Brussels

Eddy Merckx has been heaped with honors for decades as the greatest cyclist ever, not the least of which is having a subway station in Brussels named for him, but he is no doubt taking special pleasure that The Tour de France is commencing in Brussels this year in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of his first of five Tour wins.  

Sidewalks all over the city are emblazoned with the phrase “Are You R’Eddy.” One is under the most striking of the many decorations around town honoring The Tour—an arch of Yellow Bikes on the Mont des Arts overlooking the capital designed by a team of local sculptors led by Xavier Mineur.  It is almost as stunning as the magnificent globe of bicycles that highlighted the many Tour decorations at last year’s Grand Départ in the Vendée.

The Place de Brouckère is decorated with Yellow Wheels hung over the boulevard-turned-walkway while a giant Yellow Jersey hangs on a city building at the far end of the plaza.  Young children cavorted in jets of water in the plaza under the Yellow Jersey.  It has been hot, near 90, but not as blistering as France.

Elsewhere around the city, the columns on a centuries old civic building were wrapped in The Tour colors, a gesture of stark juxtaposition that always brings an extra measure of delight, moreso than giant Yellow Jerseys or the many other versions of yellowification that towns adopt.

On the outskirts of the city,  the emblem of Brussels as well as Belgium, the Atomium that dates to the 1958 World’s Fair,  had one of its giant nine spheres, each representing a province of Belgium, plastered in Yellow with the figure of a cyclist.  This giant sculpture/architectural marvel represents a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.  There is a restaurant in the top sphere and galleries in the others.

I would have thought the other emblem of the city in the town center, a statue of a boy peeing, would have been cloaked in Yellow, but not yet.  It was a focal point for tourists, many shooting selfies.

In my wanderings around the city I paused in a shady park for my usual Belgian lunch, a two-pack of cheeseburgers that supermarkets sell for 99 cents.  The other supermarket bargain is peanut butter, at least in contrast to France, where a small jar of Jiffy goes for five dollars.   A Belgian brand goes for prices comparable to back home, so for a time I don’t have to restrict my peanut butter intake to an occasional sandwich, but can indulge in a spoonful or two in the middle of the night when I awake hungry or when the urge strikes during the day for some instant energy, truly savoring it as I mainline a hit.

I was surrounded in the park by clusters of four or five Africans sprawled on blankets in the shade, immigrants from the former Belgian colonies who may or may not be enjoying their new life.  A white van pulled up shortly after noon and an older guy and two young women set up a couple of tables and put out a basket of bread and a large bowl of soup.  For nearly an hour they served a never-ending line of mostly Africans.

My wanderings also took me to the Eddy Merckx subway station four miles from the city center in the south west corner of the metropolis, one stop from the end of the line.  As I was trying to figure out how to buy a ticket at the fully-automated station so I could go down below and see the Merckx bike that was said to be on display, I confirmed with someone leaving the station that there was indeed a Merckx bike there.  When I asked him how to buy a ticket, he handed me his and said it was still good.

At the bottom of the escalator on the platform between two sets of tracks was the unlikely site of an illuminated, sparkling like new, orange track bike in a glass display case.  It was the historic bike that Merckx had set the hour record on in Mexico City in 1972, a record that stood for 28 years until Chris Boardman broke it.  I have often read mentions of and heard references to this subway station, not the least of were cracks from Lance Armstrong, a pal of Merckx’s, that he would like to steal the bike at the station, that I almost considered it a myth. It was a thrill to finally lay eyes upon this relic.  It epitomizes as much as anything the elevated status of Merckx in his homeland.

