Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape

Jacques Anquetil was a man who kept to himself and followed his own council, both on and off the bike. This approach to life tends to obscure much of one’s life and magnify the importance of the rest. In Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape Paul Howard attempts to disentangle the myth, stoked by Anquetil himself during his lifetime, from the fact. As the first five-time winner of the Tour de France, a well-known bon vivant, and an unapologetic doper, the biography of Jacques Anquetil is a compelling story, but it appears that Anquetil has maintained much of the smokescreen. Given that he was the first rider to win the Tour de France five times (a record at the time that was tied, and then broken, and now just tied again) and the first to win all three Grand Tours, it is somewhat surprising that more is not known about him. However, being wedged in cycling history between Il Campionissimo, Fausto Coppi, and Le Cannibale, Eddy Merckx, Anquetil, makes him overlooked and much like Fausto Coppi, whom Anquetil was with on the fateful trip in the Upper Volta, Anquetil lived at a time when the media was not as per(in?)vasive as it is now, so he managed to keep much of himself obscured from the world.

To begin with the handlebar tape (stick around for the sex and the lies), being a great cyclist demands both great mental and great physical skills, and one of the mental skills is wearing a mask: to look weak or strong, not as you actually feel those things, but as it would be advantageous to give the appearance of feeling those things. This obfuscation reaches its peak on the climbs, in the cold and the wet (which Anquetil hated), but it begins in the proverbial locker room, in training. For Anquetil this early, mental game consisted of cultivating a reputation as a man who could stay out drinking liquor and eating rich foods until the early hours of the morning and then ride everyone into the ground the following day. However, it is not clear from Howard’s telling how true this cultivated appearance was.  He recounts several instances of it allegedly happening, but the accounts are mostly second or third hand, and in the cases where he does have an eyewitness, it is often someone close to Anquetil and interested in maintaining his legend. As Anquetil surely wanted it, we remain uncertain whether he regularly went from bottle to bike or whether he just wanted to give his opponents that impression.

One area in which Anquetil was more forth-coming, at least as he neared retirement, was his use of performance enhancing drugs, asserting that it was crazy to think that anyone could do what professional cyclists do on pan y agua, as Tyler Hamilton would style it. Howard, however, does not seem to be very interested in this aspect of his career and largely leaves it to passing references with regards to his health. The one place it cannot be ignored is with Anquetil’s second attempt at the hour record, during which he rode further than the previous record, but did not have his record ratified, because he refused (on principle according to him) to submit to a drug test.

It is a shame that Howard does not delve into this aspect of his career more deeply because Anquetil stood at the cusp of the drug-testing era, and his honesty about his use opens up vistas to other paths the history of cycling could have gone down. His contemporary Poulidor was the first rider tested at the Tour, so the framework was being laid for the future, but instead of acknowledging what was going on or instituting rigorous testing, both of which would have required acknowledging the truth of what was going on, cycling limped along for 30 or 40 years pretending that it was clean and occasionally rapping people on the knuckles (from the great Eddy Merckx on down) for, what everyone pretended were, mistakes.

If Anquetil’s embrace of chemical enhancement was not the way to go, his honesty could have at least provided a starting point from which to address the problem. However, during the 1967 Tour, when instead of riding Anquetil chose to write a series of tell-all articles, he was not protected from the Omertà by his success, but rather, like many riders before and after, was shunned. Anquetil was not the first to talk about the rampant drug use in cycling, but he was writing at a critical time. Before him, riders were just sharing secrets of the guild, the rulers of the sport were ambivalent, and the rules were absent. After him, riders who told all were not merely spilling secrets, rather they were accusing their fellow riders of cheating, and increasingly, of crimes. Such wishes are hopeless, but looking back, one wonders why the stature of Anquetil did not force an accounting. While it would have been painful at the time, surely it would have been better than letting it fester for another 30 years.

Unfortunately, Howard does not seem to be very interested in the doping. It is possible that Anquetil’s close friends would not want to talk about the doping in a book written at a time when cycling was struggling with its doping past, but from the book it is not clear whether Howard even asked. During his career such a figure as Charles DeGaulle himself was asked about Anquetil’s doping, and remained unimpressed allegedly saying when he decided to give Anquetil the Légion d’honneur, “Doping? Don’t know what you’re talking about. Has he made ‘La Marseillaise’ be heard abroad, yes or no?”

Drug use aside, Anquetil’s relationship with the French public was fraught throughout his career. Like Coppi and Gino Bartali, Anquetil was linked in the French sporting firmament to l’Éternel Second, Raymond Poulidor, and like the two Italians, the home nation’s spirits were divided into two camps. Anquetil, however, deeply resented the association, because if Poulidor was always second, Anquetil was quite frequently first.  Anquetil felt that public adulation and the attendant appearance fees should be a simple metric based on performance, and he did not understand why he was less beloved than Poulidor.

