I FIRST MET Wilfried de Jong during the 1990 Tour de France. Or perhaps it was 1991. He was working on an article entitled ‘The Sounds of the Tour’. My memory might be playing tricks there too. It could just as easily have been ‘The Smells of the Tour’. What I do know is that he had come up with what – to my knowledge – was a brand new take on the Tour. In light of the endless column inches published on the world’s premier cycling event, it was a remarkable feat. You’d think that by the early 1990s every possible angle had been covered.
But there’s no point airing such views in the company of Wilfried de Jong. Seen through Wilfried’s eyes, the world is so rich and varied that there are always new angles to cover. And yes, even in the Tour de France, only a fraction of the possible avenues have been explored. Most of us tend towards a superficial view of the world, a view in which the Tour is simply a matter of winners and losers. Who’s on the podium? Who’s riding in that coveted yellow jersey? Yet there are individuals for whom reality doesn’t stop there. To them our surface reality is a portal to layer upon layer of reality beyond. Wilfried de Jong is one of those individuals. Let’s call them artists. They take us deeper, to share in experiences that are sometimes unsettling, sometimes euphoric. We should cherish such minds or risk losing our own to a world of boredom and predictability.
When I first met Wilfried at the start of the 1990s, I had known him for quite some time. He was one half of Waardenberg & De Jong, a celebrated duo whose mercilessly madcap theatre shows were the talk of the Netherlands in the 1980s and into the following decade. With partner in crime and fellow Rotterdammer Martin van Waardenberg, Wilfried wove the absurd and the insane into onstage creations that always threatened to burst at the seams. While their work was rooted in the real world, it was abundantly clear that this pair of outlaws were intent on stretching reality to its limits and peering at it from all kinds of weird and wonderful perspectives. To see Waardenberg & De Jong in full flow was to enter a dreamworld in which their every thought, association and mad idea had come to life. Time and again I left the theatre utterly exhausted after an evening spent convulsed with laughter. Later Wilfried confirmed my theory of the creative drive behind the shows: they were born of the belief that chaos and confusion are a rare source of beauty that should never be stifled by an excess of rational thinking.
Chaos and confusion reached a new extreme one fateful evening when Wilfried came crashing to the stage from a height of five metres. A wave of hilarity swept through the audience: this was the kind of stunt only Waardenberg & De Jong could pull off. Until it became clear that we had just witnessed a near fatal collision between fantasy and cold, hard fact. The rest of the tour had to be cancelled and Wilfried spent months recovering from an unnerving collection of fractures.
Once his bones had healed, Wilfried de Jong could have spent the next three decades making show after show, before retiring as an eminent man of the theatre with a bank balance to match. But even the absurd and the insane begin to pall when it’s your job to bring them to life on stage night after night. There comes a time when the sparks no longer fly. At least, that’s my interpretation of what happened when Wilfried decided to take things in an entirely new direction.
Even at the peak of his theatre career he had found time to make radio shows and write a book of short stories. Now he added television to his repertoire. It gave him the chance to pursue another of his passions: sport. He began with a series called Sportpaleis De Jong, and followed that up with Holland Sport, quite possibly the best sports show the Netherlands has ever seen. It revealed a new side to Wilfried: the storyteller who lovingly combines words and images in the portrayal of the total dedication shown by athletes. He instinctively understood that top athletes who sacrifice almost everything to achieve a single goal – victory – offer an unrivalled perspective on passion. The artist in Wilfried struck up a unique rapport with these sporting heroes: a mix of admiration and journalistic curiosity enlivened by an irrepressible urge to present sporting passion in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible. Many of the items he made for these programmes – along with the sports documentaries he makes to this day – have become classics of Dutch narrative journalism, thanks in no small part to his inspired long-term collaboration with peerless cameraman Rob Hodselmans.
Wilfried de Jong is also an actor. In this capacity he played a leading role in the film adaptation of my novel Ventoux. One of the film’s finest scenes came about when Wilfried decided to abandon the script briefly and allowed the real Wilfried de Jong to take over from the character he was playing. Anyone who understood what was going on witnessed a remarkable feat of self-characterisation: a balancing act between fact and fiction, sublimely executed.
