Charly Gaul - Early Life

Early Life

Charly Gaul - pronounced Gowl - was a fragile-looking man with a sad face and disproportionately short legs. He had "a sad, timid look on his face, marked with an unfathomable melancholy an evil deity has forced him into a cursed profession amidst powerful, implacable riders," as one writer put it.

Gaul worked in a butcher's shop and as a slaughterman in an abattoir at Bettembourg before turning professional on 3 May 1953 for Terrot, at the age of 20. By then he had already won more than 60 races as an amateur having started racing in 1949. They included the Flêche du Sud and the Tour of the 12 Cantons. He won a stage up the climb of Grossglockner during the Tour of Austria when he was 17, setting a stage record. It was his first race outside Luxembourg. The writer Charlie Woods said:

"The Grossglockner is slightly higher than Mont Ventoux and just as formidable. One can imagine the youngster engaging rather sheepishly with such a monster. He knew that he could climb well on ordinary hills, but this was no man's land. At half-distance, however, despite his manager's exhortations to caution, his class told and he found himself alone in the lead. A few moments of giddy pleasure were soon dispatched by the ever-present need to keep the pedals turning; he was, after all, still in no man's land. This show of force was greeted by another, a thunderstorm and the first squalls of rain probably cooled the fever of his labours and brought with it a lighter, freer atmosphere. He had always been at ease in rainfall beginning to pedal now with an edge of fierce affirmation, he perhaps completely forgot himself for a long series of ramps and bends... To such an extent that not only did he win the stage but broke the existing record for the climb.

His first professional race was the Critérium de la Polymultipliée, which he finished eighth. His first professional win was in 1953 in Luxembourg, in the national cyclo-cross championship. He came second the same year in the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré stage race. The following year he was second in the Luxembourg road championship (which he won six times), won a stage in the Dauphiné Libéré, and won a bronze medal in the 1954 world championship.