Part of Anquetil’s alienation from the public stemmed from his snubbing of the Classics. Viewing the one-day-races as too capricious to bother with, he preferred a multi-stage event where he felt there was more time for his class to tell and therefore more likelihood that he would win, and time-trials, including the then famous Grand Prix des Nations, which he won eight times, including six in a row. However, the tension with Poulidor was that Anquetil did not understand that his ruthless, almost mechanical victories, lacked the allure of Poulidor’s much more human struggle behind first Anquetil and then, at the end of his career, behind the immortal Merckx.

Aside from his cycling, the sex and lies of the title refer to Anquetil’s somewhat…unusual, domestic environment. Basically, Anquetil seems to have exclusively pursued women that he should not have pursued, who were out of bounds on grounds of propriety, or more. First, there is his wife Jeanine. When they began their relationship, she was married to Anquetil’s physician and friend, Dr. Broëda, with whom she had two children, Annie and Alain (remember them, they’ll crop up again).  While he was still racing Jacques and Jeanine seem to have a relative normal relationship, at least as normal as a professional cyclist can manage, with her slowly gaining custody of her children from her ex-husband. However, Jacques, although allegedly a good father to his step-children, always wanted to have a child of his own, and Jeanine was unable to have any more.

What happened next is obscured by the passage of time and of it taking place within a family that is still together and desirous of protecting Jacques’ memory, but one way or another it was decided (ah, the passive voice) that Annie, 18 at the time, would be a surrogate mother, and without the wonders of in vitro fertilization the conception was achieved in the natural manner and they had a daughter, Sophie. As though that was not complicated enough, Jacques continued to have a relationship with both Jeanine and Annie for the next 12 years as Sophie grew up, before the strains of the unusual familial unit broke things up.

At this point, one would think that perhaps Anquetil would back away from the mess and search either for some way to patch things up with his still devoted wife, or get as far away as possible from this mess, Anquetil, however, began a relationship with his step-son Alain’s wife Dominique, with whom he had a son before succumbing to stomach cancer at age 53. Howard sees these unusual familial relationships as evidence of Anquetil’s determination to set and follow his own standards, as he did on the bike. It seems to be an effort to maintain rigid control over his private life, and of a desire to limit the number of people who are admitted to his inner sanctum, even if it results in a rather limited selection of partners.

Howard did not manage to talk to Alain or Annie, but he paints a picture of a relatively happy family. Like Anquetil’s career this portrait is somewhat affected by the fact that the people who talked are invested in protecting the story of Anquetil, but in defense of the happy family story, it is the case that the original core, Jeanine, Annie and Sophie, at least, is still on speaking terms and lives close by each other, so there was at least something worth holding on to.

In the end, Paul Howard’s biography of Anquetil is unsatisfactory. It does little to elucidate this remarkable life and in fact makes it all feel rather mundane. However, to be fair, this lack of information and insight may be better attributed to successful management by Anquetil than failed research by Howard. Nonetheless, the book is a worthwhile introduction to Jacques Anquetil for those who know little more about him than his five Tour de France victories. Beyond the superficial, however, Anquetil remains obscure at the end of the book, presumably the way he wanted it.

Een hond met een hoed op

The somewhat stilted writing in A Dog in a Hat may leave something to be desired in terms of style, and reading along one may find the story lacking something in the way of flow, but for someone who wants to understand how cycling is a gritty, blue-collar sport in Europe, not the idle pleasure of lycra-clad, carbon-mounted investment bankers, A Dog in a Hat has a lot to offer. Our hero, Joe Parkin, after graduating from high school and on the advice of Bob Roll, leaves behind the nascent American cycling scene to pursue fame and glory on the roads of Europe.

He heads off to Belgium in 1986, on the cusp of what would become the EPO era, with warnings about the nefarious Europeans and all the drugs they were doing. Then upon navigating his way through the foreign land to his new home, the first thing that happens is that he is taken to the doctor for tests. Surely the Belgians are initiating him by doping him up right off the bat, but it turns out to just be blood work and other tests to determine whether he has the physical gifts to be a professional cyclist. The numbers come back and say that while he is not a man for the Tour, he could manage the classics, and so we are off on our adventure, with Parkin as our guide as one of the pioneer Americans in European professional cycling. While Greg LeMond may have snatched up all the glory, following Parkin, we soon realize, means that we’re going to have the fun, whether at the back holding on to the director’s car at 90 kph or on the front putting the peloton into the red we’ll enjoy cycling’s minor leagues and our occasional brushes with its legends.

In that sense, A Dog in a Hat feels a little bit like Bull Durham. It is a journey through nearly making it. However, the fun of cycling is that while we do spend a lot of time doing the equivalent of riding sweltering busses around the Carolina league, Parkin and his teammates are also needed to fill out the field at the classics, so we get to rub shoulders with the giants, and if things go well the Grand Tours are always a possibility. The season begins with Parkin mixing it up with the legends of the sport at the spring classics, but a few months later he is taking us through the wonderful world of Belgian kermis racing, an experience he memorably considers being punk rock to the Tour’s classical masterpiece.

