Cyclists can be a twitchy lot. Able to both endure and dish out pain for weeks on end in a grand tour takes considerable fortitude, or what we call The V. The cyclist must know their body and measure out its effort carefully. The pros we look to as the Giants of the Road, the Flahute, or even the Unsung Hardmen are able to win while maintaining a Casually Deliberate air about them. In some circles this is known as a poker face.
Yet there are other successful riders we admire that, shall we say, can be BIG FUCKING BABIES. I mean this with all due respect but we’ve all seen riders crack off the bike mentally just as hard as we’ve seen them crack on the bike. The months, no years, of training, pressures of competition, team and race politics, restricted diets, distance from the VMH, and complicated doping programs would all but sour the hardest of psyches. Can you really blame them? As a fellow human being who likes to think of himself as compassionate on most days, I can’t. However, as a fan of cycling, all compassionate bets are off.
Many things got me started ruminating on good, and even great, riders who, on occasion, take up the role of Peloton Diva. Primarily what got me thinking about this idea are all the off season reports of training camp dramas, contract negotiations, and intra-team squabbles. Thank you Bjarne for much of this fodder. As fans, we post about this sort of thing all the time. Mark Cavenwhatsgoingtocomeoutofmymouthnextdish being the prime example currently.
Enter The Eagle of Toledo, Federico Bahamontes. Certainly a rider before my, and probably everyone here’s, time, Bahamontes was no Unsung Hardman. Quite the contrary, his praises have been sung in the annals of cycling since he baffled everybody en route to his first KOM victory at le Tour in 1954. Only Reeshard Verenique has captured the dotty jumper more times in le Tour than The Eagle. When you look at the rest of Bahamontes’ palmares, however, it’s easy to imagine how he is arguably the best pure climber in the history of cycling. Simply put, the dude laid down The V when the road pointed up. And we’re not talking about a protected rider being pulled up to the last few K’s of a climb only to finish with a few strong kicks to the finish. We’re talking about a dude that regularly, in fact usually, went from the bottom only to be seen at the start of the following day’s stage.
But alas, his fiery temper and seemingly fickle nature may have impeded further success (again, not that he was unsuccessful to begin with). He let pelo-politics get the best of him in both the ’63 and ’64 editions of le Tour stating that the other riders were conspiring against him. Not having been there (or born yet), it’s impossible for me to know the scene, but isn’t that called bicycle racing?
Whats more is when riders let their emotions get the best of them in their dealings with fans. After being angered by comments directed at him by a fan, The Eagle removed his bicycle pump and chased the fan around for an hour or so probably screaming Spanish euphemisms and disparaging the fan’s madre . Imagine playing a game of catch-is-catch-can with your favorite Peloton Diva. Who would that Peloton Diva be? Would you handicap the Peloton Diva by arming him with bidons to throw at you or would you level the playing field by wearing cycling shoes as well? But I digress. The true Velominatus would not be so brash as to egg a rider on, because on some level, all pros deserve respect for their efforts.
The truly perplexing part about Bahamontes’ proclivity to mood swings, or many other Peloton Divas, is that it actually led him to quit both le Tour and la Vuelta. Why did he quit? It wasn’t a result of injury or illness. He quit the Tour in his swan song year because he was struggling in the mountains where he once soared. He dropped out of the Vuelta under more auspicious circumstances when six riders were allowed back in after not making the time limit, a limit which was established by The Eagle’s blistering pace. That may be one way to protest crooked officiating. Yet another would be to bury the chaps even further on the next mountain stage. Perhaps Federico not only set the standard of performance for a pure climber, but he also foretold of the fragile mental states of so many climbers who followed.
Don’t get me wrong here. Federico Bahamontes is a Giant of the Road. He rode in a bygone era which saw longer Grand Tours on rougher roads ridden on heavier bikes and when grinta played a much bigger role in tactics. Now in his eighties, he still looks like he could rip my spindly legs off on a climb. What puzzles me is when riders seem to cut their own noses off to spite their faces. Somebody get me a sports psychologist.
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Once it's pointed out it's kind obvious. But I stared at it for ages and didn't pick it at all. Most excellent. Great find, Marko - and well spotted, Brett.
Excellent article, Marko. There's a PhD dissertation in there somewhere about the fragile minds of the exceptionally gifted, whether we're talking about sports, performing arts, law, business, medicine, academics. I'm not talking gifted compared to the rest of the high school class. I'm talking third standard deviation, Merckx, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Mark Twain, Bill Gates, off the charts pros.
Writing as an Armchair Psychologist, the kind of relentless pursuit of dominance over one's profession probably doesn't come from greed, but from fear. I suspect there's massive insecurity in there as the main motivator. It's one thing to want to win. It's another to be afraid that you can't win when you're expected to win. And once the wheels start to come off the rails regarding one's performance, the fear manifests itself in some pretty erratic behavior. But I'm just guessing. I've never been that successful!