The readers of his weekly sports columns in leading Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad can count on Wilfried to lend a heightened air of drama and intrigue to the weekend’s main sporting events. He achieves this not by distorting reality or resorting to cheap tricks but by zooming in on telling details that come to symbolise a deeper truth that could so easily have gone unnoticed.
It is as a writer that Wilfried de Jong unites his theatrical roots with the documentary maker, the sport lover, the columnist and the journalist. Perhaps there’s even a hint of Wilfried the jazz aficionado in the capricious rhythms of the tales he tells.
There’s a good reason why cycling takes pride of place in Wilfried’s sporting prose. For writers from countries with a strong cycling tradition, the sport resonates in the same way as boxing resonates for many an American man of letters: Mailer, Talese and Liebling to name but three. The two sports share a lyrical quality. In both, the dividing line between harsh reality and the stuff of fable is often tantalisingly thin, a feast for the imagination. What you see is not what you get. There is more going on beneath the surface of the visible. Such hidden depths are a gift to writers with the presence of mind to take raw fact as the starting point for the yarns they spin.
Wilfried de Jong is just such a writer, in this collection of stories and beyond. Sometimes he takes on the role of protagonist. The man loves his bike, and I know from experience that even on the saddle he likes to take reality – in our case middle-aged boy racers on pricey cycles – and enrich it as only a natural storyteller can. Join him on a training run and before you know it, you’re part of a decisive breakaway in a legendary stage of the Tour de France. In other stories he handpicks his heroes from the broodingly romantic side of cycling’s history: Coppi, Bartali, Pantani. He is besotted with Italy, a nation where truth is so often stranger than fiction.
Some of his work sticks close to the facts. A story like ‘Mist on Mont Ventoux’ unfolds without much in the way of embellishment. In others, ‘Munkzwalm’ for example, his memories take on a new dimension. But embracing the fictional is not the same as twisting reality: by freeing himself from the tyranny of the factual, a true writer can come closer to the heart of the real world and bring to light a fresher, more rewarding reality.
Wilfried de Jong has a deft way with words. His lightness of touch gives his readers every opportunity to engage with and amplify the reality presented on these pages. He has no desire to steer us towards a foregone conclusion. He would much rather see us set off on our own exploration of the fascinating no-man’s land between fact and fiction, companions on the endlessly imaginative journey in which he himself takes so much pleasure.
Bert Wagendorp
IT WAS THE simplest of cameras. A black box with a built-in lens and the word Instamatic along the top. None of us knew what this meant but it suggested that the camera did everything for you. All you had to do was press the button.
Click-clack.
As a boy, I loved taking holiday snaps, capturing the big wide world in a little square frame. The knack was to hold back till exactly the right moment. There were only 24 frames on a roll of film and tradition dictated that one of those had to be sacrificed on immortalising our bleary-eyed departure. The engine of Dad’s green BMW 2000 warming up outside our front door in Rotterdam. Mum and Dad in the front, me and my two brothers in the back. By the summer of 1975 my sister had already bailed out and was off gallivanting with her pals.
Roll down the windows, wave at the camera and we were on our way.
Look out, France, here we come.
We knew that the 11th stage of the Tour would be passing close to our campsite in the Pyrenees. The Tourmalet seemed like the ideal spot. All 2,113 metres of it. Hors catégorie. On Tuesday, 8 July 1975 we were at the top, ready and waiting.
Almost every detail of the hours we spent on the Tourmalet has faded into oblivion. Looking back is not my favourite pastime. After Mum and Dad died, the stacks of photo albums from our parental home had ended up at my sister’s. It took us ages to unearth the photos I had taken that day. Stuck into a little green album, its spine tattered and torn. No captions, just a bunch of pictures from a long time ago.
The old photos did what old photos do so well. The memories began to come.
We must have left the campsite in Bagnères-de-Bigorre a few hours before the stage was due to start and made the steep drive up the Tourmalet. I seem to remember that Dad’s trusty BMW couldn’t make it to the very top and we had to pull over with an overheated engine. We walked to the summit and found ourselves a decent spot. I hung the camera around my neck.
The photoshoot of my young life was about to begin.
My 17-year-old self, a lanky lad in corduroy flares, face framed by a curtain of hair, points the camera at his parents and brothers sitting in a row. We’ve brought our own folding chairs. Mum and Dad’s even have arm rests.