With Americans and American teams now all over the top of European cycling, it is startling to realize that thirty years ago the field was largely clear of Americans. When Parkin gets to Europe there was Greg LeMond at the top  becoming the first, and now only (where have you gone Floyd and Lance), American to win the Tour de France, but behind him the ranks are relatively thin. The first American team, 7-Eleven, had just started racing professionally in Europe in 1985 (they had an American, Andy Hampsten win the Giro in 1988), but an American was still an odd sight on the roads of Europe. This means that there is a fair amount of culture shock for Parkin and the other Americans as they immerse themselves. No one is bringing him Chipotle after a big race. For his part, Parkin eschews the 7-Eleven, heads for a Dutch team and learns his Flemish, and his place, as he learns to race.

In addition to being at the cusp of the American invasion of the European peloton, Parkin is also at the cusp of the EPO revolution in cycling. His first encounter with drugs is at the kermis racing where he is awed by the volume of amphetamine usage (some of the racers he feels are racing so that they can do drugs, instead of doing drugs so they can race), but fighting it out through the minor leagues he has a couple, rather unsuccessful, cracks at amphetamine use during a race, and eventually he is offered the hot new thing. However, he says that he was largely spared the moral dilemma about the EPO for the simple reason that his position on the fringe of professional cycling means he cannot afford it.

While it may not be the best written book on cycling, it is certainly an entertaining journey through cycling’s minor leagues and is well worth the time of someone who wants to get deeper than the Tour and Roubaix. Parkin gives a great anecdotal account of what professional cycling is like for those away from the maillot jaune and gives a wonderful glimpse of the gritty racing that goes on there.

Gargantuan Needles and Life in the Sixties

The Secret Race, by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle, is partly about putting very large needles in cyclists arms and then freezing bags of their blood to be transfused at an opportune time in the future, and it does provide some juicy tidbits about the USPS juggernaut and its years atop the pro-peloton, but mostly the book tells the story of the rise and fall of Tyler Hamilton as a professional cyclist and about the destruction wrought on the pro-peloton by doping. It does not survey the whole scene, but is rather a vertical slice through the era, exposing many frayed threads that deserve to be followed up. The book is not, and does not purport to be, a complete history of the doping era, rather it is the story of one rider, his decisions and choices, and his subsequent ascent to the top ranks of professional cycling by taking the requisite descent into the depths of the doping culture that permeated the sport. As a crucial teammate for the most successful rider (Lance Edward Armstrong, maybe you’ve heard of him?) of the era, Tyler Hamilton was brought into the world of doping and learned to train and be a professional with its assistance. From there he struck out on his own rising nearly to the peak of the sport before it all came crashing down with a series of doping positives and he was exiled from the fraternity.

Now, the history of cycling is obviously drenched in doping and doping allegations, but as he tells it, Hamilton arrived with a generation of idealist young American cyclists just as the sport was hitting bottom (well one of the many) with the Festina scandal during the 1998 Tour. Despite being associated with drugs from the beginning, the nineties (or the sixties as the riders called them, because that is what everyone’s hematocrit level was, well above the generous 50% allowed by rule) plumbed the depths because the introduction of autologous blood doping and of EPO (or ‘Edgar’ as it was yclept by one of the Posties in reference to Edgar Allan Poe, a nickname used throughout the book) proved to be much more effective than the amphetamines, steroids, or other forms of doping of previous eras. The steady improvement of this blood doping in the nineties meant that by 1998 the doping was systematic and pervasive, with teams providing regimens for their riders (at least the better ones) and the best teams were best at doping. Everyone assumed everyone else was doping and a race to the bottom ensued. When a new technique was discovered or refined, teams would be cartoonishly good  until everyone else caught up and everybody awaited the next advance. Into this cauldron stepped Tyler Hamilton and the United States Postal Service team trying to put an American imprint on a European sport.

Festina promotional materials featuring Christophe Bassons (via the Cycling Archives, click to view larger)

However, as the new team was facing the strains of competing at the highest level, the Festina scandal, while not exactly cleaning up the sport, forced a change in how teams and riders interacted.  Because of the negative publicity and the renewed interest in doping control, the teams and their sponsors were wary of being involved and so stopped their direct oversight and implementation of the programs. However, since the testing was not good enough to catch a careful doper, this decision did not stop the practice, it simply pushed the risk of doping onto the riders who were then responsible for finding their own doping doctors and buying their own drugs so they could continue to compete, efforts in which they were tacitly or explicitly supported by their directeurs sportifs.

