Eddy Merckx: Pedalling to glory

Eddy Merckx raises his arms in celebration as he crosses the line to win the World Professional 168 mile road Championship race, 1973

The 100^th edition of the Tour de France just got over last week, and the rise of our colonial cousins in the world of sports has continued with an Englishman winning the coveted yellow jersey for the second year in a row. But the man we are going to talk about here, the man who dominated the domain of cycling no other, the man who has repeatedly been hailed as the greatest professional cyclist to ever walk this planet was a Belgian of humble of origins: Eddy Merckx.

Like we said, Eddy made a modest entry into this world in the summer of 1945, in a middle-class family residing in Meensel-Kiezegem, Belgium. But he never let his family’s monetary shortcomings come in the way of his cycling ambitions. He got his hands on a second-hand racing bike at the raw age of eight and his journey to the pinnacle of cycling began.

He started as an amateur with Evere Kerkhoek Sportif club in 1961 and remained with them for the entirety of his amateur career till he shifted to the professional level in 1965. His initial days in this sports were nothing to write home about. He won his first race in his 13^th attempt at Petit-Enghien. Who could have imagined then that this same lanky lad was going to rule over the cycling world a couple of years hence.

Eddy reached the zenith of his amateur career when he became the World Amateur Road Champion in 1964 when he was still a teenager. Encouraged by his recent wins at the amateur level, Eddy decided to turn pro. He started his professional career with Solo-Superia in 1965, but after a brief stint with Solo, Eddy decided to shift his loyalty to the Peugeot-BP team the following year. Peugeot turned out to be lucky for Eddy as he won the first of his record 19 “Monument” races at Milan-San Remo in 1966.

It was in the year 1967 that Eddy finally declared his arrival at the world cycling stage with back to back wins at Milan-San Remo and La Flèche Wallonne. He also went on to win the first of his three World Cycling Championships at the professional level, a record he shares with three other cyclists till date. But his tryst with the three Grand Tours of cycling began only the year after as Eddy won the Giro d’Italia riding for the Italian team Faema. He also won the “Monument” race of Paris–Roubaix for the first time that year. The era of the indomitable Eddy Merckx had finally begun.

The year 1969 brought mixed fortunes for Eddy. On one hand he competed and won his maiden Tour de France that year and on the other hand, he was disqualified from the Giro d’Italia for doping, something unheard of in those times. Drug tests had been introduced in cycling for the first time at Giro d’Italia in 1968 following the fatal death of the British star cyclist, Tom Simpson, during the 1967 Tour de France. Although Eddy vehemently denies taking any banned substance on that tour even today, he was disqualified from the Giro d’Italia all the same. Unperturbed, Eddy went on to win three “Monument” races that year and also won the stage-race of Paris-Nice for the first time.

Eddy’s was the only name that could be heard in cycling circles all through the early 70s. He won the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia as well as the Paris-Nice stage race and the “Monument” race of Paris-Robaix in 1970. The following year, he won the Tour de France again and the Paris-Nice race for the third consecutive time. He also won the Milan San-Remo and the Giro di Lombardia, the latter win making him one of the only three riders (all Belgian) to have ever won all the five classic “Monument” races. The year 1971 also brought Eddy the 2^nd of his World Cycling Championships stamping his dominance over the sports of cycling. He won the Tour de France once again in 1972 as well as the Giro d’Italia, besides winning three more “Monument” races that year.

Eddy was unofficially barred from racing in the Tour de France in 1973 due to the increasing anger and anxiety amongst the French masses that he would go on to break the five Tour de France win record of the iconic Frenchman, Jacques Anquetil. This is the reason that Eddy today has to share the honours of winning the Tour de France a record five times (he won the subsequent 1974 edition) with Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. But while the ban to race at the Tour de France prevented him from ending up with a possible record haul of 6 Tour de France wins, it also enabled Eddy to participate in the last of the three Grand Tours, the Vuelta a España, the only tour race that was missing from his kitty. He went on to win both the Vuelta a España and Giro d’Italia that year, and in the process became one of the five cyclists to have won all the three Grand Tours in their lifetime.