Even before he won his first Tour, he was a national hero. When he was evicted from the Giro d’Italia in 1969 before the 17th stage while wearing the Pink Jersey for a doping allegation that was rescinded so the Italian favorite Gimondi could win the race, the president of Belgium sent the presidential plane to Italy to bring him home. In another era this affront might have led to war. Merckx had won the Giro the year before and the Italians weren’t happy at all that  this young upstart was about to do it again. As it was, he went on to win it four more times, the most of anyone. He had yet to ride The Tour at the time, his team not wanting to subject him to its rigors just yet, but when he did ride The Tour a month after this Giro debacle, he won it in a dominating fashion that had never been seen before, truly establishing his legend.

Merckx’s 1969 win ended a thirty-year drought for Belgium.  It had once owned The Tour winning it seven times straight from 1912 to 1922, with four years broken by WWI, by four different riders. Belgians also won it three of the four years before WWII.  Only one Belgian has won it since Merckx, Lucien Van Impe in 1976, two years after Merckx’s last win.  The day before my arrival in Brussels I had passed a statute of Van Impe in  a roundabout in Mere, his place of birth.  France laments not having a Tour winner since Hinault in 1985.  Belgium has been without nine years longer. 

Brussels was not only celebrating the 50th anniversary of Merckx’s first Tour win, but also had an exhibition honoring the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Yellow Jersey.  It was a worthy appendum to a similar, much more exhaustive, exhibition at a sports museum in Nice I checked out after Cannes.  It didn’t have the many relics of the museum, but it gave a thorough history of the Yellow Jersey and supplemented it with a host of fascinating anecdotes I didn’t recall from Nice.  It mentioned that Hinault wore the Jersey in every

Tour he rode, all eight of them, something no other rider can claim.  Equally amazing is Poulidor having been on the podium eight times with three seconds and five thirds, but not for a single day did he ever wear the Yellow 

Jersey.   And yet he is the most beloved of all French riders, receiving far more accolades along The Tour route than Hinault, even though Hinault should make all of France proud for being one of the all-time greats.

Hinault was among a handful of racers who abandoned The Tour while in Yellow.  The exhibit cited six incidents when no one wore the Jersey during The Race other than on the first stage.  Once was by Zoetemelk when Hinault had to quit the race with knee pain in 1980.  Merckx did the same in 1971 when he inherited the Jersey due to Ocaña’s crash in the Pyrenees.  Kubler was the first to establish this tradition in 1950 when Magni while in Yellow withdrew from The Race.  The other three incidents were all oddities: in 1920 in its second year when the organizers forgot to give the Jersey to Thys, in 1925 when the Italian Bottecchia didn’t want to draw attention from his avid Italian fans on a stage that started in Briançon near the Italian border and in 1949 when a soigneur forgot to have it for Colleus, a tragedy as it was the only stage of The Race that he was in the lead.

It is commonly known that only three times has a rider worn the Jersey from the start to the finish—Bottecchia in 1924, Frantz in 1928 and Maes in 1935–but this exhibit points out that each of them wore the Jersey in a subsequent Tour.  Three is also the number of times a Tour has been won on the last stage—Robic in 1947, Janssen in 1968 and LeMond in 1989.

A small theater showed short vignettes of Tour history.  One was of that dramatic time trial culminating on the Champs Elysses in 1989 with Fignon collapsing in agony, squandering his 50 second lead and losing by eight seconds, while LeMond erupted in glee as the seconds counted down in his favor.  I sat for over an hour watching them all, many I had seen before, but never tire of and some that were new to me, though I well knew of them, such as the peloton spontaneously stopping mid-stage when they spotted DeGaulle in the crowd of his home town, with everyone removing their caps out of respect and DeGaulle shaking hands with many of the riders.  

After a day in Brussels I now know my way around.  When I return next week I’ll know how to find my way to the presentation of the teams in front of the Grand Palace on Thursday night and to where the peloton will be starting and finishing on Saturday.   I’ll also know the way out to a campground eight miles from the city center in Grimbergen, next to Mease, the suburb where the Merckx bicycle factory is located. In the meantime I will venture off into the hilly and forested Ardennes for some more cycling sites as I count down the days to what I have been training for the past month.  I am more than ready.