As for the painting, I first thought it looked like a photo that I'd seen before. So I looked at it really closely. Then I saw that it was a painting.
So then I looked at the cars. They seemed too modern to be from Bahamontes' era. And the rider in the breakaway had on a Miko purple team jersey with Adidas stripes on the shoulders. That looked like a jersey from the time I started to pay attention to racing in the very late '70s and early '80s.
So I did what I always do when I want to find a recipe, buy a car, get directions, or stare at bike porn. I Googled it.
That's the Miko-Mercier-Vivagel jersey from 1980.
http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dmiko%2Bmercier%2Bvivagel%26ei%3DUTF-8%26fr%3Datt-portal-s%26fr2%3Dtab-web&w=170&h=156&imgurl=www.memoire-du-cyclisme.net%2Fpelotons%2Fimage.php%3Fadr%3D1980%2Fmiko802&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.memoire-du-cyclisme.net%2Fpelotons%2Fsets.php%3Fs%3D66&size=19KB&name=Miko-Mercier&p=miko+mercier+vivagel&oid=53621718779ae02114c0200d29472d94&fr2=tab-web&no=10&tt=20&sigr=11pktk7m0&sigi=11va35akk&sigb=138cb437n&.crumb=z8CzomWg9US
Then I found the owner of the painting.
http://williampedalson.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html
Scroll down to January 10. Turns out Winning Bicycle Racing Illustrated described this painting by Cleary as being Bahamontes in 1963. But the owner says the receipt references Sven Ake Nilsson, 1980. Cleary says the same.
Turns out that's a painting of the guy who finished 7th in the Tour de France in 1980. Since Cleary usually takes his cycling subject matter from photos, there's got to be a photo of Nilsson speeding away from the chase group. If anyone can find it, please let me know. I love how Nilsson has his head down, probably looking at his front hub, deep in the red, just killing it.
And here's Sven Ake Nilsson's trading card in the jersey from the painting:
http://www.cykelsiderne.net/beeldfiche.php?beeldid=41331
@Jeff in PetroMetro
Ain't the interwebs grand? Outstanding work.
@Jeff in PetroMetro
Well, you really fucked up the whole thing now for Marko!
@brett
Ah, shit. I didn't intend to. It's Winning's fault.
Marko's position about certain Big Fucking Babies struck a chord with me. Look at COTHO, LeMelvis, il Pirato, Bahamontes, Coppi, Anquetil. Pretty amazing on the bikes and pretty amazingly difficult and kinda bizarro off them.
In music, movies, and politics, there are lots of them.
What drives me nuts, though, are the CEOs that are such divas. Not naming names (this is a global website), my wife told me a story about a now jailed CEO who used to come to work with two rottweilers. The rottweilers made sure you didn't get in his way, nor did you get on the same elevator, or, if you were on the elevator first, you got out. A mutual friend told us that his CEO (now also incarcerated) required employees to avert their eyes and not speak to him unless he spoke to them first. (Strangely pharaoh like)
These are not dumb guys. However, they are completely batshit crazy.
Genius, or unequaled brilliant talent, frequently seems to pair up with a touch of bipolar disorder.
@Jeff in PetroMetro
Nicely done old chap. The story on the Cleary painting is worthy of an article alone. That's honest to goodness research right there. Interesting how an inaccuracy from Winning magazine way back when lives on in the internet and gets propagated by a lazy fuck like myself. I got as far as the owner's blog in my post above to Brett but the team jersey and trading card piece is great. For all I know now, The Eagle was mentally stable as a rock, shot opponents down with a thousand yard stare, and thrashed Kissinger in debate club.
I wonder how Nilsson's psyche worked?
@G'phant
@Marko
Thank you for the kind words.
As for Bahamontes, he might be a nice old man now, but he was a strange bird (pun intended) during his racing years. Here's a Wiki quote about how he fired off a Millarcopter as a means to quit the Tour:
"He was also temperamental, throwing his bike down a ravine to stop any pressure to continue riding when he dropped out of the 1956 Tour de France on the col de Luitel. The following year he dropped out again when the retirement of his team-mate, Miguel Poblet, left him without support. He held on to his bike but took off his shoes."
As for Nilsson's psyche, I found one Swedish blog that, translated, said he had a good sense of humor. I didn't know the Swedes had humor. (No offense intended to the Swedish Velominati.)
@Jeff in PetroMetro
I read that about Bahamontes as well. That's what I was getting at by cutting off his nose to spite his face. Say what you will about COTHO for example, he is not a quitter. He certainly held true to his "quitting is forever" quote. I also think you're onto something about the greed vs. fear piece. As long as we're armchairing psych. COTHO, again as example, may have approached things from a greed perspective.
I'm Swedish btw. No offense taken.
I love how Bahomeillisson appears to be climbing in his 55x2. Look how low his shoulders are. Talk about laying down the v!