We rejoin the final kilometer of the race with a shot from the rear of Hennie Kuiper in the back of the four-man breakaway, sitting up straight out of the saddle and stretching his arms. The narrator says, “The time is 10 past 5. A little relaxation before riding into the stadium.”
Next, we see Kuiper doing the funky turkey move with his legs, wobbling them from side to side, trying to shake the lactic acid out of his muscles before one of the biggest sprinting showdowns in his career.
The 1976 running of Paris-Roubaix, as masterfully documented in the film “A Sunday in Hell,” has come down to this: De Vlaeminck, Moser, Demeyer and Kuiper. Pretty much riding in that order. Last week, we saw Eddy Merckx make one last desperate attempt to bridge the gap, but it didn’t last long. It came much too late.
“De Vlaeminck and Moser have probably expended the most in building up and consolidating the breakaway’s lead. So, just how fresh are Demeyer and Kuiper?” asks the narrator.
If you’ve been following our careful – sometimes obsessive – analysis of this race for the past year or so, you’ll know that the narrator’s remark is a huge understatement. Has De Vlaeminck “probably” expended the most muscle fibers trying to keep this breakaway going? No. He has DEFINITELY invested the most in keeping the breakaway group a comfortable distance from Merckx. The last few kilometers have been a one-on-three contest, with De Vlaeminck being constantly attacked by the other riders. The Belgian hardman has put on a master clinic on how to respond to the challenges. With amazing reflexes and speed, he chased down each attack, nipping them all in the bud within seconds. It’s an astounding display of incredible athleticism and an amazing will to win.
We see the four leaders cruising down the road amid an eerie quiet. Then they turn a corner and we can hear the muffled cheering from the crowd in the velodrome. It makes our heart beat faster. Suddenly, the leaders are on the track! The announcer’s voice is booming in French.
It seems so ironic that a race that took the cyclists over so many stretches of brutally barbaric, Medievally cruel cobbles ends on a smooth track, a place that seems so civilized, scientific, modern and just. Few other sports do this to competitors, push them through such different worlds, make them compete in such contrasting environments.
Naturally, De Vlaeminck, the man who seems to want the victory the most, leads the group into the velodrome. The narrator says, “There have one and a half laps to do on the track. De Vlaeminck maintains his command of the situation. “
The camera doesn’t linger much on Eddy Merckx and that’s a good thing. We don’t like to see Eddy like this. There’s no fight in him. He’s beaten, exhausted. It’s sad. We’re so used to seeing Eddy living up to his nickname, The Cannibal, tormenting the pack, inspiring fear in everyone, voraciously eating up the road, humiliating his opponents. But that didn’t happen in Paris-Roubaix in 1976, as beautifully documented in the film “A Sunday in Hell” – which we’ve been revisiting almost weekly for more than a year, obsessing on all the film’s glorious details.
Eddy, past the peak of his career, inexplicably missed the break and found himself hopelessly gaped in the final kilometers by Roger DeVlaeminck, Francesco Moser, Marc Demeyer and Hennie Kuiper. We’ve all been there, that moment when we must accept reality and admit that we can’t bridge up to the leaders no matter how insanely hard we ride.
“Dutch Tour de France star (Joop) Zoetemelk is tired. Merckx seems resigned to his fate,” the narrator says as the camera focuses on the cyclingBelgian legend for a moment, though it seems like an eternity. We’re tempted to look away, avert our eyes, because we hate to see Eddy this way. Then, thankfully, the scene abruptly changes and we’re far up the road, following the four-man breakaway.
The commentary picks up again: “Moser tries to make a break for it, but again, De Vlaeminck parries the move in a flash. And Kuiper again, but DeVlaeminck sees it and is on his wheel once again.”
But wait, we’re back to Merckx again. He’s moving his way up through the pack. The narrator says, ”Eddy Merckx, the race is over for him. He hasn’t been able to dominate this one.”
