For the most part, “heroes” tend to be the
people who appeal to us when we’re young: random custodians we nominate to
represent our nascent sense of self, to associate our being with the things we have
begun to consider worthy. Nobody knows the person their hero elect really is, and there may be many, breaking down one’s
worship into less obsessive morsels. As we grow older the notion of a hero/heroine
becomes less relevant. Assuming you are of sound mind, these totems often
become superfluous. Sure, there will be people we continue to admire, and we
might venerate them openly, but it forms reverence of a less partisan kind.
Heroes can come in
all shapes and sizes, but amongst the callow they’re normally fished from quite
a narrow caste. They may be sportspeople – and often are – although pop stars and
actors are not uncommon subjects of adoration. The more politicised may look
toward nobler folk, whereas some youths cherish those of a more creative bent,
such as authors, artists, poets, or musicians. But it is amongst the
light-hearted stuff that the young generally look.
As an adolescent the
people I held in high esteem conformed to type – sportsmen and musicians
mostly. Gary Lineker was probably the first person I placed on a pedestal,
because he played for Everton and then won the Golden Boot at my inaugural FIFA
World Cup – Mexico 86. No sooner had
that tournament ended and Gary was off to Barcelona for a cool £2,800,000. I
was in need of a fresh, domestic subject to fill the void. Up stepped Kevin
Sheedy and his left foot – the perfect candidate on account of him playing for
Everton and me being (predominantly) left footed (I’m almost ambidextrous where
my feet are concerned). Indeed, I canonised many an Everton player back then,
left-footed or otherwise: Trevor Steven, Graeme Sharp, Adrian Heath – even
Neville Southall.
In parallel, I made
musical heroes of collectives, rather than individuals: Public Enemy, the
Beastie Boys, Gangstarr, Brand Nubian, KMD. These rap groups seemed far cooler
than the over-stylised pop and rock acts I’d grown up with. I had admired
Prince too, but I’d always been a bit bothered by the clothes he wore. Come the
end of the 1980s and I wasn’t particularly enamoured with the look of “baggy”
or “Madchester” either. Rap artists, on the other hand, dressed conservatively
by comparison, sportswear being their staple. I could get on with that.
When I reached the
second half of my teenage years I started behaving a little more responsibly
and pledged my support to Plymouth Argyle, my local team and the team I really
ought to have been supporting all along. I needed a hero and it was Dwight
Marshall to whom I turned. A short, pacy striker, who resembled some of those
hip-hop dudes I was obsessed with, it was an instinctive choice. My friend and
I used to watch the occasional reserve game down at Home Park just to get our
fix of Dwight. Once, as he was leaving the field, we called his name and he
rewarded us with a sly wink – it quite made our evening.
A few years later,
when Dwight returned to Argyle for a second spell, we bumped into him in some
licentious Plymouth nightclub and bought him a drink by way of thanks for the
memories. He left for Kingstonian soon after that but Argyle’s glory years were
just around the corner, offering a whole host of prospective altars to worship
at: the French pairing of David Friio and goalkeeper Romain Larrieu; the
Canadian Jason Bent; local “bey” Paul Wotton, or Argyle legend Mickey Evans.
Mickey Evans remains
one of the most gifted footballers I’ve ever had the privilege of watching in a
real, live match environment. His appearance was slovenly and he lacked pace,
but his first touch was impeccable and his hold-up play first rate. He’s
probably the last footballer I genuinely held in such high esteem.
It wasn’t just
football players who felt the pinch; as I hit my twenties I grew less factional
in all my interests. I’d just like a lot of people, groups and things.
Mark E Smith is a
fine example of this. I’m still very interested in his musical output with The
Fall, but the myths that surround him are of no consequence. He is still
possibly the nearest thing I have to a hero, but you won’t find his picture
hanging on my wall, and I’m quite accepting of the fact that he’s a bit of a
pissed-up mess – or more to the point, just a “man”.
