137. The Strange Tale of Charly Gaul, with Paul Maunder

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2:49We're on, Will, we're on. Welcome back. Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. Welcome back. It has been quite a long time, I feel. Has it been quite a long time since I've spoken to you? It feels like it's a long time since I've been on the podcast. Yeah, I think it has. always astonished at how much better I look square on than in profile. That's what recording podcasts always tells me. It's weird, isn't it? Because you never actually see, I'm not saying I look good, but I look weird. The side of me looks weird because you never see the side of you, do you really? No. Well, not even really.

3:19You never see, not unless you arrange yourself a cunning setup of mirrors. You're right. If you're actually fully side on, you have to take a picture of yourself. Yeah. You can't see that. Apparently there's some seasickness aids that have their special glasses and they've got like these little um no like the uh little things of oil you get on a spirit level so it's got these like little kind of like circles with fluid in and then they operate in your peripheral vision for anyone that can't see me i've got my hands at the side of my head indicating where these discs of water are and then they look like the horizon so it looks like you've got a horizon all around you at all times as if your peripheries can also see the sea and that's supposed to steady your kind of internal gyroscope, which is the thing that gets upset when you get seasick.

4:10Well, there you go. So James, you've been travelling this week. Yeah, I've been travelling this week. Didn't think I was going to talk about that, did you? I have been travelling this week. I went on my, not once, not twice, not three times, but for the fourth time of asking, thrice cancelled trip to Switzerland to go and ride up some insanely steep passes from a little town called Andermatt, which is the home of Tudor Pro Cycling probably the most Swiss team you could get headed up by Fabian Cancellara sponsored by Assos Clothing riding BMC bikes and hosted by Switzerland's premier ski and summer resort town I'm not sponsored by them I've just been there and it's pretty rad and rode up some really high mountains which I'm just not prepared for a bit like with the Maratona I ran the numbers and realized that if I added up my classic ride to the 120k distance this ride was going to be, I'd still only be at two thirds of the complete amount of elevation I was going to do in Switzerland.

5:15So it was 120k and it's 3 ,600 meters of elevation, which is just kind of bananas. And the longest climb, so for anyone that knows the area, we went up the Suston Pass, the Grimsel Pass and the Firca Pass. The longest climb was 27 kilometres, which is insane. That's a long time. It's a long time, it's a long climb, which leads into a wonderful segue, because we're going to keep this intro short, to today's podcast, which is about a book called The Angel of the Mountains, which was the nickname of, Carl and Will, you know the guy's name. Is it Charlie Gaul? It is Charlie Gaul, the Luxemburger. Luxemburger, Luxemburger, he's from Luxemburg, who won the 1958 Tour de France and was called the Angel of the Mountains because obviously he climbed in a way that I could only imagine.

6:11Prodigious, mercurial talent, one of those fragile riders. He also won the Giro, but he experienced a pretty kind of up and down life, mixed fortunes, especially in retirement where he had a bit of a tumultuous time that eventually saw him being a recluse in the Black Forest and growing a big beard and getting a little pot belly. Anyway, I talked to the author of Angel of the Mountains, The Strange Tale of Charlie Gould, published by Bloomsbury and out of the moment, Paul Maunder, about Charlie Gould, because I just found it fascinating. It also ended up being an article in Cyclist Magazine. Can't remember the issue.

6:48I can find it, but I won't because I won't remember. But it is online. So check it out online, cyclist.co.uk. And do pick up Paul's book because I, for once, actually read this thing cover to cover because I do like a good biography of, you know, flawed genius because who doesn't? So without further ado, Will, you haven't said much. You're not going to say anything more because I did the interview on my own, but I will see you again at the end. It's Paul Maunder and his book about Charlie Goal.

7:22Could you kind of paint a very basic picture of Charlie Goal? So he's a Luxemburger. There's not many of those, period. Not many of those, certainly, who cycle. And was, I guess, a gifted rider as a kid, probably, but didn't necessarily think he would become a pro. Was he maybe a bit of a late developer almost in kind of his sport, would you think? Yeah, he was born in 32. So his sort of school years and early teenage years dominated by the war. He lived in the Ardennes in northern Luxembourg. And the Battle of the Bulge was going on around him. The Germans had been in occupation for, I think, four years by the time he was 12.

8:08It's quite a tough environment. He didn't have a bike until he was about 14. But then the family then moved to Luxembourg City and he's got a bike, started bowling around the suburban streets and went into a bike shop of a former pro rider and just fell in love with just the sport and the technology and bikes and then the freedom of being out on your own in the Ardennes, lovely countryside out to the north of Luxembourg City and started racing I think when he was about 15 or 16 but quite quickly became one of the best in Luxembourg and then sort of went international from there and he turned pro relatively young I think he was 20 when he turned pro.