There’s a chill in the air. Dad’s a frozen-food wholesaler and used to the cold, but even he has a jumper around his shoulders. I see an inadvertently exposed stretch of shin, pasty-white as always. Mum has her hands clamped between her thighs. My brothers are sporting sun visors. Had the publicity caravan already gone past?
I’m standing at the other side of the road. An oval display on top of the camera tells me how many photos I have left.
In the distance, I can see the caravan crawling up the mountainside. The riders are dots, followed by a column of toy cars. I try to work out how to capture a moving rider with my click-clack camera and decide to aim to the right in the hope that they’ll ride into shot.
Cars, motorbikes, blaring horns, loud voices.
That’ll be them now.
One by one the riders come within range of my lens. These are the days before helmets and shades. Cyclists still have hair and eyes. They are coming thick and fast. Who is worthy of a photo? I spot the yellow jersey: Eddy Merckx, his hands on the top of the bars. Gloves with air holes. Orange frame. Thin tubes. Cap on back to front. Black sideburns. A face that means business.
Click-clack.
With any luck, I have just immortalised the mighty Merckx. Then again, I might have snapped the blurred hand of a clapping spectator.
Eddy is gone. Quick, time to turn the serrated wheel and move the film on. Riders shoot past. Too many to recognise. I hold my fire.
Who have we here? Luis Ocaña in a Super Ser shirt. The same intense red as his bike. The Spaniard with his furious cycling style, up on his pedals. Across the road, spectators are already straining to see who’s coming next. Fools! This is where you should be looking. At Ocaña. Winner of the 1973 Tour.
A Frisol jersey. Dutch team. Who can this be? Well, at least he’s a Dutchman. Click-clack. I’ll look him up when I get home.
Specs. Gerrie Knetemann. Lagging behind against a medical backdrop: Aspro emblazoned on the car behind him. Headaches were big business even back in the day. Knetemann has grabbed hold of a newspaper to tuck under his shirt on the descent to the foot of the Aspin. Keeps out the cold. As a paperboy, I know the ink will leave its mark. Smudged black words mirror-written on his sweaty torso.
All the riders have passed. Once a stream of back-up cars has rolled through, the mountain grows quieter. I cross the road to join my folks. Who did they spot? I’ve got Merckx, I’m sure of it. I saw yellow. Fingers crossed that one comes out okay.
Now, almost four decades later, I have them in my hands again, those little squares of 1975. A photo freezes time but starts a faded film running in your head. They live, breathe, move. I see a carefree holiday. My loving parents. My brothers’ faces, still blessed with youth. Family life, the good old-fashioned way.
I take a closer look at the pictures. Sure enough, there’s Merckx. And Knetemann. And Ocaña, who went on to take his own life in 1994. Put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Could that young Frisol lad have been Henk Prinsen? A white jersey, let’s see, must be a young Francesco Moser. And is that Francisco Galdós in the blue-and-yellow KAS shirt? Colours of the past.
These days phones take photos. Meanwhile Hipstamatic and Instagram provide filters to make our digital snaps look older than they really are. Why this hankering for yesteryear? Is Merckx on steel still somehow closer to our dreams than Wiggins on carbon?
I remember taking my holiday snaps out of the envelope at the chemist’s the week after we arrived back home. Those images of my cycling heroes had been playing on my mind for days and there they were at last, spread out before me on the counter. My Instamatic had done me proud. The life of a cyclist reduced to a still image on a square of photo paper.
I recall looking down at Merckx. Proudly, fondly. At the top of the Tourmalet, he had passed me at a distance of just a few metres. Back home a special honour awaited him. The man who went on to lose in 1975 – his yellow jersey snatched away by Frenchman Bernard Thévenet – would spend the next 39 years stuck in my tattered green photo album.
SNOT. I HAD to clear my bunged-up nose. Nothing but my right hand for a hankie. Oh well … One blast and my nostrils were open again, fresh September air tingling behind my eyes. I shook the snot-green slime from my fingers and glanced to the side. The valley was already a fair distance below me. The first five kilometres of Mont Ventoux were in the bag. Around 15 minutes’ cycling.
