Cycling Legends Media

Cycling Legends Media Cycling Legends
The untold story, the unseen photos.
✍️ by Chris Sidwells
📷 Daily photos and short stories.
📚 Books. 🚲 Events. 🎙️Podcast.
(1)

linktr.ee/cyclinglegendsmedia

Jacques Anquetil (centre at age 18) was a complicated and contrary person, even the reason he got into cycling was diffe...
19/12/2025

Jacques Anquetil (centre at age 18) was a complicated and contrary person, even the reason he got into cycling was different. For most pro riders it’s the love of adventure, the freedom a bike gives, and the thrill and competition that racing offers. Jacques Anquetil’s reasons were: first girls, but very quickly after…money.

Here’s an extract from our book, ‘Cycling Legend 03: Jacques Anquetil - the man behind the mask’, that explains.

Jacques had a cyclist friend at college called Maurice Dieulois, and he loved the stories Dieulois told about the races he did. Anquetil’s cousin, Maurice Bidault was there too, and he recounts how Jacques noticed a lot of girls liked listening to Dieulois too. He said Jacques found that even more interesting.

When Anquetil started winning, Bidault told a newspaper reporter how Jacques got started: “He had an old Alcyon bike. Not a racing bike like Dieulois and his friends rode, but not only could he keep up with Dieulois and his club, Jacques left them behind on the hills.”

Dieulois’s club was the AC Sottevillais, which was run by a bike shop owner with a reputation for spotting talent called André Boucher. Shortly after their first ride Dieulois took Anquetil to meet Boucher, who would become a key figure in Anquetil’s cycling career, as well as in his life.

Boucher often spoke about Anquetil’s second motivation for racing. “From the start there was no question, Jacques was going to be a racing cyclist, not a tourist. He wasn’t interested in using his bike for pleasure. He wanted to race and he wanted to win, and if he didn’t establish himself quickly, he would have given up the bike.”

Anquetil said many times that he saw cycling as a way of earning good money, and he gave himself 4 races to start doing it. If he didn’t win at least 1 of those 4 races he would have given up and found another way to make Money. Luckily on 3 May 1951, Jacques won his fourth race, the Grand Prix Maurice Latour, and his trajectory was set.

Read more about Jacques in the third edition of our illustrated book collection here - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-03-jacques-anquetil

📸 Paris Normandie
🖋

18/12/2025

How Eric Vanderaerden had 3 careers in 1 - and all very successfully!

Looking for a stocking filler?

Take a look at our Illustrated Book Collection, packed full of unseen photos and stories - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/collections/cycling-legends-illustrated-books

You have until 3pm tomorrow (Friday 19th Dec) for guaranteed delivery in time for Christmas!*

*UK Delivery only

By 1982 TI-Raleigh had been at the top for 7 years but cracks were showing. There always was friction between the manage...
18/12/2025

By 1982 TI-Raleigh had been at the top for 7 years but cracks were showing. There always was friction between the manager Peter Post and a key talent, Jan Raas. Both were tough and uncompromising, but a previously tolerable working relationship was now antipathy.

Raas was creating a new team, Kwantum Hallen for himself and others for the end of 1983, when Raleigh would pull their headline sponsorship. Post had another in Pansonic, but only half the team stayed with him, the rest went with Raas, and they still had to get through two more years.

Unsurprisingly TI-Raleigh wasn’t performing, and when TI-Raleigh’s best finisher in the Tour of Flanders was the Dutch rider, Johan van der Velde in 10th, Post went nuts. Two days later the atmosphere before Ghent-Wevelgem was toxic, and the riders went to bed early. This little story shows how bad things were.

The man in today’s photo, Frank Hoste of Belgium was a new pro in the team, and he was sharing a room with Van der Velde. Hoste recalls what happened that evening in Cycling Legends 02 TI-Raleigh. “Neither of us could sleep, so we thought a beer might help. It was about 11 o’clock and nobody was in the bar, so we thought we’d be okay. Only 1 person came in while we were there, Peter Post. He stopped, looked at us, said nothing and walked out.”

“Next morning he said he’d pay me for the rest of my contact but wouldn’t send me to any big races. I started Ghent-Wevelgem because it was too late for Post to throw me out, but I had no morale. My job was to help Jan Raas, but when we got in the break, he told me he had a bad stomach. He said he’d try, and I had to make it hard the last time over the Kemmelberg.

“I did, but I went so hard I got away and Rass couldn’t follow. He didn’t chase, so I got to work and I won. I saw Post at the finish and he said: “Well done” and never mentioned the beer again. He also sent me to all the big races. I learned maybe that was what you had to do, let him rant then just get on with it.”