8:54Okay yeah and he sort of kicked off being a cyclocross champion. Yes yeah he was cyclocross champion in Luxembourg also excelled in hilly races in the Ardennes. But he kind of came into his own and found his real metier when he went to the Tour of Austria, representing Luxembourg. And I think he was about 18, and he rode the Grossglockner climb. Oh, yeah. And set a record time for it, won the stage. And that record time, I think, stood for a long period, many, many years afterwards. and I think he found in those the big climbs of Austria and Switzerland his true calling. He was quite slight, quite short and he was born to be a climber really.

9:41Yeah, because he's what, 64 kilos or something? Yeah. 175 centimetres so I guess for his day, I don't know I'm really reaching now but maybe joining so hopefully not joining some ridiculous dots but I guess a lot of people were kind of off the back of the wall, not a lot of food, malnutrition. So you had kind of smaller riders. But even then, that's a pretty small, light guy, which presumably he would have stuck out because other riders couldn't have matched that purely from the kind of physical point of view. Yeah, yeah. And if you look at pictures of some of the tour winners from around that time, like even Kopi or Bobay, Batali, they're pretty robust figures probably in when you met them in reality probably didn't seem quite so robust but you know they look a bit sort of barrel chested and a bit bit stronger but he was quite it was slight and he also had a quite unique style a lot of people talk about climbers pure climbers as being that kind of um having that ability to accelerate and decelerate at will on climbs and really vary the rhythm he actually he didn't really do that he just hit a climb and started winding up a tempo and just kept going and getting more and more intense really high cadence really low gears lower gears than most the guys were using and it kind of lulled everyone into a full sense of security because they felt like they could follow him for the first few kilometers of the climb and then they got halfway up and they just were broken and he was just keeping carry on accelerating all the way to the top and and clear because that was a um rafael uh could never quite say his name gemignani quote i think saying that he just always rode like he had a higher gear yeah yeah everybody else kind of tick tock yeah cadence but yeah it's interesting because in the book there's a picture i think is it in the book or i've just seen it somewhere online of him so charlie goll much later in life stood at some memorial with Frederico Bahamontes so another notable climber gets a name, the Eagle of Toledo and then the two are so different in the kind of cut they're just like, even though obviously Charlie Gould's older he's just a thicker set, more regular looking bloke, but the size is really different and Charlie was a good looking lad when he was in his twenties, very piercing blue eyes, fair hair he had a kind of big James Dean quiff he always looked quite immaculate on the bike so he had a kind of bit of a although he was not huge he had a bit of a rock star sort of look to him which wanted many many fans there's stories about how he got many letters from female fans during his career but once he retired the physical transformation was quite amazing really he put on weight, he grew a beard and look very different.

12:43It's interesting because talking of those kind of grandiose words from journalists, there's a quote I came across, which is he's Mozart on two wheels. And then another one, which is a citation that hasn't actually got an author attached to it, just somebody wrote at the time from a Guardian obituary. He's a sad, timid look on his face marked with unfathomable melancholy. He gives the impression that an evil deity has forced him into a cursed profession amidst powerful implacable rivals. Yeah, exactly. It's that sort of thing where you think, wow, I like the lyrical nature of it. But if you're the subject of that quote, and I'm sure he didn't read that, but if you read stuff like that and think, oh, my wife's going to read that and my mum, then he probably pits you against the press a bit.

13:32He didn't really get on with journalists. He had a few journalists he would give access to. But most of them he was really suspicious of their motives and what they would say. So what would be, across his career, what are the highlights? So he won the Tour in 1958, so that's probably the most marquee event. And he won the Giro twice, 1956 and 1959. In all of those races, he did the characteristic Charlie Gaul structure of the race, which is to not really pay attention in the first week, lose loads of time on the flat stages, either through going to sleep at the back of the bunch or getting caught out in the echelons or crashing or punctures.

14:17So he came into the mountains, often 15, 20 minutes down on his rivals, then would wait for one day, and often a day with really bad weather, where he would just pick a moment to attack. He sometimes told his rivals where he would attack, and they were just helpless to do anything about it. And he would take off, and Pogacar-esque would ride for 100 kilometers, 80 kilometers on his own through the mountains, through the rain, and win by 10, 15 minutes. And he was actually a pretty good time trialist too. So often, I think in the 58 Tour, there was a big stage for the Alps where he won by 15 minutes in the freezing rain.

15:02that had been deferred and then he did a really good time trial the next day and that gave him the yellow jersey in the 56 Giro the day when he took the pink jersey was um to Monte Bondone and it was snowing that day it was like a freak weather storm and he took off on his own rode through freezing uh rain and snow in wearing no jacket whatsoever just wearing a jersey and uh like a handkerchief knotted around his neck. Or, you know, it wasn't even a Gore-Tex handkerchief, you know. And he won by minutes and minutes and minutes. He actually stopped halfway through the final climb, went into a cafe and had a hot chocolate, and was found by his soigneur, who then sort of got a bucket of hot water and rubbed his legs and his arms to wake him up a bit, gave him a drink, and then put him back on his bike.

