âDauphiné Libéréâ. The punch â he could do it once, at most twice, over a weekâs racing: his famous âcoup de reinsâ. He would have agreed with Van der Valk that power, after you have learned to conquer heat, thirst, pain, fear, springs from the nape of the neck. To be a bicycle racer you have to learn to do a stage of two hundred and forty kilometres at an average over forty to thehour, to climb a col of two thousand five hundred metres through roads with bends of a hundred and eighty degrees, under the merciless sun and the no less merciless rain, to go downhill at a hundred and twenty an hour. If you can do all that you are worth the money you earn.
He was thin, and looked fragile in his expensive suit â English material, Prince of Wales check, but cut more extravagantly than the clients of the manège would have considered permissible. They would, indeed, have curled the lip and given little deprecating laughs: what else could one expect from a boy who had made huge sums of money just riding a bicycle? No difference between that and a pop singer, that anyone-who-was-someone could see. Making money, to them, was something one did without the eyes of a crowd â the crowd might see how the trick was performed and that would never do.
Thin, with a narrow head, blond hair cut short, candid blue eyes. Anquetil, not surprisingly, was his great hero; Rob was another one who used his head. Rob had studied the terrible Norman for ten years with extreme care, and profited from something the same temperament. He was Dutch! â not for him the flamboyant fury of a Fausto Coppi, capable of winning on his own half an hour before the next â he had learned how to dose his effort, how to make âpsychological winsâ.
He was thirty-six, a calm, controlled man, very much in charge of the enterprise to which he had set his hand.
Every winter he had done two hundred kilometres a day, rough country roads with spare inner tubes slung round the neck, the rain slashing his face, wind in the eye. Six-day events were for money, and also to learn racing in a crowd, to keep balance in the desperate wobble of a sprint, to learn the hard lessons from riders who elbowed you, pinched you against the barrier, held you by the jersey. He wasnât a salon runner, as the French called it contemptuously. He was hardened. And he had been a lone wolf all his life. He had been sacked by Pellenaers from the Dutch team for disobeying group discipline. All Brabant had pelted him with eggs for that, and a national glory had turned into a national disgrace like so many more. He hadnât budged, and now he was âOur Robbieâ, the glory of South Holland. He hated the coldblooded metropolitan west, where there was no sport but football (which Rob thought a show-off game for oafish exhibitionists)and where oafs giggled at his soft, peasant Brabants accent.
He would have liked to stay in France, where no rider, save perhaps the grave and courteous Raymond Poulidor, was more popular with the French crowd. In France he had been happy. He had learned to stop being uncouth, a tonguetied sweating clod â he remembered so well; Stablinski had beaten him by cunning in the Four Days of Dunkerque, and they had been interviewed together in front of the television. Jean deserved to beat me, he had thought, destroyed with shame and envy, listening to the Frenchman say calmly, âYou have to exteriorize yourselfâ â what on earth did it mean?
He could talk French now well enough for anybody, a queer mixture, with Northern and Catalan expressions but perfectly understandable. In France a rider was respected and an individual was prized, and he had plenty of money. He would have stayed, but at the last moment he lost courage â for the first time in his life. When it came to buying property he was frightened of the flowery phrases of French bureaucracy, of the chalky old notaries and
He was thin, and looked fragile in his expensive suit â English material, Prince of Wales check, but cut more extravagantly than the clients of the manège would have considered permissible. They would, indeed, have curled the lip and given little deprecating laughs: what else could one expect from a boy who had made huge sums of money just riding a bicycle? No difference between that and a pop singer, that anyone-who-was-someone could see. Making money, to them, was something one did without the eyes of a crowd â the crowd might see how the trick was performed and that would never do.
Thin, with a narrow head, blond hair cut short, candid blue eyes. Anquetil, not surprisingly, was his great hero; Rob was another one who used his head. Rob had studied the terrible Norman for ten years with extreme care, and profited from something the same temperament. He was Dutch! â not for him the flamboyant fury of a Fausto Coppi, capable of winning on his own half an hour before the next â he had learned how to dose his effort, how to make âpsychological winsâ.
He was thirty-six, a calm, controlled man, very much in charge of the enterprise to which he had set his hand.
Every winter he had done two hundred kilometres a day, rough country roads with spare inner tubes slung round the neck, the rain slashing his face, wind in the eye. Six-day events were for money, and also to learn racing in a crowd, to keep balance in the desperate wobble of a sprint, to learn the hard lessons from riders who elbowed you, pinched you against the barrier, held you by the jersey. He wasnât a salon runner, as the French called it contemptuously. He was hardened. And he had been a lone wolf all his life. He had been sacked by Pellenaers from the Dutch team for disobeying group discipline. All Brabant had pelted him with eggs for that, and a national glory had turned into a national disgrace like so many more. He hadnât budged, and now he was âOur Robbieâ, the glory of South Holland. He hated the coldblooded metropolitan west, where there was no sport but football (which Rob thought a show-off game for oafish exhibitionists)and where oafs giggled at his soft, peasant Brabants accent.
He would have liked to stay in France, where no rider, save perhaps the grave and courteous Raymond Poulidor, was more popular with the French crowd. In France he had been happy. He had learned to stop being uncouth, a tonguetied sweating clod â he remembered so well; Stablinski had beaten him by cunning in the Four Days of Dunkerque, and they had been interviewed together in front of the television. Jean deserved to beat me, he had thought, destroyed with shame and envy, listening to the Frenchman say calmly, âYou have to exteriorize yourselfâ â what on earth did it mean?
He could talk French now well enough for anybody, a queer mixture, with Northern and Catalan expressions but perfectly understandable. In France a rider was respected and an individual was prized, and he had plenty of money. He would have stayed, but at the last moment he lost courage â for the first time in his life. When it came to buying property he was frightened of the flowery phrases of French bureaucracy, of the chalky old notaries and
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