Then Eddy gets out of his saddle slightly and starts stomping on his pedals like a man possessed, with his hands in the drops and his head below his bars as he powers on. “Suddenly, he mounts an attack. Only a Merckx would attack at this late hour,” the narrator says. You can’t help but love Eddy for giving it one last shot. It’s a surge fueled purely by pride. But it turns out to be hopeless.
Before I floated the idea, I knew what the guy behind the counter at my local bike shop would say. But I went ahead anyway and said, “I’m building up a bike and thinking about using Campy.” I stepped back and waited for his reaction. He took a deep breath, gave himself some extra time to think of a diplomatic response. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said. When I asked why, he said that Campy still makes some of the best components in the industry, but the company’s service is light years behind the competition. He looked relieved when he saw me nodding in agreement as he talked. He shared a simple example. Once a customer needed a spring for a shifter and had to wait four months for it to be delivered. Yes, four months! This didn’t make sense to me. How could this be true in our modern age? Isn’t just-in-time delivery a standard now in most industries? I asked for an explanation, but he said he found it equally as bizarre. He shrugged and said, “Hey, it’s an Italian company They do things differently.”
Speed kills in the business world nowadays, and I think slow, stodgy service is one of Campy’s biggest problems. I don’t buy that crap from the Campy marketing guy quoted in Cycle Sport who said the company is a Ferrari brand that can’t compete on a mass scale with Toyota and Chevy. “We all have to protect our souls, our DNA,” he said. What a butch of bull. It really comes down to caring about customers like me. I suspect inefficiencies, ancient logistics are holding Campy back the most, decreasing its market share at such a rapid speed. It pains me to write this because I’ve long been a Campy fan. I have a Record gruppo on my Moots. I’ve been willing to pay the Campy price because I love the quality and beauty of the gear.
I’m also sucker for tradition and history. It’s hard to find another brand that has played such a big role in our beautiful sport. One of my favorite Campy stories is the one about the World Championships in 1973 when Freddy Maertens was leading out Eddy Merckx in a sprint against Fellice Gimondi. The Italian won and Maertens claimed that Merckx knew he wasn’t strong enough to beat Gimondi but tricked his Belgian teammate into leading him out anyway. Maertens claims Merckx wanted Gimondi to win because they were both riding Campy, while Maertens was equipped with Shimano. (Merckx claimed Maertens botched the lead-out by going to soon). Anyway, few other brands could inspire such passion and loyalty?
Although I’ve long considered myself a Campy man, I’m fed up with the Medieval service and the hassle and worry of finding parts. Since last summer, I’ve been trying to replace the bearings on my Campy Zonda training wheels. Most of the shops will do the obligatory computer search of their suppliers before telling me they can’t find them. One guy spent 30 minutes flipping through thick parts catalogues and surfing the Web before he gave up. Frustrated, I said, “Why is it getting harder and harder to find Campy parts in this damn country?” He told me that my anger was misdirected. The difficulty of finding Campy parts was a problem worldwide. ”Shimano’s sales in Italy alone are now bigger than Campy’s global sales,” he said. I haven’t been able to verify that factoid, but I’ve mentioned it to others in the industry who are far more knowledgeable than I am and they found it credible.
The Cycle Sport article makes a good point when it says that Campy is ”far from being a stuffy, lagging-behind, retro brand.” It notes that Campy continues to develop products on the cutting edge of technology and design. Campy might have beaten Shimano to the market with an electronic groupset if it hadn’t decided to focus more on developing its 11-speed cassettes. The Super Record 11 Group was voted best product of 2010 in Cyclingnews.com’s survey. So there appears to be a lot of life left in Campy.
Sometimes it’s good to be No. 3. Last year, James Surowiecki wrote an outstanding essay in The New Yorker about this topic. He looked at the top three makers, by market share, of computer games. I’m blissfully ignorant about this stuff and can’t recall all of the names of the companies. Anyway, Surowiecki’s point was that the No. 1 and 2 brands lost a ton of money slashing their prices in a bid to grab market share from each other. They also spent a bunch on marketing and advertising wars. Meanwhile, the No. 3 company mostly focused on refining its existing products and developing really good new ones. The No. 3 company ended up with a superior product line, higher profits and more loyal customers willing to spend more on their games. Could Campy achieve this, too? Is the company doing it already? Again, it would be fantastic if a cycling journalist who also knows how to write a solid business story would take a look at the issue.