15:54So goes the story, anyway. Wow. So is there some connection? Is Luxembourg specifically got really horrible weather? Does it produce grizzled riders? Why do you like the rain and the horrible weather so much? Well, I think if you look at weather of Luxembourg, it does rain quite a lot. So I think there's been this sort of, again, this morphology that he was some kind of superhuman ability to withstand freezing temperatures and rainy days. And on the flip side, he hated really, really hot days. But actually, if you look at Luxembourg, it does rain a lot. So if you go out training, these were before the days when riders would go and live in the south of France or Spain or further afield.

16:37He lived in Luxembourg all his life. So he went out and he rode a lot in the rain. And I think now I'm not a particularly technical expert on cycling, but I do understand that the more you do something, the more you become conditioned to it. And that's going to stick and be useful in races. Was there any truth to the name of his criticiser, Escapes Me, but somebody saying that the reason he rode so well in the rain is because he couldn't take so many amphetamines in the heat? Well, that is quite likely, yeah. I mean, there's stories that he took so many amphetamines that he would be foaming at the mouth in some races.

17:13But I think amphetamines are more effective on the cold days. It's worth bearing in mind these were the days before drug testing and before they were actually legal. So the morality of it is a difficult one to weigh up, and obviously it's a long time ago. Yeah, and not only that, but presumably that was what most people were doing, yeah. That and drinking Pernod and red wine and things handed to them by spectators as they go. Yeah, and there was one day in the 55 Tour de France, on 112, when I think it was Ferdi Kubler collapsed on the race and there was another Frenchman who collapsed and was put in an ambulance and nearly died.

18:00Obviously a bit of a sort of omen for the Tom Simpson events that followed, but they'd all had a couple of shots of brandy at the bottom of the climb. and brandy, heat, extreme endurance sport and drugs probably is not a great cocktail, is it, for getting to the top of the Vente? No, it's totally bananas. So why was 58 his year? Because I think his... So if he was born in 32, presumably he was 21-ish, 22 maybe when he did the... Well, 2021, when he did his first Tour de France and he didn't, did he? He abandoned the first couple, didn't he? Yeah, yeah, he didn't really do well in the first couple.

18:47I think he was 55 where he made a bit of a breakthrough and I think he got conferred when he had anyone a couple of stages. I think before that, you know, he was young and inexperienced and he didn't quite know how to work in a team as well. He was quite a loner. He was pretty grumpy most of the time. Or, you know, in a more positive sense, he was quite introverted. And I think he struggled to get on in a team of older riders who he didn't necessarily know that well. And he didn't share his winnings, which some riders have reported as, you know, oh, Charlie didn't share his winnings, so we never helped him.

19:26But I think actually that's just a kind of naivety of a young rider who didn't quite know how things worked and needed a bit of advice. so he just needed that time to learn the ways of the sport and some of the nuances of the politics I think as much as gain physical strength. And was he at the time, although riders had sponsors the tour was national teams still or he'd gone back to national teams from like the 20s so does that mean he's riding in a team of basically absolute no-namers from Luxembourg? Well, they often couldn't even find enough riders from Luxembourg. So they rode in a Luxembourg mixed team.

20:08So there'd be Charlie and maybe three other Luxembourg riders, and then an Australian and New Zealander, maybe a couple of South Africans, and any other really small countries that couldn't find a place in a team. So obviously that was always, and actually a couple of British at the time as well. so that was always pretty hard because they were never a unit never a team unit and Charlie in the hotel Charlie would say to them you guys do what you want I'm going to go and win the mountains prize but I'm keeping all the money so it was just fine up to a point but that's never going to win you the yellow jersey so what changed in 58 is that for some reason the Dutch couldn't field a full team well maybe they had two teams but certainly there was a deal done with UCI where Luxembourg and the Netherlands could field a joint team.

21:06So Charlie had a couple of loyal domestiques from Luxembourg plus four or five big strapping Dutch riders who could keep him protected in the wind, and that really helped him. And he was sort of fuelled as well by being like basically incredibly pissed off with Louis-Saint-Boebe. Can you kind of unpack that a bit? Yeah, I mean, I think they had a definitely a tetchy relationship. Bobbe was, by 55, he was the undisputed king of French cycling. He'd won the tour three times. He was quite a charismatic guy, quite powerful in the peloton. And they just never got on on a personal level. but Bobbe also wasn't above using tactics like attacking people in feed stations.

22:01Also there was a moment when Charlie stopped for a natural break in the 57 Giro and Bobbe and his team then attacked him and took a lot of time out of him which lost Charlie the Giro. But also as they did so started calling him Monsieur PP and really kind of laying on the, taking the Michael out of him. And so the two teams weren't very good friends. But I think by the end of their careers, there was a bit of grudging respect. Bobbe, I think some of the writers of the time probably wound up Bobbe a bit by saying that Bobbe was a great rider, but he worked for it. And it was always very hardworking and very calculating.

22:45Whereas Charlie just had this natural grace and beauty. and when it came to him, he sort of floated far above Bobbe's quality. Yeah, I think there's a quote that you cite at the beginning of the book that sort of sums it up, which is a journalist saying to him something like, what do you need? And then he replies, what is it you want me to need? Yeah, yeah. And that was actually when he was 18 years old on the Gross Glockner climb. Oh, really? So even back then, Gaul was sort of peddling beautifully away from the peloton and had the confidence to say to this journalist, you know, I'm completely self-contained.

