From 1988 - Jacques Anquetil is dead...

I wrote this within weeks of Jacques Anquetil's passing, upset that he'd died so young and cut short such a graceful life. My editor at Winning Magazine, Rich Carlson, who also died young and cut short a wonderful life, preferred this piece to any other I submitted in my eleven years at the magazine. Anquetil was the first 5-time Tour de France winner. He died in 1987.

Anquetil

I just heard. Jacques Anquetil is dead, dead of stomach cancer at 53. At this point, there's no way to know if he suffered for months or died shortly after he was diagnosed. Not that it matters exactly, how it went; fact is - handsome Jacques Anquetil is dead.

I hate it that he's dead. I hate it for him that he didn't get to live his gentleman farmer, race commentator life until he was so old even his legend creaked. He looked, in recent photographs like he was having a good time. I would’ve wished him a more lasting good time, as if my wishing would've done any good.

I hate it for him that he died a young man, and I hate it for me. Whenever someone like Anquetil dies, someone who rode so far and well and kept himself so fit, it becomes harder for me to sustain the belief that if I only ride my bike, ride my bike and eat kinda smart, ride my bike and sleep good and stay skinny, well I'll by-God live forever.

Jacques Anquetil did not live forever. He didn't even live a long time. I guess he lived longer than some people do, people who have awful misfortunes or childhood illnesses or AIDS. But I don't think of those people as health-minded, fitness-oriented individuals like myself and you Winning readers. We aren't like those unlucky people; we're going to live forever.

I wonder if Anquetil thought he would live forever. I'll bet he didn't think of his cycling as fitness activity. He probably thought of it as work; he may even have had secret fears that all that stress might shorten his life.

Maybe if you just ride at the level you and I do, and not as hard as 5-time Tour winner Anquetil did, maybe then you'll live forever. Maybe then.

Losing a man like Anquetil gives me pause, you know? I see old fat people in the street, cigarette ashes spilled down the fronts of their sweaters. I see men in bars I know are there every night, sad men smoking cigars and squinting through smoky stale low light at some equally unhappy woman six stools away.

I see people who eat heavy food and drink lots of booze every day and they're old and doing OK and Jacques Anquetil is dead at 53.

Maybe we're wrong, we athletes. Maybe we get to choose what's important to us, just like other folks, and maybe being skinny and fit is gratifying to us just as a prime rib and a couple of cocktails twice a week is gratifying to them, and none of it has a damn thing to do with how long we get to hang around here doing our personal number.

If it's so that we can do pretty much what we please, forget about cholesterol, smoke and drink, you name it, and it won't matter; if it's so, a lot of people are going to be disappointed: people whose personal lives have to be scheduled for time slots after the ride and before the workout and the swim, people who think that if they stay young-looking and thin and beautiful they'll be immortal, people who think that the only good week is a 400 mile week, people who think life is an individual time trial and who appear as if, while they're standing there talking to you, they can hear the timekeeper's watch ticking.

And people like me, too, people who feel their lifestyles are healthy and reasonable, who feel that compulsiveness is someone's desire to ride more miles then THEY do. People who think that red meat should be eaten in moderation but assume Ben and Jerry are high-consciousness New Englanders who sure as hell

wouldn't put anything in that stuff that would hurt anybody, especially somebody who rides a couple hundred miles a week. Even if he ate it every day.

Jacques Anquetil liked to party, he was famous for it. He took things, too, and told his critics that he only did what his trusted doctor or trainer told him to do. We're too smart, we U.S. bikies, to go for that brand of self-deception. We're clean. That's why we're going to live and live 'til we're too old to care and Anquetil, who fooled his body into winning five Tours and umpteen Grands Prix de Nations time trials, is dead.

Some day science will discover just what Jacques Anquetil did wrong, how he made the fatal lifestyle mistake that took him from us at a still vital 53. Until then, I suppose it'll be a kind of a mystery. I think that until they do figure it out, I'm gonna keep on pretty much the way I have been, riding my bike and not gaining much weight, even in the winter.

I might try, during the holidays, to moderate my eating and drinking. Right now I feel like I might just stay away from a lot of wine and French food, rich sauces, stuff like that.

I wish I could understand why so many things about life are so mysterious, why healthy people die young and some sick people hang on, enduring discomfort for years. I wish I could better deal with the idea that all that clean living and exercise could amount to nothing, not the feeblest barrier against disease and infirmity.

I wish I didn't sense the undercurrent of desperation behind so much of what my friends and I do. I wish Jacques Anquetil were still alive.