Charly Gaul - Retirement

Retirement

Gaul's career effectively ended with the Tour de France in 1962. "Without knowing it, he was climbing the slope of his own decline," said Philippe Brunel.

He grumbled as he climbed the Pyrenees and his eyes were flecked with blood.

"At Saint-Gaudens, after his faithful team-mate and roommate Marcel Ernzer had dropped out, he spoke of his lassitude.

"I'm scared in the peloton... The abuse of stimulants, the fatigue clumsy. How many of them have got the reflexes that they need?"
Gaul was never the same. At the end of the season, he left the Gazzola team, tried Peugeot (which came to nothing), a comeback (equally nothing) in the Lamote-Libertas team."

Gaul stopped for good after a track meeting at Niederkorn in 1965. He never recovered from the hurt of being whistled by the crowd when he made his last appearance on the road in the country, riding for a poor team, Lamote, sponsored by a Belgian brewery and achieving nothing. He ran a café at Bonnevoie near the railway station in Luxembourg city before slipping out of public view.

Read more about this topic:  Charly Gaul

Famous quotes containing the word retirement:

    The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Douglas. Now remains a sweet reversion—
    We may boldly spend, upon the hope
    Of what is to come in.
    A comfort of retirement lives in this.
    Hotspur. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    He who comes into Assemblies only to gratifie his Curiosity, and not to make a Figure, enjoys the Pleasures of Retirement in a[n] ...exquisite Degree.
    Richard Steele (1672–1729)