Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape by Paul Howard

Author:Paul Howard [Howard, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

An Insatiable Appetite

WINNING, OF COURSE, WAS Anquetil’s raison d’être. When still a novice, he had been advised that if he raced to make money, he wouldn’t win, but that if he raced to win, he would make money. ‘He quickly understood that the best way to make money out of riding a bike was to win races,’ remembers his friend Dieulois. It may not have been rewarded with great popularity, either with the public or his rivals, but Anquetil did not let this deter him. In fact, his run-in with Altig and the growing threat posed by Poulidor, both on the bike and in terms of the public’s affection, only served to encourage Anquetil to even greater achievements – 1963 was to be his most successful year to date.

It should be noted, however, that simply winning any old race wasn’t enough – the standing of the event was almost as important as victory. One of the great ironies of Anquetil’s rivalry with Poulidor is that it was Poulidor – the eternal second – who ended his career with more professional wins (189 compared with 184). Of course, the vast majority of Anquetil’s victories carry far greater prestige than those of Poulidor. Although prepared to go to enormous lengths to assert his authority, he was inspired by pride and a careful assessment of the races that were most important in sustaining his reputation – and contract value – rather than the later all-consuming gluttony of Eddy Merckx, for example. When Merckx was nicknamed ‘The Cannibal’, Anquetil was dubbed ‘The Civilised Cannibal’ by Jacques Augendre.

‘I think it wasn’t in his character to want to win everything,’ explains Dieulois. ‘The season was long, so he targeted some races and was happy to win those to maintain his status and the commercial value that allowed him to earn his living. He wasn’t like Merckx. Jacques could have had a fuller palmarès [race record] if he’d really knuckled down to it, but he just based his season on the Tour and the time trials, and that was enough for him. He was quite calculating in this way.’

To this end, starting the season with his third win in Paris–Nice was the best way to demonstrate his form and send out a clear message to his rivals. The victory didn’t come without some controversy, however, and once again it involved Altig.

Following the problems surrounding their partnership in the same team the previous season, Géminiani had established a policy of ‘horses for courses’ at St Raphaël. As a result, Anquetil had been appointed leader for stage races, while Altig, along with Jean Stablinski and Jo de Roo, had been nominated to the same role for the far more numerous one-day races. The distinction was not unique, and in principle would seem to have been a step forward from the previous year’s tribalism. Even if both Altig, as winner not just of one-day races but also of the previous year’s Vuelta, and Stablinski, one-day man par excellence and himself

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