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

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Nelissen was the fastest of the lot, faster even than Cipollini and Abdou, according to Marc Sergeant, his lead-out man in 1994. Sergeant was a team-mate to lots of good sprinters, and these days the Lotto team he directs includes André Greipel, one of the best sprinters of the current generation. Yet he says: ‘Honestly, Willie was maybe the fastest guy I ever worked with. He was a real sprinter.

‘Let me give you an example. Sometimes he would say, “I’m dead, I’m not good today.” We’d say, “Come on Willie, you have to do it – come on.” And when he saw the sign for three or four kilometres to go, at that point he turned into a beast. I don’t mean in a bad way. It was an instinct he had. He wasn’t arrogant or aggressive, but he could say: “I’m going to win here; nobody else,” and he could beat Cipollini, Abdoujaparov – anybody. And he was a friendly guy, with no enemies. Everybody respected him.’

In his pomp, Nelissen explained this transformation: ‘A sprinter has to be like that. The trick is to get me mad.’ He compared it to road rage: ‘There was a guy once who didn’t give way and he started beeping his horn at me. When something like that happens, I’m ready to jump out of the car. People have to hold me down or I would explode. Well, that’s the feeling I get when I start a sprint. That’s how I get going, get the adrenaline flowing, like fireworks going off. In the sprint, I would kill or eat somebody, but after the line the calmness returns.’