23:26I can do what I want on this climb. You can make a story of it if you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a strange, there's a really strange synchronicity as well with Schleck getting, Andy Schleck, another Luxemburger, getting attacked by Contador when his chain unshipped. And that was the end of his, yeah, to a podium spot hopes. Poor old Luxembourg. A hard time. So if he reaches these pretty heady heights and garners the name Angel of the Mountains, which, again, I'm sure comes from a journalist, presumably. Was there a particular moment when that just appeared in the press and that was his name?

24:13Was there something that sparked that? Yeah, that was a L 'Equipe writer, Pierre Abu, who was describing there was a race called the Circuit of Six Provinces near Lyon, which is kind of a precursor to the Tour de l 'Avenir for younger pro riders. and again Charlie just attacked on a mountain in the rain and rode clear and the writer described him as having angelic features and just a binkle of a worldly floating away from the peloton. I don't think actually Charlie really played up to his nickname at all. He was aware of it but I don't think he really took it seriously whereas some of the writers at the time like Tom Simpson really played up to their nicknames and tried to create almost a brand out of it.

25:04Yeah, yeah, yeah. Simpson's sort of like riding around with his feet on his hammer bars with a bowler hat. Although, I guess if you're, you know, even if you're trying to ignore the headlines, if one minute you're the angel of the mountains and the next minute you're Montoya Peepee, then it's going to get under your skin. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And to sort of underpin that, he was a real hero for Luxembourg because Luxembourg had been occupied by the Germans and was trying to rebuild its sort of national identity. and he became a huge symbol of that in the early 50s and the crowds in Luxburg were ervant in their support of him.

25:39But they turned against him really, really quickly and I think in those mid, well, towards the end of the 50s, they started to boo him for relatively small weaknesses in specific races and that really got under his skin and really riled him. Although he was quite a loner, he was quite sensitive to that reception. yeah that's yeah poor guy so is that so 58 is his his tour he's done uh and he does a giro yeah wins a giro in 59 but then why does it sort of peter out for him or did it peter out was there some kind of like shock annexed ending or yeah did he just never quite ascend so high again yeah he just um it did it did peter out over the following four or five years he still showed early 60s still shows flashes of brilliance in the mountains but yeah sort of 62, 63 onwards it just declined and I think by the end the riders were saying it's always embarrassing like he's he's just not the rider he used to be and he didn't he took his time in retirement he kept wanting to come back to the tour he loved the tour so much particularly Von 2 and he was desperate to get a ride in the tour and then at the end of his career He rode for Peugeot briefly and then a small Belgian team, all on the hopes of getting back into the Tour and having those moments of brilliance again.

27:07But it just never happened. And then, because he retired in 1963, but he came back briefly, tried to do a comeback in 1965. And then after that, it was just like, I'm done. And ended up being manager of a cafe in Luxembourg. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, so here we go into the sort of more murky period of his life. And he retired in 65, I think it was, and opened a cafe in the suburbs of Luxembourg City. Wasn't probably the best cafe owner. It wasn't quite clear whose idea it was, but he was pretty unsociable and, according to local legend, drank most of the bar himself. so I think people who went in there hoping to have a few jolly stories about Tour de France and a beer with Charlie were quite disappointed because he was sort of sitting there in silence behind the bar that didn't last very long that lasted a few months he'd had um issues in his he'd been married twice he had issues in his second marriage too around the same time and so the story goes he he closed the bar one day packed a bag and disappeared and went to live as a recluse in the Ardennes forests.

28:25However, this is where it starts to get, hopefully what I've tried to do in the book is unpick the truth from the mythology. So he didn't really disappear. He always had a flat in the city and a holiday house in the Ardennes forests. Pretty modest, sort of basically a static caravan, but, you know, perfectly nice place to live, to go fishing, hunting, walking, really really beautiful area and from 66 onwards into the late 60s he lived there most of the time with his dog Pocky and he just didn't he still saw his friends and family and people he knew to live his life but he didn't talk to the press and I think that became sort of transmuted into who, oh, Charlie's a hermit or a recluse.

29:17And the cycling media almost got a bit upset that they didn't have automatic access to a former Tour winner. And he probably was, on balance, it seems like he probably was depressed at the time, probably was drinking quite a lot. He also had a bad car accident around that time, so he had to recover from that. So he definitely went through some dark times. But the kind of image that people have portrayed of him as a sort of scruffy, bearded recluse living in a hut in a forest is not entirely true. Right, because I think you say in the Skype how even sometimes he'd turn up somewhere and someone would remark upon his suit, for example.