In the meantime, I’m not going to buy Campy anymore. I’ve never been much of a gear head. I’d rather be riding my bike than obsessing about equipment. Cost isn’t a huge concern for me because I’m happy to spend money on important things, and cycling is one of the essentials in my life. I’ll brown bag it at work and skip Starbucks to save money for my cycling addiction. What I really care about is durability and availability. My job frequently takes me and my bike to emerging markets where Campy simply isn’t available. I really need to be able to get my bike fixed on the road. So I’m switching to SRAM.
At Waffles & Steel, we’ve been spending the past year or so reliving the 1976 Paris-Roubaix classic, as masterfully documented by the film “A Sunday in Hell.”
We’re getting close to the finish – just 22 miles away. The lead bunch has been reduced to 25, with all the big names of that fantastic cycling era positioning themselves for a decisive move. Earlier, Eddy Merckx used a monster effort to devastate the field with no success. Eddy is a bit past his prime and not as dominant as he used to be.
The narrator says, “Freddy Maertens, his teammate Marc Demeyer and (Walter) Godefroot are at the front. Merckx has stopped trying to split the field.”
They’re jackhammering over a narrow cobbled primitive road that cuts through a farm field. Finally, they reach a section of modern pavement, and most of the riders get out of the saddle for a surge on the smooth surface – a great relief after the severe pave pounding.
Oh no! There’s another crash! It will serve as foreshadowing for another awful event that will develop soon. But this time, one of the victims is the great Belgian cyclist Walter Planckaert. He’s sprawled out – his legs in the street, the curve of his back on the curb and his torso on a grass strip off the road. He’s not moving. His bike is trashed, with one wheel bent into a taco shape, the tubular half off the rim like a limp black snake.
After a brief lament about losing Planckaert, the narrator returns to the front: “Up here, the battle is coming to a boil. Every other second the rhythm is broken by someone trying to break away. All the favorites are active now and have put themselves at the front of the field.”
He continues: ”DeVlaeminck, Demeyer, Godefroot, Maertens. … They keep a sharp eye on each other. Maertens takes the lead. But off to the right, DeVlaeminck suddenly attacks. Way out on the side of the road, he pedals away in a new attempt to get free. Moser is the first to react, then Maertens. This time they know it’s do or die.”
They catch DeVlaeminck and we lose sight of the bunch as they round a corner on a spectator-lined road through a small town. But as we clear the corner, we see it. It’s a crash! Someone is down! It’s Freddy Maertens!
He’s on his side, screaming in pain as he moves his body. When he’s helped to his feet, he immediately doubles over. He’s finished, out of the race. There’s a touching moment when he’s ushered into the white doctor’s car. Before he gets in, he stops to watch a mechanic pick up his bike and load it on top of a team car. In a time of personal tragedy, he still wants to be sure his ride is being handled properly, even though didn’t have to spend an entire month’s salary to buy it.
The narrator says, “Maertens sadly ends the race as a passenger in the doctor’s car.”
Sunday is when we revisit Hell. Not the fiery one. No, a version far worse, one paved with sinister stretches of cobbles that are well described in our favorite cycling documentary, “A Sunday in Hell.”
In our last installment, Eddy Merckx was hammering like a crazed demon, trying to split the field. But he has eased up and the leading bunch is back together again.
The camera skips to the velodrome in Roubaix, where the fans are already waiting for the finish. Some have small transistor radios pressed against their ears. Others are smoking. One guy holds up a sign that says, “Merckx-Moser-Maertens.” They’re being entertained by some track riders. But the narrator adds, “Track racing is onlya substitute. The real thing is the road, and the crowd is awaiting its heroes.”
