Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Full name | Jacques Anquetil | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Nickname | Monsieur Chrono Maître Jacques |
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Date of birth | 8 January 1934 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Date of death | 18 November 1987 (aged 53) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Country | ![]() |
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Height | 1.76 m (5 ft 9 in) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 70 kg (150 lb) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Team information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Discipline | Road, track | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Role | Rider | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Rider type | All-rounder | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Amateur team(s) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
1950-1952 | AC Sottevillais | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Professional team(s) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
1953-1955 1956–1958 1959–1960 1961–1964 1965–1966 1967–1969 |
La Perle Helyett ACBB Leroux Saint-Raphaël Ford-Gitane Bic |
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Major wins | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tour de France (1957, 1961–1964) Giro d'Italia (1960, 1964) Vuelta a España (1963) Super Prestige Pernod International
Grand Prix des Nations
Liège-Bastogne-Liège (1966) |
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Infobox last updated on: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
19 December 2007 |
Jacques Anquetil (8 January 1934 – 18 November 1987), was a French road racing cyclist and the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times, in 1957 and from 1961 to 1964. He stated before the 1961 Tour that he would gain the yellow jersey on day one and wear it all through the tour, a tall order with two previous winners in the field - Charly Gaul and Federico Bahamontes - but he did just that. His victories in stage races such as the Tour were built on an exceptional ability to ride alone against the clock in individual time trial stages.
Anquetil was:
Anquetil was the son of a builder in Mont-Saint-Aignan, in the hills above Rouen in Normandy, north-west France. He lived there with his parents , Ernest and Marie, and his brother Philippe and then at Boisguillaume in a two-storey house, "one of those houses with exposed beams that tourists think are pretty but those who live there find uncomfortable."[2]
In 1941, his father refused contracts to work on military installations for the German occupiers and his work dried up. Other members of the family worked in strawberry farming and Anquetil's father followed them, moving to the hamlet of Bourguet, near Quincampoix. Anquetil had his first bicycle - an Alcyon - at the age of four and twice a day rode the kilometre and a half to the village and back. There he was taught by a teacher wearing clogs in a classroom heated by a smoking stove.[2]
Anquetil learned metal-turning at the technical college at Sotteville-lès-Rouen, a suburb of the city, where he played billiards with a friend named Maurice Dieulois. His friend joined the AC Sottevillais club with the encouragement of his father and began racing. Anquetil said he was impressed by the way girls were attracted to Dieulois because he had become a coureur cycliste and he gave up his first choice - running - and joined the club as well."[2] He was 17 and he took out his first racing licence on 2 December 1950. He stayed a member the rest of his life[3] and his grave in the churchyard at Quincampoix has a permanent tribute from his clubmates.
Anquetil passed his qualifications in light engineering and went to work for 50 old francs a day at a factory in Sotteville. He left after 26 days following a disagreement with his boss over time off for training. The AC Sottevillais, founded in 1898, was run by a cycle-dealer, André Boucher, who had a shop in the Place du Trianon in Sotteville.[3] The club had not just Anquetil but Claude LeBer, who became professional pursuit champion in 1955, Jean Jourden, world amateur champion in 1961, and Francis Bazire, who came second to Eddy Merckx in the world amateur championship in 1964.[3]
Boucher trained his group first from a bicycle and then by Derny. Anquetil made fast progress and won 16 times as an amateur. His first victory was the Prix Maurice Latour at Rouen on 3 May 1951. He also took the Prix de France in 1952 and the Tour de la Manche and the national road championship the same year.
Anquetil rode in the French team in the 100 km time trial at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and won a bronze medal. Impressed by his protégé's progress, André Boucher sent an envelope of Anquetil's press cuttings to the local representative of the Perle bicycle company and asked him to send them to the firm's cycling team manager, the former Tour de France rider, Francis Pélissier. [4]
Pélissier called Anquetil, who was surprised and flattered to hear from him, and offered him 30,000 old francs a month to ride for La Perle as an independent, or semi-professional. Anquetil accepted and immediately ordered a new car, a Renault Fregate, which he crashed twice in the first 12 months.[5]
Pélissier wanted Anquetil for the 1953 Grand Prix des Nations, a race started by the newspaper Paris-Soir which since 1932 had risen to the status of an unofficial world time-trial championship. It was held on a 142 km loop of rolling roads through Versailles, Rambouillet, Maulette, St-Rémy-les-Chevreuse and then back to Versailles before, originally, finishing on the Buffalo track in Paris.