It would be
disingenuous of me to say that there aren’t personalities that arouse my
curiosity in a manner that goes beyond mere appreciation. For illustration, I
buy into the myth completely that David Bowie has made for himself. I take
stock in his persona just after he recorded Station
to Station – maybe my favourite Bowie album – turning his back on his more
outlandish selves, and, in turn, Los Angeles, cocaine and the Thin White Duke,
before then moving to Europe to paint himself anonymously, but still with a
certain style. I like that he was slim and I am slim, and that we share a
fondness for the idea of Europe being a thing in itself – a mind-set, or canon. I like how Bowie describes his
album Low as being him trying to
articulate how he had nothing to articulate. I like that he takes himself
seriously but maintains a strong sense of humour. It’s what good art’s all
about – that and provocation.
In my early thirties
I entered into a period of being seriously intrigued by the actor and musician
Vincent Gallo. He came across as well-dressed, amusing yet cantankerous, and
something of a renaissance man – with good hair. But he is just another man,
and I can see very little of myself in him – no physical resemblance, no
skill-set, nothing – and potential heroes need that kinship on which to base a
sense of aspiration.
Then there are
intellectuals and writers – Christopher Hitchens, Jonathan Meades, Ian
Svenonius – whom I greatly admire, and maybe there’s still room for the odd
sports personality too. Ronnie O’Sullivan certainly contributes to my enjoyment
of snooker, although I watch the game whether he’s taking a sabbatical or not (or
‘retiring’ as he calls it). O’Sullivan is a hero par excellence. He’s got a great all-round game, tactical
awareness, and plays with a visually pleasing fluidity. O’Sullivan also has
personality and a charming oddness that is fascinating to behold. In fact, his
glum disposition and ambivalence toward his own sport suggests he’s all too
familiar with the concept of Weltschmerz, although maybe not consciously.
Which brings me on to cycling and the
personalities involved: are any of them hero material? Would I, as a callow
youth, have felt inspired by its protagonists and have their pictures plastered
across my wall? Impossible to say, but Bradley Wiggins – the most obvious
contender – just doesn’t quite do it for me. He really should: he’s svelte,
slightly sardonic, and something of a Mod. I don’t consider myself to be a Mod
but I do like a Fred Perry, and it’s nice to see a sports person who doesn’t
sport the collars of their (American) polo shirts pointing upwards or wear
earrings or advertise expensive wrist-watches. And I like his sense of humour,
and I’m all for people who wear their thinness well. There’s just something
about him that doesn’t sit quite right with me. It might be his mood swings…
Mark Cavendish I
like, although he’s not the sort of rider I could ever imagine myself to be – a
sprinter. I couldn’t ever conceive idolising Chris Froome because, although he
seems a nice bloke and is undoubtedly a rider of great strength, he’s just too conservative
in his demeanour. I warmed to David Millar over the course of his book but he’s
nearing the end of his career. Also, he does a lot of adverts.
Abroad, I find
Alberto Contador strangely appealing (he looks like Prince) but the suspicion of
doping hangs around him, as does a Michael Schumacher type dedication that’s
off-puttingly impenetrable. Cadel Evans seems okay but he’s another one whose
career has obviously peaked.
If I was a 16 year
old cyclist, then, I’d like to think that Cavendish would be my main man, but
I’d probably be rooting for Wiggins too. It’s moot and not something that
overly concerns me. Still, it would nice to be able to connect with the
personalities of the sport on some level.
But it doesn’t just
come down to who’s racing now, does it? After all, I wasn’t around when Bowie
was hitting his stride, or when Johan Cruyff was tearing it up on the world
stage (footballers don’t come any cooler than Cruyff). So I reach into
cycling’s past to find myself a “hero”, but who could it be?
I contemplate first Jacques Anquetil (nickname: Monsieur
Chrono) because it’s as far back into the annals of road cycling as I’m
prepared to look, and because from what I can gather he was the first really
big hitter the sport ever had. The Frenchman triumphed in the Tour de France
five times – the first cyclist to achieve this feat – the Giro d’Italia twice
and the Vuelta a España once. Only five cyclists have won all three Grand Tours
and only three others have won the Tour de France five times: Eddy Merckx,
Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain (Lance Armstrong had registered seven
victories until they were annulled because of proven, and admitted, doping
offences). More significantly, Anquetil was a rider admired for his elegance,
his style and the smoothness with which he rode a bike. He was also said to
have liked a drink, was eminently professional and possessed an intellect that
he imposed upon his cycling to great effect.