He adds, “This old track’s most distinguished function has been to provide the setting for the conclusion of one of the world’s greatest road races.”
He says, “Roubaix is close to the Belgian border and today the track is a Mecca for thousands of them.”
We’ll be focusing on two scenes in “A Sunday in Hell” today. One is kind of bizarre and the other is awe inspiring.
The first scene looks like it was created by David Lynch, not Jorgen Leth. It’s a French pub crowded with fans following the race on the radio. Nearly everyone is smoking. The place has the most hideous wallpaper I’ve ever seen – wavy black, brown, white and gold stripes climbing up the wall. I imagine this is what one sees on a bad acid trip or after banging one’s head on the pave. The men – most with long sideburns, floppy collars blooming out of leisure suits – are drinking beer from tall, skinny glasses. The last shot is of a strange guy in his 20s dressed in a black suit with a bright red carnation sticking out of his coat pocket. True, in a Lynch flick, the guy would be a dwarf. Still, it’s weird.
The second scene begins with Roger DeVlaeminck sending two of his Brooklyn riders up the road. Eddy Merckx and Freddy Maertens have finally caught up with DeVlaeminck’s group, so it’s time to shake things up again. “This breakaway is a tactical maneuver,” the narrator says, adding that the two riders aren’t real threats in the race. “They’ve been sent by DeVlaeminck with the intention of forcing his rivals to greater activity. It’s obvious that DeVlaeminck wants to dictate how the race is ridden this year. He’s on the offensive, even with this ploy by his own support riders.”
Next we see the riders rolling into a feed station and many of the domestiques are quitting the race. Some will bum a ride off of spectators, who will take them to Roubaix.
The narrator gets back to the action: “The two Brooklyn attackers still have a slight advantage, but it can’t go on for long because Merckx asusual has assumed the role that all the others are eager to see him in – the lead position. Once in front, he heads the pursuit like a locomotive. It falls into place for DeVlaeminck. Merckx now has to ride after the breakaway that DeVlaeminck has organized. Merckx is causing the group to string out.”
As the narrator describes the action, we see a fantastic aerial shot of Merckx, who looks desperate as he powers over the cobbles pushing a huge gear, his bike bouncing over the bigger chunks of pave. It’s a wonderful shot of one of the greatest athletes ever doing what he does best: hammering down a road, inflicting intense pain on the competition There are about 40 riders behind Merckx, and they seem to be struggling to stay on his wheel. Once when I showed this movie to a small group of my riding mates, everyone was chatty during the first part of the movie. But when we got to this scene, everyone fell silent, put their beers down and just watched in awe.
Each week on Sunday, Waffles & Steel puts a segment of “A Sunday in Hell” under an electron microscope so that we can better appreciate what’s arguably the best cycling documentary ever made.
Last week, the riders finally hit the first patch of pave, and Roger DeVlaeminck caused panic and chaos in the peloton with a breakaway. It didn’t take long for his nemesis Freddy Maertens to catch him. In today’s segment, we learn that Francesco Moser and Eddy Planckaert are also in the lead group of about 20 riders.
Merckx is in a chasing group with Walter Godefroot, another one of my all-time favorite riders, a man who for me personifies the Belgian hardman. I also love his name: Godefroot.
As the riders jidder and jadder over the cruel cobblestones, we see some more great shots of the fans standing on the embankments along those medieval roads. Farmers in sweaters and tweed hats. A guy in a tie. A little girl in a cycling cap. A 70s style hipster wearing a spectacular orange leisure suit and what appears to be a white beret. Did disco really suck that bad?
Then we see more carnage and misfortune. The side of the road is lined with riders waiting for a spare tire. Two Brooklyn riders are hunched over a bike trying to fix it themselves.
The narrator says, “In the rear, the weak and less fortunate are being left behind, while those who don’t like cobblestones prefer riding on the road side. An accident here on the first stretch of pave can be disastrous. This is where the broom wagon has something to do.”
