as reported in today Times Newspaper :
It’s not every year that the Tour de France passes through Brittany on the western tip of France. When it does, thousands of locals line the route to watch the world’s greatest cycle race.
In the 1960s a young Bernard Hinault joined his fellow Bretons on the streets. One summer the race even went past the front door of his house. “I hadn’t thought much about becoming a cyclist when I was very young,” he says, “but seeing the Tour again and again put the idea in my head.” Years later he would become a champion of the Tour.
Like many children in France, Hinault received his first bike when he was about seven years old, but only started riding competitively a decade later. He discovered that he was born to the saddle. “When I left school and started working I would cycle to work each day,” he says. “There was a hill on the way to work. The great thing about the hill was that because it was so steep, the lorries had to slow down and change gear. So I’d get behind them. It made getting to the top much easier.”
Chasing lorries across Brittany sparked the competitive fire in Hinault. Within four years he had joined the professional ranks, launching a career in which he became one of the sport’s greats. No Frenchman has won the Tour de France since Hinault wore the leader’s yellow jersey along the cobbles of the Champs Elysees in Paris in 1985. He won the Tour five times and is the only cyclist to have won the three Grand Tours twice: the Tours of France, Italy and Spain.
An attacking cyclist who could climb, sprint and race against the clock, Hinault was nicknamed the Badger. “It was the way all the riders addressed each other in the peloton when I was younger: ‘What’s up, blaireau?’ Finally it just stuck.” The 23-year-old already had quite a reputation when he entered his first Tour in 1978. He had won several one-day classics the previous season and two months before he had triumphed in the Vuelta a Espana.
The Tour, celebrating its 75th anniversary, started in Holland, but Hinault was content to bide his time as the race snaked its way through Belgium, northern France and down the west coast. That year Brittany was not on the agenda.
It was in the eighth stage – a 59km time-trial through the vineyards of Bordeaux from St-Emilion to Ste-Foy-la-Grande – that Hinault stamped his mark. He powered home to beat Joseph Bruyere by 34 seconds and lopped more than four minutes off Gerrie Knete-mann’s lead. He climbed from obscurity to fourth in the general classification, and France had a new hero. In the Pyrenees the Badger showed his climbing skill up the 2,113m Tour-malet and after nearly six hours finished only five seconds behind the stage winner, Mariano Martinez, a mountain specialist.
The next day the riders were required to wake at five o’clock for the morning stage. They decided to protest en masse. The peloton dismounted near the finish and walked across the line. The stage was annulled and the prize-money given to charity. Hinault was the leader of the protest, a role he filled for many years as patron of the peloton.
“When you’re No 1, you lead by example,” he says. “Everyone understands that you’re not to be messed with. You fight the other cyclists’ corner as well. We had a demonstration because racing conditions were getting worse. We had to put a stop to it.”
The Alps provided further drama. Michel Pollentier, defending the King of the Mountains jersey, swept to victory on the Alpe d’Huez stage, taking the yellow jersey. However, when he provided a urine sample for the drug test, he slipped a plastic bulb under his arm and fed “clean” urine into the beaker through a tube under his shorts. He was caught out and kicked off the Tour.
“We’re waging a war against drugs,” says Hinault. “The problem with sport today is that there’s so much more money at stake. If you’re going to try to win that money, you’ll be tempted to cheat. It’s the same with anything in life. Certain people will go to any lengths to get what they want.”
In 1978 Pollentier’s disqualification left the Dutch rider Joop Zoetemelk leading. However, Hinault pounced in the final time-trial two stages before Paris and secured his first Tour victory by three minutes, 56 seconds.
Which of his five wins was the most satisfying? “All of them. It’s impossible for me to pick one. That’s how it is with every race for me, whether it’s the Tour or a little local race. Every race is wonderful in its own way. You see kids of two or three watching their first Tour, right up to old ladies of 80. It’s a spectacle unfolding right in front of you. And it’s free, classless, as much for the poor as the rich.
“I like to think of the Tour as a menu. When you go to a restaurant, you have a menu with all these different dishes on it: entrees, desserts. It’s the same thing with cycling, particularly with the Tour. You have stages where you’re climbing, sprints, the mountains. It’s for you to play to your strengths, you decide exactly when to attack.
“I had one tough day in the Giro d’Italia after I’d eaten too much ice cream and was punished for it. I’ve had knee problems, but that’s part of life. Athletes aren’t supermen. We are men like any other – fragile. We have our worries like everyone else.
“The Tour is no more demanding than it was 20 years ago. It’s 1,000km shorter, in fact. There are two rest days, when 30 years ago there was only one. There were stages that were 330km, 340km then. Today, if they do one that’s 250km, everyone thinks it’s too much. As I said, the Tour is like a menu. Nobody says you have to eat all of it. It’s up to you to choose the bits you fancy: where you should attack, where you should rest, but still keep up with the others, of course.”
Now working as a Tour adviser, Hinault and his wife, Martine, are ready to enjoy life. “I was a farmer for 20 years, growing crops, mostly. We stopped last year. We wanted to live a little. We were always so busy: it’s no kind of life, really. I’m 52 and I’ve made enough money. You can’t take it with you. I want to put my feet up.”
But the competitive juices still flow. “I’ve started cycling again. I didn’t win my last race, but I was still up there with the frontrunners. I really enjoyed it.”