I took a swallow from my front bottle and the bland taste of sports drink lingered in my throat. Alongside me was my back-up car: an airport rental with my ten-year-old son Sonny in the back, hanging out of the window.
‘The gradient here is six per cent, Dad. And soon it’ll be ten.’ His tone was calm and even, a newscaster summing up the day’s atrocities for the viewing millions.
‘Right, thanks,’ I said. My bottle was back in its holder.
Ventoux veterans back in Holland had warned me. Six kilometres in, a hairpin bend veers left and the steep climb begins in earnest.
Another 100 metres to go.
They don’t call Mont Ventoux the Giant of Provence for nothing. At almost 2,000 metres, it’s by far the highest peak in the region. I had yet to see it in all its glory. When we set out from the village of Bédoin, a stubborn bank of cloud had settled on the summit.
My knees pumped up one after the other. And sank towards the asphalt just as fast. Looking down between my legs, I saw my chain driving the small chainring and the third lightest cog: 34 teeth up front, 23 at the back. I could still change down to 26 and 29. Two more chances to ease the pain as the going got tougher.
Another 50 metres till the next gear change, right before the hairpin.
This climb was my gift to myself. I’d hit the big Five-O. More a milestone than a birthday. Inviting the folks round to OD on cake and crisps wasn’t going to cut it. No, what I needed was my bike and the company of a few good friends. Benny and Rob had agreed to come along for the ride. Two men looking on from the comfort of a rental car, bearing witness as their pal worked himself into a sweat conquering the Ventoux.
Benny was happy to go along with anything as long as there was a slap-up meal in the offing. So here he was, at the wheel of the brand-new Renault we had picked up at Nice airport. Rob was in the back with Sonny. Not exactly his bag, cycling. He’d rather be out pounding the pavements of his home turf in Amsterdam on his weekly run.
Sonny was guest of honour at this strange celebration of mine, recording the spectacle with his own mini camcorder. His plan was to edit an official birthday movie on his computer when we got home.
The Renault was already rounding the bend, Sonny’s head still sticking out of the window. I watched his face disappear behind the boulders.
Just time for another slug to quench my thirst. I grabbed the bottle and gave it a squeeze. A thick stream shot into my mouth. Too much. The excess liquid splattered on the asphalt and I realised it could well be the one gulp I’d be crying out for on my final kilometres to the summit.
I heard the car change gear. As if I needed reminding that things were about to get steeper.
Though I was sticking to the outside of the bend, I could feel the tension in my thighs increase in a matter of metres. My tempo was plummeting. Ahead of me lay the notorious forest where many a dismayed Sunday cyclist is forced to dismount after miles of hard labour. The trees reminded me of the sparsely wooded banks I once planted for my model railway as a boy; after smearing glue either side of the track, I scattered grit on the sticky patches and dotted them with a handful of plastic pines for my locomotive to chuff past.
My back-up car had slowed and was back alongside, Sonny capturing every second of my first metres through the forest in glorious close-up. A photocopy of the gradients per kilometre was stuck to the folding table in front of him.
‘Dad, this is the forest, right?’
I nodded and panted.
‘It’ll soon be ten per cent,’ he said cheerily, as he continued filming.
I changed gear and my legs heaved a sigh of relief. The chain was now turning 26 at the back. Six kilometres of Ventoux behind me, another 15 to go, but I still had something in reserve.
In the 1970s, there was a gifted Belgian climber by the name of Lucien Van Impe. A man born to cycle up a slope. Six times he was King of the Mountains in the Tour de France. As soon as the road started to rise, you would see Van Impe easing his way through the peloton, supple as can be. I remembered him leaping off his bike at the end of a soul-destroying mountain stage, fresh as a daisy. As a microphone was shoved in Van Impe’s face, the team mechanic took care of his bike. The little man with a greasy rag hanging out of his back pocket looked at the cassette and saw that Van Impe hadn’t even used his lightest gear. There wasn’t a trace of grease on the cog. ‘Lucien’s in good form,’ he announced triumphantly to the camera crew. ‘His 22 is still clean as a whistle!’
