thread.
SHADOW
OF THE
BADGER
PARIS-
ROUBAIX
1981
The shadow of Bernard Hinault
looms over French cycling like no
one else. Second only to the great
Eddy Merckx in the breadth of
his victories, the man nicknamed
the Badger is without question the
greatest cyclist that France ever
produced—and it is a country that
has produced a great many greats.
Hinault was the third rider in history
to win the Tour de France five times,
but that was by no means the limit of
his achievement. He won three Giri
d’Italia and two Vueltas a España,
taking his Grand Tour total to ten,
but he also won virtually every other
major race out there; this included
the 1980 World Championships, the
1981 Paris-Roubaix, three editions
of the Dauphiné Libéré and two each
of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Flèche
Wallonne and the Giro di Lombardia.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his
massive list of victories, Hinault
refuses to look at any particular one as
his most satisfying.
“The most important thing in your
career was the image you give to the
people, your attitude on the bike,” he
told me. “You’re not only a machine;
you think inside the race, you ‘ fait le
metier’ and what the people take away
from your cycling is most important.”
“It’s about the passion you have
inside,” he explained. “The shine
in your eyes when you take a
victory; it happens inside the race,
not like a computer program;
your instinct on the bike.”
It was in 1985 that saw Hinault join
the greats—Merckx and Jacques
Anquetil, the heroes he’d watched
as he grew up on the north coast
of Brittany—with a fifth win at
the Tour. He rode the last week of
the race with a broken nose, after
crashing as he sprinted for a stage
win, but there was nothing going to
stop him from taking the race, not
even the prospect of carrying his
broken nose across the Pyrénées.
Although he joined his heroes on the
fifth win, he claims that it was not the
statistic that motivated him.
“No, it was just important to win,”
he said. “It wasn’t important to equal
Merckx and Anquetil, just purely for
the pleasure of winning.”
Sadly for the host nation, Hinault’s
combative 1985 victory was the last
to be taken by a Frenchman. Since
then a number of French riders have
Text > Ben Atkins Illustrations > Deborah Davis
