Well, it's been a long time since my last 'view' back in August 2020. That's almost back to the days when Team Sky/Ineos governed the grand tours, when Quick-Step still ruled the Classics and when women's racing had yet to make its quantum leap to the equality it now shares with the men. The last time I wrote a blog, Philippe Gilbert was still the reigning 'champion' of the Tour of Flanders because the 2020 edition took place in October due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That same pandemic saw a whole raft of events delayed and re-scheduled, with Paris-Roubaix actually cancelled - an almost forgotten item four years on. Primoz Roglic looked to have won a delayed Tour de France in September, only to be shocked on the penultimate stage by a young pup called Tadej Pogacar. The Tour's importance had pushed the Giro and Vuelta into autumn with Tao Geoghegan Hart winning a Giro that overlapped the start of a Vuelta won by Roglic. Both Flanders, won by Mathieu van der Poel, and Liege-Bastogne-LIege - won by Roglic - had taken place during the Giro. But it was Pogacar's ambush on Roglic in the Tour that became the talking point of the 2020 season, which is what leads me into this revived 'Graham's View' at the end of the 2024 season. Yes, it's been a long time between drinks. I have watched, read, listened, and therefore dwelt so much on Pogacar this past nine months, he really has impressed and entertained us so much. But with such prowess came the over-use of the cringe-worthy acronym of G.O.A.T to dilute my appreciation of the Slovenian superstar. Pogacar is brilliant, he is incredible, he is exciting, he is spectacular, and - in 2024 at least - he was clearly un-beatable in almost ever race he started. But, excuse me, he is not the greatest cyclist of all time. He may never be. The original and present-day G.O.A.T is of course, Eddy Merckx, against whom all comparisons should be considered before bestowing the title to a relative newcomer. The facts are very clear: Merckx won five Tours de France, five Giri d'Italia, one Vuelta a España, x 7 Milan-Sanremo, x5 Liege-Bastogne-Liege, x3 World Championships, x3 Paris-Roubaix, x3 Fleche Wallonne, x 3 Ghent-Wevelgem, x2 Tour of Flanders, x2 Il Lombardia, x4 Paris-Nice. And, for seven consecutive years between 1969 and 1975, Merckx won a highly-respected Super Prestige Pernod competition that used to decide the best cyclist each season.
Disclaimer: this tale is not about the forthcoming Tour de France nor the battle to save the 2020 cycling season. It’s a fun look back at a tiny summertime race few people today have ever heard of, but which had a great winner in Stephen Roche. Definitely one from the vaults ! One race that won’t feature on this recently re-started, Covid-19 affected season, is the Criterium de Chateau-Chinon, not least because the race stopped permanently in 2000. In the aftermath of the 1998 Festina affair that almost brought the Tour de France to its knees, post-Tour exhibition races like that at Chateau-Chinon were suddenly shorn of spectator interest as the general public turned their backs, and entrance-fee money, on such races - at least in France they did. Yet the 1993 edition of the Criterium, held as per tradition on the first Monday of August in the dead-centre of France, provided me with one of my funniest experiences as a cycling photographer, in what was possibly the most insignificant event I’d ever been to. The idea, put forward by the founding editor of Cycle Sport, William Fotheringham, was to follow Stephen Roche on his journey that day, to record what only we knew was going to be ‘yer man’s last race as a professional cyclist. Believe me, it takes a lot to drag yourself back to France barely a week after the Tour has ended, when you’ve only just fled Paris for some blissful downtime at home. But the whiff of adventure was impossible to ignore, just as it had been so many times before. Six years earlier Irishman Roche had sensationally won the Tour de France, beating Pedro Delgado and Jean-Francois Bernard after a titanic battle over a marathon-like 25 stages. That Tour win in 1987 was part of a ‘triple crown’ that also saw Roche win the Giro d’Italia and World Championship in the same season. I’d had the pleasure of photographing Roche since he turned ‘pro in 1981 and felt especially proud of his Giro, Tour and Worlds victories.
By now, in any normal season, we’d be indulging ourselves in the enjoyment of the Spring Classics, with all the excitement and anticipation that entails. In any normal season we’d already be celebrating the success of Milan San Remo and seeing if its winner could also manage to pull off a victory in one of the cobbled monuments like the Tour of Flanders or even Paris-Roubaix. Depending whether a pure sprinter or a power-climber had won Il Primavera, we’d be reviewing and discussing his chances in races like Dwars door Vlaanderen, E3, and Ghent-Wevelgem, and even stretching our imaginations to the hillier Classics of Limburg and Wallonia, to speculate further on the outcome of those treasured races. Except this is no normal season, how could it possibly be, in a year that is already beyond extraordinary because of the way the pandemic of Covid-19 has spread its evil across the world? Anyone who has followed cycling for a long time knows instinctively when a big race is happening, no matter where in the world you happen to be. It’s something you feel in your bones and in your veins, as much a physical sense as it is a mental one. But it’s the mental sense that strikes the harshest tone when those races have not taken place – there’s something missing from your life. This is one such year. Ghent-Wevelgem takes place on the last Sunday in March, each year, except that it didn’t. The Tour of Flanders has been held on the first Sunday in April since time began, but it too was postponed or cancelled. And Paris-Roubaix has followed suit – postponed from its slot on the second Sunday of April with no replacement date given. These three Classics happen to be equal favourites of mine and I’ve missed them as much as anyone else. So, time to pen a few thoughts and concoct a tribute because of their absence, so far, in 2020.