Although he briefly experienced this golden age of team led doping, Hamilton spent most of his career in the world created by the Festina scandal, having to manage his own program. He had taken lessons at the feet of a (eventual) seven-time Tour de France champion and he believed that he could follow a similar path. However, as Jonathan Vaughters says in the book, professional doping is not a trivial problem because of the testing and because competent, effective doctors do not generally get into doping:

…they’re doping doctors for a reason. They’re the ones who didn’t make it on the conventional path, so they’re not the most organized people…The deadly mistake that Tyler, Floyd, Roberto [Heras], and the rest of them made when they left Postal was to assume that they’d find other doctors who were as professional. But when they got out there, they found–whoops!–there weren’t any others.  –p.232–

In fact, it turned out that Lance Armstrong was attached to Michele Ferrari for a good reason, namely that he was very good at what he did. As the testing did improve, a rider needed a good doctor to keep himself (or herself, presumably even harder since there’s less money in women’s racing, but also less testing?) from getting caught, a difficult proposition as Hamilton learned first hand. However, even from the second tier of doctor, this advice and pharmacological support did not come cheap and once teams were out of the doping picture, only successful riders could afford the high fees (Hamilton talks of paying Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes $50,000 for blood freezing plus performance bonuses). This high cost of participating meant that the best techniques were limited to the already successful riders, and created a vicious/virtuous cycle separating those at the top from the rest, leading one to wonder what kind of investments there were in young riders and whether they were offered payment plans to help start their paths into doping. In fact Hamilton says that the year Fuentes brought his freezer online he promised to only offer the service to him, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, and Alexandre Vinokourov, only his elite clients, further limiting access.

However, leaving cost aside, one is naïvely tempted to think that with the rampaging free fire zone that existed, there was still a level playing field for riders with decent doctors, albeit a much faster one. However, one of the things that Daniel Coyle reiterates in the book (see esp. footnote on p.62) and Jonathan Vaughters has emphasized in his recent discussions of doping is that doping inherently creates winners and losers because different riders have different strengths and different weaknesses that may or may not be remedied with the drug of the day. They also have different reactions to the drugs, so even if their skills might be a good match for a drug, they might not respond well to its use. So while the revolution in EPO and homologous blood doping helped everyone it did less to help that riders with high natural hematocrit levels (like Jonathan Vaughters). These riders were then at a disadvantage because their natural advantage was lessened and riders with different skills could greatly improve their climbing with the extra oxygen carrying capacity.

For riders with higher natural hematocrit levels, however, things were not all bleak, as they could gain substantial benefits during stage races, where after a week of racing their levels naturally declined. In these long races blood doping really shone, with judicious use of blood bags (BBs in the book, extracted with the very large needles) or micro-dosing EPO, a rider could keep his hematocrit level where it was at the beginning of the race, avoiding the natural drop-off one experiences after weeks of racing. Understanding this, one wonders whether the constraints of his doping program were one of the reasons that Armstrong exclusively focused on one long stage race, the Tour de France. While in the past the great riders like Fausto Coppi, Eddy Merckx (really sui generis and not to be used for comparison purposes to anyone), Bernard Hinault, and Jacques Anquetil were seen as great champions after winning a variety of races and not because of dominating a single race, even the Giro or the Tour, Armstrong was criticized during his career for not trying more than just (easy to say) the Tour each year, and perhaps it was related to the mechanics of peaking with his drug program and how it interacted with his training and racing. In any case, the blood doping benefited different riders to different degrees and therefore did not merely make the races faster (although it did do this), but also seriously distorted the competition.

In discussing how doping helped him, Tyler Hamilton tries to be very upfront and for the most part succeeds. However, both he and Jonathan Vaughters in his interviews seem to be defensive about their actions. They both worked very hard to succeed in cycling and they want to justify their talent on the merits, to pick out things that they deserved, races they won on pan y agua or to say that they beat a bunch of dirty riders anyway. They are understandably conflicted between feeling guilt from having cheated, but also pride from the hard work it took them to succeed. One of the shames of doping is clearly that it sullies the pain and suffering that is at the center of the sport. The pain and struggle of those doping is no longer pure and in the face of that they seem to want to be able to salvage something good, some truth: the fact that they accomplished this thing and it was good, out of the wreckage of the lies. The problem, perhaps arising from a sport that has not come to terms with the era yet, is that they are not yet facing this problem straight on. With the sport as a whole refusing to acknowledge the depth of the problem, the riders who do speak up are shunned and they cannot fully put their accomplishments, tainted but nonetheless accomplishments, in context of what was going on around them.

This lack of accountability by cycling does a disservice both to the riders who have come forward and to those who did stay clean, to the fact that there is a choice, even if it comes along a slippery slope and at a point when a young rider has already made large sacrifices to be a professional. One glimpse of what might have been, and mentioned in passing in the book, is Christophe Bassons, who was at ground zero of the sixties, having become notable as the only person on the infamous Festina Squad who was not doping. He is an interesting rider in that he managed to ride clean while everyone else was dirty, partly due to the fact that his VO2 max was higher than Lance’s. While not amazingly successful, he competed successfully and even won a stage of the Dauphiné Libéré in the infamous year of 1998. In some alternate reality we may have seen Bassons and Armstrong or Ullrich battling for the Tour, but as it was, Bassons’ outspokenness about doping led to him being ostracized from the cycling fraternity and he quit the sport, showing the danger of picking the alternative path. However, as Vaughters and Hamilton know intuitively this alternative reality is not accessible, one cannot recreate an ideal past, one must just deal with what is left. The truth may set you free as the final line of the book says, but it cannot change the past.