Additional reporting: Mia Ogden
ESPN Classic, Sky channel 442, will show Legend On Legend (Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx) in three half-hour shows at 4.30pm and 9pm today
It’s not every year that the Tour de France passes through Brittany on the western tip of France. When it does, thousands of locals line the route to watch the world’s greatest cycle race.
In the 1960s a young Bernard Hinault joined his fellow Bretons on the streets. One summer the race even went past the front door of his house. “I hadn’t thought much about becoming a cyclist when I was very young,” he says, “but seeing the Tour again and again put the idea in my head.” Years later he would become a champion of the Tour.
Like many children in France, Hinault received his first bike when he was about seven years old, but only started riding competitively a decade later. He discovered that he was born to the saddle. “When I left school and started working I would cycle to work each day,” he says. “There was a hill on the way to work. The great thing about the hill was that because it was so steep, the lorries had to slow down and change gear. So I’d get behind them. It made getting to the top much easier.”
Chasing lorries across Brittany sparked the competitive fire in Hinault. Within four years he had joined the professional ranks, launching a career in which he became one of the sport’s greats. No Frenchman has won the Tour de France since Hinault wore the leader’s yellow jersey along the cobbles of the Champs Elysees in Paris in 1985. He won the Tour five times and is the only cyclist to have won the three Grand Tours twice: the Tours of France, Italy and Spain.
An attacking cyclist who could climb, sprint and race against the clock, Hinault was nicknamed the Badger. “It was the way all the riders addressed each other in the peloton when I was younger: ‘What’s up, blaireau?’ Finally it just stuck.” The 23-year-old already had quite a reputation when he entered his first Tour in 1978. He had won several one-day classics the previous season and two months before he had triumphed in the Vuelta a Espana.
The Tour, celebrating its 75th anniversary, started in Holland, but Hinault was content to bide his time as the race snaked its way through Belgium, northern France and down the west coast. That year Brittany was not on the agenda.
It was in the eighth stage – a 59km time-trial through the vineyards of Bordeaux from St-Emilion to Ste-Foy-la-Grande – that Hinault stamped his mark. He powered home to beat Joseph Bruyere by 34 seconds and lopped more than four minutes off Gerrie Knete-mann’s lead. He climbed from obscurity to fourth in the general classification, and France had a new hero. In the Pyrenees the Badger showed his climbing skill up the 2,113m Tour-malet and after nearly six hours finished only five seconds behind the stage winner, Mariano Martinez, a mountain specialist.
The next day the riders were required to wake at five o’clock for the morning stage. They decided to protest en masse. The peloton dismounted near the finish and walked across the line. The stage was annulled and the prize-money given to charity. Hinault was the leader of the protest, a role he filled for many years as patron of the peloton.
“When you’re No 1, you lead by example,” he says. “Everyone understands that you’re not to be messed with. You fight the other cyclists’ corner as well. We had a demonstration because racing conditions were getting worse. We had to put a stop to it.”
The Alps provided further drama. Michel Pollentier, defending the King of the Mountains jersey, swept to victory on the Alpe d’Huez stage, taking the yellow jersey. However, when he provided a urine sample for the drug test, he slipped a plastic bulb under his arm and fed “clean” urine into the beaker through a tube under his shorts. He was caught out and kicked off the Tour.
“We’re waging a war against drugs,” says Hinault. “The problem with sport today is that there’s so much more money at stake. If you’re going to try to win that money, you’ll be tempted to cheat. It’s the same with anything in life. Certain people will go to any lengths to get what they want.”
In 1978 Pollentier’s disqualification left the Dutch rider Joop Zoetemelk leading. However, Hinault pounced in the final time-trial two stages before Paris and secured his first Tour victory by three minutes, 56 seconds.
Which of his five wins was the most satisfying? “All of them. It’s impossible for me to pick one. That’s how it is with every race for me, whether it’s the Tour or a little local race. Every race is wonderful in its own way. You see kids of two or three watching their first Tour, right up to old ladies of 80. It’s a spectacle unfolding right in front of you. And it’s free, classless, as much for the poor as the rich.
“I like to think of the Tour as a menu. When you go to a restaurant, you have a menu with all these different dishes on it: entrees, desserts. It’s the same thing with cycling, particularly with the Tour. You have stages where you’re climbing, sprints, the mountains. It’s for you to play to your strengths, you decide exactly when to attack.
“I had one tough day in the Giro d’Italia after I’d eaten too much ice cream and was punished for it. I’ve had knee problems, but that’s part of life. Athletes aren’t supermen. We are men like any other – fragile. We have our worries like everyone else.
“The Tour is no more demanding than it was 20 years ago. It’s 1,000km shorter, in fact. There are two rest days, when 30 years ago there was only one. There were stages that were 330km, 340km then. Today, if they do one that’s 250km, everyone thinks it’s too much. As I said, the Tour is like a menu. Nobody says you have to eat all of it. It’s up to you to choose the bits you fancy: where you should attack, where you should rest, but still keep up with the others, of course.”
Now working as a Tour adviser, Hinault and his wife, Martine, are ready to enjoy life. “I was a farmer for 20 years, growing crops, mostly. We stopped last year. We wanted to live a little. We were always so busy: it’s no kind of life, really. I’m 52 and I’ve made enough money. You can’t take it with you. I want to put my feet up.”
But the competitive juices still flow. “I’ve started cycling again. I didn’t win my last race, but I was still up there with the frontrunners. I really enjoyed it.”
Additional reporting: Mia Ogden
ESPN Classic, Sky channel 442, will show Legend On Legend (Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx) in three half-hour shows at 4.30pm and 9pm today