Read the full story, and many others about the team, in the second edition of our illustrated book collection, Cycling Legends 02: TI-Raleigh here - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-02-ti-raleigh

Photo: Het Nieuwsblad

Peter Van Petegem lived for the cobbled classics. He won the 2 biggest, Tour of Flanders (twice, 1999 & 2003) and Paris-...
17/12/2025

Peter Van Petegem lived for the cobbled classics. He won the 2 biggest, Tour of Flanders (twice, 1999 & 2003) and Paris-Roubaix (2003). They were his races. If he had a good April, he had a good year; if April was bad, his year was over.

Born in Brakel in the Flemish Ardennes – the hills there are the crucible of the Tour of Flanders and many other races, he’s ridden them since childhood and still does.

“On the way home from school I used to climb the Bosberg and the Muur van Geraardsbergen on my bike every day. That’s why I know them so well. I must have climbed them hundreds of times,” he told Chris Sidwells in an interview.

He was a strong kid, a gymnast and a member of the Belgian junior national football squad, playing midfield. And as often happens with talented all-round athletes, when he started racing his bike, he made a mark straightaway.

Van Petegem won races through power, tough training and an unrivalled knowledge of Flemish race routes, but he had something else. A gift that allowed him to race in a way that’s almost impossible to copy.

It can only be described as a sixth sense. Even in the most important races, Van Petegem would hang around at the back of the peloton with the last few riders. Then, at a given moment he moved through the bunch, ghosting from wheel to wheel, timing his arrival at the front just as the winning break was created. Then he simply let his momentum take him to it.

“Something gets communicated to me at the crucial moments of a race. I feel something, like something is about to happen in the peloton. I don’t know whether it’s just experience, but I don’t think it is because I’ve always raced this way. It’s difficult to explain, but I sense something going on when the race changes from its build-up stage to its crucial stage, no matter when that moment is,” he told Chris.

The full Peter Van Petegem interview and the story of his illustrious career is in Cycling Legends 04: Flandriens - cult heroes of the cobbles.

Available here - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-04-flandriens-by-chris-sidwells

Photo: John Pierce, Photosport International

Eddy Merckx is the greatest of all time. Few would have disagreed with that until Tadej Pogecar, who by his audacious do...
16/12/2025

Eddy Merckx is the greatest of all time. Few would have disagreed with that until Tadej Pogecar, who by his audacious domination has done stuff even Eddy Merckx says he couldn’t. But no one, not even Tadej, will come close to the sheer quantity of races Eddy Merckx won.

Eleven grand tours and 72 stage victories (including TTTs), 3 pro road race world titles and 1 amateur, 19 monuments, including every one multiple times, and a career total of over 500 race wins. It’s incredible and could stand as the record in men’s cycling forever.

However, in a long interview with Chris Sidwells in our book, Cycling Legends 04 Flandriens, Merckx said he could have been better but for a crash in a 1969 post-Tour de France track meeting in Blois.

That’s something to imagine, so Chris asked him if he would have won more races. “No,” he replied, “not more, but I would have won with greater facility. I would have won stage races by many minutes instead of just a few, just like I did in the 1969 Tour.” Eddy’s winning margin was close to 20 minutes in 1969!

“I can honestly say that I didn’t feel the pedals before my crash in Blois. People talked about suffering in cycling, but I didn’t understand what they meant. I never suffered, but it all changed at Blois. The crash was terrible for me. From that day cycling became suffering,” Eddy told Chris.

“After the crash it was never the same. The pain changed from day to day, some days I would weep on my bike, on others it was OK. One time, towards the end of my career it was so bad that I was riding up the hill in Alsemberg, Brussels, and I wondered if I was going to get to the top. I thought I might have to get off and walk, and it’s not very steep or very long. My back became my weakness. It still affects me today. I could never jog to keep fit because of my back.”

You can read this long and deeply thoughtful interview with Eddy Merckx in Cycling Legends 04: Flandriens - cult heroes of the cobbles. The perfect present for a cyclist in your life, or just treat yourself - it’s Christmas!

Click here to read more and buy the book - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-04-flandriens-by-chris-sidwells

It’s a common thing that from the outset great champions see their destiny. They realise their ability, own it and seek ...
15/12/2025

It’s a common thing that from the outset great champions see their destiny. They realise their ability, own it and seek to develop it. This was true of the teenage Tom Simpson, as this short extract from our book about his life, Cycling Legends 01 Tom Simpson, reveals:

In 1955 Tom won 16 junior races and would move into senior competition at 18 the following year. It was a big step, so he sought advice. Europe was the hub of cycling excellence, and he started writing to European coaches, including the great Francis Pélissier. The Frenchman didn’t reply but kept his letter, which was published in a magazine 10 years later when Tom was the men’s elite road race world champion.