It only took a few minutes’ TV watching of stage one to pique my nostalgic instincts and remind me how much I adore the Vuelta a España. It was the evening sunlight that did it, reflecting brightly off the lapping waves of the Mediterranean sea to create soulful shadows from eight bicycles and eight cyclists as each team pointed themselves down the start ramp in Torreviega and sped off to a roar of approval from a rapturous crowd. Just as those roars grew louder in the most populated areas of the town, so did the shadows grow longer and darker as the sun came closer to setting, as the faster teams began their own race, and as the snow-white pyramids of sea-salt added a further, unique, quality to the evening’s entertainment. And then came the spectacular crashes of UAE and Jumbo-Visma - perfectly timed in the second half of the stage just as excitement of the finale was building on TV. This jolt from beauty to cruelty may have shocked many, but not-so those of us who expect such things to happen in the Vuelta. Because these things always happen in the Vuelta. The chances of witnessing chaos and mishap linger permanently over a race that’s not as tame nor as the sleepy as one expects for the time of the year. You don’t have to be a photographer, nor even a romantic traveller, to appreciate the summer ebbing away in Spain. What is required is a season-long work connection to cycling, one that’s seen you on the road since the cold months of February and March at a time when the Giro, Tour and Vuelta await many months down the road. I always loved the way the Vuelta acted as a way of seeing out the summer months and to ease our hearts and souls into autumn and the season’s end. It’s manic high pace, yet occasional lethargy, seemed just perfect for the period. The Vuelta celebrates the last week of summer when the beaches are still packed, the heat quite intense, and the hinterland of the country almost devoid of humanity when the Vuelta pedals by. The nights of that last week are crazy, noisy, raucous occasions, before the return to school that swallows up the nation’s youth as well as farewelling a million tourists too - that’s a Vuelta still in summer. Then we go north, celebrating a Spain much greener, cooler, quieter, a Spain that is ridding itself of those pesky tourists, tempting the locals to come out and cheer the race on themselves. To be near the ocean, particularly in the north-west of the country, to see the weakening sun set over the Atlantic, to experience dusk falling - that’s a Spain that is embracing the onset of autumn, with a powerful melancholy impossible to describe.
I didn’t really need to wait for the hilly Ardennes races to finish in order to say that Mathieu Van der Poel’s victory in the Amstel Gold was the most exciting element of this spring classics’ season. Of course, I did wait, just in case, but as much as I enjoyed seeing the affable Jacob Fuglsang win Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and win it well, all it did was to leave me wondering what might have happened had Van der Poel’s Corendon-Circus team been invited to the race. The enormity of Van der Poel’s lush win in the Amstel one week earlier, as well as his domineering performances throughout March and April, ensured that no matter who won in the Ardennes, they would only do so in the absence of the most exciting, emerging all-round talent in years. Van der Poel proved he could win on the cobbles of Flanders, and on the Brabant hills too, so why not in the hilliest classic of them all, La Doyenne?
"I'll remember Paul for many things - as a pioneering professional cyclist, a TV commentator, a hors-category PR officer and general laugh-a-minute entertainer. But most of all I'll remember him as a friend of almost forty years. When I first ventured to continental Europe with my cameras in the late-1970's, Paul was the one cyclist who took an interest in what I was doing. Without realising it at the time, both of us were running parallel adventures in the world of cycling, Paul as a determined young bike-rider, me as an ambitious yet dreamy photographer. I noticed how Paul had set up his shop by living with the French, embedding himself in the very French world of cycling, and building deeper foundations than if he had just hung out with his fellow British colleagues. I too saw the importance of mixing in with the French photographers, so too the Belgians, Dutch, Spanish and even Italians, as I made my way into the business. Paul was my go-to cyclist if I needed advice on an up-coming race, or simply someone to ask about the myriad of tactics out there. Or someone to crack a joke with just before the race began. I realised much later in life that we were, in many ways, kindred spirits back then, just that neither of us knew it. A whole grupetto of English-speaking riders followed Paul into the professional ranks in the early-1980’s, and he became their beacon, their talisman, as the European-based hardmen struggled to adapt to this ‘foreign’ influx. It helped the cause that most of the mercurial Scandinavians had joined forces with the Anglophones to smooth their way in. And as each and every one of them took their first steps, there was I, meeting them and photographing them as a friend of Paul Sherwen. I soon realised that Paul was a leader amongst this band of brothers in the sport. No matter if he was engaging with a fellow-Anglophone or a French superstar like Bernard Hinault, Paul could swing things when it mattered the most. Just as Paul had benefitted from the wisened knowledge of Britain’s Barry Hoban, already a seasoned veteran when Paul turned ‘pro in 1978, so did he take just about every young dude under his wing and point him in the right direction. There were two key elements to Paul’s status. For one, as a loyal team worker he was no threat to anyone in a competitive way, and therefore his advice was utterly selfless – and he led by example on the bike. Secondly, Paul commanded so much respect from teammates and colleagues that there was no-one better to turn to.