Next comes one of the most mundane scenes. But it’s one of my favorites. The camera is suddenly inside the broom wagon, an aging vehicle that clatters down the road. Why spend money on a fancy ride for the domestiques, men who would probably be working in a grimy factory if they weren’t on a bike team?
One of the riders from Merckx’s Molteni team barges through the broom wagon’s doors. With black smudges under his eyes, he looks like he just finished a shift deep inside a coal mine. He’s speaking in Flemish and there are no subtitles. The tone of his voice and his angry, unsmiling face shows that he’s unhappy. He’s dropping out of the race too early – a really bad move when his boss is already in difficulty. I can’t identify the rider by name. When I watched the DVD with my good friend Jan Kole – a retired Dutch pro who now makes beautiful steel frames under his own brand, Colossi – he knew the rider (and everyone else in the peloton) but I forgot to jot down the name. (Sander, can you ask you dad for me?)
The Molteni cyclist tilts his head and we can get a good look of what’s under his jersey collar. Just below the fabric is white skin, the kind found on Northern Europeans at the start of spring. Above the collar, pinkish orangish red flesh – the tone common on Northern Europeans after their first day of a Thai beach holiday. After he sits down, the Molteni rider has to close the door himself. It emits a tinny sounds, like a cheap aluminum storm door on an old home. He slams it once…twice…and again…and finally gets it to close with the fourth try. These men are workers, not sports celebrities. They slam their own doors.
Now my favorite part. He rips the leather hairnet helmet from his head and reveals a spectacular two-tone brow. The top part is a pinkish white. The bottom part is dark, a mixture of sunburn and pave grime: dirt, cow manure, diesel drips, sweat and other sorts of rural Euro filth. He says something else in Flemish, but we don’t need subtitles. His face says it all.
Every Sunday, Waffles & Steel revisits the finest film ever made about cycling: “A Sunday in Hell.” I’ve been deconstructing the movie – almost frame by frame – and this week I’ll take a look at one of my favorite parts.
The riders have just started rolling, but the sounds of men chanting can be heard down the road. The narrator says, “But something is holding up the start, something unforeseen and probably something highly irregular. Something is blocking the road and delaying the departure, an obstacle that is not included in the race program. It’s a demonstration.”
(Let’s back up for a second. A labor protest is “highly irregular?” In France? Has the British narrator never been there before? )
Some of the riders are shown off their bikes, staring down the road at a large crowd of chanting workers tossing newspapers into the air.
The narrator explains, “They are demonstrating against one of the sponsors of the race, the newspaper Le Parisien Libere. They are protesting the redundancies of the operators of Linotype as the result of automation. It’s a longstanding labor conflict. The race organizers are not entirely unprepared.”
The camera shifts to a bunch of police carrying riot clubs and rifles, which looked scuffed-up, as if they’ve been dropped before by retreating troops preparing to surrender.
Eddy Merckx cranes his neck to survey the scene for a few seconds. Then he does a U-turn and rides to the Brooklyn team car to borrow a wrench. The narrator says, “But the delay can be used to adjust one’s saddle.” Eddy hits the back of the saddle a few times, then starts using the wrench to turn his seat post bolt. Did he finally get it right this time? Probably not.
As the demonstrators allow the riders to go by, they start sticking orange protest decals on the racers’ backs, and the narrator says, “A professional bike rider is of course a moving advertisement, so why not a little space for the workers? The riders are allowed through in single file, the chain gang run the gauntlet of epithets about the capitalists who organize the race. A political lecture for the road.”
The narrator adds, “But since the race is going to be run anyway, and it is, even the demonstrators have their favorites to cheer, such as the idolized Bernard Thevenet.”
A craggy-faced worker, who looks like a French gnome in a pointy white stocking cap, pats Thevenet’s back, waves to him as he rides on and gives him a vigorous thumbs-up sign.
I’ve always thought this scene would make a great Monty Python skit. After the riders go through, the protesters would jump on their own bikes, haul ass down the road, pass the racers and set up a new protest gauntlet ahead of the peloton. They would keep doing this until they beat the professional racers to the finish line in Roubaix’s legendary velodrome. They eventually get offered new jobs as cyclists, making the racers jobless!