George Berger did reply, he was a British coach with extensive French experience. A UK government interpreter who’d raced with the Vélo Club Lavallois in France, training under its famous coach Paul Rouinart.

He was impressed with Simpson, saying years later, “He had talent the like of which had never been seen in Britain.”

Berger translated French articles on training and nutrition, and even translated the whole of Jean Bobet’s book, ‘En Selle’, a French training bible, for Tom, who improved enormously over the winter of 1955-1956.

Berger advised Simpson to enter the 1956 British national pursuit championships, where he would face several world-class internationals, including the reigning world pursuit champion, Norman Sheil. A tough enough prospect, but he needed a qualifying time, and his track bike wasn’t up to scratch. Sheffield’s Doug Bond came to his rescue.

Bond had a place in a pre-championship pursuit trial at Fallowfield in Manchester where the title race would be held, and he approached the organisers asking them to give his place to Simpson. Bond told them the unknown youngster wouldn’t disappoint, and they agreed to swap.

He lent Simpson his best track wheels shod with super-light silk tyres, and Simpson won the pursuit trial in 5 minutes 16 seconds, not only fast enough to qualify him for the British championships, but the fastest 4000-metre time recorded in Britain so far that year. Five months later he had an Olympic bronze medal in the team pursuit.

Read more about Tom Simpson in our illustrated book, Cycling Legends 01: Tom Simpson, full of untold stories and unseen photos - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-01-tom-simpson

📸 John Pierce Photo Sport International

This is Sir Paul Smith. He knows a thing or two about what looks good, and he thinks the Cycling Legends illustrated boo...
14/12/2025

This is Sir Paul Smith. He knows a thing or two about what looks good, and he thinks the Cycling Legends illustrated book series looks very good indeed. Not only that, but he also wrote the foreword to Cycling Legends 03: Jacques Anquetil.

Sir Paul was a talented cyclist before he entered the fashion industry, and Jacques was his teenage hero. He says he used to save his pocket money to buy copies of the French sports newspaper L’Equipe from a newsagent in his native Nottingham. “But only if it had a photo of Jacques Anquetil on the cover.”

Well, there is an unexpected image of Anquetil on the front of Cycling Legends 03: Jacques Anquetil - the man behind the mask. The book reveals Anquetil as the man as well as the cyclist: his complexities and beliefs, as well as his amazing athletic achievements.

The whole series is full of new information revealed by their subjects and by the people who knew them best, as well as incredible pictures, many of which are previously unpublished.

That is our mission at Cycling Legends Media, the untold story and unseen picture. Sir Paul approves; in fact, he’s got all four. Treat yourself or the cyclist in your life to our Christmas offer- all four books plus a free quality musette for £60.

Click here to read more about our books - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/collections/cycling-legends-illustrated-books

As we draw to the end of 2025, the 60th anniversary year of Tom Simpson’s ground-breaking victory in the elite men’s roa...
14/12/2025

As we draw to the end of 2025, the 60th anniversary year of Tom Simpson’s ground-breaking victory in the elite men’s road race world championships, this is a short extract from our book about Tom’s life, as told to Chris Sidwells by those closest to Tom; his family, team-mates, rivals, managers and friends.

The extract is about how Tom prepared for the title race, and it started off very badly. He crashed during the 1965 Tour de France, his wounds weren’t cleaned properly by the attending medic, and he contracted a serious infection.

He wouldn’t leave the race, but 2 days after the crash he cracked completely. He’d contracted bronchitis, could only hold the bike with 1 hand and lost nearly 19 minutes on 1 stage. Next day he was dropped on every climb and fell to 30th overall. There was no point in continuing, but he did for 2 more stages. Then the Tour doctor refused to let him continue.

He was taken to hospital where at first, they thought he might lose his hand, it was that bad. Tom was operated on; drains were inserted into the hand and powerful antibiotics used to fight blood poisoning that infected his whole body.

He was moved back home to Ghent after a couple of days and left there to get better.

Once he was better, he started training for the road race world championships in San Sebastian, Spain, and did it the Belgian way. Racing in highly competitive kermesse races, and riding to them and back home after. In those days weekend pro kermesses were 200 kilometres, so Tom was sometimes doing 300, with a hard race in between.