Un uomo solo è al commando

Near the end of his career, Fausto Coppi expressed regret that he had never made a second attempt at the hour record. For a cyclist who twice won the Giro and the Tour in the same year and for whom there were few races missing from his palmarès, his somewhat botched, albeit successful, attempt at the hour record during the Second World War remained unsatisfactory. The attempt was unsatisfactory in part because he was not in the best shape of his career, because of  the strictures of the war, and in part because he had not devoted himself to the effort, not wearing aerodynamic kit during the effort and having warmed up by riding the more than 90 kilometers from his home in Castellania to the Velodrome Vigorelli in Milan to attempt the record. Furthermore, the lack of international comity at the time made it difficult for non-Italians to verify the record and that along with the eventual narrowness with which he beat the record (31 meters)  cast doubt on its legitimacy. These reasons were enough to make anyone want a second attempt, but the main reason for Coppi was that he wanted to take a real shot at it after the war when amphetamines had been drastically improved, and he could use the better ‘chemicals’, as he called them. However, as it turned out, he never did take another run at the hour record, instead focusing his last big effort on the 1953 World Championships, which he won, and Coppi’s hour record would stand until 1956 when Jacques Anquetil, another rider who freely discussed his use of pharmacological solutions to the problems of cycling, would break it by 360 meters.

The most striking thing about Fallen Angel: The Passion of Fausto Coppi, however, is not this now surprising candor about doping, but rather how elusive the protagonist remains throughout the book. William Fotheringham does a good job of filling in the background, the rivals, the coaches, the love interests and the spear carriers, but throughout the book there seems to be a void at the center of the painting. Initially one feels that perhaps Fotheringham has missed his mark, that he has failed to successfully flesh out the main character. However, as the book proceeds, one gets the feeling that it is not the fault of the author, but rather a characteristic of the subject. Coppi himself was somewhat elusive, and as a quiet man who had become a great champion and hero, he remained removed from the events around him, and as the mythology that grew up around him after his death it further obscured the man at the center of the legend. This towering mythology is particularly impressive for someone who died a mere 50 years ago. One then forgives Fotheringham for the mystery remaining at the center, but still wishes that he had done more to engage with the fact that his title character was so mysterious, and to understand how that affected his life, his racing, and our understanding of it all.

Serse (on left) and Fausto (photo via  Cycling Hall of Fame)

Since we never fully get to the heart of Coppi himself, we are brought into his life by the key personal and professional relationships of his life. Growing up in a small town in Italy, Coppi had strong ties to his family and to his Catholic faith (a relationship, with the church at least, that would sour in later years). Surrounded by this strong support system, Fotheringham portrays Coppi as somewhat weak willed (a fact belied by his many victories), and suggests that it was his brother Serse who provided the necessary mental support for the elder, more talented Coppi brother, especially at times of crisis for Fausto. Although, a much less talented cyclist, Serse provided balance for Fausto as Fausto shot to the top of the cycling world. This relationship was crucial for Fausto and because of the bond helping Serse win Paris-Roubaix in 1949 to be one of the most satisfying accomplishments of his career. The efforts were not even entirely athletic in nature, because final victory took several months to certify, and Serse ended up sharing it with André Mahé. The reason for this somewhat odd turn of events was that Mahé and his other compatriots in what appeared to be the winning break were accidentally directed away from the entrance to the velodrome in Roubaix. When they discovered the error they walked in a side door and then climbed through the press box and down to the track to contest the sprint, which Mahé won. Serse then led in the peloton by the conventional method and won a sprint to the line that he initially thought was for fourth place. Given the irregularities, Serse and Mahé were, in the end following much wrangling, jointly given the victory. Fausto, for his part, would get his first and only Paris-Roubaix title the following year.

In addition to Serse, the main source of stability in Fausto’s professional life was his blind trainer, Biagio Cavenna. With Cavanna’s help Coppi made up for any lack of confidence he may have possessed with rigorous and scientific preparation and training, and a willingness to experiment with different methods to improve his performance. Beginning his career just as the derailleur was being introduced Coppi, along with Cavenna, would help to drag cycling into the modern era and towards modern training methods. Before Coppi, training mainly consisted of going out for a long hard ride. One simply maintained as high pace as possible for the duration of the ride. Coppi and Cavenna, however, began to understand the importance of varying one’s effort and were among the first to introduce interval training into cycling workouts.

Their innovation was not limited to the road, Coppi was willing to experiment with new methods in other areas as well. He eagerly experimented with variations in diet, both generally and specifically during races. The conventional wisdom when Coppi came onto the scene that you should eat a large, heavy meal before the race and then start eating on the bike a couple hours into the race. Coppi decided that a small meal and eating more regularly during the race was a better approach, one that would be born out with future riders. In addition, despite being raised in a conventional Italian farm family, he was willing to experiment with different diets, including new-fangled ideas from Hollywood. From this willingness to experiment with diet and training, one can understand why Coppi also embraced the new ‘chemicals’, they were widely praised by the medical community after the war and they provided another realm in which to experiment and try to improve one’s performance.

