2002 Cover image
Jacque Anquetil, five-time winner of the Tour de France, used to take his water bottle out of its holder before every climb and stick it in the back pocket of his jersey. Ab Geldermans, his Dutch Lieutenant, watched him do that for years, until finally he couldn’t stand it any more and asked him why. And Anquetil explained.
A rider, said Anquetil, is made up of two parts, a person and a bike. The bike, of course, is the instrument the person uses to go faster, but its weight also slows him down. That really counts when the going gets tough, and in climbing the thing is to make sure the bike is as light as possible. A good way to do that is: take the bidon out of its holder.
So, at the very start of every climb, Anquetil moved his water bottle from its holder to his back pocket. Clear enough.
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Lebusque is from Normanby, just like Anquetil. He claims to have raced with him twenty-five years ago. And to have come in before him on occasion.
I usually come in before Lebusque.
Lebusque is really only a body. In fact, he’s not a good racer. People are made up of two parts: a mind and a body. Of the two, the mind of course, is the rider. That this mind has recourse to two instruments, a body and a bicycle – both of which have to be as light as possible – doesn’t really matter. What Anquetil needed was faith. And nothing is better for a firm and solid faith than being in the wrong.
Tim Krabbe, The Rider (1978)
OK, Tim Krabbe’s The Rider is the best novel about cycling ever written. While he claims it was never meant be a metaphor, just a book about cycling, for those of us who have ever raced (at whatever level), it is so much more. It transcends the physicality of the race and reads as something of a cross between Camus’ l’Estranger, with all its existential angst, and the best piece of cycling journalism you could hope to read.
Krabbe is a Dutch writer, cyclist and chess player who is best known by English readers for this novel and for his 1984 novel Het Gouden that was made into possibly the most horrifying film I have ever seen, The Vanishing (1988). Don’t bother with the 1993 American remake; it’s rubbish.
Krabbe has recently returned to cycling after a 25 year year break and earlier this year won the 90k road race (65 years and older) in the 2009 Senior Games in Middleburg. I would like to think he beat the the rider from Cycles Goff.
Gilhaney 