I was determined to keep my 29 clean for as long as possible. It’s a simple mind game. Steer clear of your last resort and you’re still one helluva guy, every chance you’ll make it to the top. No way was I going to downshift and leave myself nothing to fall back on. That would mean giving up. And giving up was not an option. Unthinkable. I’d never be able to look my friends or my boy in the eye again. And least of all myself …
I managed to regain some kind of control over my breathing. The steep road ahead meandered lazily through the trees. Not a flat section in sight, only the promise of worse to come. Ten per cent gradient for metres on end.
‘Bonjour, ça va?’
I just about jumped out of my skin. My front wheel lurched half a metre to the right.
A sturdy bloke with a cheeky grin almost brushed against me as he chugged past, maintaining an enviable tempo.
‘Oui, oui,’ I panted.
Sweat trickled over the close-cut hairs on his neck and into the collar of his light yellow shirt. I frowned at the word printed on the back. Cacahuètes. The tin of peanuts pictured below provided the translation. Pillock! What cyclist worth the name would wear a shirt extolling the virtues of peanuts? A rider couldn’t wish for worse fuel. Impossible to grind down and swallow. Too dry, too fat, too salty.
With every turn of the crank, he moved ahead by a good 20 centimetres. I gave myself a stern talking-to. Don’t let him get to you, stick to your own pace. He might be pushing a bigger gear. Let Peanut Brain do his thing.
Ten per cent. Well over twice the gradient of the ramp leading up to the Van Brienenoord Bridge back home in Rotterdam, which I’d tackled on many a training run. The closest thing to a mountain stage in my flat-as-a-pancake part of the world.
Rewind to the previous evening. To Sonny and I sharing a kingsize bed in a hotel in the village of Mazan, 15 kilometres from Mont Ventoux. It must have been around ten. Benny and Rob had retired to their rooms after dinner in the hotel restaurant. Sonny’s head was peeping out from under the bedclothes, camcorder and stopwatch beside him on the bedside table.
He looked at me drowsily.
‘Dad, why do you have to climb that mountain anyway?’
‘Because it’s one of the toughest to climb.’
‘So why not pick an easier mountain?’
‘I just want to see if I can get to the top of this one.’
‘And what if you can’t?’
‘Then I’ll be really annoyed with myself, but that’s okay.’
‘So it’s not really that important after all.’
‘Uh … I just liked the idea of cycling up a really high mountain on my 50th birthday.’
‘But wouldn’t it have been much easier to do it on your 20th?’
‘Yeah … you have a point there, son.’
The desire to climb a mountain is a bid to defy gravity. There’s a good reason why civil engineers do their damnedest to stick to the valley. It’s only when there’s nowhere else to go that the asphalt starts creeping up the mountainside like a tendril of ivy.
Cramp is often the price a cyclist pays for a demanding climb. And then there’s the nightmare scenario: the heart sending up a distress signal. Suddenly death can be around the next bend. It’s the fate that befell British rider Tommy Simpson. During a stage of the 1967 Tour, within striking distance of the Ventoux summit, Simpson fell exhausted from his bike. He begged onlookers to help him back onto the saddle, only to swerve across the asphalt in the scorching heat and finally collapse. The Tour physician was soon at the scene but his valiant resuscitation attempts were to no avail. Simpson died in the helicopter on his way to hospital. Alcohol and amphetamines were found in his bloodstream.
Simpson’s death is a warning to all riders who push the human body beyond its limits. But let fear get a foot in the door and you’re lost. There is no reaching the top of Mont Ventoux without pain. It takes guts to attack a mountain. To refuse to let nature cut you down to size.
Apart from the drone of the Renault’s engine, the forest was quiet. Even the sound of birds among the trees had died away. Peanut Brain was a long way ahead. He heaved himself out of the saddle and stood on his pedals.
I ploughed on at a steady 11kmph, keenly aware of the need to keep pressure on the pedals or risk wobbling out of balance.
Twenty-nine teeth. One flick of my right hand and the going would get a little easier. No! Don’t do it! Breathe in, stroke, breathe out, stroke, breathe in, stroke, breathe out.
Peanut Brain was still up on his pedals. No man could keep that up in this forest. In this ruthless woodland chill that saps the strength from your muscles.
A fly landed on my arm and started rubbing its front legs together. Lazy hitcher. Nerves rattled, I blew in its direction but it took the gust in its stride and stayed put. The little bugger had to go. I huffed and I puffed and watched it fly off into the trees.
