TOM SIMPSON

Cycling

Gustav Temple tells the tragic tale of the British cyclist whose promising career came to a dramatic end at the top of Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France

“Mont Ventoux was awesome; as you got closer and closer to it, you realised this is going to be something else. It’s just sheer hell; hell on wheels” Colin Lewis

he white rocky surface of Mont Ventoux can

Tbe seen from miles away, its sun-bleached stone giving it the appearance of a moonscape during the summer, while in the winter it is covered in snow. Regardless of the season, Mont Ventoux maintains its own ghastly climate at the 1,912-metre summit, veering from one day to the next from gale-force winds and storms to searing heat. Situated 60 miles northeast from Avignon in Provence, Ventoux has many nicknames, none of them flattering: Bald Mountain, The Giant of Provence, The Killer Mountain, the Hill of Death. “The Tour de France is the most important challenge in the international calendar. Every day you are at the peak of your physical conditioning. You are always close to blowing a gasket, always close to breaking point”

Philosopher Roland Barthes, in his 1957 essay The Epic Tour de France, described it as ‘a true mountain – an evil god to whom sacrifices must be made’.

One such sacrifice was made by a British cyclist during the 54th Tour de France on 13th July, 1967. Tom Simpson was the golden boy of British cycling in the 1960s, and is still regarded as one of the finest cyclists this country has produced. The son of a miner from County Durham, he entered professional cycling in 1959. He clocked up an impressive list of accolades in all the major European races: 1961, won the Tour de Flanders; 1962: donned the yellow jersey in the Tour de France; 1963: won Bordeaux-Paris; 1964: won Milan-San Remo; 1965: won Giro de Lombardia and the World Cycling Championship; 1967: won Paris-Niece. In 1965 he was awarded three British awards by different bodies for Sports Personality of the Year. Having secured the coveted rainbow jersey of the World Road Race Championship, and donned the yellow jersey (the first Briton ever to do so) for one day during the

“He was a character. He went out and bought some decent Harris Tweed clothes and a bowler hat, and the French press and public loved him. They called him Monsieur Le Tom”

1962 Tour de France, Tom Simpson had his sights set very high for 1967 – to win the Tour de France.

Despite his run of victories in one to sevenday events, he had set himself a tough challenge, although Tom Simpson was not a cyclist of modest ambitions. “He had this tremendous will to win,” says Colin Lewis, one of Simpson’s teammates on the ’67 Tour. “He would never say die, he would always take things head on.”

The Tour de France in the 1960s was much harder than it is today, lasting 4,779 km compared to today’s 3,365 km. Another of Simpson’s teammates, Barry Hoban, recalls the gruelling race: “Three weeks, day in, day out, over the Alps, over the Pyrenees, rain, wind, snow, the whole lot. If you’re an overall contender, one bad day and that’s it; the Tour’s finished for you.”

“The Tour de France is the most important challenge in the international calendar, says Lucien Aimar, Tour de France winner 1966. “It’s where all your faults and weaknesses appear on the big day. Every day you are at the peak of your physical conditioning. You are always close to blowing a gasket, always close to breaking point.”

Simpson had moved to France in 1959, aged 21, to pursue his ambitions. He quickly adopted a persona that proved popular with the French, dressing up in quintessentially British clothing and strolling about town carrying a furled umbrella. “He was a character,” says Colin Lewis, “He went out and bought some decent Harris Tweed clothes

and a bowler hat, and the French press and public loved him. They called him Monsieur Le Tom.” Footage exists of Simpson cruising around Paris in an old jalopy, wearing a bowler hat, lapping up the attention. He learned French and within a year was conducting all his post-race interviews on television in the language, further endearing him to the public.

But this jovial character, partly a shrewd move to gain popular support, was only on the surface. Deep down, Tom Simpson was a ruthless operator with his sights set on nothing short of overall victory in the 1967 Tour de France. His skills behind the handlebars were already the stuff of legend among French sports journalists such as Jean Bobet, who had observed Simpson’s single-mindedness from the start of his career: “He saw everything so well, in front and behind, to one side and the other. He was like a bird of prey.”

Simpson’s previous two attempts at the Tour de France, in 1965 and 1966, had ended ignominiously. Injuries forced him to abandon both races, though in 1965 it was only the insistence of doctors that forced him off the road. He would have continued riding with an infected hand, bronchitis and an infected kidney if he’d had his own way. Hit by a car on a de- scent in ’66, it was only the inability to hold on to the handlebars that shunted him out of the race. But the effects on Simpson of having to abandon the Tour were more devastating than for others.

“To lose and give in, for an ordinary rider,” says Jean Bobet, “is a minor setback. But for a

champion, someone special, it’s unbearable. “He’d got the famous rainbow jersey. That was without doubt the pinnacle of his career. He’d joined the club of the best-paid riders. He was in the top ten.”

Another factor in Simpson’s disappointment at abandoning the Tour de France was the loss of major contracts. The size of a promised contract with an Italian trade team would depend on how he performed in this tour. He was already thinking about a financially secure retirement after the Tour.

With so much riding on his victory in the 1967 Tour de France, it was no surprise that Simpson turned to stimulants. Doping had been a part of professional cycling since the 1950s, with the use of amphetamines among riders being common knowledge, even though the authorities turned a blind eye. Amphetamines were seen as nothing more than an asset; something to help you over the top when the heat and exhaustion were against you. Simpson’s British teammates hadn’t been inducted into this French doping fraternity, for they had only just arrived. That year, the Tour de France had reverted

to the older tradition of fielding national teams, as opposed to pelotons grouped by sponsors. Team sponsors were held responsible for the riders’ strike in 1966 and so Tour director Félix Lévitan insisted on national teams entering in ’67. The Tour started with 130 cyclists, divided into 13 teams of 10 cyclists. Therefore Simpson’s team was a hastily assembled group of professional cyclists from Britain with much less local knowledge than him. Consequently, the habits he had taken up previously as part of the Peugeot team were alien to his new British counterparts. “Just train hard, eat well and sleep well,” they told him, but he had already got into the habit.

