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The Greatest Bike Race – Ever
by charles howe, July 2004
If ever there was a year when
the Tour de France may be said to have truly come of age as a sporting event,
it has to be 1964. Live television made
all of France the audience to a pulsating duel between the cool, aloof,
calculating Jacques Anquetil, just a fortnight
removed from winning his second Giro d’Italia, and upstart Raymond Poulidor, a
charismatic Monsieur-tout-le-mond
(“Mister Everybody”) in the hard-luck tradition of Eugene Christophe and René
Vietto, who five weeks prior had notched his first Grand Tour win by a mere 33
seconds in the Vuelta a España. All of
France was as polarized between the two riders as Italy had been in the days of
Bartali and Coppi.
Anquetil
rode conservatively for the first two weeks as he recovered from the Giro, yet
still managed to win the mountainous ninth stage and its one-minute bonus after
Poulidor mistakenly sprinted a lap early on the vélodrome at Monte Carlo. He won a 20.8 km time trial the next day to
move into second place, 0:31 up on Poulidor, as the pair approached the Tour’s
sole day of repose, just before the 14th stage from Andorra to Toulouse.
It is
sometimes claimed that Anquetil visited a clairvoyant before the Tour, who
predicted he would die during this stage, but this appears to be an
exaggeration of Marcel Belline’s prediction that he would abandon “near
Andorra;” what is unclear is whether the prediction was that he would simply
withdraw from the race, or actually die, as seems commonly accepted now (Belline was a supposed psychic used by France-Soir
from time to time to add a dash of
intrigue to race coverage). In any case, there was a haunted and superstitious
side to Anquetil, who had a long-running fear that he would die younger than
his father, and the prediction obsessed him.
Each day, he would call his wife Janine and tell her ‘Another day gone’
as he counted down to his personal Calvary.
Such was the antipathy between fans of the two riders, that the more
fanatical among Poulidor’s legions sent Anquetil
numerous clippings of Belline’s prediction, with the notation “good riddance”
written at the top.
To relax
his mind, he scorned the usual rest-day conventions of repose and an easy ride,
turning up instead at a VIP barbeque sponsored by a local radio station. A photograph in the local paper would say it
all: there was Jacques the bon viveur, a cigarette dangling from his
mouth, sandwich in one hand, sangria at the ready nearby, and Janine at his
side. The next day was “like taking a
condemned man to the firing squad,” according to his manager, Raphaël
Gèminiani, and it was the one stage for which Anquetil did not warm up.
Stung by
such brazen insolence and disdain of proper regimen, the best climbers –
Poulidor, Bahamontes, and Jimenez – all retaliated by attacking from the flag
the next morning, while a surprised Anquetil, looking pale and haggard, was
unable to react, and lost over four minutes to on the long (27.5 km) grade up
the Port d’Envalira from the stage start, making Poulidor the race leader on
the road. Seemingly in a trance,
Anquetil would later admit that only the shouts – as well as taunts – of
Gèminiani and his teammate Louis Rostollon (plus timely pushes from the latter)
kept him from abandoning then and there.
“I just wanted to climb off, lie in the grass, and sleep. I could hear Louis shouting at me, as if in a
dream.” Finally he reached the summit,
the last man on the road, where legend has it that ‘Gèm’ applied the
appropriate palliative – a bidon of champagne,
naturally, being saved for celebration – while screaming a challenge to his
pride: “Jacques, if you’re going to die, please wait till the broom wagon gets
here.” It was not unknown for riders to
be handed champagne by spectators, and Anquetil seemed to thrive on it in the
1957 Tour, but Janine disputes it was involved in this case, and offers a more
likely explanation: he looked at Gèminiani, smiled, and said to himself, ‘It’s
either him [Belline] or me.’ He had
resigned himself to whatever fate had to offer.
He had
to, for he then set off on a near-suicidal descent, plunging into a dense fog
with only the taillights of support vehicles to guide him; Rostollon, who only
moments earlier was shepherding his leader up the mountain and so desperately
trying to revive him, now feared for his life going down. “He left them standing. I could see him and I thought to myself, ‘My
God . . . he is risking everything,’” Gèminiani recalled. Meanwhile, Janine could only listen
helplessly as Radio Tour announcer Felix Eritani
reported from the road “There’s thick fog and – oh my God – Anquetil is overtaking! He is crazy!
He is crazy!” (“Il est fou!
Il est fou!”) “It’s
frightening,” she would recall over 35 years later. “For the wives, it’s terrible.”