30:00So he wasn't that scruffy, he was really into clothes. And like I said earlier, when he's racing, he's 18, he's 64 kilos because he's an 18-year-old lad and he can probably eat what he wants. and then when he's older he just looks like a regular bloke it's a bit like wiggins but people go oh look he's part it's like yeah he's a thicker set guy than when he was racing but he was emaciated when he was racing yeah and i'm sure someone like chris frome will always be very very skinny but i could imagine like i don't know cavendish going looking relatively normal let's say and yeah pictures i've seen of charlie that he doesn't it's funny he doesn't look like the descriptions of this wild man with a pot belly running around the ardennes yeah exactly and And he was always, he loved Italy and he was really into Italian suits, Italian cars.

30:47He did like the finer things in life. But also he always was into hunting and hunting in the forests of the Arden was a big part of his youth and his whole life. So actually he liked wearing the kind of hunting gear, the greens and the little cap. I want to say jobpers, that's probably wrong. Plus fours maybe. but again so but to describe those as him in being some kind of weird eccentric is probably just a disgruntled Italian cycling journalist I mean it's not such a good story if you can't talk to the guy you've got to write something so you need the reason why you can't talk to him to be a really sensational one yeah so how long is that for is he he's in in the Ardennes not really keeping out of the public eye for like it's probably best part of 10 years or probably a bit more than that.

31:42But by the mid to late 70s, I think his friends thought, well, maybe Charlie's ready to get back into the world a little bit. And he was, one of his friends gave him a part-time job delivering cars from a car dealership. And he loves cars. And he loves cars. And it gets him out and about, you know. And it'd be pretty cool if you're in Luxburgh, you buy a new car and it's delivered by Charlie Gould. You know who he is. And he meets a young woman who's working at the car dealership. And they begin a relationship, get married, and she falls pregnant. And so he becomes a father quite sort of late in life.

32:23Oh, wow. So he's like, what, in his 50s? In his 50s, yeah, because it's sort of around late 70s, 77, his daughter was born, I think. So, yeah, late 40s, early 50s. and he then starts to become more open to talking to the cycling world again, starts going to local events. And again, the story goes that in 1983, there was a tour of Luxembourg. There was a journalist in a race car following the race who was following the peloton, looked out and saw a family standing by the roadside, a man and a woman and a young girl. and he thought, I looks like Charlie Gould. He told the driver to stop the car.

33:07He stopped the car, jumped out, and it turned out it was Charlie Gould who had just come to watch the race. And this journalist, who had always been a massive fan of his, said, can I have an interview? And to his surprise, Charlie said, okay, yeah. So they, Pilo Fonk, for the Luxembourg broadcaster, got his interview. And then the Tour de France came to Luxembourg in 1989, the Grondo Park was there so they sort of helped try to get involved in that and he gradually became more out there and involved in the cycling world again

33:45I reckon a while ago the bike computer market looked all sewn up, there were two big players end of, kind of like how once upon a time group sets meant either Shimano or Campagnolo so there's a wonderful synergy in the fact SRAM busted open the groupset market back in 2006 and now SRAM's computer arm, Hammerhead, is blowing the doors off in the same way with the Hammerhead Karoo. My favourite thing about the Karoo is how much it's like a smartphone. So the touchscreen is really crisp and punchy, so data and mapping, which is way more like a phone's mapping than a classic bike GPS, by the way. Those things are super clear.

34:22But unlike a phone, battery life is a huge 35 hours with GPS on and your ride recording. Plus, it's also way smaller. It's up there with the smallest head units, given what it does. And it does loads, from predicting gradients in real time to making routes on the fly to running apps like Spotify. And it will even tell you how fast you're going. There's a whole lot more that we'll get into in other episodes. But for anyone who just needs things now, now, now, head over to cyclist.co.uk and search Hammerhead Crew 3 to read our in-depth review and find out why we gave it our cyclist recommended badge of honour.

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35:20so what's the context of his retirement next to his contemporaries so you've got ferdy kubler uh swiss you've got bobert and his brother whose name always escapes me john yeah um and on cutiel as well and they're all they all don't particularly have sort of nice endings even though maybe their retirements are actually kind of all right yeah so they're quite a mixed bag so bob a was once he retired he applied the same sort of work ethic and ambition to business which he had for cycling and he started a very successful spa business um with a sort of series of spa centers in britney and beer it's an upcoming brand he sold and quite a successful business but he sadly died of cancer at a relatively young age his brother became a writer but then his brother was always a worker and a team player rather than a star in his own right and then there were other more sort of tragic cases like Kubler who was phenomenally successful good-looking charismatic stylish during his career and really struggled in retirement, which is something we've seen throughout cycling the last 60, 70 years of people who stop and just find it really hard to adjust to retirement because for all the planning you do, I think that just the loss of that status, plus the adrenaline and the kind of just the purpose of being a pro rider is really hard to replace, I think, especially when you're 35, so in the prime of your life.

