In the third volume of his “Cycling Legends” series, author Chris Sidwells focused on the first man to win all three Grand Tours in his career and the first to win the Tour de France five times. “Monsieur Chrono” was the nickname given to Jacques Anquetil, who built his reputation through his brilliance as a time trial racer. With his sporting heyday from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s and with his early death at 53 in 1987, many of today’s cycling fans are not that familiar with his impressive accomplishments. The first English-language biography of him only appeared in 2008. This new book is subtitled ”The Man Behind the Mask” and the author’s aim was to reveal who Anquetil really was, someone far more complex, in both his professional and personal lives, than his public image suggested.
Born in Normandy in 1934 and raised on a strawberry farm, Anquetil left the village school at 14 to enter a technical college where he became friends with a fellow student who was a cyclist. Soon Jacques was riding with the local club, where he surprised the others with his natural talent. Anquetil believed that bike racing offered an escape from the dreary everyday life that seemed ahead of him and was in a hurry to succeed. By 1952 as an amateur he won the Normandy provincial championship, followed by the French national one that same year. These results qualified him for the French Olympic team, which won the team medal at Helsinki and gave him a bronze medal.
In 1953 he raced as an independent, a quasi-professional status that allowed a rider to participate in races without a team contract. In August that year he took on the Tour de la Manche, a three day pro race in his region, and he beat the professionals for his first big victory. But he really got the cycling world’s attention a month later when he raced the Grand Prix des Nations, a legendary race that was essentially the World Championship for time trialling. The route was a complex 140 km course, ending at the Parc des Princes velodrome in Paris. Previous victors had included Fausto Coppi (twice), Hugo Koblet and Louison Bobet but nobody was prepared for 19 year old Anquetil’s dominant victory, coming in over seven minutes ahead of the next competitor. Anquetil was to go on to win this race eight more times—a win every time he entered—but the 1953 edition would change his life and launch him to the stratosphere of pro racing as he became famous overnight.
Signed onto the La Perle team managed by Francis Pélissier (of the famous brothers of French racing fame in the 1920s), Anquetil was determined to learn the metier and become an accomplished professional. However, he ignored his manager’s advice on dietary and other matters and this seems to have been a consistent pattern. A young man who would go his own way then and afterwards, Anquetil’s fabulous palmares never earned him the affection of the French public. While he might currently hold third place in the all-time Grand Tour winners list, with eight victories, “victories were not what motivated Jacques Anquetil. He was in cycling to make money and winning was the means by which he did it.”
One of the strengths of the “Cycling Legends” series is the space devoted to interviews with people who gave candid opinions of the central subject of the book. In this one there is an exchange with a talented British rider, Peter Hill, who raced with Anquetil as a teammate and shared the same coach, André Boucher, with Boucher having huge influence on both young riders. Hill’s comments on the training regime for pros in the early 1960s are revealing and the myth that Anquetil did work at training as much as he should have is gently debunked.
There is so much interesting material in this book about the world of racing a half century ago and the conflicts between riders. All too human, there were times when Anquetil was less interested in winning himself than in making sure someone else failed. This is the the truth about what history has built up to be one of the great rivalries of bike racing—that of Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor. Poulidor was no slouch as a racer—he won Paris-Nice and the Dauphiné twice, the GC at the Vuelta, Milan-San Remo and Flèche Wallonne, along with seven Tour de France stages—but he while he was not as good as Anquetil he became one of France’s most loved sports figures. Anquetil seems to have been genuinely appalled by the idea that Poulidor might beat him in a race. “It wasn’t Poulidor’s talent that bothered Anquetil, it was his popularity. Poulidor was all smiles and bashful modesty at races and he was approachable too. But he lost more often than he won, usually at the hands of Anquetil. That resonated with a significant proportion of the French public.”
In 1965 Anquetil did not race any of the Grand Tours, feeling that he had maximized the financial return he could get in the high-paying criterium races that followed them. He was also worried that Poulidor was on the verge of winning the Tour de France, so Anquetil’s team manager, Raphael Geminiani, suggested a stunt that would overshadow anything poor Raymond would accomplish: winning the Critérium de Dauphiné Libéré, a week long stage race in the mountains followed immediately after by taking the win at the gruelling 560 km Bordeaux-Paris race. After winning the Dauphiné (and, yes, beating Poulidor there by under two minutes), he was whisked off by private jet to Bordeaux for the start of the race in the middle of the night, setting off sleepless but ultimately succeeding there too.
Sidwells is successful in portraying Anquetil as very different from his public image, that image—aloof, calculating, cold, somewhat arrogant but also glamorous, handsome and an accomplished jet setter—but the reality was different:
“His suave confidence was a mask; it was the public face which portrayed Jacques Anquetil the cyclist as a business success. In truth he was a timid man, superstitious, sometime jealous, and an obsessive. On top of that he could be awkward, contrary and oblivious to the effect his actions had on others. Those traits made him a restless and conflicted soul who could be frighteningly driven during his racing career, but who later in life found solace in nature.”
His racing career allowed him to end his days as lord of the manor in his own chateau, where he played the role of gentleman farmer, so different from the hard circumstances of his childhood. This was an obsession and the author touches on another obsession of the retired rider, which was to father a child. The author notes that Anquetil lived his life the way he wanted and his personal life has aspects that make one cringe. His obsession with Poulidor seems to have been creepy enough but his family relationships trump that although the sporting press remained mum on this subject and Sidwells, who had the chance to visit the chateau and speak with Anquetil’s second wife, does not dwell on it.
“Jacques Anquetil: The Man Behind the Mask” is an excellent book, filled with superb photographs and those great interviews, not only with Peter Hill but also the better-known but now-departed Rudi Altig, Jean Stablinski and Jean Bobet. Anquetil’s sporting record is amazing in retrospect (although, oddly, no Rainbow Jersey) and his accomplishments deserve to be respected. Those in Normandy always thought him the best cyclist there ever was and, after reading this book, there is much to be said for that opinion.
Cycling Legends 03 “Jacques Anquetil: The Man Behind the Mask”
by Chris Sidwells
150 pp., profusely illustrated, softcover
Cycling Legends, UK, 2024
ISBN 978-1-0369-0379-4
Price: GBP 20 (There is a discount available when buying more books in the “Cycling Legends” series)
- The book is available directly from the publisher. For further information and international pricing: cyclinglegends.co.uk
The post PEZ Bookshelf: Cycling Legends 03—Jacques Anquetil, The Man Behind the Mask appeared first on PezCycling News.