Coppi’s approach to training and diet were in contrast to his greatest rival, Gino Bartali, who was slightly older and was the established champion of Italian cycling when Coppi burst on the scene by winning the 1940 Giro d’Italia at the age of 20. In a grand rivalry that was partly manufactured to help sell newspapers and bicycle races, Bartali was portrayed as a conservative, pious Catholic, while Coppi was portrayed as a rebel and socialist, despite also being a devout Catholic. In riding style they were both successful at long breakaways in an era that still rewarded such tactics. However, even at a time when brutal stages and uneven roads made solo attacks more likely to succeed than they are in the modern era, Coppi was known for his one-man, race-winning breakaways and became known by the journalist Mario Farretti’s description of one of his attacks for victory: un uomo solo è al commando, one man is in the lead, in command. Although, Bartali long remained as the counterpoint to Coppi, Coppi’s style on the bike and his early death cemented his victory in the long term battle for Italian cycling fans hearts.

In contrast to his innovations that helped to launch modern cycling, Coppi’s personal life was marked by three, now seemingly unnecessary, tragedies caused by reactionary moral prescriptions and primitive medical knowledge. First, was his brother Serse, who died in 1951 two years after his greatest victory at Paris-Roubaix.  Like many cyclists of the time (and like Bartali’s brother), Serse died from inadequate medical care after crashing during a race. After getting caught in a crash with Fausto and other teammates at a railroad crossing and hitting his head, the severity of his injury was not understood, and Serse simply went back to the hotel to rest and sleep. Unfortunately the injury was much more serious than recognized at first and by the time his condition was understood it was too late. This tragic death of his brother and loss of a confident, supportive voice proved very hard for the elder Coppi to take, and, again like Bartali after his own brother’s racing death, he initially found it hard to continue his career.

The second tragedy, was related to his marriage, or more accurately his divorce. Having married young, during the war, Coppi’s marriage did not survive the rigors of a racing cyclist, especially one who kept competing throughout the winter by racing on the track. Having a young daughter, this separation would have been unfortunate enough, but after the war the Catholic church was trying to maintain its dwindling hold on Italian life and tried to block Coppi from getting a divorce or separating from his wife. The furor caused by the church and others who were purportedly concerned with Italian morals, pressured the government to pursue Coppi and it eventually prosecuted Coppi and his mistress for adultery. The fallout from the divorce would last the rest of his life and Coppi deeply resented the prosecution, feeling that he was only being made an example of because of his fame.

Finally, there was his own death. Coppi died of malaria after participating in a cycling exhibition in the Republic of the Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) as a favor to one of his French cycling friends. Coppi and three of his companions spent one night of their journey without mosquito netting. When they each went back to their respective homes, Coppi and two of the others fell ill and the doctors were mystified. The two French riders were (it appears, without knowing they had malaria) fortuitously treated with quinine and made full recoveries. Coppi, on the other hand, despite the fact that malaria had only recently been eradicated from Italy, was not given quinine and quickly succumbed to his illness.

Despite his many accomplishments and despite living on the cusp of the modern era, Coppi remains mysterious throughout the book. Despite, or because of, being an Italian legend, Coppi managed to keep much of himself obscured from public view. Since much of his private life was raked through the coals for all to see, it is perhaps reassuring that he managed to retain something of himself that could not be accessed by history. Even with his domestiques and children still alive and answering questions, Coppi remains a man alone, plunging ahead to the next climb, without even Bartali knowing what he is thinking, how he is feeling, or how the ‘chemicals’ are affecting him.

The Little Black Bottle

Toulouse-Lautrec poster for the Simpson Lever Chain

On 6 June 1896, Jimmy ‘The Mighty Midget’ Michael, the reigning World Champion at 100 km participated in a series of races called the ‘Simpson Lever Chain Challenge’, which were cooked up by William Spears Simpson to demonstrate the superiority of his peculiar new bicycle chain. Although the chain was pure snake-oil and quickly disappeared from the scene, the races, which came to be known as the ‘Chain Races’ and were held at the Catford Cycling Club Track in London are central to the story of his manager Choppy Warburton, Michael and Warburton’s other charges, and Warburton’s lasting legacy in cycling, which largely flowed from his little black bottle and its mysterious contents.

Before gaining fame as a trainer of World Champion cyclists, Choppy  looked destined for a life in the cotton mills of Lancashire where he grew up. Like most youths growing up in poor, working class families in Lancashire in the 1850s and 60s, Choppy began working down at the mill at a young age (presumably for tuppence a month like his neighbors in Yorkshire). However, Choppy’s athletic and entrepreneurial gifts provided him with a route that would take him far from the mills of Lancashire, even if not quite all the way to the decadent luxury of the four Yorkshiremen:

Choppy’s work at the mill involved meeting trains at the switch and then following them along the spur to the mill, and instead of walking back, he would run back alongside the train. The mill-owner, a sportsman in his own right, noticed Choppy running, and realized he had the making of a runner on his hands and encouraged Choppy to race. Spurred in part by workers having new leisure time and more pay as a result of the Trade Union Act of 1871, sporting activities were then developing into a professional enterprise instead of just a diversion for gentlemen of means. With his talent and the changing times, running turned out to be Choppy’s way out of the mill although it would not provide an immediate exit. Choppy began by competing on Sundays and holidays, fitting it around his mill-work, but eventually he became successful enough as a runner (or pedestrian as they were known at the time) to travel to the United States for a series of races.

