record in 1956 and won the Grand Prix des Nations nine times and brought that exacting time trial skill to bear in every road race, pressuring his adversaries with relentless speed. He skipped the Tour de France in 1960 in favor of the Giro d’Italia and went on to win it, the first Frenchman to do so. He won it again in 1964, the same year he won his fifth Tour title and one of his first classics, Ghent–Wevelgem. He was not a rider who sought to win everything, but he invariably won the races that mattered to him, whether the motivation was prestige or money, and he always won with style.
To attest to Anquetil’s credentials as a modern athlete, we have additional images to admire: Anquetil the press favorite, the elegant homebody, the tousled hero.
Of these, it may be the latter portrait that is most arresting. It embodies all that we admire in our athletes and what we imagine for them. The sculpted cheeks, the casual mop of hair, a look in the eyes of interest and anticipation but also utter confidence. He stands reviewing the finishing times in the individual time trial for stage 20 of the 1962 Tour. Until this day, he has not led the Tour. Instead, he has waited for this day of the time trial to make his move. He has finished his race, and now he stands to the side, carefully calculating the other riders’ intervals. His claim on the yellow jersey, and the Tour title, depends on no one bettering his time, and so there is some anxiety. And yet he knows, with an athletic certainty that few others may ever have, that no one can match him.
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