Roger Walkowiak interview

iainf72

Nice little read

http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured- ... amentation

Do you remember your monthly salary as a rider?

10,000 old French Francs a month.

That equaled about $20 per month when, in the U.S. at least, the average yearly wage was around $4,500. After the Tour victory, did you earn more?

Oh, then I got 60,000 Francs.

afx237vi

In the years since you retired, which rider most impressed you?

Hmm … the Belgian …

Eddy Merckx?

Yeah, him.

Classic

frenchfighter

Thanks, good read.

Not particularly nice that he is called undeserved just as he wasnt considered anything to start with.

Things like this make you a heavyweight champion nowadays:

The last big day in the Alps, I knew the Croix de Fer got really steep through a village seven kilometers from the summit. So in the village I gave it everything I had. When I finished the descent, I had a two-minute gap. But there were still 70 kilometers, down the valley into a headwind. My director wanted me to stop and wait for the others but I said no. That's the day I won the yellow jersey back.

frenchfighter

Bloody hell, this guy is my rider.

Not impressed with these two, who were previously known to me as climbers par excellence:

There was a stage after I had won back the jersey, I crashed and a group of favorites that included Charly Gaul and Federico Bahamontes attacked. When I got back on my bike I was two minutes down and spent the next two hours chasing. And when I caught them what did they do? They took turns attacking! But it also gave me something to chew on.

But then later on:

Of all the champions of your generation, who impressed you the most?

I would say Charly Gaul and Federico Bahamontes. Both were in a class apart. The problem was that Charly Gaul lacked consistency. Bahamontes was more consistent, but he was a terrible descender.

Phew.

frenchfighter

Oh man this is great reading.

Anquetil, however, was always nice to me. He was 18 years old, and he was already a star. He just got better and better. But he also took a fair amount of pills, you know. It is not something we talked much about. Of course a lot of guys would take stuff, but only when it was valuable. Some tried to do the best they could without taking anything. He was one of the ones who abused. Anyway, I really liked him. He was always very respectful.

frenchfighter

afx237vi wrote:

In the years since you retired, which rider most impressed you?

Hmm … the Belgian …

Eddy Merckx?

Yeah, him.

Classic

And if you made him mad, watch out, he would make life hell for everybody the next day.



Iain, does it allude to this at all in the book you just read?

kozzo

Great man hated by the French press because of his Polish origin...
De Gaulle propaganda needed real French hero to deal with complexes of WWII...
Example how heritage of collaboration killed the man...

Le Commentateur

Well, his comments regarding the respect showed him by Anquetil is telling. His face didn't fit with the established name riders to an extent too, since he wasn't a team leader. Given time and a few more wins that may have changed but he did an ‘Ullrich’ and didn't train well for the following season, which put him back into relative obscurity where some thought he belonged.