However, not dying young, Warburton was confronted with the problem all athletes face as they get older, which is what to do next. Warburton took what would become a well-trodden path for athletes, although he was something of a pioneer, and become a coach once he could no longer run himself. Although coaches were still looked upon with suspicion, as they were believed to subvert the amateur ideal, Warburton believed in the importance of regulated training and that his experience training himself would allow him to make money training other athletes. Warburton began by training runners, but soon realized that there was more money to be made in the burgeoning field of bicycle racing, and despite not knowing how to ride a bicycle, he believed that his general methods would be transferable.

In fact, Warburton proved correct, and his combination of persuasion with regards to talent, showmanship with respect to putting on races, and training proved to be a promising one, and he quickly built up a quality team of racers racing for Gladiator Cycles. One of his strengths was building up a large stable of well-organized pacers, who would ride bicycles built for two, three, four, or even five, and were vital to success in the races of the day. The pacers needed to be trained well-enough to set a high pace and to switch out smoothly so the racer would not lose time or energy changing from one pacing team to another. Despite these successes as a trainer, he is not best remembered for his workouts or the champions he trained, but rather for his mid-race fueling choices that brought him infamy and serve as the crux of the The Little Black Bottle by Gerry Moore. The eponymous bottle, from which his riders would get a potent pick-me-up during the race. When his racers appeared to be hitting a wall in the epic contests of the age, Choppy would appear, bottle in hand and give them a swig, and they would perk up immediately. Given the subsequent history of cycling, this activity has been cited as the first case of doping, however, as the book lays out, there are numerous problems with seeing it that way.

First, no one knows what was in the bottle. Choppy was both a showman who liked to entertain the audience, and if they thought he had a magic potion all the better, and a coach, who felt the same way about opponents, if they thought his riders were unbeatable once they had a drag from the little black bottle, that was all to the good. Second, there were no rules against doping at the time. Cocaine and other useful substances were as close as the nearest druggists and were used by people in everyday life, as can be seen from Sherlock Holmes and his seven-percent-solution. Riders and their coaches, then, were on their own for choosing what would best help training and racing. Third, the cases that are supposed to be examples of his riders becoming ill and/or dying from Choppy’s ministrations are a lot more ambiguous than given out when cited as the first casualties of doping.

Choppy Warburton with his charges (from left) Arthur Linton, Jimmy Michael, and Tom Linton

Most notably among the controversies involving Choppy’s little black bottle was the one involving Jimmy Michael at the aforementioned Chain Races. Here after a sip from the bottle Michael did not improve his performance, but rather weakened and lost his race badly. He would later accuse Choppy not of giving him performance enhancing drugs, but rather of poisoning him.  Although Choppy was sanctioned by British cycling authorities for his actions, Moore suggests that Michael was really making the accusation to get out his contract to allow him to move to a new manager where he would get a larger share of the winnings.  Choppy and the Might Midget would both soon pass away, with Michael’s death adding more fuel to the fire of condemnation for Choppy.

The two main weaknesses of the book are that it lacks citations, including for information that seems to be verging into the realm of speculation, especially about the state of mind of Warburton at various times, and that it covers much of the ground in the book multiple times. Many races, for example, are covered from Warburton’s perspective as well as that of his main riders. Neither of these may be the fault of the author, since he died before the book was published, but they do detract from the impact of the book. Although The Little Black Bottle provides a good aperitif, another treatment of Choppy may be on the way, as Andrew Ritchie, who has written a number of cycling books, including a biography of Major Taylor and who helped to put The Little Black Bottle together after Moore’s death, says that he is working on his own book about Choppy which will be better sourced and more thorough by better engaging with French language sources.

Despite its shortcomings the book provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of early bicycle racing, with the beginnings of the legendary Paris Roubaix and of the World Championships. In the end, whatever the contents of his bottle, Choppy Warburton surely left his mark on the cycling world and set a standard for showmanship and rigorous training for others to build upon.

The Cyclist and the Counterfeiters

When racing against Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali used to sneak into Coppi’s room and search it for drugs, herbs, cordials, and anything else Coppi might be taking to improve his performance before or during a race. As portrayed in Road to Valor by brother and sister team of Aili and Andres McConnon this behavior is that of an obsessive racer trying to learn everything he can about his opponents. However, after World War II, they were also the actions of a former champion, who was drinking up to twenty espressos a day, desperately trying to regain the pinnacle of the sport as time and the younger, more talented Coppi were confounding his efforts. This challenge from Coppi forms the third section of the  McConnons telling of Bartali’s story which begins with his rise to fame and then pauses for an interlude of World War and Bartali’s actions therein, before returning to the road and the undiminished struggle for the maillot jaune and the hearts of the tifosi.

