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god is dead. the rise and fall of frank vandenbroucke. andy mcgrath. bantam press hardback. 320pp illus. £18.99

i have never been one to possess the competitive gene as it relates to moments of sporting endeavour. the secondary school which i attended, in common with many, held an annual sports day, but due to the limited space on the sports field and the number of pupils, it was necessary to pre-qualify for participation. those excluded from taking part, were expected to form a well-behaved group of spectators, rather than bunk off down main street, which is pretty much what the athletically challenged did.

i'm sure you can see what's coming, but in order to prepare the way for bunking off, it was necessary to choose events in which one hadn't a chance of succeeding. in the case of yours truly, those were shot-putt, javelin and long-jump, none of which i came close to qualifying for. true sportspersons are, by their very nature, a competitive lot, usually accompanied by a huge dollop of natural talent, another factor entirely missing from my portfolio. belgian cycling wunderkind, frank vandenbroucke ticked both boxes.

former editor of rouleur magazine, andy mcgrath has written a stunning biography of this troubled individual, remedying the absence of a story that needed to be written for all manner of reasons, not least of which is to illustrate the differences between 'them' and 'us'. not entirely unlike marco pantani, vandenbroucke encountered a career that burned very brightly, but burned out all too quickly. frank vandenbroucke died in october 2009, aged only thirty-four.

belgium is probably the very best of places in which to be born if your future is to involve competitive cycling. from the legacy of the great eddy merckx, to iconic races such as de ronde van vlaanderen and liege-bastogne-liege and the country's reputation for breeding the archetypal 'hardman', it's hard to think of a european country that identifies quite so definitively with cycling. and then there's what is often regarded as the most identifiable of national jerseys.

though many would take exception to the book's title, the author has derived this from vandenbroucke's own biography 'Ik BenGod Niet' (i am not god). as it transpires, given the adoration foisted upon vdb during his career, this debatable moniker has justifiable credence. as if to underline the often confused aspirations of those 'blessed' with seemingly unbridled talent and ambition, like several other notable champions, vandenbroucke seemed both to deliberately attract such adoration, all the while finding it every bit as distasteful.

"At his first World Championships, for juniors, in 1991, he was the boldest, the ringleader seeking attention. Everything was a competition." compare this with a quote from much later in the book where journalist, jan antonissen states, "You always left with mixed feelings because you felt sometimes he had the sadness of a clown."

that natural talent surfaced even in advance of his chosen career as a professional cyclist. despite apparently owning a sprint akin to that of a slug, even against those older and more tactically experienced, aged sixteen, he rarely found himself off the podium. it's an interesting speculation as to whether talent is hereditary, but it served frank no ills in being the nephew of prologue specialist, jean luc vandenbroucke. his case was quite probably also advanced by his "immense humanity". as the author points out, "People were drawn to him and wanted him to do well."

vandenbroucke did indeed do well. in 1998 alone, he won paris-nice overall, the tour of wallonia, the tour of galicia, gent-wevelgem and took second place in fleche wallone, zuri-metzgete and kuurne-brussels-kuurne. the following year, he stood atop the podium at liege-bastogne-liege and omloop het volk, as well as winning the points jersey at the 1999 vuelta a espana. if ever there was a candle that burned brightly, vandenbroucke's was it.

but vandenbroucke's increasing volatility saw him changing teams almost every year. after a three year career with mapei, the following two years were spent with france's cofidis team. from 2001 to 2004, he rode for four different teams and ended his professional career in 2009 with the almost unknown 'cinell-down under'. the 1990s, however constituted a decade that professional cycling would probably prefer to forget, with epo raising its ugly head in 1994.

vandenbroucke's family was well-versed in the machinations of the sport. "...it's fair to wonder how clean Vandenbroucke was when he started out in the ranks of Lotto" (1994). according to the author, even at the age of sixteen, frank was "...not the type to miss a trick when it came to self-improvement." that may or may not have been the implication behind lotto team-mate's statement, "Frank just played with all of us, when it was uphill, he had such talent."

and it was arguably doping that eventually did for both vandenbroucke's professional and personal life. vandenbroucke claimed he started doping in 1996, claiming that, "...it would have been impossible to win without it." but, as pointedout by andy mcgrath, back in the nineties, team doctors were masters of their universes. frank was introduced to the sleeping drug, 'stilnoct' while at cofidis in 1999. take a massively talented individual like vandenbroucke and closet them in the distinctly odd world of professional cycle racing, where, by design, their every need is catered for, there's a distinct possibility of a collision of two strangely complementary worlds .

"The psychiatrist Jean-Christophe Seznec, who published a report on Cofidis's Stilnoct problem [...] states that some French riders compared the itinerant hotel-hopping life of bike races and training camps to being at a holiday resort with their family: it took away a sense of reality, so they let themselves go."

but the pervading individual behind a large portion of vdb's career was "A doughy, balding fifty-five-year-old man of average height with a podgy nose, clinical air and thin-rimmed glasses..." this was bernard sainz, a man renowned within french and belgian cycling. the great 'mabuse'. he became the guru behind the scenes, a man to whom vdb effectively handed over his physical and mental being, ultimately with less than agreeable results in the long-term.

frank's personal life was also one that started out with infatuation and a young family, but ended not only in divorce and a second marriage, but eventually in complete disarray. to be a champion athlete in any discipline usually entails inhabiting the outer edge of whatever it is the rest of us inhabit. add to that the previously mentioned iconoclastic lifestyle and introduce a bit of chemical dependency, and, in cases such as that of vandenbroucke, you have a recipe for disaster. it happens in rock'n'roll just as it happens in professional cycling. 'live fast, die young'.

andy mcgrath's research for 'god is dead' is little short of immense. he has not only interviewed many of those closely associated with vandenbroucke's career, but several less obvious in his frighteningly short life. and he appears to hold a compassionate empathy for his subject. the author does not, however, let the weight of the narrative obscure brief moments of literary sparkle. in describing vdb's personality, he incorporates an almost perfect example of alliteration: "Frank was a free-flowing fountain of feelings." later in the book, he exercises a mischievous sense of humour when reporting a misadventure during a holiday in guadaloupe, where vandenbroucke broke his collarbone: "Aside from his body parts, he couldn't seem to catch a break."

andy mcgrath won the william hill sports book of the year in 2017 for 'bird on the wire' a biography of tom simpson. it seems very likely that he might repeat the accolade in 2022. 320 pages of brilliance

'god is dead 'is published by bantam press on thursday 10 march.

wednesday 9 march 2022