37:05and yeah Kubler died in a motor accident in the 60s which is possibly was possibly suicide and yeah sadly there's been quite a few cases of suicide depression alcohol problems money problems with former pro riders and I think for me Charlie is often bucketed up in that bracket but actually he kind of he had his dark years but he kind of knew what he needed to survive and get through and that was to be alone basically and to push the whole cycling world away live a quiet life in the place he loved doing things he enjoyed with his friends and it's quite almost quite a good lesson life lesson for all of us i think is that you know you know what you need and be quite ruthless in going after it and how would everything else obey then you're going to get through your darker darker times i was thinking i wonder how much you know it's obviously still very hard but how much harder it would be for a retired athlete now the person that you know the most recent person in the as in the big name that springs to mind is Jan Ulrich yeah how much more difficult his dart period which I think is probably still even happening is because of the internet and you can just track people down you know if some podcast comes out about somebody some random little and then they'll go and find the protagonist in that podcast won't they it'll just be like a completely normal person, let alone if it's actually a huge sports star and you just have to track them, then you can film them and everything else.

38:35Whereas I guess you could actually genuinely disappear a bit more back in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, exactly. And I think back in those days, it was still mainly newspapers, which is the way that sport was conveyed in magazines. So if you said to a journalist, sorry, you're coming in, it's kind of over. There's no conversation. Whereas today, yeah, social media just pervades life in general, doesn't it? So did he sort of, I mean, I guess make his peace with cycling? Because he also had a falling out with the Luxembourg Federation where they didn't give him a coaching job. And presumably that plus the fans that you alluded to earlier, turning on him, then he'd just be a bit like, well, massive toys out the pram I'm off legitimate not toys out the pram screw this for Game of Tin Soldiers that's probably the correct adage did he then sort of like make his peace with those people?

39:35I think possibly the Luxembourg cycling establishment it was always an uneasy relationship thereafter I think there was there's often a sort of scenario where star riders in those small countries are offered the national coach job for a year or two. I don't think Bradley Wiggins has been in the UK, but I know Robert Miller had a bit of a torrid time with British Cycling back in the 90s. And those jobs are sometimes a bit ceremonial, almost a bit of a way to ease into retirement. The Luxembourg Federation, I think, took the call at the time that actually maybe this grumpy, unpopular drug-taking loner, possibly wasn't the best person to bring up the young teenage riders in the camp.

40:25But there's not much document about that, so that's just my speculation, really. In the end, after the Tour de France came to Luxembourg in 1989, he actually took a job at the Luxembourg Ministry of Sports Archive. So he was an archivist and worked there for several years, which is something that the Keep writers loved the idea of, because they wrote about how Charlie could sit in the archive and sort through the ephemera and photographs of his own career and come to peace with himself, which seems to me unlikely, because I think he probably was at peace with himself before that, but I think it probably did suit him.

41:06I went to the archive to research the book and got presented with big boxes stacked full of clippings and photographs and other magazines and so on. And most of them were labelled in quite clear handwriting of the date and the publication. It was only when I left that it dawned on me that probably most of that handwriting was Charlie's. They'd probably gone through and cut out that newspaper article or photograph and then labelled it and put it back in the file, which was quite nice. Yeah, that's amazing. so he died in his 70s 73 or something yeah and he'd been married three times and had a had a daughter so presumably he he yeah he died a kind of a happy family man like he was still with his still with his wife and yeah yeah and he you know he worshipped his daughter i think becoming a father seemed to make him you know deeply happy you can see always see in the photos this just in his face the expression of contentment fabien his daughter you know came involved in the cycling world i think for a while she dreamt of being a racing cyclist herself but she also helped him get back on his bike because she wanted to go out riding and so he said i'll take you out then so um he got some slightly bigger sized lycra and uh and took her out in luxembourg and then they went to vontu and revisited all the places some of the more some of the places that he'd raced and yeah I think there was a lot of nostalgia and sort of looking back in happiness at his career yeah I was trying to work out a kind of timeline because there's the the parallel which you draw between him and Pantani and which he draws himself he becomes a bit of a friend of Marco Pantani's yeah he was and Pantani I think dies a year before does he die before is Charlie Gould still alive when Pantani dies He did, yeah.

43:06So I think Pantani died in 1999 or thereabouts. Right. And Charlie went to his funeral. They were good friends and arguably they were quite similar riders, quite similar stature and style and had their own brand. And arguably then also Pantani didn't quite handle the fame in the same way as Charlie did and became sort of seduced by celebrity and nightclubs and the more glamorous side of cycling. Whereas Charlie was always quite a homebody and just like being at home listening to records and doing a bit of gardening in Luxembourg. And yeah, so Charlie went to his, Pantani's funeral and reportedly was absolutely sobbing his eyes out.

43:50with a really inconsolable loss of Pantani. Yeah, I mean, there's a sort of, because the kind of mystique around Pantani is that, I think the word is like he's drawn into that world, isn't he? He doesn't start there. He is quite a kind of homebody, scrawny young kid, gets really good on a bike, and then just is a bit of a loner, but at the same time becomes like the biggest thing in Italy since Fausto Coppi, and then just kind of wears this, like a bit of an albatross around his neck but then yeah does get into the cocaine and I don't know all that conjecture, the unproven there's a podcast I wasn't there recently about Pantani and like the whole raking over the mafia connection and whether or not there's something onto all which I think is probably just all nonsense Yeah there's been lots of books about it as well I've been having there and I mean maybe there's something about the difference between Luxembourg and Italy there about just the cultural impact on a rider because Lux is both a small place.

