar Tape",  Paul Howard's intriguing biography of five-times Tour winner Jacques Anquetil.

Anquetil's colourful private life is now well-known, but is probably worth repeating.  In as short a summary as I can manage:

• He had an affair with his Doctor's wife, setting up home with her and her two young children.
• When she proved unable to bear him a child of his own, he had one with her daughter -- who was by now a teenager. 
• He then lived with the two women and his new child in an unorthodox (no wonder the French have a word for it) menage a trois.
• When this arrangement failed, he attempted to make his two former lovers jealous by having an affair with his stepson's wife, a relationship that continued until his death.

Chapeau, Maitre Jacques.  Sunday lunch at the Anquetil house must have been a bit tense.

More interesting in some ways was his attitude to food and drink. 

Anquetil had a reputation as a bit of a gourmand, horrifying traditionalists with his taste for seafood and creamy sauce. Howard suggests that some of it was pretence, done to wind up the press and opponents, but Cycling magazine looked aghast at his diet when he came to Herne Hill:

"Before his races ... Jacques ate hors d'oeuvres (sausages, meat, salad), sweetbreads in cream sauce with creamed spinach, and fresh fruit, and he drank spa water and coffee."

Sweetbreads in cream sauce?  I was lucky to get some bread-and-butter pudding when I raced at Herne Hill.

And he was partial to a drop.  After an all-night drive to one team training camp he sat down to a breakfast of langoustines with mayonnaise and a carafe of white wine.  His famous quote about training is reproduced here in full.  Asked by a young fan how best to prepare for a big race, he recommended:

"A pheasant with chestnuts, a bottle of champagne and a woman"

In particular, I like the fact that he was very specific about the food -- less so about the rest.

The book if full of interesting, almost incidental, asides that reveal the lost colour of pro-racing.

Among my favourites so far: Apo Lazarides,  on a lone breakaway up the Col D'Izoard, stopped and waited for the peloton to catch up because he was frightened of being attacked by bears; Raphael Geminiani, angry at being left out of the French team for the Tour,  turned up at a stage start with a donkey named after the selector Marcel Bidot.

Truly, it is the races that have got smaller.

  

 

Perils of the Peloton Pt .1

In his excellent book The Escape Artist, Matt Seaton briefly touches on an issue of concern to all male cyclists -- shrinkage. This is, of course, a straightforward physiological phenomenon. At times of extreme effort, or extreme cold, the body is designed to channel blood and its vital oxygen to those areas which need it most -- in cyclists' case, usually the legs. It takes the blood from those areas it regards as superfluous -- fingers, noses and private parts.

So it is that after a particularly long or cold training session you find yourself with numb fingers and privates so shrivelled that you resemble a skinny Action Man doll.

In many ways the body is right. Cyclists are a weedy, asexual lot -- not renowned for their lustful behaviour: some old school pros believed in the theory that too much duvet activity had a detrimental effect on your performance the following day. They feared, as boxers did, "leaving their legs in the bedroom".

The legendary Sean Kelly once admitted abstaining from all such nocturnal functions before races -- for different periods depending on the length and severity of the event. One journalist calculated that -- taking into account the Grand Tours, the Classics, the World Championships, late-Summer criteriums and a couple of Six Days -- there was a good chance that Kelly's wife of several years was still a virgin.

Not everyone was so austere. Jacques Anquetil liked to prepare for a race with "a bottle of good burgundy and a woman", but he made both his daughter-in-law and his stepdaughter pregnant so was hardly a role model. Mario Cipollini was once asked whether he abstained from sex before racing. No, he replied, but I try not to have it while I'm racing.

I was reflecting on all of this as I surveyed my sadly depleted body after another long, cold training run this morning. How a sport that requires you to wear the most figure hugging and revealing of kit can leave you with so little to display.

A while ago, I bought a smart jersey and shorts combo from Dauphin Cycles near Box Hill. They are well made and stylish -- but with one fundamental flaw. They are almost see-through, especially in the wet; and pale blue and white are very unforgiving colours.

Unless, that is, you're Tom Boonen. Which is another reason -- along with his talent, palmares, money, and 16-year old model girlfriend -- to hate him. How can I put this delicately? Even after several hundred kilometres of racing and a full-on sprint, no matter how nippy the weather -- when Tornado Tom crosses the line and flings his hands in the air, he appears to have a toddler's arm stuck down his Quick Step shorts.

