Читать книгу Etape. The untold stories of the Tour de France’s defining stages онлайн

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‘Oh, and they’ve gone! They’ve gone! One after the other!’

There’s a huge noise at the moment of impact. A collective gasp, a roar: the sound of shock.

As Liggett said, they were there, shoulder-to-shoulder, and then they were gone. They were gone.

* * *

Old golfers never retire. They just lose their balls. So the joke goes. A variation of this joke could be made about Belgian cyclists – that they never retire, that is. The sport of cycling is so big in Belgium, the scene so vast, that it seems to absorb all the ex-pros. Retired riders become team directors, race organisers, national selectors, they run amateur teams, or, in Freddy Maertens’ case, they are employed in the Flanders Cycling Museum.

Not Wilfried Nelissen, however.

Nelissen seems to have disappeared. ‘Wilfried Nelissen you want? That’s a tough one. Give me a bit of time,’ says one Belgian journalist. Another one first expresses surprise that I want to contact him, then admits it might not be easy.

Nelissen was the third man in a golden generation of sprinters, though he tended to be obscured by the shadows cast by the other two, the flamboyant Mario Cipollini and the lethal Djamolidine Abdoujaparov. Cipollini – ‘Super Mario’ as he liked to be known, ‘Il Magnifico’ as he liked even more to be known – was an Italian playboy and showman who became ever more outrageous, arriving at the start of one stage of the Tour, in 1999, dressed as Julius Caesar in a chariot pushed by his team-mates. (In case you were wondering, it was Caesar’s birthday.) On other occasions, Cipollini wore one-off, non-regulation skinsuits: tiger-print, zebra-print, a translucent muscle-suit. In retirement, he hasn’t changed much. During the 2013 Tour de France in Corsica, I drove past a fit-looking forty-six-year-old riding his bike with his top off and an impressive all-over tan. It could only be Cipollini.