Upon
reaching the valley below, Anquetil had already made up two minutes on the
leaders. He then caught an intervening
group containing yellow jersey Georges Groussard and several of Groussard’s
Pelforth teammates, formed an impromptu alliance, and after 10 km of recovery,
the chase was on. The catch was made 111
km into the 186 km stage, and by the finish, Anquetil had actually gained
1:21 on Poulidor after the latter suffered an inopportune puncture and a
bungled wheel change which deposited him on the pavement at 28 km to go. Poulidor was beside himself in tears: “In one
day I have won and lost the Tour de France,” he sobbed, while a relieved
Anquetil said that if Poulidor had been in yellow at the end of the day, he
would have retired. The next day saw an
angry Poulidor strike back with a rare vengeance, scoring a brilliant solo win
at Luchon as he took back 1:43 and drew within nine seconds of Anquetil.
But bad luck visited Poulidor once again. Halfway through the 42.6 km, stage 17 time
trial, he was within seven seconds of Anquetil on the road when he suffered yet
another ill-timed puncture and sloppy bike change to end up conceding
0:37 to Anquetil, who collected a 10-second time bonus as the stage
winner. Three days later, the two were
still only 56 seconds apart upon reaching the base of the Puy de Dôme together
for the stage-ending climb up the viciously steep slopes of this extinct
volcano. It was the last climb of the
Tour, and the last chance for Poulidor, the better climber, to play his strong
suit. An estimated 500,000 lined the
route, while the rest of France looked on via live television; all held their
breath as the pair staged an unforgettable mano a mano for more than 8
km, literally riding elbow-to-elbow, even bumping shoulders once, as if to dash
the other to the ground. Poulidor could
hear Anquetil’s labored breathing and was ready to go for the kill when
Anquetil expressed mock disgust that the two Spanish climbers ahead (Bahamontes
and Jimenez) would collect the time bonuses: “Merde, les Espagnols obtiendra les bonifications.” The bluff worked, as
Poulidor was tricked into thinking Anquetil was stronger than he really
was. As a result, Poulidor waited until
1000 meters to go before he finally broke away, and his gain was limited to
just 0:42 on the stage, reducing Anquetil’s lead to a bare 14 seconds. Years later, Gèminiani would insist correctly, “What duel? There never was duel! Why?
Because Anquetil rode up alongside Poulidor, who felt intimidated, the
Spaniards attacked, and Poulidor didn’t go with them.” Anquetil
sprawled exhausted on the hood of a car after finishing, and asked Gèminiani how much time he still led by;
when told 17 seconds, he replied it was 16 seconds
more than necessary. The comment was
typical of a man who was said to have a calculator in his head.
Incredibly, the drama had yet
to reach its climax, which came 48 hours later, during the 27.5 km, final-stage
time trial from Versailles to Paris. The
crowds along the route this Bastille Day were estimated at 800,000, and they
were in ecstasy when Poulidor led by 11 seconds after 20 km; since the stage
winner received a 20-second time bonus, all he needed to do was win by one
second, and surely Poulidor could hold on for
that. Slowly, however, Anquetil began to
pull back the deficit, second by second . . . even as Poulidor arrived at the
Parc des Princes vèlodrome and was
mobbed as the victor, Anquetil was adding new meaning to his moniker of ‘Maître Jacques’ with a remarkable late
run that gave him the stage win by 21 seconds and the final GC by 0:55, the
narrowest margin to that date, thus dealing the hapless but lovable ‘Poupou’
his bitterest defeat in a Tour career studded with disappointment and
misfortune. “It’s funny – no, ugly,”
Janine recalled, “when a rider believes he’s won, the
journalists surround him, and then suddenly – it’s the wrong one! He’s left standing alone, like a fool.”
It was Anquetil’s fourth
consecutive Tour win and fifth overall, both unprecedented at the time, while
Poulidor, despite the promise he had shown in finishing second as a rookie in
1962, never wore the yellow jersey for a single day in a 15-year Tour career
which included a record eight podium finishes, including third place in 1976 at
the age of 40. Like Christophe and
Vietto before him, however, Poulidor’s perseverance through seemingly endless
bad luck (there would be more to come) only served to endear him to the French
public all the more, while Anquetil’s shyness was mistaken for aloofness,
leaving him jealous of Poulidor’s popularity, and
baffled at what he had to do to ever gain the adulation his exploits deserved.
The Epic Battle
Still the definitive mano
a mano in Tour history, the famous duel on the Puy de Dôme produced many
unforgettable images.