44:51Everyone knows each other. It seems that everyone's, I'll say everyone's a huge generalisation, but Charlie anyway had his feet on the ground and just liked being at home, liked what he knew. And for example, there was a time he considered moving to Italy but just couldn't bring himself to do it. He just liked where he was from and just liked going out on his bike and going fishing, going hunting. And that was about it. Yeah. I feel like one of the sweetest and saddest parts of that, like, Twilight Years story is when he goes hunting and he finds an injured, like, wild boar. I want to say cub.

45:29They're probably not cubs, are they? Whatever tiny wild boars are. Yeah, I don't know. And then he, like, nurses it back to health and then takes it to a vet one day who gives it an injection that has a bad reaction to him and dies. And after that, Charlie just, like, gives up hunting, which is, like, his most favourite thing before that. Yeah, exactly. yeah um he and i think he i think when they say hunting in luxembourg i mean on the whole going out for a walk with a rifle but not doing a huge amount of actual hunting um it's just uh being out in the great outdoors and um yeah he was definitely um a sensitive soul and um you know he loved his dog deeply too and uh so i think beneath the stoic sort of loner introverted demeanor which probably wound up a lot of people he was probably quite a gentle kind soul yeah because there's a few references to his contemporaries saying actually he wasn't antisocial he was actually a really funny guy yeah but as soon as you sort of shone a spotlight on him he kind of just balled up a little bit and didn't want to really you know bring himself and i can imagine you know Within the peloton, actually, he probably got on fine with most people.

46:40It's just when you get a reporter in your face five minutes after the race has ended. And the reporters in those days were really, really cheeky. There weren't press officers around. So stories I've seen in other magazines where there's photographers taking pictures of him in the bath or shaving or in his hotel room at the tour. just busting in just busting in and it wasn't managed in the way it is now and wasn't there wasn't a mixed zone where the riders knew I'm being interviewed here they were sort of fair game wherever they were so you can kind of understand why they got a bit prickly when it happened I feel it's a shame because of that I've never seen a picture of Oncatil with a pheasant a woman and some champagne the night before a race as per his famous quote because surely there's got to be someone hanging around taking pictures of those evenings yeah it probably was but maybe the cameras got smashed up but yeah there's that really horrible um bit of footage of uh mercs getting kicked off the giro i want to say and they come into his hotel room with a camera crew yeah and then they tell him then and there and they're filming it and they and he's the guy just bursts and then and this is obviously like mercs is like you know latterly becomes like absolute top dog but he's a much younger rider and you just think like how awful is that yeah to like shatter somebody's dreams and then just be like oh yeah i mean actually allow that we brought the camera with us they we just they just bust in with us yeah yeah there's a lot more respect now for the riders i think in ways it gets a bit stage managed and um choreographed that's the only downside yeah i mean from a sort of like writing point of view as an author do you feel like it's gonna be really difficult to like write a book about more modern stars because they just don't have, the access isn't there, so you just don't know.

48:33And there's no one documenting it as they kind of ride and then grow and then go off into. Yeah, I think back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, the journalists who were in the races with them day in, day out, saw so much that they could write amazing inside storybooks. But now, you know, you really have to be really hard to get access with the riders. And, yeah, arguably, would you really get the deep down stories? I think it'd be hard. Did you feel then you sort of, did you come across Charlie Gaul in connection with like, I don't know, in another situation and think this guy's story needs to be told in a new and different way and probably in an English language way as well?

49:18Yeah, well, I wrote an article a few years ago where I had a sort of idea that domestiques tend to be extroverts and leaders tend to be introverts. Now, it's probably overly simplistic, but I was trying to look at introverts and extroverts and their sort of roles in cycling. And I came across then, I think you just put in cycling introvert and Charlie's quite high up on the Google search list. So then once you read his story, it's intriguing just because it's there, but it's still quite thin. Yeah. Any ideas? Does this, you know, maybe his daughter, I mean, yeah, his daughter probably should, I hope she is, even asking questions, still be alive.

50:01She is, yeah. And has she, have you spoken to her or has she seen the book or anything like that? Any kind of feedback? Yeah. Well, yeah, I met her in Luxembourg and had a conversation. I think it's probably a hard one for her because there's not been that many books about him for a few years now and hasn't been one in English language. So, yeah, hopefully she'll like it. But I think over the period of the book, I came to like him more and more and hopefully sort of feel like I understand him to some degree, but obviously I never met him and his story's still a little bit elusive. There's still cool years without any documentation or record.

50:43So it's hard to... Some of what I've put is putting together what's known and a little bit of speculation and joining on the dots. No, yeah, I really enjoyed it. I'm not going to hand on heart say I managed to read all of it cover to cover. I'm just such a slow reader and there's not enough time. But yeah, I've been smashing it out as much as I can over the last 10 days. It's really good. And it captivated me because I feel like that's a name I've heard. I probably would, if someone said name 20 Tour de France winners, he might just creep in there if my memory serves me. But, you know, it's not a big name.