Eddy Merckx on the track, 1970

Eddy had his last hurrah in the year 1974 as he clinched both the Tour de France as well as the Giro d’Italia, both for a record fifth and final time in his career. He also won his maiden Tour de Suisse that very year. The year 1974 also proved historic for Eddy as he became the first winner of the Triple Crown of Cycling when he won the World Cycling Championship for the third time as a pro. Only one more cyclist has since been able to repeat that feat: Stephen Roche in 1987.

Eddy started the 1975 Tour de France really well, and a sixth title seemed to be very well within grasp but some tragic occurrences shattered that dream. Eddy was punched in the abdomen by an irate spectator while he was still racing and he subsequently also suffered a major fall in stage 17 of the race that left him with a broken jaw, and contused knee and hip. Although he went on to finish 2nd, this tour is still regarded by some as his best, since in spite of the misfortunes that seemed to follow him everywhere, he still fought till the very end, attempting to regain the yellow jersey from Bernard Thévenet and finished just 2 minutes and 47 seconds behind him. He also went on to win three more “Monument” races that year taking his tally to 18.

The injuries sustained during the 1975 Tour de France took their toll on Eddy and the invincible “Cannibal” entered the twilight of his career. He started off the year 1976 on a good note winning his final “Monument” race at Milan-San Remo but a fall in the subsequent Tour of Flanders side-lined him for the rest of the season. He made an unsuccessful comeback to the Tour de France in 1977 finishing a distant 6^th. Curiously, the winner, Thévenet, admitted to taking the banned substance cortisone and yet was not stripped of his title.

Eddy won his last race at the lowly criterium of Kluisbergen in July 1977 racing. Although he continued cycling for some time after that, finally good sense prevailed, and he brought a close to his glorious career at the end of the Omloop van het Waasland race in March 1978, riding for the C&A team. He thus bade the racing track goodbye with over a dozen records to his name, which included amongst others; 5 Tour de France and Giro d’Italia wins, 3 World Cycling Championship titles as a pro, 19 victories in the classic “Monument” races with a total of 28 classic race wins, and a massive 525 career victories as a pro cyclist. He also holds many unparalleled records in the Tour de France like having the most stage victories in a single tour (8) with a total of 34 stage victories, wearing the yellow jersey for 96 days in total; winning the general, points and mountain classification in a single edition of the tour (1969), winning the combativity awards for aggressive riding 4 time, and also winning the combination jersey the most number of times (5).

Eddy demonstrated his versatility when he set the hour record in Mexico City in 1972 by covering an astounding 49.431 km at high altitude, a record that stood till 1984. Had cycling been a part of the Olympics then, one can only surmise how many medals he would have won. One fascinating observation regarding Eddy’s professional career is that his annual percentage of wins followed a normal distribution pattern starting with a low 13 % in 1965 before rising to a career high of 45 % in 1971 and finally ending in a dismal 0 % in 1978.

In the years following his retirement, Eddy meddled in a variety of roles starting from being a race commentator to a coach and advisor. But he is most famous for setting up the Eddy Merckx Cycles company in Belgium in 1986 that has attained iconic status with the passage of time.

The days of Eddy Merckx are long gone and a certain Chris Froome is now wearing the yellow jersey that Eddy wore with aplomb more than four decades ago. Drug tests have become much more stringent and cycling is still struggling to emerge from the dark age of doping that has rocked it since the turn of the new millennium. But in all these years, no man has come even close to matching Eddy’s illustrious career graph. Eddy’s dominance of pro-cycling has become a part of folklore. He was the first superstar of the sport, an epitome of class, with a never say die attitude that won him the nickname of “The Cannibal”. And in these troubled times, there is a need for another Eddy Merckx to emerge from the ashes, who can show the world that no matter how tough the circumstances are, it is always talent and perseverance that prevail in the end.