The Anquetil Years
Poulidor's rivalry with Anquetil is a legend in cycling. While a good climber, Poulidor had a hard time matching Anquetil in the individual time trial, often having victory snatched from him by losing time in time-trial stages of the Tour de France.
Poulidor's riding style was aggressive and attacking, whereas Anquetil preferred to control the race in the mountains and win time in the time-trials. Poulidor became the darling of the French public, to the ire of Anquetil. Poulidor's mid-France upbringing and his slow Limousin speech also contrasted with Anquetil's northern background and sharper accent. Poulidor's face was deeply tanned and furrowed; Anquetil had high cheekbones, a smoother face and brushed-up blond hair.
Poulidor's best chance of defeating Anquetil in the 1964 Tour de France, in the finish on the Puy de Dôme. Anquetil rode beside Poulidor but both were so exhausted that only in the last few hundred metres could Poulidor take nearly enough time to threaten Anquetil's yellow jersey. The Tour organiser, Jacques Goddet, was behind the pair as they turned off the main road and climbed through what police estimated as half a million spectators. Goddet recalled:
The two, at the extreme of their rivalry, climbing the road wrapped like a ribbon round the majestic volcano, terribly steep, in parallel action... I've always been convinced that in these moments that supreme player of poker, the Norman, used his craftiness and his fearless bluffing to win his fifth Tour. Because, to me, it was clear that Anquetil was at the very limit of his strength and that had Poulidor attacked him repeatedly and suddenly then he would have cracked... Although his advisers claim that his error in maintaining steady pressure rather than attacking was the result of using slightly too big a gear, which stopped his jumping away, I still think that it was in his head that Pou-Pou should have changed gears.
Anquetil rode on the inside by the mountain wall while Poulidor took the outer edge by the precipice. They could sometimes feel the other's hot gasps on their bare arms. At the end, Anquetil cracked, after a battle of wills and legs so intense that at times they banged elbows. Poulidor says he was so tired that he has no memory of the two touching, although a photograph shows that they did. Of Anquetil, the veteran French reporter Pierre Chany wrote: "His face, until then purple, lost all its colour; the sweat ran down in drops through the creases of his cheeks." Anquetil was only semiconscious, he said. Anquetil's manager, Raphaël Géminiani, said:
Anquetil's head was a computer. It started working: in 500 metres, Poulidor wouldn't get his 56 seconds. I'll never forget what happened when Jacques crossed the line. Close to fainting, he collapsed on the front of my car. With barely any breath left, exhausted, but 200 per cent lucid, he asked me: 'How much?' I told him 14 seconds. 'That's one more than I need. I've got 13 in hand', he said.
In my opinion Poulidor was demoralised by Anquetil's resistance, his mental strength. There were three times when he could have dropped Anquetil. First, at the bottom of the climb. Then when Julio Jimenez attacked . Finally in the last kilometre. The nearer the summit came, the more Jacques was suffering. In the last few hundred metres, he was losing time. At the top of the Puy it's 13 per cent. Poulidor should have attacked: he didn't. Poulidor didn't attack in the last 500 metres - it was Jacques who got dropped, and that's not the same thing.
Poulidor recalled, 40 years later:
| “ | Anquetil didn't bluff me. The truth is that we were both cooked. The only error I made was to forget to ride the hill in advance, by contrast to Lance Armstrong, by example, who leaves nothing to chance. Me, I set off to win the stage and the one-minute bonus. Even with Jacques on my wheel I would have taken the yellow jersey, but I wasn't able to follow Jimenez and Bahamontes. | ” |
Poulidor gained time but when they reached Paris, Anquetil still had a 55-second lead and won his last Tour de France thanks to the time-trial on the final day. The writer Chris Sidwells said:
The race also ended the Anquetil era in Tour history. He could not face riding it the following year, and in 1966 he retired from the Tour with bad health - once he'd made sure that Poulidor could not win either. Poulidor may not have managed to slay his dragon, in fact so bloodied was he by his battle that he never did win the Tour, but he did manage to wound his rival, and in so doing brought down the curtain on the rule of the first five-times winner - the first great super-champion of the Tour de France.
It was often said that Anquetil preferred to see Poulidor lose than to win a race himself. The two were paired for a two-man time-trial in 1965; instead of riding for victory, Anquetil feigned exhaustion and cost both the victory, which he admitted later. Poulidor said the two had to bear each other's presence in the round-the-houses races that then made up most of riders' incomes after the Tour. He said:
| “ | For a long time, I detested him (Anquetil). In the criteriums we were obliged to get on but we never ate at the same table. It was often Jeanine who acted as an intermediary. But later we got on. When he died, I had the feeling that I had lost a friend. | ” |
He said he thought of Anquetil "not every day but almost."
Poulidor recalls Anquetil's last words to him on his deathbed:
| “ | He said to me that the cancer was so agonisingly painful it was like racing up the Puy de Dôme all day, every hour of the day. He then said, I will never forget it, 'My friend, you will come second to me once again.' | ” |
Read more about this topic: Raymond Poulidor
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.”
—Auberon Waugh (b. 1939)