Seems like perfect hero material to me, but I
find a weird family arrangement rather dissuading. After trying for a child,
but failing, it was agreed that Anquetil’s wife’s step-daughter would offer her
services as some sort of surrogate. To this she agreed, but rather than
abandoning the arrangement once the child was conceived, they continued with
their ménage à trois until Anquetil’s
step-daughter’s jealously toward her own mother drove her away from the family
home. The truly odd thing is that this scandal appears to have done Anquetil’s
reputation no harm, either then or now.
Anquetil and Merckx take time-out
Eddy Merckx (nickname: The Cannibal) is widely
considered to be the greatest cyclist there ever was. As well as his five
general classification triumphs in the Tour de France, he added five victories
in the Giro d’Italia, and another in the Vuelta a España. Merckx
also accrued an impressive list of victories in the Classics, including seven
in the Milan-San Remo, five in the Liège–Bastogne–Liège, three in the
Paris-Roubaix, two in the Tour of Flanders and the same in the Giro di
Lombardia. Such far reaching ability kind of makes him the Pele of his sport.
His passion extended to manufacturing his own bikes, and many of those
who worked for his company speak well of him. Sounds great doesn’t it, but most
of this took place before I was even born, which, regrettably, stymies my sense
of idolatry. By saying that I discount two other cyclists by implication: Fausto
Coppi and Tommy Simpson. Actually, I discount a whole raft of cyclists, but
these are two chaps I feel a visceral affection for.
Fausto Coppi was a wiry Italian with a facial profile that leant itself
to caricature. He was a versatile rider who won the Giro d’Italia five times
and the Tour twice. ‘Il Campionissimo’ was idolised by the Italian public, until he fell for another woman. Italy was
consumed by its Catholicism at the time and Coppi’s adultery was not well
received – in fact, his adoring public turned on him and his career spiralled into decline. (The history of their affair is
even more convoluted than that, but it’s been attended to elsewhere and I don’t
feel qualified to expatiate further.)
In 1959 Coppi fell ill with a particularly virulent strain of malaria
after visiting Burkina Faso at the then President’s behest, and died soon
after. Italy mourned emphatically, and hypocritically.
Tom Simpson’s death is just as tragic, despite him having never won a
Grand Tour. But then, he was English, and the English never had – not back then
– that sort of pedigree. In fact, ‘Tommy’ Simpson had been contextually successful
as a rider, winning four Classics – the Tour of Flanders in 1961, the Bordeaux-Paris
in 63, the Milan-San Remo in 64 and the Giro di Lombardia in 65 – and, in 1962,
becoming the first Briton to ever wear the maillot jaune, heading the general classification of the Tour briefly
after stage 12.
It was
on Simpson’s assault of Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France that he
perished. He had hoped to make an impact that year: to wear the yellow jersey
for a stage or two; maybe even finish third or higher in the general
classification. Coming into the Tour’s 13th stage Simpson was placed
a respectable sixth overall, but he’d been feeling unwell since stage 10, with
stomach pains and the troubles that often accompany that. He was in no shape to
push himself to any sort of limit.
It was
a very hot day, the day that Simpson died, and he’d prepared with amphetamines
and alcohol. He fell off his bike with about 1 km to go before the summit,
insisted on getting back on but collapsed 460 metres later. Tom was pronounced
dead soon after that.
All
of these guys raced during an era where doping was tolerated, which is neither
here nor there. But the fact that they belong to a different time does sort of
preclude their adoption as some sort of latter-day cycling saint. I don’t know why
but it just does.
Now
that Lance Armstrong has been brushed aside, the Spaniard Miguel Indurain
remains the most legitimately recent colossus to have straddled the sport, and
I remember his name from when Chris Boardman made a respectable impact on the
Tour de France in 1994. It is mostly accepted that Indurain rode clean – which is here or there because by then to dope
would have meant to cheat insidiously – but his low-key personality fails to
inspire.
