Alpe d’Huez. It’s back in the Tour. Twice! They’ll go up it properly tomorrow (24th July) and then they go up the shite side which doesn’t really count on Saturday.
With that in mind, it felt timely to excavate this one from the archives.
I think this is one of the very early episodes of the Velocast Reading Room that I did. We recorded it in June 2015. I do remember the first two episodes were with Matt Rendell about his Marco Pantani book and then with Daniel Friebe about his Eddy Merckx book. I think this one with Peter Cossins might have been the third one.
The earlier episodes involved me in conversation with John Galloway discussing the book before and after we cut to the interview with the author. The later ones were just me on my own.
It’s a strange feeling now going back and chopping them up and taking the bits with John out. No need to feel sympathy for him, he won’t give a f**k. And he definitely won’t be reading this.
Peter Cossins appeared on that books podcast more than any other writer. I had him on talking about Alpe d’Huez, his book on the 1903 Tour de France, his book on tactics called Full Gas and his book on The Monuments.
In this chat about Alpe d’Huez I mention a story in passing about a rider who used to ride for Rabobank and Lotto called Aart Vierhouten. I mention a really great anecdote from the book but then I don’t say what it is because I don’t want to spoil the book for people. I reckon 11 years is probably time enough where I won’t get accused of spoilers.
So if you listen to the podcast above and you get to just before 21 minutes and you’re wondering what that story is that I deliberately don’t say. Here it is:
In 2004 having struggled all the way up the climb, illness putting him through every kind of torture, Vierhouten rolled into the finish after taking almost fifty-four minutes when most of his peers were taking around forty-five to complete the 15.5-kilometre time trial from Bourg d’Oisans.
‘Jezus Christus!’ exclaimed the sweat-soaked Dutchman as saliva ran off his chin. A few hours later, as he lay on his bed looking at the ceiling of his hotel room, Vierhouten was told his effort had been in vain. He had been eliminated from the race after finishing outside the time limit established by Lance Armstrong’s near-record ascent of the Alpe.
Rather than shedding tears as many of those left by the Tour tend to, Vierhouten listened to his Lotto team leader Robbie McEwen. ‘Come on, Aart, let’s go and do some boozing in the village’, the Aussie urged him. Vierhouten had already knocked back a few when he remembered he had agreed to go on Dutch post-stage TV programme De Avondetappe. He stumbled onto the set and conducted an interview with beer in hand. During the course of it, his eye caught that of a woman in the audience. They chatted, got on and spent the evening dancing in the Igloo nightclub. Aart and Miriam Langedijk are now married and run cycling clinics together.
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