During the war Bartali served in the Italian Army as a bicycle messenger in Italy, but it his actions after the Italians surrender and the Germans takeover that make the war fit for an entire section, instead of just a break from his career as a cyclist. In fact, Road to Valor probably would not have been written without the middle section, and it is therefore disappointing that this is the weakest section of the book.

The main gist of the story is that during the war Bartali helped a Jewish friend from his pre-racing days and his family find a safe place to live after the Germans had invaded, making it substantially more dangerous for Jews in Italy. More notably, and more poetically for a cyclist, Bartali also used the fact that he and his bike were a common presence on the roads, even during the war, to help ferry documents to help Jews survive. Previously, people had helped Jews to escape from Italy to Switzerland or other safe countries, but as the war for Italy intensified it had become difficult to leave. Therefore, a ring of counterfeiters had been set up to provide the identity papers critical to life in a totalitarian state to allow Jews to live incognito in Italy.

The story is a compelling one. However, from the endnotes and the authors’ description of their sources there is simply not enough extant information about Bartali’s activities during the war to do more than give vague probabilities. Bartali was deeply religious and there is evidence of his friendship with the bishop who organized the ring, but little more than third hand evidence. The fault of the authors’ is not a paucity of research, but rather trying to build too complete a picture with insufficient data. In shaping their story the authors want the reader to follow Bartali through his decision making as he gets involved in the ring and on his first rides to ferry documents, just as they have the reader follow him through his struggles in the Pyrenees during the Tour. Unfortunately, although there were many reporters present when he took on the Tour, his clandestine activities during the war could not be covered.

The primary problem with the war section is that Bartali did not talk about his activities while he was alive, saying that he had a small role and that there were many people who had done much more. By the time people found out about it, including the authors, and started asking, many of the main participants were dead. So, since the activity was by necessity secretive, there are no contemporary reports and since his actions came to light so late, there was no one directly involved with Bartali who is still alive. The authors did a good job of finding people who were tangentially involved, but they were remembering events from 60 years ago, and even then only had vague intimations about what Bartali was doing.

Compounding the sourcing problem is the fact that the authors try to paint a detailed picture of Bartali’s specific actions when they have no evidence for them at all. Somebody remembers him being somewhere and they give a detailed description of how he got there, what he was feeling, etc., and the reader only finds out how thinly sourced it all is by reading the endnotes. They would have been better served by discussing what is known and what is not known and what are reasonable guesses, although that approach may have only led to a chapter discussing what our best bets are, instead of a whole section detailing his ultimately unknowable actions.

The sections on cycling are better sourced, with Bartali writing and talking about them while he was alive, although again the authors are over-reliant on Bartali’s own writing and friends’ and relatives’ recollections long after the fact, instead of on contemporaneous reporting, of which there is plenty. The sections on bicycling follow a more traditional sports story, telling of the champion’s childhood passion, his embrace of the sport, and the rise to glory, followed, after succes or struggles, by one last shot at staving off the inevitable. Although, in this case the middle, the sustained success, is missing to the war, a fact that Bartali was not insensitive to.

Before the war, Bartali rose to the top of the growing sport of bicycle racing, twice winning the Giro d’Italia and becoming the second Italian cyclist to win the Tour (after Ottavio Bottecchia, who had won in 1924 and 25), and afterwards he would win one last time, setting the record for longest times between Tour victories. He had aspired to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year, but at a time when the Tour was organized along national lines instead of with professional teams, the Fascists decided the glory of winning the Tour was more important than attempting a double, and fearing that the Giro effort would wear him our for the Tour, they would not let him race the Giro in 1938, forcing him to focus on winning his Tour, which he did. The rising tensions in Europe meant that this would not be the last time that politics would impinge upon Bartali’s sporting goals, and the following years the Italians declined to send a team to defend Bartali’s victory because of worsening relations with France.

Coppi leads Bartali up the Col d’Izoard on Stage 16 of the 1949 Tour de France. Coppi would gift the stage to Bartali and then go on to win the Tour.

The war and its aftermath obviously precluded the running of the Tour, but during the war Bartali had struggled to maintain his form and looked forward to a return to racing. Although he had lost more fitness than he realized, by 1948 he was again ready to take on the Grand Boucle. With the sport still organized along national lines and as the established star, Bartali was now posed to benefit from political machinations at Coppi’s expense, and Bartali was chosen to lead the Italian team. With three days of epic attacks in the mountains, Bartali was able to subdue his rivals and claim his second Tour victory. The future would come soon as Coppi, who had refused to ride in support of Bartali in 1948, would conquer the defending champ at the 1949 Tour, completing the Giro-Tour double long sought by his rival. However, in 1948, the determination of Bartali, who by then was being called the ‘old man’ gave him a final Tour victory.

Bartali and his dedication to his craft through a long career spanning the upheavals of the war provide a compelling story. The cycling sections provide interesting glimpses into the development and specialization of bicycle racing, while the entire book offers tantalizing slices of life in Italy around the war. However, for the section on Bartali’s actions during the war, it would have been better if the McConnons had laid a firm basis of facts, before springing into reconstruction mode. As it stands, the reader is left to sift through the endnotes deciphering what is actually known and what was interpolated by the authors.