‘How many kilometres on the clock, Dad?’ Sonny shouted from the car, a few metres ahead of me.
I pressed a button on my bike computer.
‘Six-point-three!’
All quiet in the car. I saw Sonny bow his head and pictured him frowning at the figures in front of him, working out the route and the increase in gradient.
A can by the side of the road caught my eye. I recognised the crumple of green and blue. Sprite. Way too sugary for the Ventoux. It’ll only make you thirsty.
Sonny stuck his head out of the window again. ‘Ten per cent coming up!’
It was like my own son was personally ratchetting up the steepness of the road. I was pedalling much harder than I had been a minute ago.
‘How long?’ Two words. All I could manage.
‘What?’ asked Sonny.
Breathing heavily, I waited for the moment when I could add another word to the question.
‘How long ten?’
His head disappeared inside the car.
I was doing around 9kmph.
Come on, kid. It’s not rocket science. Just run your finger down the column. How long? How long ten?
‘I think you’ll be back down to nine per cent after one kilometre, Dad,’ I heard him shout at last.
My eyes began to focus on the little black stones that made up the surface of the road. It seemed smooth but there were a few millimetres of space between each stone. Zoom right in and I was riding from stone to stone, on thin air. I shook my head. Keep this up and I’d convince myself I was riding on cobbles.
I yanked my front bottle from its holder and took a few mouthfuls. Liquid heaven. The breath I missed swallowing them down nearly did for my rhythm. It was all I could do to keep the bike under control.
I shoved the bottle back in its holder.
My pace continued to wobble. No let-up. The road kept on rising. Time to change down to 29? No! Under pain of death!
Asphalt and trees. Nothing but asphalt and trees. Still no sign at all of the summit.
As we’d set out from the centre of Bédoin, a couple of cyclists had come hurtling down the road, rain jackets flapping. Back from the top. Their faces were deep red, lips caked with dried spittle.
‘Froid?’ I asked, pointing at the hidden summit.
‘Ça va, ça va!’ they yelled, with a gesture that could have meant anything.
It was September. The walls of the bike shop in Bédoin where I had pumped up my tyres were hung with huge photos of Mont Ventoux cloaked in white. They showed cyclists being stopped by a gendarme, the barrier lowered across the road. The mountain pass was fermé. Even in months when you least expected it, Mother Nature could give us mere mortals a rap on the knuckles.
‘You’re going to make it, Dad.’ Sonny’s head had popped back out of the car window. ‘You’ve got your lucky magnet with you, right?’
I ran my hand over my back pocket and felt the metal disc tucked between two gel packs. I gave him a thumbs up.
The Rabo team’s most gifted rider, Robert Gesink, powered up one of the Ventoux’s less steep ascents during the 2008 Paris–Nice stage race. His astounding cadence had drained the fight from all the climbers in the leading group by the time they reached the village of Malaucène. Only Australia’s Cadel Evans was able to latch on to Gesink’s back wheel and went on to beat the Dutchman in the final sprint.
Marco Pantani cycled up Mont Ventoux alone, ahead of the rest in the 2000 Tour de France. With a gut-wrenching effort, Lance Armstrong in the yellow jersey reeled the Italian in. Side by side they battled up the final stretch to the top. The two of them maintained a punishing pace. Pantani with his light, agitated bearing and supple tread on the pedals. Alongside him the manic American cycling machine, eyes squinting slightly in his pale, gaunt face. In the end, it was Pantani who inched his wheel over the line to take victory. Afterwards, the American liked to be reminded of how generous he had been that day. After all, the win could just as easily have been his.
Gesink, Evans, Pantani, Armstrong … I had to stop thinking about pros. From this day on I was in my fifties. A sporting sad sack with a bee in his bonnet: to prove he was still strong enough to make this climb. An old fart out to show his son he still had a tough guy for a father, not some couch potato brushing crumbs from his paunch in front of the telly.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Sonny, after a long silence. ‘It’s another six kilometres through the forest.’
Six kilometres. I thought of my regular training route around Rotterdam and imagined the flat road rearing up at a ten per cent gradient.
‘Yeah. Tough.’
‘What does your meter say?’
‘It says 13.7.’
‘Okay, that makes the gradient … 8.7 per cent.’