“Of course he took drugs, but not more than anybody else,” says French journalist Philippe Brunel. “Doping was kind of a social bond. Those who didn’t take them were marginalised by the others. It was practically impossible not to take drugs if you wanted to be part of the razzamataz of the Tour de France.”

Simpson had made a good start on the first stage of the Tour; placed sixth overall after the first week, he was in a position to challenge the leaders

when he came down with stomach pains and diarrhoea while passing through the Alps. Back at his hotel, his teammates tried to give him some soup but he was immediately sick. He dropped to 16th place in the 10th stage and down to seventh overall. But ignoring the illness, he got back on his bike for the next stage to Marseilles. During this 12th stage he recovered enough to move up from 16th to 7th, within striking distance of the Tour’s leaders. On the morning of the 13th stage, Simpson was seen swigging from a water bottle that some suspected also contained brandy.

By the time Tom Simpson approached the forbidding slopes of Mont Ventoux, at 2pm on 13th July, his body had already been pushed to the limit. It was the hottest part of the day, and as soon as the cyclists had cleared the first part of the climb among dense forest, there was no protection from the 107-degree heat. Philippe Brunel: “It’s a kind of nightmare, a lunar landscape. The stones reflect the sun, the heat is crushing; it’s the heat of a crematorium.”

Simpson had slipped down to the second group, struggling to keep sight of the leaders of the 13th stage, Raymond Poulidor of France and Julio Jimenez of Spain. The heat, combined with the altitude, had terrible effects on all the competitors, but Simpson was now facing his own private battle to survive the mountain. He refused all offers of water and his body had ceased to produce perspiration, added to the effects

Mourners' cycles at Tom Simpson's funeral

of the amphetamines he had taken, which completely override the body’s safeguards. Tom had now entered what cyclists call ‘the Red Zone’ and was fast heading for ‘the Twilight Zone’.

“On the Ventoux you are on your own,” says Lucien Aimar, who was riding alongside Simpson. “You are not there to chat. But I turned to Tom and said, ‘Don’t be an idiot. Stay on my wheel as I gather speed for the climb.’ I was fond of Tom so I wanted to protect him. A second time he attacked and I said, ‘Stay calm and limit the damage.’ But he didn’t respond. He was like a zombie.”

Just below the Col des Tempêtes, a little over a kilometre away from the summit of Mont Ventoux, Simpson began to reel across the road. He collapsed by the side of the road and demanded to be put back on his bike. He staggered on for another 500 yards before collapsing again and falling off his bike. This time he was unconscious. Before he passed out, his final words were, “Put me back on my bike.” The medical team tried to revive him with cardiac massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but Simpson was fighting for his life in the blazing heat on the hot stones. The race continued while pandemonium reigned on the slopes. While the other cyclists began the descent of the mountain, a helicopter arrived to whisk Simpson to hospital. Three hours later he was pronounced dead.

When news reached Simpson’s teammates that evening, the restaurant where they were dining went completely silent. At the start of the following day’s 14th Stage, all the riders assembled in silence, reluctant to continue the race. Simpson’s peloton forced themselves to get back on their bikes. It was seen as a tribute to the deceased cyclist when a British rider, Barry Hoban, won the 14th Stage.

Debate as to whether Simpson pushed himself too hard on that day, running on empty and suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration, or whether it was the amphetamines that killed him, rages on to this day. Simpson’s entire career is tainted with the doping stigma, exacerbated by more recent scandals, most notably Lance Armstrong being stripped of all seven of his Tour de France wins in October 2012.

Simpson is still viewed by many only as the cyclist who died from doping, but cycling author Jeremy Whittle, who wrote the book Ventoux, doesn’t think it is that simple. “This wasn’t a time of corporate doping or massively-funded, laboratised doping of Lance Armstrong and others of that particular generation, who had carefully constructed programmes. That is completely different to Tom Simpson being told ‘take one of these, it’ll make you feel good’ which is pretty much what it was.”

Simpson’s daughter Joanne, in an attempt to clear his name, requested a copy of her father’s autopsy from Avignon Hospital. But she was told that all autopsy records are destroyed 25 years after death, and Simpson’s had been destroyed between 1992 and 1997. There is a monument to Tom Simpson on Mont Ventoux on the spot where he collapsed, always covered with tokens and tributes from other cyclists, and Joanne often visits it on 13th July, the day her father died. A keen cyclist herself, it took a lot of training before she could make the attempt to ride up the mountain, but she cycled up Ventoux in 1997, on the 30th anniversary of her father’s death.

“I was riding up Ventoux thinking, ‘Bloody hell, Dad, this isn’t easy,’ but then as I got higher up, I thought, you did choose a beautiful place to die. What a view!”

Joanne still has a Garmin racing cap, which cyclist David Millar tossed towards the monument as he passed it during the 2012 Tour de France. Millar was convicted of doping charges and suspended from professional cycling in 2004, but has since become a well-known anti-doping campaigner. Joanne was watching the race as he whizzed by and incredibly caught the cap he had thrown. Upon the cap Millar had written ‘To Tommy, RIP’. n