51:19but actually I love his story because it weaves through so many other kind of like greats and that's just like quite a kind of magic period of cycling I think post-war. It's a little golden era wasn't it? Yeah yeah yeah and I don't know dare I say before there's sort of almost too many rules about what people can and can't take or how races unfold and there's much more I don't know wacky races racing sort of feeling to it. Quite anarchic yeah yeah. Yeah that's the word anarchic. no nice thanks a lot paul that's really good good no no problem

51:52welcome back ladies and gentlemen will what did you think about that interview that i seriously don't think you'll ever actually listen to was i good you were fantastic as always james a natural was it interesting yeah it was absolutely fascinating i think the saddest thing about it is that Charlie Gore ultimately seems like, well, I think later on in life, he's kind of made peace with himself, peace with his demons, but he didn't really seem to enjoy doing what he did at the time. I mean, I'm sure there were moments, but I feel that's the sort of sadness of people that are really good at something is they're only really happy when they're right on top.

52:32And if they're not on top, they're just, it's the artist, isn't it? It's the kind of angry Picasso style, although probably I'm going to say Charlie Gore is probably a nicer person than Picasso because I think we've all realised that Picasso was a bit of a wrong one. Anyway moving on from that, Will do tell me what's coming up in the racing calendar because we finished a summer of France where are we going to next? Yeah it was good wasn't it and nice to finish with finally another French success and I don't know if you saw but I think it was a Le Keep survey of their readers voted Pauline Ferrand-Pravot as the greatest French athlete of all time.

53:13Really? Something along those lines. Even better than Gerald Depardee? Apparently. Apparently she was number one. I might have slightly got the category wrong, but it was something along those lines. I mean, fair play. She's obviously dominated in the Olympics, mountain biking, road racing, you name it. Yes. And I think that there is a greater debate about her place as maybe the greatest of all time. I know there's Marianne Vos, but the multidiscipline thing is something else. But yeah, Spain is next on the calendar. We've already had a couple midway through. The Vuelta de Burgos, it was San Sebastian at the weekend and the Vuelta de España is coming up in a couple of weeks.

53:54Obviously the Tour of Britain in the start of September but we've still got a while for that. The Tour of Britain, big one. Is it going anywhere near your house? It's not but that's partially because it will be finishing with a celebration of Geraint Thomas in South Wales. And I don't live in South Wales. No, I could get over there. It's not too far. Do you think that will actually be G's last race or will there be some, I don't know, celebratory criterium or something else as seems to happen under the radar? And then you look back on PCS and it says there's one other thing he did. Yeah, I feel like he's probably not going to be bothered about doing world championships, but maybe he will.

54:32It depends, you know, he might just be tired and be like, yeah, let's call it. yeah maybe he'll do the tour of Wangxi I would go there I think I'd love to be invited to that it's one of those races that I think a lot of pros turn their noses up at it's an awful lot of travel it's in China by the way you may have noticed from Will's accent but imagine getting a ticket out there just to sort of essentially what I gather I wouldn't say mess around but it's a it's a processional race almost it's not quite you know people contest it but it's one of those you're there to make a spectacle through your presence potentially and sort of bring cycling as a whole as opposed to sort of make something uber competitive and i bet it'd be really fun we did a really good article on that once actually and it sounded really fun yeah the locals offer cigarettes to the riders that's great and as we know now that would have felt their performance that would have helped their performance is that what they were doing all this time smoking away the carbon monoxide training it's genius it's genius and we've had this discussion at work actually, where in a strange way, there's some method to the madness that once upon a time, people did say that smoking increased your lung capacity.

55:40I don't know who said that, but that's apparently a thing. And in a way, it's kind of true because that's how the carbon monoxide training was supposed to work, where it stuck to your red blood cells, as in the carbon monoxide did. And then it means your body goes, ah, there's not enough oxygen. What are we going to do? Let's make some more red blood cells. And then lo and behold, you've got a higher hematocrit level, which is really useful, which is what EPO does. Anyway, there's a tangent. But no, that's how heat training is in. Friendship over with carbon monoxide. Heat is my new best friend.

56:12Well, yeah, I got a press release from I can't remember the name of the company, but they reckon that something like 17 out of the 21 stages of the Men's Tour de France were won by people using their heat measuring devices. Which is pretty big. Core. Good name for a heat measuring device. Core, blimey. but that's pretty mega 17 winners something in it and uh there's also they have their big heat suits that they get they do training and do the heat training on the road um which i think most notably used by uno x who were on their first sort of front stage and had a rider finish sixth overall so yeah it could work it could work well on that note i'm gonna go and pedal around in my thickest bomber jacket.

56:58I'm going to wear a naff-naff bomber jacket. Do you remember those? Do you not remember? There you go. There's a line in the sand. Those who remember naff-naff and those who don't. On that note, Will Strixen, it's been a pleasure. I'll see you again soon, I am sure, or at least I hope. And for now, from us, the Psychics Magazine podcast, catch you in two weeks.

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