Put simply, and I apologise for offending more delicate readers -- Tom Boonen must have a huge cock.

The internet, a wonderful source of knowledge. I'm sorry for the slightly unfortunate tone of this post -- tomorrow I'll review dynamo lighting systems or something.

Legs of the Gods

There are few things more strikingly stylish, sexy even, than a good pro-cyclist in full flow on his bike. Look at film of Fausto Coppi, surely one of the most stylish sportsmen ever, as his long, delicate legs spin him over a col; the terrifying force of nature that was Bernard Hinault – compact, powerful and aggressive, face set in a mask of anger and determination as he swept all opposition and obstacles aside; the incomparable Mario Cipollini, “the Lion King” super-fast, super-brave sprinter with the looks of a Mediterranean playboy and a flamboyant line in lycra fashion statements – pink, gold, zebra print, and – on one particularly memorable occasion, a one-piece suit made to look as though his skin had been flayed off, leaving his muscles on full view. Race officials would routinely shake their heads and punish him for infringing this or that clothing regulation and “Cipo” would smilingly pay their fine, toss his long golden locks and ride into the sunset with a podium girl on his crossbar.




Above all, watch Francesco Moser in “A Sunday in Hell”, Jorgen Leth’s legendary film about the 1976 Paris- Roubaix. Bent double at the waist, his back is ramrod-straight, perfectly still and parallel with the ground as his legs flow seemingly effortlessly in perfect circles. Then take a look at pro-riders, even lowly domestiques , before the start of races, as they glide and jink their bikes through the crowds of photographers, officials and hangers-on; relaxed and smooth, never braking, never making a wasteful movement – like so many shiny fish in a shoal, constant speed, constant flow – as though their machines are simply an extension of their bodies, or their bodies an extension of their machines. Their bikes, shoes, and clothing shine with an unnatural Technicolor glow, rivalled only by the impossibly deep, teak tans of their shaved, oiled and chiselled legs; awheel, a pro-cyclist is a brightly coloured God among men.


There are exceptions, of course. There were many reasons to dislike climber and French housewives’ favourite Richard Virenque – chief among them that he was a petulant cheat who denied drug use again and again, until the evidence was overwhelming and then tried to blame everyone but himself for his sins. But much of the vitriol aimed his way was undoubtedly because, well – he just didn’t look right on a bike. He was once described as resembling a frog on a matchbox, only slightly unfair, and a reasonable approximation of his cramped, ugly riding style.


And Floyd Landis, “winner” of the 2006 Tour, had already been deducted points by European fans for his charmless beard, backwards baseball caps and agricultural riding position long before any questions were raised about the honesty of his performances.



The bizarre, contradictory thing is this. Off their bikes, even the most stylish looking riders transform into freaks. Bodies which look natural, admirable, on bikes become ungainly, misshapen – like some ghastly laboratory experiment gone wrong. Massive legs, with sinewed calves and gargantuan thighs are joined to spindly, concave chests, skeletal shoulders and arms which would look under-developed on a frail schoolgirl. A traditional pre-Tour photo opportunity shows riders being given medical checks by the race Doctor. For this, they are required to strip off and have a stethoscope applied to their chests, or a rubber hammer swung theatrically at their kneecaps. The resulting pictures are not for the faint-hearted. Deeply suntanned faces, arms and legs frame milk-white sunken chests and exposed ribs; the skin stretched so paper-thin across their backs that one pro’s wife complained she could clearly see and feel the outlines of her husband’s internal organs. Away from their bikes, cyclists have a haunted, consumptive look, their movements are disjointed and their upper bodies are under-developed and frail, every unnecessary ounce of muscle above the waist is simply an extra burden to drag up hills or into the wind.


Even the ultra-stylish Fausto Coppi could look ungainly off his Bianchi – no amount of Italian knitwear, sports jackets and gold-rimmed sunglasses could disguise a faint resemblance to Mr Bean. Cycling though is all about hearts and legs. The Spanish five-times tour winner Miguel Indurain was reputed to have a heart twice the size of a normal human, and lungs so big they ballooned out below his ribcage.