The landscape had hardly changed. I seemed to be cycling the same stretch over and over, stuck in a perpetual motion machine. Forever cycling, never finishing.
‘No … hang on … ten per cent,’ came the voice from the car.
I blew a drop of sweat from the tip of my nose. Took another swallow from the bottle. Already three-quarters empty. I had to stand out of the saddle to keep my rhythm going. When I sat down again it felt like someone pulling on my shirt.
Friction? I peered down at my front wheel; the brake pads were well clear of the rim. And at the back? No, nothing wrong there either.
Push yourself too far in the Ventoux forest and you’ll pay for it later. Or so they say. I had to stay within my limits. Otherwise I’d never make it.
I contemplated holding on to the car for a second. Skipping a single turn of the pedals. Bliss. It would make all the difference to my legs, to my head.
The next bend was approaching. Was this where the gradient began to ease off? I looked up to see a man at the roadside, hunched over his bike. A man in a yellow shirt. Cacahuètes had caved! Peanut Brain was done for. I knew it! Start too quickly and pay the price. A damp patch had formed beneath the tin of peanuts on his back, sweat was dripping from his flushed face. As I drew level, I spotted a puddle of sick on the asphalt at his feet. The same colour as his shirt. I’d seen better ads for peanuts.
‘Bonjour!’ I yelled, with all the good cheer I could muster. It left me short of breath but it was worth every gasp.
Cacahuètes looked up, startled, and I gazed into the hollow eyes of a desperate man. Gobs of peanut yellow around his mouth.
He didn’t say a word. I didn’t look back.
I had settled into a decent pace. Magnificent forest. Sublime asphalt. Twenty-six teeth turning nicely.
‘It’s nine per cent here, Dad.’ The car was back alongside me.
Only nine? Bring it on! I was ready for anything after seeing the self-satisfied grin wiped off Peanut Brain’s face.
A row of big block capitals flashed beneath my wheels. LANDIS. Letters painted on asphalt stick around a long time, long after the name they spell has sunk into obscurity. For a few years, people had gathered here to cheer on America’s Floyd Landis as he made this climb in the days before his doping ban. A fan had lugged a bucket of paint up the mountain to leave these six letters in broad brushstrokes ahead of the stage. Landis: no doubt there would soon be a place for him again in the forgiving peloton.
I looked up. The sky had clouded over. I was glad I’d remembered my arm-warmers in case conditions turned cold and blustery on the final stretch. I had left the valley sporting my fire-engine red Acqua e Sapone kit, the height of summer cycling fashion.
The forest was thinning out and I began to see through the trees. Not much in the way of distractions. No deer in flight, no marmots scampering for cover. Should I be breathing more deeply to keep my oxygen levels up?
The Renault had been crawling up the road beside me for at least an hour, in first gear. Benny must be about to lose his mind behind the wheel.
One more kilometre to go till Chalet Reynard, a car park and restaurant at an altitude of 1,440 metres. Ventoux veterans had told me this was the first spot where the hard climb lets up a little. A chance to catch your breath before the six-kilometre slog through the lunar landscape to reach the summit.
Benny upped his speed a little as he drove past. Was he planning to settle down in front of me?
Then came a dry, scraping sound.
‘Fuckin’ hell.’ Benny’s voice.
One of the car’s front wheels had slid off the edge of the road and was jutting out over a deep ravine.
‘Sonny!’ The danger hit me in a heartbeat. ‘Sonny, out of the car! Now!’
Sonny opened the rear door and hopped out onto the asphalt, followed by Rob. They stood together at the side of the road.
Where was Benny? Still in the car?
No. He was out too, walking over to join Rob and Sonny.
I kept on pedalling, though my pace had slowed.
‘Keep going, Wil,’ I heard Rob shout. ‘We can sort this.’
‘Are you sure?’ I yelled over my shoulder. ‘Is Sonny okay?’
‘Yep, we’re fine here. Keep going.’
‘Okay. See you at the top,’ I shouted, and cycled on.
A car with a French number plate came down the mountain, an older man at the wheel and a woman in the seat next to him. I waved furiously at the driver to slow down. Thankfully, he complied.
As I rounded the next bend, our Renault came into full view and the impact of what had just happened slapped me full in the face. One more metre and the car would have gone over the edge.
