Read Online Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal by Daniel Friebe - Free Book Online
Authors: Daniel Friebe
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Merckx, meanwhile, looked for the brown, shoulder-length hair of his mother, Jenny. Once or twice he took a can of Coca-Cola from her outstretched hand.
Back in the peloton, the local boy Janssen’s worry and frustration grew. To use one of Janssen’s favourite French expressions, he ‘
pédalait dans le beurre
’ – literally, he was pedalling through butter. In other words, it was effortless. After eight laps, he could wait no longer. Towards the top of the only real hill on the course, Janssen accelerated and gained 50 metres. Two laps later, at the midway point of the race, he joined Merckx, Motta, Saez and van der Vleuten.
With two laps to go, Janssen drew close to Merckx. The pair of them had shared a ride the previous year when Merckx’s car had broken down on the way to a race. Merckx now turned to him. ‘So, between you and me, who wins? We need to be careful of the Spaniard Saez, because he’s fast in a sprint, that guy. And Motta will be quick as well…’
‘If we get to the finish all together, I’m going to ask van der Vleuten to lead out the sprint from a long way, a kilometre out. That OK?’ Janssen replied.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Merckx agreed.
Janssen knew that, in his eagerness, Merckx would want to squeeze between the two Dutchmen and come under the kilometre-to-go flag on van der Vleuten’s wheel. The latter would fade 400 metres from the line, whereupon Merckx would launch his sprint and himself begin to slow in the last 100 metres. Janssen’s superior speed, as a three-time former winner of the Tour de France’s green jersey, would then guarantee him victory.
That was the theory, but not quite how it turned out: when the quintet reached the final bend, 500 metres out, van der Vleuten had still not kicked. By the time that he did, then jagged to the right at the 200-metre banner, Merckx was closing in on victory and Janssen had lost vital speed as he swung left to avoid his teammate. Janssen was clearly quicker but Merckx held on…by 30 centimetres. Exhausted by his last-ditch attack on the final lap, Gianni Motta came home in fourth place and collapsed into Doctor de Donato’s arms.
The aftermath was dominated by recriminations – Janssen’s aimed at van der Vleuten for not respecting orders in the final kilometre, Motta’s at the entire Italian team for not marking Janssen, and theirs at him for attacking so early. Amid the brouhaha, the most important outcome was the one that too many still seemed determined to overlook: at age 22, Eddy Merckx would end the 1967 season as the champion, nay the king of the cycling world.
‘We hadn’t seen anything special,’ protests Jan Janssen. ‘He was like anyone else. We never thought for a second he’d be a really great rider. He was like Willy Planckaert, Godefroot and lots of others.’
He says this then pauses – a long, dramatic, meaningful pause. ‘The first time I saw him do something really remarkable,’ Janssen goes on, ‘was at Heerlen. There I realised that, to beat that guy, you had to put your foot to the floor and them some.’
‘I was the strongest that day, Eddy knew I was the strongest, but, yeah, I’ll admit it, you could see at the end of ’67 that Eddy was something else,’ says Gianni Motta. ‘Pingeon had won the Tour but, with Pingeon, you knew an hour earlier when he was going to attack. Merckx, by comparison to Pingeon and the rest of us, was Superman.’
Maybe, finally, someone was opening their eyes.
3
fire and ice
‘I can still see Eddy on the climbs before the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, in the snow…He can’t contain himself. He has magic in his legs.’ M ARINO V IGNA
IN THE HOURS leading up to what would be Eddy Merckx’s second Giro and only his second major tour, he had fizzed with nervous energy in Faema’s pre-race HQ in Gavirate. Eighteen months earlier, the same callow exuberance had led to a falling out with the Italian Vittorio Adorni in the sprint to the line at the 1966
Back in the peloton, the local boy Janssen’s worry and frustration grew. To use one of Janssen’s favourite French expressions, he ‘
pédalait dans le beurre
’ – literally, he was pedalling through butter. In other words, it was effortless. After eight laps, he could wait no longer. Towards the top of the only real hill on the course, Janssen accelerated and gained 50 metres. Two laps later, at the midway point of the race, he joined Merckx, Motta, Saez and van der Vleuten.
With two laps to go, Janssen drew close to Merckx. The pair of them had shared a ride the previous year when Merckx’s car had broken down on the way to a race. Merckx now turned to him. ‘So, between you and me, who wins? We need to be careful of the Spaniard Saez, because he’s fast in a sprint, that guy. And Motta will be quick as well…’
‘If we get to the finish all together, I’m going to ask van der Vleuten to lead out the sprint from a long way, a kilometre out. That OK?’ Janssen replied.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Merckx agreed.
Janssen knew that, in his eagerness, Merckx would want to squeeze between the two Dutchmen and come under the kilometre-to-go flag on van der Vleuten’s wheel. The latter would fade 400 metres from the line, whereupon Merckx would launch his sprint and himself begin to slow in the last 100 metres. Janssen’s superior speed, as a three-time former winner of the Tour de France’s green jersey, would then guarantee him victory.
That was the theory, but not quite how it turned out: when the quintet reached the final bend, 500 metres out, van der Vleuten had still not kicked. By the time that he did, then jagged to the right at the 200-metre banner, Merckx was closing in on victory and Janssen had lost vital speed as he swung left to avoid his teammate. Janssen was clearly quicker but Merckx held on…by 30 centimetres. Exhausted by his last-ditch attack on the final lap, Gianni Motta came home in fourth place and collapsed into Doctor de Donato’s arms.
The aftermath was dominated by recriminations – Janssen’s aimed at van der Vleuten for not respecting orders in the final kilometre, Motta’s at the entire Italian team for not marking Janssen, and theirs at him for attacking so early. Amid the brouhaha, the most important outcome was the one that too many still seemed determined to overlook: at age 22, Eddy Merckx would end the 1967 season as the champion, nay the king of the cycling world.
‘We hadn’t seen anything special,’ protests Jan Janssen. ‘He was like anyone else. We never thought for a second he’d be a really great rider. He was like Willy Planckaert, Godefroot and lots of others.’
He says this then pauses – a long, dramatic, meaningful pause. ‘The first time I saw him do something really remarkable,’ Janssen goes on, ‘was at Heerlen. There I realised that, to beat that guy, you had to put your foot to the floor and them some.’
‘I was the strongest that day, Eddy knew I was the strongest, but, yeah, I’ll admit it, you could see at the end of ’67 that Eddy was something else,’ says Gianni Motta. ‘Pingeon had won the Tour but, with Pingeon, you knew an hour earlier when he was going to attack. Merckx, by comparison to Pingeon and the rest of us, was Superman.’
Maybe, finally, someone was opening their eyes.
3
fire and ice
‘I can still see Eddy on the climbs before the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, in the snow…He can’t contain himself. He has magic in his legs.’ M ARINO V IGNA
IN THE HOURS leading up to what would be Eddy Merckx’s second Giro and only his second major tour, he had fizzed with nervous energy in Faema’s pre-race HQ in Gavirate. Eighteen months earlier, the same callow exuberance had led to a falling out with the Italian Vittorio Adorni in the sprint to the line at the 1966
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