Anquetil was aware that one of his rivals was an Englishman named Ken Joy, who had broken records in Britain but was unknown in France. He would ride with another Englishman, Bob Maitland.[5] The historian Richard Yates says:
Anquetil caught Joy - the moment he realised he was going to win the race[2] - even though Joy had started 16 minutes earlier. At 19, Anquetil had become unofficial time-trial champion of the world.
The win pleased Pélissier but did not convince him. Next year he drove his team car not behind Anquetil but his Swiss star, Hugo Koblet. Anquetil was not amused. When he beat Koblet, he sent his winner's bouquet to Pélissier's wife "in deepest sympathy".[2]
Anquetil rode the Grand Prix des Nations nine times without being beaten.
On 22 September 1954, Anquetil started two years' compulsory service in the army, joining the Richepanse de Rouen barracks as a gunner of the 406th artillery regiment. The army accorded him few great favours but there was an exception:
“ | In June 1956, my chiefs finally gave me an order more to my liking, the strangest, the most unusual that a gunner has ever been asked to carry out; it was nothing less than to beat the world hour record. I knew what that meant: to storm a veritable fortress. For 14 years, since 7 November 1942, the date on which Fausto Coppi planted the Italian flag on it, it had discouraged all assailants. One figure sums up the difficulty of the enterprise: 45.848 km.[2] | ” |
Should he break the record, he and the army agreed, he would give half the rewards to the army and the rest to the mother of a soldier, André Dufour, who had been killed while fighting at Palestro, in Algeria.[6] The chances of breaking it were far from guaranteed, not only because Coppi's record had already defied Gerrit Schulte and Louison Bobet but also Anquetil himself, on 23 November 1955, when he had started too fast, faded and finished 696 m short of Coppi. His second attempt also flopped. He again started too fast. After 54:36 his helpers called him to a stop after 41.326km. His legs failed him when he got off his bike and he had to be carried to a chair in a corner of the Velodromo Vigorelli, the velodrome in Milan, Italy.
"I was like a child's lead soldier that has lost its horse", he said.[2] The Italian crowd chanted: "Coppi! Coppi! Coppi!"
Next day he received a telegram: "Congratulations on a good performance. Sure of your success. Take your time. Captain Gueguen will arrive tomorrow with instructions. Signed: Commander Dieudonné".[6]
At 7:30pm on 29 June 1956, riding a lighter bike made in three days to the same design as Coppi's, and using a 7m40 gear (52x15), Anquetil tried again and finally broke his hero's record, riding 46.159 km. Coppi was the first professional to give Anquetil his autograph.[7] When the two next met, Anquetil was also a professional. He went to Italy to meet Coppi and, for reasons never explained, dressed as a simple country boy rather than in the smart clothes that he normally wore.
In 1967, 11 years later, Anquetil again broke the hour record, with 47.493 km, but the record was disallowed because he refused to take the newly-introduced post-race doping test[8]. He objected to what he saw as the indignity of having to urinate in a tent in front of a crowded velodrome and said he would take the test later at his hotel. The international judge ruled against the idea and a scuffle ensued that involved Anquetil's manager, Raphaël Géminiani.
In 1957 Anquetil rode - and won - his first Tour de France. His inclusion in the national team - the Tour was still ridden by national rather than commercial teams - was what the French broadcaster Jean-Paul Ollivier called "a forceps operation".[9]
Anquetil recognised the allusion and accepted the invitation to ride. He finished nearly 15 minutes ahead of the rest, having won stages.
