Paul Fournel - Anquetil, Alone: The legend of the controversial Tour de France champion

ANQUETIL, Alone

Paul Fournel is a French writer, poet, publisher and cultural ambassador. He was awarded the Prix Goncourt for short fiction for Les Athltes dans leur tte. His Besoin de Vlo (translated into English as Need for the Bike and Vlo) is a classic cycling text, in which he describes himself as the Proust of the chute. Anquetil, Alone is translated by Nick Caistor.

PAUL FOURNEL

Translated from the French by Nick Caistor

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

PURSUIT

An imprint of Profile Books Ltd

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Bevin Way

London

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www.profilebooks.com

First published in French in 2012 by

Editions du Seuil, entitled Anquetil tout seul

Translation copyright Profile Books, 2017

Copyright Editions du Seuil, 2012

Frontispiece photograph DR

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 78283 298 0

Geldermans told me that before every climb, Anquetil used to take his water bottle out of its holder and stick it in the back pocket of his jersey to lighten his bike. I decided to look more closely. I discovered that, in all the photos of Anquetil in the mountains, the bottle was in its holder. But that was an illusion: Geldermans story is the true one. Thats the one that gets to the heart of the cyclist. Its the photos that are lying.

Tim Krabb, The Rider

Over-exertion is a vain notion for cyclists.

Antoine Blondin

A reactor, an IBM machine and a spirit-still.

Raphal Geminiani, Les annes Anquetil

Anquetil enjoyed the blessing of the winds. His pointed nose and face like a fine blade sliced the road open for him, and his whole body flowed behind it, cutting through the mistrals, piercing the winter breezes and the summer storms. He seemed to be diaphanous, almost ill, with a slender build that was half a Van Looy, a third of Rudi Altig. His profile was like one on a medal, and when you saw him looking so slight you would never have imagined he had such a barrel chest, a barrel hiding the gunpowder of the most explosive engine, or that his legs and lower back were made of latex.

The way he pedalled was a lie. It spoke of ease and grace, like a bird taking off or a dancer in a sport of lumberjacks, riders who crushed the pedals, gluttons for hard work, masculinity in all shapes and sizes. Anquetil pedalled blond, with supple ankles; he pedalled on points, back bent, arms at right angles, head straining forwards. No man was ever better suited than him to riding a bike, never was the harnessing of man and machine so harmonious. He was made to be seen alone on the road, silhouetted against the blue sky; nothing about him suggested the peloton, the crowd and the strength of being united. He was cycling beauty, out on its own. For a long while I thought of him as a sorcerer who has found the Great Secret, Cyrille Guimard said of him. From his first turn of the pedal, he exchanged the legendary toughness of the galley slaves of the road for an unprecedented kind of violence, something that looked elegant but was secretly brutal, and from which his opponents were going to suffer, without being able to imitate him. It should be added that Anquetil doesnt grimace, bare his teeth, jerk his head as he struggles. He is hard to read. He simply turns pale, his face is imperceptibly sunken, his eyes turn light grey. At the hardest moments of a race, when hes going at 50 kph, you would think he was consumptive.

I was ten years old. I was small, brown-haired and tubby. He was big, blond and slender, and I wanted to be him. I wanted his bike, his allure, his nonchalance, his elegance. I had found my model and my opposite wrapped into one. Both of these were impossible to achieve, which meant I had a long way to go.

For Anquetil, the essential takes place in solitude. He doesnt like mass races, he doesnt like to show off. His opponents are there to be beaten; they arent there to get to know or to play games with. His team-mates are there to work hard to make him win and to earn their own livelihoods. Nothing more. There are things he does alone and things that he alone does. In both cases, solitude is his kingdom. This solitude is not simply a way of considering what cycling is about, its an overall way of life, the defining characteristic of his soul, whether that has been sold to God or the Devil.

Anquetil is standing naked, balanced nervously over the bathtub as it fills with boiling water. The steam grips his sex, buttocks, legs: the precious calves, the golden thighs. The head receives the vapours, becomes a thermometer. Anquetil peers down at his feet, but cant see them. He absorbs the heat, gorges his muscles on it. He doesnt think of the race hes taking part in, doesnt go through the bends and contours in his mind. The outline is rolled up in his belly: he can feel it there, hard, compact, painful, knotty, and knows that soon, right after the start, it will unroll and follow every last centimetre, like the most detailed route map. He is scared. The steam swells his quadriceps and eases his torment. He has followed all the rituals one by one: he has had a haircut, well-groomed on top and trimmed well above the ears, like a grooved artillery shell he has been to see his healer, who laid his hands on his weak throat and all the parts of his body where he is going to feel pain beyond pain. On Friday, he rode the 120 kilometres of the ritual at the speed of his old trainer Bouchers motorbike, nestled in its shelter at the limits of his strength; on Saturday he dug the length of the course metre by metre, studying it on the map, taking in every detail; and now he is warming himself over the bathtub.

On the chair next to the washstand, the black shorts, white socks, his jersey all of them brand new; the shoes with black leather soles, polished and already worn to avoid any nasty surprises, the cleats carefully nailed underneath. He wont be wearing a cap.

ANQUETIL: Im wedded to the crown of the road, at its highest point, I dont cut across at the bends, saving myself having to descend and climb back all the time. I leave that line to the cheapskates, the penny-pinchers. I retrace the road-builders design and his pure line, choose the part that vehicles have worn smooth, leaving the edges to flints, shards of glass, dust. The road glides beneath my stomach. Ive learned all about it on the rim of my wheels. I know that after this house it will turn left and start to climb, I know this stand of trees below will protect me from the wind for a moment. The whole width of the road is mine, and I trace the cleanest path along it that I can. The narrowest tubulars have been inflated to 10 bars, and Im flying on my path of air.