Where it all began... Southport, the early Sixties. ジョンのツール・ド・フランスマニアはこの頃から始まりました

北イギリスのサウスポート市、1966年のわたし。5歳でした。

1966. Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India; 8000 US soldiers landed in Vietnam; A B-52 bomber collided with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares. And, in Southport, UK, I learned that God is... Belgian.
１９９６年。インディラガンジーがインドでの初女性首相として選出される。８０００人の米兵がヴェトナムに上陸。パロマレス米軍機墜落事故発生ースペイン南部の上空で米軍機が衝突し、農村パロマレスに水素爆弾4個が落下した事故。
そして！私ジョンが、イギリスサウスポート市にて、神はベルギー人だと学ぶ。

This is me wearing my brother's Baird Sports team jersey at the Southport criterium. My mum and dad and I would often get in the car around 5am on a Sunday morning to drive off and support Aah Kid as he and the company bike team (both dad and Steve worked for Baird Television at the time) thrashed from point to point in some Northern England cycling endeavour. Even now if I smell embrocation, it makes me want to shave my legs and pedal off into a headwind on the A1.
サウスポート一日自転車レースにて、私の兄スティーブのスポーツチームのジャージを着てる所。パパとママと私は、日曜日にはよく五時に起きてパパと彼の働いていた会社の自転車チームの応援に現地迄行ったものです。

I saved that shirt until it fit me, by the way. I suspect the van is a Commer. The bicycle belonged to Neil Rhodes (who took off to become a Pacemaker, with Gerry Ramsden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_&_the_Pacemakers).
このジャージシャツが私の体に合うようになる迄、大切にしてました。

The frame was a Jacques Anquetil. Two-wheeled treasure in those days, and even more so now. I hung out with those naughty boys, a child amongst fledgling men. Despite my youth, I felt at home. And I listened to every thing they said. They talked about music, and girls, cars, football and much interesting stuff. And they intoned magic words: Altig, Poulidor, Anquetil, Planckaert. But one name above all they spoke with reverential awe.

In 1966 God won the World Cycling Championships.
Many years later I cycled with the school bike club to Europe, where we were to watch the peleton pass through a small Belgian town. As the bunch came into sight, there was a distinctive figure leading the group - intense, powerful, majestic. His shirt was pink. The Maglia Rosa.

Every time I read some nonsense about Lance Armstrong being 'the greatest cyclist ever' my mind goes back to that Belgian afternoon. All of us who saw him know who is the best. Even Hinault agrees, and he is French.

As my bro points out, "Neil was a pacemaker, and now he's probably wearing one". Aah Kid ain't no spring chicken, and if I were to put on that same Baird TV jersey now, it would reveal a rather embarrassing paunch.
Yet all of us, when we hear the name, feel that internal spark of fire burning once again... and so we tune in to the Tour, for it is so much more than a race. It is our youth, our capacity for heroism, our dream.
And of course, God is Eddy Merckx.

Bernard Hinault said of Armstrong, "Seven times? If Merckx had concentrated solely on the Tour de France, he would have won it fifty-one times".

Alez, allez, Le Cannibale.

神様