In 1959, Anquetil was whistled as he finished the Tour on the Parc des Princes because spectators had worked out that he and others had contrived to let Federico Bahamontes win rather than the Frenchman Henry Anglade. The French team was unbalanced by internal rivalries. Anglade, whose bossy nature earned him the nickname Napoleon, was particularly unusual in that he was represented by the agent Roger Piel while the others had Daniel Dousset. The two men controlled all French racing.[10] Dousset soon worked out that his riders had to either beat Bahamontes or make sure that Anglade didn't win. Since they couldn't beat Anglade, they contrived to let Bahamontes win because Bahamontes, a poor rider on the flat and on small circuits, would be no threat to the post-Tour criterium fees that made up the bulk of riders' - and agents' - earnings.
Anquetil was jeered and showed his coldness to public reaction by buying a boat that he named "The Whistles of 59" and by pointing out that he was a professional and that his first interest was therefore money. It was an attitude that other riders could understand but made it hard for fans to love him.
In 1960 Anquetil stayed away from the Tour, returning in 1961 and winning the Tour de France thereafter until 1964. He won in 1962 at a speed not bettered until 1981. He was the first rider to win four successive times, breaking the record of three set by Philippe Thys and Louison Bobet. He was also the first to win five times in total, a feat since emulated by Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. Only Lance Armstrong has won more Tours.
His last Tour victory (in 1964) was also his most famous, featuring an elbow-to-elbow duel with public favourite Raymond Poulidor on the road up the Puy de Dôme mountain on 12 July. Suffering indigestion after his excesses on a rest day, Anquetil is reputed to have received treatment from his team manager in the form of a swallow of champagne - a story that Anquetil's wife says is untrue.
The Tour organiser, Jacques Goddet was behind the pair as they turned off the main road and climbed through what the police estimated as half a million spectators. Goddet recalled:
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.
Of Anquetil, 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:
Poulidor gained time but when they reached Paris, Anquetil still had a 55-second lead and won his last Tour de France. The writer Chris Sidwells said:
Anquetil won all three of the Grand Tours - the first cyclist to do so. Anquetil twice won the Giro d'Italia (1960, 1964) and won the Vuelta a España once (1963). He also won the season-long Super Prestige Pernod International competition four times, in 1961, 1963, 1965 and 1966 - a record only surpassed by Eddy Merckx.
Anquetil unfailingly beat Raymond Poulidor in the Tour de France and yet Poulidor remained the more popular. Divisions between their fans became marked, which two sociologists studying the impact of the Tour on French society say became emblematic of France old and new.
The extent of those divisions is shown in a story, perhaps apocryphal, told by Pierre Chany, who was close to Anquetil:
Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Léonard, in their study, wrote:
In 1965, Anquetil won the eight-day Alpine Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré stage race at 3pm, sat through two hours of interviews and receptions, took a 6:30pm chartered flight to Bordeaux and won the world's longest single-day classic, Bordeaux-Paris the following day. The race started at night and continued, from soon after dawn, behind derny motorcycle pacers.
Anquetil was upset, said Raphaël Géminiani in his autobiography, that his rival, Raymond Poulidor was always more warmly regarded even though he had never won the Tour de France. In 1965, when Poulidor was perceived to have received more credit for dropping Anquetil the previous year on the Puy-de-Dôme than Anquetil had received for winning the whole Tour, Géminiani persuaded him to ride the Dauphiné Libéré and, next day, the 557km Bordeaux-Paris. That, he said, would end any argument over who was the greater athlete.
Anquetil won the Dauphiné, despite bad weather which he disliked, at 3pm. After two hours of interviews and receptions he flew from Nîmes to Bordeaux. At midnight, he ate his pre-race meal and then went to the start in the city's northern suburbs.
He could eat little during the night because of stomach cramp and was on the verge of retiring. Géminiani said in his autobiography that he swore at Anquetil and called him "a great poof" to offend his pride and keep him riding. Anquetil felt better as morning came and the riders dropped in behind the derny pacing motorcycles that were a feature of the race. He responded to an attack by Tom Simpson, followed by his own team-mate Jean Stablinski. Anquetil and Stablinski attacked Simpson alternately, forcing himself to exhaust himself, and Anquetil won at the Parc des Princes. Stablinski finished 57 seconds later just ahead of Simpson. [18]
The historian Dick Yates said:
There are strong and undenied rumours that the jet laid on to get Anquetil to Bordeaux was provided through state funds on the orders of President Charles de Gaulle. Géminiani mentions the belief in his biography, without denying it, saying the truth will come out when French state records are opened to scrutiny.