Every Sunday, Waffles & Steel revisits the finest film ever made about cycling: “A Sunday in Hell.” I’ve been deconstructing the movie – almost frame by frame – and this week I’ll take a look at one of my favorite parts.
The riders have just started rolling, but the sounds of men chanting can be heard down the road. The narrator says, “But something is holding up the start, something unforeseen and probably something highly irregular. Something is blocking the road and delaying the departure, an obstacle that is not included in the race program. It’s a demonstration.”
(Let’s back up for a second. A labor protest is “highly irregular?” In France? Has the British narrator never been there before? )
Some of the riders are shown off their bikes, staring down the road at a large crowd of chanting workers tossing newspapers into the air.
The narrator explains, “They are demonstrating against one of the sponsors of the race, the newspaper Le Parisien Libere. They are protesting the redundancies of the operators of Linotype as the result of automation. It’s a longstanding labor conflict. The race organizers are not entirely unprepared.”
The camera shifts to a bunch of police carrying riot clubs and rifles, which looked scuffed-up, as if they’ve been dropped before by retreating troops preparing to surrender.
Eddy Merckx cranes his neck to survey the scene for a few seconds. Then he does a U-turn and rides to the Brooklyn team car to borrow a wrench. The narrator says, “But the delay can be used to adjust one’s saddle.” Eddy hits the back of the saddle a few times, then starts using the wrench to turn his seat post bolt. Did he finally get it right this time? Probably not.
As the demonstrators allow the riders to go by, they start sticking orange protest decals on the racers’ backs, and the narrator says, “A professional bike rider is of course a moving advertisement, so why not a little space for the workers? The riders are allowed through in single file, the chain gang run the gauntlet of epithets about the capitalists who organize the race. A political lecture for the road.”
The narrator adds, “But since the race is going to be run anyway, and it is, even the demonstrators have their favorites to cheer, such as the idolized Bernard Thevenet.”
A craggy-faced worker, who looks like a French gnome in a pointy white stocking cap, pats Thevenet’s back, waves to him as he rides on and gives him a vigorous thumbs-up sign.
I’ve always thought this scene would make a great Monty Python skit. After the riders go through, the protesters would jump on their own bikes, haul ass down the road, pass the racers and set up a new protest gauntlet ahead of the peloton. They would keep doing this until they beat the professional racers to the finish line in Roubaix’s legendary velodrome. They eventually get offered new jobs as cyclists, making the racers jobless!
Sunday is the day we revisit “A Sunday in Hell,” which in my mind is the best cycling film ever made.
Our weekly series meets up with the riders as the Paris-Roubaix classic has just begun and the riders are spinning through the city of Chantilly. The camera finds Eddy Merckx in the peloton and starts following him as he works his way closer to the front while the race is still in its neutral zone. When he passes one of his Molteni teammates, he whistles at him. It’s a gentle warbling sound, like one made by a delicate little songbird, not by a beast of a man who was such a ruthless competitor that he was nicknamed “The Cannibal.”
The narrator says, “It’s beautiful weather but cold at this time of the morning, and the riders are wearing special arm warmers and leggings to keep warm.”
The funny thing is that Eddy seems to be the only one who’s all bundled up, as if he’s ready to ride through Siberia. He’s wearing a long-sleeve jersey or maybe they’re arm warmers. It’s hard to tell. He also has tights or leg warmers. On his feet, he’s wearing ridiculously thick rag-wool booties that reach the bottom of his calves. His garb really makes him stand out, but it also shows his age. The older you get, the more sensitive you are to the cold. Eddy is getting old and he’ll show it more later in the race.
saddle and stretching his arms. The narrator says, “The time is 10 past 5. A little relaxation before riding into the stadium.”
nipping them all in the bud within seconds. It’s an astounding display of incredible athleticism and an amazing will to win.
Recent Comments