Jean Stablinski of France lived just over the border, and he prepared the same way for the ’65 worlds. This is what he told Chris for our book. “I would see him arrive quietly on his bike, then leave on it after the races. I felt his power in them too; he used those races. He would attack or push hard for no reason, then drop back, never getting a result, just training.”

It worked, and you can read the full account of this and Tom’s many other victories, and the struggles he had to achieve them in Cycling Legends 01 Tom Simpson - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-01-tom-simpson

📸 L'Equipe
🖋

For 10 whole years, between 2002 and 2012 Belgian cycling was gripped by Boonenmania. Tom Boonen was so popular and so s...
13/12/2025

For 10 whole years, between 2002 and 2012 Belgian cycling was gripped by Boonenmania. Tom Boonen was so popular and so successful, for a while it was hard for him to live in the country. He was mobbed in supermarkets, followed by lines of traffic when he went training.

He moved to Monaco for five years; “Three at first, then one year back in Belgium, then another two,” he says. But returned to his homeland for good in 2012. He said he’d been happy in the principality but returned because his partner, Lore wanted to resume her career working with young offenders in Belgium.

Boonen being back in Belgium coincided with his greatest exploit, winning the Tour of Flanders, Ghent-Wevelgem and Paris Roubaix in the same year. That equalled Rik Van Looy’s record, but he also equalled two others. He was the 5th rider ever to win 3 Tours of Flanders, then the 2nd after Roger De Vlaeminck to win 4 Paris-Roubaix.

Boonen achieved all he did through talent and mountains of hard work. Tom Steels, a former multi-Belgian champion was the Quick Step team coach when Boonen raced, and this is what he told Chris Sidwells about him.

“He is fast, very strong and can generate tremendous power, but he is also very dedicated to an objective. He can train very hard, which is why he applies his power over long periods and burns off the opposition. Even in a sprint, his sprint is a long rather than explosive.” Steels then gave an example of Boonen’s dedication.

“When they changed the route of the Tour of Flanders and switched to a circuit of the Kwaremont and Patterberg to end in Oudenaarde, Tom wanted to get a feel for it. He did it by riding the whole route, not just the last part.

“I know because I went with him on my scooter and he rode behind it the whole way, more than 260 kilometres at race speed. He said there was no point doing the circuit fresh, because it would be different with the race kilometres in his legs.”

You can read Chris’s interviews with Tom Boonen in our latest book, Cycling Legends 04: Flandriens - cult heroes of the cobbles - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-04-flandriens-by-chris-sidwells

Photo: John Pierce Photosport International

Today’s photo is of the Dutchman Peter Post (inside making a Madison change with team-mate Leo Duyndam), taken during hi...
12/12/2025

Today’s photo is of the Dutchman Peter Post (inside making a Madison change with team-mate Leo Duyndam), taken during his racing career. He was the best of his generation in the once very lucrative world of six-day track racing, and a classics winner on the road. However, he is most remembered today as the team manager who changed the way teams raced, as well as for his uncompromising nature.

Racing against Post was hard. He was hard on himself as well as on others, but as a manager he sometimes went over the top. But for all those who ended up on the wrong side of him, there are many who rate Peter Post. Riders who saw things as he did or were super-talented. He paid them well and gave them everything they needed to realise their potential, and some paid him back with eternal loyalty.

TI Raleigh was Post’s first team and his masterpiece. It produced world champions, racked up classic victories, grand tour stages and eventually won the Tour de France with Joop Zoetemelk.

Winning the Tour on a Raleigh bike was the sponsor’s main objective, and Post delivered it. He always referred to sponsors as ‘the boss’ and expected his team to deliver for them, and Post did his job to the approval of most but made enemies along the way.

It’s said he didn’t treat the British riders Raleigh had at its outset fairly, and they all eventually left or were gotten rid of. It was one of the many questions Chris Sidwells asked Post during a long interview with him in 2005, the full contents of which are in our book about the team, Cycling Legends 02 TI-Raleigh. This is some of what he said.

“Some were good, (Phil) Bayton was strong, (Dave) Lloyd too, but he had health problems, and (Sid) Barras was strong and he was fast, but they came from a different culture to Dutch and Belgian riders. They didn’t understand how a pro team works, how the team always comes first, and I didn’t have time to train them. I had to deliver for Raleigh, it’s what they expected.”

Read the full interview in the second edition of our illustrated collection, Cycling Legends 02: TI-Raleigh here - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-02-ti-raleigh

Address

Everton

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Cycling Legends Media posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share