Anquetil's most humiliating race was the Trofeo Barrachi in Italy in 1962, when he had to be pushed by his partner, Rudi Altig, and was so exhausted that he hit a pillar before reaching the track on which the race finished.
The Trofeo Barrachi was a 111km race for two-man teams. Anquetil, the world's best time-triallist, and Altig, a powerful rider with a strong sprint, were favourites. But things soon went wrong. The writer René de Latour wrote:
The pair reached the track on which the race finished. The timekeeper was at the entrance to the stadium, so Anquetil finished. But instead of turning on to the velodrome, he rode straight on and hit a pole. He was helped away with staring eyes and with blood streaming from a cut to his head. The couple nevertheless won by nine seconds.
Anquetil was not as successful in the classic single-day races but towards the end of his career he won:
Anquetil finished in the top 10 in the world championship on six occasions, but second place in 1966 was the nearest he came to the rainbow jersey.
Anquetil was a smooth rider, a beautiful pedalling machine according to one writer. The American journalist Owen Mulholland wrote:
Raphaël Géminiani had been Anquetil's rival as a rider; he became his strongest asset as his manager. The historian Dick Yates wrote:
As a partnership they won four Tours de France, two Giro d'Italia, the Dauphiné-Libéré and then next day, Bordeaux-Paris. Géminiani said of him:
Anquetil was named France's champion of champions by L'Équipe in 1963. He was also appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Mérite in 1965 (cross of merit) and Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur on 5 October 1966.
Anquetil was fascinated by astronomy and was delighted to meet the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
The rational side of his character contrasted with his superstition. In the 1964 Tour de France, a fortune-teller called Belline predicted in the newspaper France-Soir that Anquetil would die on or around the 13th day of the race. His wife Janine, knowing Anquetil's superstition, hid the paper from him but Anquetil found out, not least because he was sent cuttings with unsigned letters. [25]
Jean-Paul Brouchon, leading cycling commentator at the news radio station France-Info, said of the day the forecast was supposed to come true:
A mixture of Anquetil's fear for the future and his enjoyment of living in the present led to many newspaper pictures of the large meal and the wine that he drank that day. Next morning, still worried about the prediction and laden down by the partying, he was dropped on the first hairpins of the col du Port d'Envalira.
He was famous for preparing for races by staying up all night before drinking and playing cards, although the story seems to have increased with the telling. Nevertheless, his team-mate, the British rider Vin Denson, has written in the UK publication Cycling of exuberant parties during races. Denson has written, too, of Anquetil's scrupulous business arrangements with riders and others:
The British journalist Alan Gayfer, former editor of Cycling said:
Dick Yates said: "He had a deep love of the land and was at his happiest when driving a tractor. They [his wife and he] both acquired a taste for bridge parties which often continued late into the night. That Anquetil was a highly intelligent man there can be no doubt and he was the nearest thing to a true intellectual that cycling has ever produced."[27]
Anquetil married Janine Boeda on 22 December 1958. She had been married to Anquetil's doctor. The doctor, seeing a rival, sent his wife to live with friends. [28] Anquetil went to see her, disguised as a plumber [29], and took her off to Paris to buy clothes in the faubourg St-Honoré. [30]
Their marriage produced no children. Janine had two children, Alain and Annie, from her previous marriage. In 2004, Sophie Anquetil published the book Pour l'amour de Jacques in which she confirmed what had been rumoured but what Anquetil had always tried to hide [31]: that she was Anquetil's daughter.