And legs. Gnarled, distended lower limbs are a badge of pride among pros – the uglier the better. Sean Yates, the British super domestique who completed nine Tours De France, spent a glorious day in yellow and became one of Lance Armstrong’s most trusted lieutenants has a pair of legs so disfigured by varicose veins that they frighten small children. When racing, he would roll his shorts all the way up his thighs, like an old-fashioned bathing costume, to avoid the dreaded cyclists’ tan lines – an odd affectation for this least affected of men. No-one dared tell him that the tan lines were the least problematic aspect of his legs’ appearance.

The Rouleur

In my dreams, I am a Rouleur, the unglamorous, unsung workhorse of cycle racing.

The big man who sits on the front; braving the wind and rain and the flat Northern landscapes, dragging the pack down die-straight Roman-built roads until the weak fall from the back.

When I go riding with my neighbour Steve, we make an unlikely pair. He is short and slight, built like a jockey, or the flyweight boxer he once was. Faced with a hill, he stays seated and simply spins his legs a little faster, his lightweight aluminium bike gliding up the gradient as though glued to an asphalt elevator.

I don’t glide.

I’ve never asked Steve about his two-wheeled fantasies, like most cyclists our conversations tend towards the dour and pragmatic, but I imagine he sometimes fancies himself as a summer hero of the Alpine cols. Perhaps Federico Bahamontes, the Eagle of Toledo, whose climbing ability once put him so far ahead of his rivals that he waited at the top of an Alp in the Tour De France, eating an ice-cream, so he didn’t have to make the descent on his own. Or Robert Millar, the eccentric, fragile Scot, still the highest placed Briton in the Tour, who won the red-and-white spotted jersey of the King of the Mountains three times. Even Marco Pantani, “the Pirate”, big-eared and tiny-framed, an Italian mountain specialist who came back from terrible injuries to take on and beat the mighty Lance Armstrong, only to squander his life and talent on cocaine and paranoia – dead in a Rimini motel room at the age of 34. The cocktail of triumph, tragedy, bravery and romance that draws thousands to professional bike racing is easily encapsulated in the frail figure of the climber.

Nearly six feet tall and fourteen stone, I was never going to be a climber, and I have never had the wild-eyed recklessness and brutal aggression of the finish-line sprinter. But in my dreams I could be a rouleur, a flahute, a Flanders hard-man.

At the Tour De France, the big men spend much of their time in the so-called Autobus. By the time the Tour reaches the mountains, this group of heavier, slower riders hang behind the leading racers; one wheel ahead of the Voiture Balai, the minibus with a symbolic broom strapped to its roof, which sweeps up those who’ve decided enough is enough. Someone in their number will calculate mile-by-mile, how slowly they can ride yet still finish within the time limit for disqualification.

By this time, they will already have had their hour in the sun – some will have dropping back to the support car to pick up drinks or extra clothes for him, then fought their way to the front and held their course in the fifty-mile-an-hour dashes to the line, elbows out, nostrils flaring, heads down, which characterise the early stages of the Tour. Some will have babysat their team leader, sheltering him from the wind, straining and sprinting to catch back up.

Others will have spent their time watching rival teams as the peloton picked its nervous way through the early stages, ready to wind up the pace and smash opponents’ resolve; chase down those unwise enough to break away and go for glory; or set off themselves on madcap solo efforts, in a small break of riders doomed to be caught by the finish line but still happy if their sponsors’ jerseys get some prime time TV coverage, and their own names come to the attention of the team managers, the all-powerful Directeurs Sportifs

But for a few, their lives flourish not around the Grand Tours of Summer, but the Classics – the one day races of Spring and Autumn, on flatter roads, in unpredictable weather, when the great cols and alps are impassable and covered in snow. When the wind howls uninterrupted from the North Sea and the roads are wheel-rim deep in the mixture of rainwater, mud, agricultural chemicals and cowshit that American riders christened Flemish Toothpaste.

The Ronde Van Vlanderen - the Tour of Flanders; Ghent-Wevelgem; Liege-Bastogne-Liege; the Het Volk and Amstel Gold – harsh, brutal races in harsh, brutal landscapes. But the Queen of them all remains Paris-Roubaix.