Cyclopedia (26 page)

Born:
Yffiniac, France, November 14, 1954

 

Major wins:
World road race championship 1980; Tour de France 1978–9, 1981–2, 1985, 28 stage wins; Giro d'Italia 1980, 1982, 1985, six stage wins; Vuelta a España 1978, 1983, seven stage wins; Paris–Roubaix 1981; Giro di Lombardia 1984; Liège–Bastogne–Liège 1977, 1980; Ghent–Wevelgem 1977, Flèche Wallonne 1979, 1983; Amstel Gold Race, 1981; GP des Nations 1977–9, 1982

 

Nickname:
the Badger

 

Further reading:
Memories of the Peloton
, trans. Noel Henderson, 1989

 

During the 1992 TOUR DE FRANCE, you could buy fluffy badger toys with a picture of the five-time Tour winner, nicknamed
Le Blaireau
(the Badger), on sale for charity. It was a bizarre bit of marketing, as in real life Hinault was anything but cuddly: he remains one of the most combative cycling champions ever, earning his NICKNAME, as he said himself, “because a badger is a devil of an animal to deal with in a tight corner.” It was also, he said on another occasion, because when wounded, the badger would retire to its burrow, lick its cuts, then come out fighting.

Celebrated as one of the elite club who have won five Tours de France, Hinault is stocky and outspoken, ready with a smile or a glare, aggressive on his bike and off it, most famously taking on a bunch of striking dockers who stopped the 1984 Paris—Nice race. He was not beyond throwing the odd punch in retirement, notably during the 2008 Tour de France when a demonstrator rushed on to the winner's podium at Nantes and the “Badger” gave no quarter. The clip is now a YouTube classic. Hinault said that one of his main reasons for going to school was that there might be a fight on the way there.

As a pro cyclist he was legendary as a boss or
patron
who would make the bunch race his way or suffer for their impudence. “Sometimes he would attack and the peloton would string out into a long line. Then he would sit up and start laughing, mocking us. He had a god-like aura, but I didn't like him,” recalled the cyclist-turned-journalist Paul Kimmage. ROBERT MILLAR said he was so fearsome that the
number 666 should be tattooed on his forehead. In 1984, having lost the Tour to LAURENT FIGNON, he took out a full-page advertisement in
L'Equipe
, proclaiming: “I shall be back next year. The badger has claws and intends to use them.” True to his word he returned to win a fifth Tour in 1985.

Together with his La Vie Claire teammate GREG LEMOND he produced one of the greatest Tours ever when he finished second in 1986 after three weeks when their RIVALRY turned the event into a hotbed of intrigue and mindgames. His greatest wins came in the face of adversity, be it the crash in the 1985 Tour that left him with two black eyes and a broken nose or the ding-dong battle with Joop Zoetemelk in the 1979 race that ended with the pair sprinting out the finish together on the Champs-Elysées.

His greatest victory, perhaps, was when he dominated Liège–Bastogne–Liège in a snowstorm that forced most of the field to retire in 1980. He rode with bare legs and ended up with fingers that remained numb for three weeks afterward. He also crushed the field in the 1980 world championship to prove a point after quitting that year's Tour with a knee injury. That was a devastating race: a series of searing attacks on the Domancy hill at Sallanches that left the field in tatters. The Badger's retirement was typical: he had always said he would quit at 32, so he organized a cyclo-cross race in his village in Brittany five days before his birthday, finished 14th in front of a crowd of 15,000, and never raced again. He worked for the Tour de France organizers from 1989 onwards and remains a pungent commentator on cycling, most notably in 2009, when he had a media spat with LANCE ARMSTRONG.

HOBBY HORSE
Early bicycle with no pedals, powered by the rider pushing his feet against the ground, also known as the DRAISIENNE. See that entry for more details.

HOLLAND
The only European country where a conscious, long-term nationwide effort has been made to promote cycling as transport. It has 19,000 kilometers of bike lanes; nearly 85 percent of the population own at least one bike, and there are estimated to be 16 million bikes in the country. Cycling has been made such an attractive option that in one town, Groningen, 57 percent of all journeys are made by bike and virtually all the children cycle to school, some travelling up to 20 km.

The Dutch did not implement a national cycling policy until 1990, but as early as the 1970s there had been an increasing awareness that unrestrained road building to accommodate ever-growing car traffic was not possible; there wasn't enough space in this densely populated country. Beginning in 1974 the cycle route network was massively expanded, with investment of some $230 million; from 1990 all major cities had to implement plans for increased cycle use. The result is a massive network of traffic-free cycle paths, many of them two-way, with junctions at motor-traffic roads specially designed for cycle safety, including underpasses and bridges and clearly marked areas where cyclists can wait at traffic lights in front of cars. The aim, said one cycling policy paper, was to ensure that “all traffic participants must have equal rights.”

Groningen offers a detailed view of what can be done. Proactive cycling policies began in 1969: over the years, car access to the city center has been restricted, initially in the face of opposition from businesspeople and shopkeepers. Through traffic was removed from the center, and cars directed to parking lots.

By 2000 a huge network of cycle lanes had been built (equivalent to perhaps 60 percent of the major roads); from 1980 secure, supervised cycle storage facilities were provided, roughly one a year. These provide lockers, repair facilities, rent racks, and carriers; there are 15 at various schools. At traffic lights heavy flows of cyclists were given priority. Investment in cycle-specific facilities between 1989 and 2000 was some 23 million euros, with cycle-friendly facilities also forming part of other investment programs.

Policy documents available through the Dutch cycling information service make it clear that this has only been achieved by sustained long-term investment over several decades, with every planning decision taking into account how people are going to travel and how they can best be accommodated. Food for thought as cities grapple with congestion and climate change.

HORSES
Contests between cyclists and horses were popular in the US in the pioneering days of bike racing. The
Lordsburg Liberal
from 1888 tells of “an ugly but tough” horse that cost $350 beating a bike over 49 miles through Colorado, while the
New York Times
published a lengthy report in 1888 of a SIX-DAY RACE in Madison Square Garden between men and horses, using
an earth track for the horses outside a boarded bike track. The match pitted long-distance horse rider Charles M. Anderson against two cyclists, Irish champion William Woodside and Pennsylvania champion John Brooks; Anderson had 20 horses and could change at will, while the cyclists rode for an hour each. Racing was from 1 PM to 1 AM, to the sound of a regimental band playing tunes from
The Mikado
. The winner is not recorded.

Occasionally during the 20th century cyclists raced horses purely as stunts, including Italian CAMPIONISSIMO Costante Girardengo, Rik Van Steenbergen of Belgium, and Italian climber Claudio Chiappucci. There was also speculation about a match between Mario Cipollini and a stallion named Varenne, although it seemed that Cipo's interest in the contest was partly to invite comparison between his sexual exploits and those of the stallion. (See SEX.)

The longest-standing Man v. Horse contest took place between 1985 and 1994 in the Mid-Wales town of Llanwrtyd Wells, which hosts various bizarre events including the world bog-snorkelling championship. The Man v. Horse marathon was for runners, mountain bikes, and horses over an insanely mountainous 22-mile course that included a forest section, where the cyclists had to crawl through deep mud underneath fir tree branches that came down to a couple of feet above the track. It was sponsored by bookmakers William Hill, who invited bets on whether two legs could beat four. The first biker or runner to best the quadrupeds was mountain-bike legend Tim Gould of Yorkshire, who earned £5,000 in 1989 for beating a horse called the Doid. Gould was helped a little when the organizers ruled that vets' checks on the horses had to be included in their times.

Tougher regulations over racing mountain bikes on bridleways mean that the race is now restricted to runners against horses.