Janine had two failed pregnancies and Anquetil grew upset in 1970 that he wasn't a father. [32] The couple considered a surrogate mother before Janine thought of her daughter, Annie. Janine said: "We didn't use the parental authority that we could have had over her. It was a request that I addressed to her. Gently. Annie always had the choice of refusing."[33] Annie confirmed her mother's recollection. [34] She said:
Anquetil, his wife and his wife's daughter began a ménage à trois[36] Annie said: "Nobody thought it strange that Jacques Anquetil joined me in my bed each evening before returning to the marital bed beside my mother. Everybody was comfortable with it [Tout le monde était à l'aise]."[37]
Annie said she should have left the house after her daughter, Sophie, was born. Instead, she grew jealous of her own mother and demanded that she leave instead. [38] When Janine refused, Annie left instead. To fill the gap in the house, Janine invited her son, Alain, and his wife, Dominique, to return to live there. Anquetil began an affair with Dominique, to make Annie jealous. [39] Dominique had Anquetil's child but Annie still refused to return.
Dominique still lives in the house, Les Elfes, where she organises conferences. [40] Janine and Anquetil divorced. Sophie moved in with Janine, although she lives now in Calenzana, near Calvi. [41]
Both Janine and Dominique wrote their life story: neither mentioned the link between Sophie and Anquetil.[42]
Anquetil will be remembered not simply for the five Tour wins and his unique success in the Grand Prix des Nations. He will be remembered for his stand on the drugs issue. Anquetil never hid that he took drugs - a common practice at the time - and in a debate with a government minister on French television said that only a fool would imagine it was possible to ride Bordeaux-Paris on just water.
He and other cyclists had to ride through "the cold, through heatwaves, in the rain and in the mountains", and they had the right to treat themselves as they wished, he said in a television interview, before adding: "Leave me in peace; everybody takes dope."[43] There was implied acceptance of doping right to the top of the state: the president, Charles de Gaulle, said of Anquetil: "Doping? What doping? Did he or did he not make them play the Marseillaise [the national anthem] abroad?"[44]
He won Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1966. An official named Collard told him once he had got changed that there would be a drugs test. "Too late," Anquetil said. "If you can collect it from the soapy water there, go ahead. I'm a human being, not a fountain." Collard said he would return half an hour later; Anquetil said he would already have left for a dinner appointment 140km away. Two days later the Belgian cycling federation disqualified Anquetil and fined him. Anquetil responded by calling urine tests "a threat to individual liberty" and engaged a lawyer. The case was never heard, the Belgians backed down and Anquetil became the winner.
Pierre Chany said: "Jacques had the strength - for which he was always criticised - to say out loud what others would only whisper. So, when I asked him 'What have you taken?' he didn't drop his eyes before replying. He had the strength of conviction."[45]
Anquetil argued that professional riders were workers and had the same right to treat their pains as, say, a geography teacher. But the argument found less support as more riders were reported to have died or suffered health problems through drug-related incidents, including the death of the English rider, Tom Simpson, in the Tour de France of 1967.[26]
There was great support in the cyclist community, however, for the way Anquetil argued that, if there were to be rules and tests, the tests should be carried out consistently and with dignity. It was professional dignity, the right of a champion not to be ridiculed in front of his public, that he said led to his refusal to take a test in the centre of the Vigorelli track after breaking the world hour record.
The unrecognised time that Anquetil set that day was in any case quickly broken by the Belgian rider, Ferdi Bracke. Anquetil was hurt that the French government had never sent him a telegram of congratulations but sent one to Bracke, who wasn't French. It was a measure of the unacceptability of Anquetil's arguments, as was the way he was quietly dropped from future French teams.
Anquetil holds a particular place in the estimation of British fans, who voted him the BBC's international personality of the year in 1964. He appeared with Tom Simpson from a studio in Paris. The Franco-American journalist René de Latour wrote:
A few days later, Anquetil was named French sportsman of the year.
Anquetil was fascinated by Britain because of the country's enthusiasm for time-trialling and because in 1961 he presented prizes at the Road Time Trials Council evening at the Royal Albert Hall to honour Beryl Burton and Brian Kirby[47]. The pair had won the women's and men's British Best All-Rounder competitions (BBAR) for, respectively, the highest average speed in a season over 25, 50 and 100 miles (women) and 50 and 100 miles (160 km) and 12 hours (men).