But there are two cyclists who have very much
come to the fore during my recent study into the history of the sport and I’m
finding it hard to choose between them. Bernard
Hinault and Greg LeMond both raced for La Vie Claire for a while, and it was
the former that initially drew my admiration.
Hinault (nickname: The Badger)
has won the Tour de France five times, the Giro d’Italia thrice and the Vuelta
a España twice. I’m less bothered about the statistics than the personality
behind them. Resembling a 1950s Hollywood star, like Montgomery Clift or James
Mason (not so much at the start of his career but more toward the end), Hinault
was a Breton farmer who polarised the opinion of the
French. He was either arrogantly aloof or defensively shy, depending on your
point of view.
Nobody doubted his courage, though. During the
1977 Critérium du
Dauphiné Libéré he fell into a ravine, was helped out of it, got back on his
bike and won the race. In the Tour de France of 1985, Hinault came off his bike
and smashed up his face, with two black eyes and a broken nose to show for it. Again
he rode on and eventually won the Tour. Then there’s the time he physically
attacked striking dockers and trade unionists when they obstructed the road
during the 1984 Paris-Nice, and Hinault ploughed into them whilst leading a potential
break from the peloton. Man, you didn’t mess with Le Blaireau.
Greg LeMond, by all accounts, is a more mild mannered man. He’s an
American, which might make this all the more surprising, and it’s a dichotomy I
find pleasing. The antithesis to Lance Armstrong, it is said that the latter
helped destroy the former’s bike business by “persuading” the firm Trek to wind
down promotion and distribution of the LeMond brand (Trek and LeMond had
reached a licensing agreement in 1995 according to which Trek would manufacture
bikes labelled as LeMond Bicycles). LeMond had cast aspersions on the nature of
Armstrong’s victories in six successive Tours and bemoaned the fact that Lance
was known to be working with Michele
Ferrari, an Italian physician heavily involved in blood doping and who openly
advocated the controlled use of erythropoietin among athletes. Basically,
LeMond guessed that Armstrong was using drugs and called him on it, and
Armstrong did everything in his power to shut him down.
The reason why Armstrong might have seen
LeMond as such a threat was because of his – LeMond’s – three victories in the
Tour de France and the fact that he was the first – and now the only – American
to have won it. Greg LeMond might have achieved more if it wasn’t for a hunting
accident in 1987 which left him with 35 shotgun pellets lodged in his body. The
trauma nearly proved fatal but he recovered to triumph in the Tour for a second
and third time, in 1989 and 1990 respectively.
It is
LeMond’s first victory that is the most curious, though, for it was won riding alongside
Bernard Hinault for La Vie Claire. LeMond had moved to La Vie Claire from Renault-Elf in 1985, where he’d played
second fiddle to Laurent Fignon (a cyclist who I cannot contemplate revering as
a result of him sporting a ponytail). He figured Hinault, who had also been a member
of Renault-Elf up until 1983, was on the wane and that he – LeMond – would be
the main man at La Vie Claire. Turned out that the Breton had at least another
Tour left in him and LeMond was instructed to hold back and play domestique to
Hinault’s team leader. Fair enough, but it was understood that in 1986 Hinault
would be obliged to return the favour, for it was reckoned that LeMond might
have been strong enough to take the Tour in 1985 and had been manipulated into
restraining himself. (I recommend you read the all-engrossing Slaying the Badger by Richard Moore for
a more detailed analysis.)
Greg
LeMond did win in 1986 but only after holding off a savage rear-guard action
from Hinault, which the American considers something of a betrayal. For his
part Hinault claims that he was serving LeMond’s best interests and merely
grinding down the opposition. The fact that Hinault won the maillot à pois rouges (the polka dot jersey awarded
to the King of the Mountains), the Combativity Award, and three individual
stages (compared to LeMond’s one), suggests that Greg might have had a case.
Anyway,
both riders have personality, good faces, were almost certainly dope free, and
rode for La Vie Claire. These shall be my “heroes”, then, and maybe I’ll draw
strength from them when I’m struggling to get up Ditchling Beacon.
