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merckx: half man, half bike by william fotheringham. yellow jersey press. hardback. 308pp illus. £16.99

merckx: half man half bike

there was a talented cyclist who happened to be born at the same time as eddy merckx. like so many others, the cyclist spent the best years of his career trying to beat merckx, but was constantly frustrated. time and again he knew he was in perfect form, time and again the cannibal defeated him. when he died, the pro went to heaven and was greeted by st peter. the saint put him on the start line of a race on the smoothest velodrome he had ever seen, on the finest handbuilt italian frame.
all the greats who had predeceased him were on the start line: fausto coppi, maurice garin, ottavio bottechia and so on, but, even so, our cyclist knew he could win. he rode the perfect race, timed his effort just right, and had victory in the bag on the final lap. as the line approached, however, he sensed a wheel coming past, glanced to the side and saw the face of the cannibal.
afterwards, in a state of some distress, the cyclist went up to st. peter and said, "eddy isn't dead yet, what's he doing here?" st. peter replied graveley: "that wasn't merckx. it was god. he likes to pretend he's merckx.

i'm sure those of us who consider ourselves well-versed in the historical aspects of cycliing will have heard that joke before, perhaps with modest variations. the point, however, is well meant from the view of those who were pitted against merckx for the majority of their professional cycling careers. there is no real evidence that merckx lorded it over his team-mates, peers or competitors; in fact, as evidenced by william fotheringham's compulsive narrative, it seems eddy may have been more seriously in doubt of his abilities on occasion, though perhaps more towards the latter days of his career.

there are likely only two cyclists who transcend the sport of which they are a large and vital part: eddy merckx and lance armstrong. perhaps the former will be less to the forefront in the minds of the younger civilian, but both are names more easily put forward if you were to ask your non-cycling friends to pinpoint a cyclist of whom they may have heard. coppi and anquetil, though easily mentioned in the same breath by the cognoscenti, will be all but unheard of outside the corridors of power. lance armstrong has been, if anything, over biographied. merckx seemingly less so, yet his is the hour record on which the uci arbitrarily decided to base all further attempts. his substantial number of victories have been used to justify everything from the continuation of the one inch headset, to steel frames to the square taper bottom bracket, probably mostly by me.

merckx's career is unparalleled, one that will never be equalled, principally due to the emergence of the sprinter's train and the current trend of targetting specific events as opposed to making the supreme effort across the entire season. yet, surely this is all grist for the mill, a part of recent cycling history that constitutes and confers entry to those wishing to think of themselves as cyclists? if that is indeed the case, what on earth was william fotheringham thinking when he embarked upon over three hundred pages about the great man in this day and age?

well, strange to relate, and concomitant to my remark above regarding the public's arguably greater knowledge of the career of lance armstrong, i confess to knowing less about the merckx years than should be admitted in polite company. and i'm willing to bet that the same is true of many others. eddy's first high profile victory was the world amateur road race championship in 1964, the year i turned eight and the same year as the beatles started to impress upon an impressionable eight year-old. his last professional race was in 1978 (circuit du pays de waes, belgium). he last won a professional event in 1977, when racing for fiat; a stage of that year's paris-nice.

i'm more than willing to admit to boring old fartness, but during those latter years of merckx's career, i was in the serious throes of being pretentious at art school. many of those now following cycle sport are younger than i, even the apocryphal mamils (middle aged men in lycra). and unless there has been a playstation or wii game featuring the cannibal, those of a younger age may be blissfully unaware of the great man's career. so will fotheringham's superbly timed, researched and written book half man, half bike will hopefully redress the balance and explain just why the man is still held in high esteem even today, and why he was often blamed for removing all semblance of competition during his peak moments (an accusation often levelled at coppi in his era).

as fotheringham conclusively states on more than one occasion, merckx felt it his professional duty to attempt victory in every race he entered, no matter the level at which the race was set. while there are those who now use certain races as training for targetted events throughout an admittedly extended season, merckx would have none of that, pretty much always racing to win. and in the 1975 tour de france, having broken his jaw in an innocent fall, he continued to race against the race leader, bernard thevenet, that press and public would not ill-judge the latter's eventual victory in the absence of competition from himself. as fotheringham quotes from an eyewitness at the time 'merckx granted thevenet a total victory. had he retired, that victory would have been questionable.'.

so, far from wishing to plunge his fellow competitors into despondency and despair by lording it over from the front of the peloton, it seems he quite literally could not help himself.

will fotheringham has authored more than a few excellent biographies of cycling's greats, but i think it only fair to say that he has excelled himself with this volume. every now and again along comes a book that is well nigh impossible to put down. at around three hundred pages of reading, only the most temeritous would complete in one sitting, but that doesn't mean the hours in between sessions are not fraught with anticipating the next few chapters. though many of the details have been brought to my attention in oh so many ways prior to opening the cover of half man, half bike, and i was well aware that eddy was no longer a part of the modern peloton, the sense of desperation to find out if the butler did it was almost tangible.

if, however, i may exhibit a modicum of temerity of my own, i'd like to take issue with the practice of placing the captions relating to all seventeen illustrations at the front of the book rather than alongside each image. it's a real pain having to flick back and forth on reaching the insertion points between pages 84-85 and 212-213. when the book reaches paperback status, i'd urge those at yellow jersey to reconsider this. it didn't necessarily spoil my reading, but it didn't enhance it either.

will fotheringham's writing has surely reached its own apogee in this truly superb book and one can only wonder why eddy's portrait is not on at least one insole of those new rapha grand tour race shoes.

posted saturday 17 march 2012.

twmp

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