Alan Gayfer, the editor of Cycling at the time of Anquetil's death, wrote in appreciation:
Anquetil was fascinated by the British love of time-trialling and in 1964 discussed riding a British 25 mile (40 km) race. Gayfer and the British professional Tom Simpson explained that the course would be on flat roads and asked Anquetil how long the distance would take him. Anquetil, who had the talent to predict his time-trial times accurately, said 46 minutes. That was eight minutes faster than the distance had ever been ridden, the record standing to Bas Breedon at 54:23. It took until 1993 for the record to fall below Anquetil's estimation.
Anquetil asked £1,000 to compete and a London timber merchant called Vic Jenner said he would put up the money. Jenner was an enthusiast who had often put money into the sport. He died shortly afterwards, however, and the ride never happened.[48]
Anquetil rode on the Isle of Man in 1959, and in 1965, when he won the Manx Premier by beating Eddy Merckx into second place.[49]
Anquetil rode his last race not in France, of which he still despaired for its preferring Poulidor, but on 27 December 1969 on the track at Antwerp, in Belgium. It happened, wrote L'Équipe "to the great indifference of the media."[50] He retired to become a farmer at La Domaine des Elfes, La Neuville-Chant-d'Oisel, 17km from Rouen. The château, formerly owned by Guy de Maupassant, was surrounded by 170 hectares. [51]
Anquetil was a correspondent for L'Équipe, consultant for Europe 1 and then on Antenne 2, a race director for Paris-Nice and the Tour Méditerranéen and in Canada, directeur sportif of French teams at world championships[52], and a member of the managing committee of the Fédération Française de Cyclisme. His radio analyses were considered especially sharp and he gained a notoriety in Belgium for telling Luis Ocaña, the Spanish rider living in France, how to beat the Belgian star Eddy Merckx during the Tour de France.
He rode his bike only three times in retirement, saying he had already ridden plenty enough ("trop dégusté sur cet engin"). He rode the Grand Prix des Gentlemen in Nice, a race in which old riders were paired with current competitors; he went out for an afternoon with friends in Normandy; and he joined his daughter for a bike ride on her birthday. Other than that, he didn't ride his bike from 1969 to 1987.
In 1987, after stomach cancer, Jacques Anquetil died in his sleep at 6am on 18 November at the St-Hilaire Clinic in Rouen. He had been there since 10 October. A statement from the clinic said: "His state of health had visibly deteriorated over the last hours and he died in his sleep after showing great courage throughout his illness."[26] Anquetil is buried beside the church in the village of Quincampoix, north of Rouen, where a large black monument by the traffic lights lists all his achievements. There is a further monument at the Piste Municipale track in Paris, where the centre is named after him.
The Jacques Anquetil sports stadium at Quincampoix was dedicated in 1983. There are moves to open a museum in his memory.
The historian Richard Yates wrote:
He added:
The Tour visited Rouen on the 10th anniversary of Anquetil's death. There to remember his first victory in the race were his team-mates, Gilbert Bauvin, Louis Bergard, Albert Bouvet, André Darrigade, Jean Forestier, André Mahé, René Privat and Jean Stablinski. There, too, was the team car from Anquetil's first Tour, driven by the man behind the wheel that year, William Odin. [53]
Sporting positions | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by Roger Walkowiak |
Winner of the Tour de France 1957 |
Succeeded by Charly Gaul |
Preceded by Gastone Nencini |
Winner of the Tour de France 1961-64 |
Succeeded by Felice Gimondi |
Preceded by Charly Gaul |
Winner of the Giro d'Italia 1960 |
Succeeded by Arnaldo Pambianco |
Preceded by Franco Balmamion |
Winner of the Giro d'Italia 1964 |
Succeeded by Vittorio Adorni |
Preceded by Rudi Altig |
Winner of the Vuelta a España 1963 |
Succeeded by Raymond Poulidor |
Records | ||
Preceded by Fausto Coppi |
UCI hour record (46.159 km) 29 June 1956-19 September 1956 |
Succeeded by Ercole Baldini |
|