“A Sunday in Hell”: Hanging or being crafty?

The Eurovision TV cameraman is sitting on the back of a motorbike that’s roaring along  just behind the lead group of four riders in Paris-Roubaix in 1976. The race is being televised live now with only about an hour left. It must have been thrilling to listen to the early part of the race on the radio, then see the battle explode into images on TV just as the racing really gets heated.

Welcome back to our weekly series that takes a look at a scene or two from one of the world’s best cycling documentaries, “A Sunday in Hell.” Last week, we left off with Eddy Merckx inexplicably missing the most crucial break in the race. Roger De Vlaeminck was able to slip away with Francesco Moser, Marc Demeyer and Hennie Kuiper, wearing the world champion’s rainbow jersey.

This week, we pick up the race with a view of the back of the Eurovision cameraman’s red jacket as he follows the lead group on motorbike. “The live transmission has begun,” the narrator says. “And we’re into the final hour of Hell.”

We leave the race momentarily and find ourselves in a Eurovision studio, where three TV producers babble away in French as they watch the race shown on several small monitors mounted to the wall.

The camera moves back to the race and we’re shown the riders and their team cars tearing across the last stretch of pave. They kick up so much dirt and dust that it is hard to see the screaming fans lining the “road.” Despite all the flying debris, none of the riders wear sunglasses or any other form of eye protection. Nor do they have bike computers or race radios. It was a time when you raced by feeling.

The narrator counts how much time the leaders have on the chasers: “…10 seconds…15…20…25…30…35…40…45……….and here comes Merckx, Godefroot and the others. … More than a minute behind De Vlaeminck and the others.”

He adds, “Some of the worst pave lies close to Roubaix, and on these mishapen roads and amid these dust clouds, a lot can happen.”

Moser leads around a sharp corner and almost goes off the road as he dodges a race motorcyle that’s stuck in a ditch.  After the four leaders clear the tricky turn, a pack of race motorcycles panic and gets jammed up as they try to negotiate the turn. There’s chaos as team cars race up to the spot and then slam on their breaks and wait for the motorcycles to untangle themselves. The fans lining the road start going nuts and yell at the motorbikes as a couple gendarmes start blowing their whistles, trying to restore order and unclog the road.

 Just as the meyhem gets sorted out, the human locomotive Merckx pulls his train around the corner. “Now there are only 12 men in Merckx’s group,” the narrator says. “The rest are scattered in the dust.”

There’s an aerial shot of De Vlaeminck at the front of his group. The narrator explains that De Vlaeminck and Moser are doing all the work while Demeyer and Kuiper draft on them.

“Neither Demeyer or Kuiper take the lead. They are just hanging on or are they being crafty and saving their strength?” he says. “Demeyer glues himself to De Vlaeminck’s rear wheel. He’s been in that position since the start of the breakaway. He’s still marking De Vlaeminck. In so doing, he’s furthering the war that Maertens and De Vlaeminck are waging against each other.”

“A Sunday in Hell”: Broom wagon has something to do

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.