Rob had yelled at me to keep going. But did he realise the car was that close to the brink? A simple shift in weight could send it plunging into the ravine.
I kept on pedalling, though my pace continued to slow. The French car had stopped at the scene of the accident and the man and woman were talking to Rob and Benny, gesticulating wildly. No sign of Sonny.
The road was still rising but my mind had disengaged. My legs were churning away at the pedals. That was all. Every chance I got, I looked down through the trees, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sonny. The Frenchman was now on his knees, peering underneath the Renault. More gesturing ensued.
My computer read 14 kilometres. Another seven to the summit. If the cloud lifted, it might only be another one till I set my sights on the white-topped peak with its famous observatory, that plucky middle finger thrusting skywards.
The summit was up there waiting. What good would it do to turn back now? A man my age could be forgiven for taking a little break, resting one foot on the road. But turn back? I had never given up on a climb before.
A fuse blew in my brain. I could almost smell scorching. What was wrong with me? What kind of bastard cycles on and leaves his ten-year-old son at the scene of an accident, at the edge of a ravine?
My legs stopped pedalling. I was still in two minds but my handlebars were already lurching to the left. My front wheel made an about-turn.
The descent was a piece of cake. It felt strange not to have to pedal any more. In a matter of seconds, my speed leapt from 7 to 30kmph, and on up to 50. I had to brake to take the hairpin bend with the requisite care.
I screeched to a halt next to the Renault. Sonny was still standing where I had left him, at the roadside overlooking the ravine. Camcorder in hand. Perfectly calm.
I unclipped my shoes and felt terra firma under my feet for the first time in what felt like an age. I left my bike on the inside bend and walked over to Sonny, legs trembling at the transition from cycling to walking. My thighs felt fat and heavy.
‘Everything okay?’
Sonny gave me a thumbs up. Not a trace of fear.
‘So you’ve stopped then?’ he said.
This was true. I had stopped.
Rob, Benny and the French couple were standing in the middle of the road. The underside of the rental car was badly scraped. The left front wheel was hanging in midair.
‘How do you plan to get her moving?’ I asked.
‘If a couple of us hang off the back of the car and someone puts her in reverse, that should do it,’ said Benny, still visibly shaken. ‘With any luck it will shoot back from the edge.’
No one made a move. Everyone was unharmed. Suddenly this was all about salvaging a stupid rental car. I wanted to get back on the bike. Get moving again. Moving like I had never stopped.
‘I’ll get into the car,’ I said. ‘Key still in the ignition?’
‘Yup,’ Benny said.
Sonny was fiddling with the buttons on his camcorder. I left him to it; as long as he stayed put he’d be fine.
Carefully I slid into the passenger seat of the Renault. It felt strange to be operating a car from this position.
‘Start her up,’ Benny shouted, ‘then release the handbrake and put her from neutral into reverse.’
I started the engine and the three men hung from the back of the car with their full weight.
‘I’m releasing the handbrake and going straight into reverse. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ came the reply.
‘Here goes,’ I shouted above the noise of the engine. I slid the gearstick into reverse and gave a little touch on the accelerator. The engine strained and pulled the dangling wheel back onto the asphalt. Back in her element, the Renault immediately began to roll backwards.
‘Brake! Brake!’ Benny yelled.
The car began to pick up speed as it headed downhill, veering left and right. From the passenger seat I only had one hand to steer with. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my left foot to connect with the brake.
My leg was shuddering. I could hear the tyres slipping.
This was not going well. The rental car was out of control and I began to steel myself for the inevitable.
‘Brake!’
My foot found the brake at last. I hit the pedal as hard as I could and the car went into a skid. I looked over my shoulder. My last tug on the wheel had set the Renault on a collision course with the French couple’s car. I tried to change direction but too late. Eyes closed, I braced myself for a bone-crunching impact.
Another metre or two to go.
The cars collided with a dry smack and our Renault came to a halt at last.
Everyone came charging over.
My eyes searched for Sonny. He was still standing at the roadside, camcorder at the ready. I put on the handbrake and jumped out of the car.
‘All right?’ I asked.
‘Why didn’t you brake, Dad?’
‘I tried but I couldn’t hold her.’