Photo of the day: Charly Gaul 'Bergauf Mont Ventoux'


Once was on a business trip in Nice, France.   (Nice alright... I know!)  It was June 1999, and I was driving to the airport, listening to the radio.    The machine-gun rapid fire French broadcaster relayed a quick update from the prior day's Dauphine Libere -  the hillclimb Time Trial up Mont Ventoux.  The  news was that US Postal American Jonathan Vaughters had won the stage, breaking the record Charly Gaul, set during the Tour de France in 1958.  Thanks to JV's integrity, we all know now where some of the turbo boost came to win that one.

Here's an interesting, different photo of Charly Gaul during his record setting Time Trial stage win in '58.



Take a good long look at his bike, his position.  How super low the saddle is, how bent the knee is at the bottom of the stroke.  How high the bars are.  How he's sitting bolt upright.   Hands relaxed on the hoods.  A vision of relaxed souplesse.   Bike a steel Guerra with a pie-plate for a cluster.  You can almost hear the chain and rear derailleur brushing against the spokes as it scallops out the teeth on that 26.

Now consider that without the use of EPO (but ok... maybe some other little pills - but pills whose effect in the furnace-like heat that July day was undoubtedly not the same as a blood bag), Charly set a record for the climb that lasted over 40 years.   Now I know that TT's up the Ventoux may not have been that frequent during that interval, but still... you try to ride up the Ventoux in 1 hr 2 minutes.

Those 40 years were marked by quantum leaps in training and bike technology and weight improvement.  The bike is steel.  The cranks are steel with cotter pins.  The saddle a brooks leather model, not very light (although it probably got drilled out by his faithful master mechanic Ottusi.)


Ottusi had fitted Charly with  a 44/49 up front, and a 5 speed screw-on freewheel: 15, 17, 19,  23, 26.

No light touch shifters with one tooth differences on an 11 speed rear cassette for Charly.   None of that mattered, and probably doesn't matter as much as folks believe now when you think about it.

Stick it in the 26, and spin those legs like a ceiling fan.

Greatest climber of all time?    Greatest climber of all time.

Comments

  1. JohnDecember 20, 2012 at 5:49 AM

    Chapeau Eddy. Great post. Think also how much faster Charly would have gone had it been raining. He hated the heat and excelled when the weather was bad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. VeloJonDecember 20, 2012 at 12:02 PM

    Greatest climber of all time? Maybe, but I think the Eagle of Toledo, Federico Bahamontes, should be in that discussion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fast EddyDecember 20, 2012 at 2:32 PM

    It's an interesting discussion. I lean Gaul because of the time gaps 'Charel' could carve out, his incredible ability to reverse enormous time defecits on a single knockout exploit on a single stage of multple climbs (e.g. Dauphine 54, Briancon 55 Tour, Monte Bondone 56 Giro, Aix Les Bains 58 Tour)...sometimes even on a single climb (e.g. '59 Giro on Grand St. Bernard when he KO'd Anquetil) makes me put Gaul on a pedestal hors category. And taking that time out of the likes of Bobet and Anquetil and all the best in their best years. Nothing against the Eagle who was (and still is!) a true great, no doubt. But don't believe his exploits fall in the same 'legend' category as Gauls. Be interested in your POV though...Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  4. FPastDecember 25, 2012 at 1:41 AM

    His saddle is certainly low, but not so low as it first seems. This photo is slighty deformed. The wheels look like ellipses.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pee Oui RoubaixAugust 1, 2013 at 6:49 AM

    The distortion of the photo is a problem, but despite that it looks to me like the cranks are longer than on the displayed bike. My respect for Gaul multiplied when he was one of the few pros who attended Marco Pantani's funeral.
    Pee Oui Roubaix

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Time tested, old school early season training advice

Image
I just love the article below. I found it on the web years ago. It's a lecture by Dr. Marco Pierfederici, a trainer who used to work with Eddy Merckx and Italian pro teams back in the ’70 and ‘80s. He delivered this talk at a training camp in Miami organized by a long-gone business called 'Italia Velo Sport'. They imported Battaglin and Francesco Moser frames, Campagnolo and Gipiemme components and other Italian clothing and gear. This innovative, early discount mail order company brought champion Francesco Moser to a winter camp with US amateurs in 1982, and then brought over Giovanni Battaglin and his teammates, I believe in early 1983. The pros spent the days logging early season easy miles with starry-eyed US amateurs, and spent evenings giving clinics to imparting old world 'knowledge'. An old friend and CCB teammate Rick Graham attended that camp. A few weeks later as we were tapping out the miles around Gloucester Mass., I remember Rick talking ab
Read more

Benotto dreams...

Image
Before the US National Road Race Championship, August 1982. Hard to believe now jongens , but once upon a time I could sprint a bike through a crowd fast enough that somebody actually saw fit to sponsor me. It's a faded memory I needed to keep drawing upon several times this past season... Way back in 1981 I was recruited by Constantin Negulescu to join his Northstar Bicycle Club.  The ex-Romanian national team rider had put together an elite US Amateur team, sponsored by a slate of leading Italian cycling brands:  Bicicletas Benotto, Gipiemme components, Ambrosio rims, Hutchinson tires and IscaSella Saddles.   With the exception of Hutchinson (who still makes killer tubeless tires... raced this whole season on one pair), most are brands either dead, or largely missing in action.  But back in '82, well, it was the perfect gear. "Good enough for Roger DeVlaeminck or Moser, good enough for you!" Talk about Christmas morning... I can still remember being in
Read more

Lost races of the Northeast: Le Tour de la Gaspésie

Image
Ever wonder what it's really like to ride a Tour? C'mon, admit it.  Most of us amateurs, from the time we first stomp on pedals in anger, from that first adrenaline rush riding in a peloton, that sound of whirring chains and wind, incubates a dream of riding a ' Tour '.   A real stage race, one longer than the 3 or 4 day long weekend versions available nowadays.  A race with  commissaires,  run from town to town in a place where the road signs are in a foreign language.  A race with stages measured in kilometers, one where words like revitaillement, grimpeur,  hors-delai and  voiture balai  are quickly added to your daily vocabulary. Back in the 1980 and '81, if you were a New England based Cat 1 or 2 rider longing to ride a Tour, you basically had two options:  Get selected for the internationally known Coors Classic in Colorado, or work your way onto a team doing Québec's Tour de la Gaspésie.   While I had neither the talent nor the  palmares for the form
Read more