149. The legend of Eddy Merckx, with Lee Donaldson

0:00I've been riding with the Hammerhead Karoo for a fair bit now and beyond the slick screen and the 35 hour battery life I'm really getting into the Karoo's climber function. Now what climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride whether it's a pre-planned route or not and then when that climb comes up this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and colour coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation. so it's amazing for places I've never ridden like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before but the crew guide you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort it's like having a little team ds on your handlebars you can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on it so a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go.

0:59So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award. Then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase. Just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout.

1:23Hello and welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I'm your host, James Spender, and it's just me today. So I'm going to get right on and introduce this week's guest. Now, our guest today is Lee Donaldson, a filmmaker and passionate cycling fan who I think has just completed or is really very close to completing what I'd wager will become. I don't say that lightly. What I'd wager will become the definitive documentary on Eddie Merckx. It's called 525, the unstoppable Eddie Merckx, and it's named after obviously Merckx's insane number of race wins, the sort of number that gets you called unstoppable, rightly so.

1:59And it brings together what Lee describes as the greatest cast of cycling champions ever seen in a cycling documentary. And I know that sounds pretty, that's a big statement, but with contributors, including Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, Lottie Capecchi, Bernard Hino, Sean Kelly, Roger De Vlaming, the fashion designer, Paul Smith, Ernesto Colnago, who built Merckx's bikes and his hour record bike, plus Merckx's family, and of course the man himself, I think saying it's going to be a great cycling documentary is pretty much nailed on. It is an all-star cast, and I reckon it's probably, I don't know how you could top that really, all those people talking about Eddie Merckx, who, you know, he is a hero to those people too, which is a kind of amazing thing, I think, if you've got this rider who raced 60s, 70s, and is now, you know, he's still the king of the sport.

2:51Although, obviously, yeah, we have that discussion. Who's better, Pogaccia or Merckx? Lee shoots me down for asking that question. So, sorry, listeners. And sorry, Lee, for being such a bait journalist. But anyway, I've not seen the film yet, although Lee expects it to be released later this year. But I do love Eddie Merckx at least 60 % as much as Lee does. And I love Eddie Merckx quite a lot. So that tells you something about Lee's passion and his encyclopedic knowledge about the man and the Merck's legend. So I really hope you enjoy listening to this because as much of a kind of self-indulgent vanity project as it was, I really enjoyed chatting to Lee because I've not met anyone that knows nearly as much about Merck's as Lee does and more to the point has actually met the man and all of his family and his mates and some of his biggest cycling fans.

3:40So without further ado, let's welcome to the show Lee Donaldson.

3:50Because, you know, once it's been committed to podcast form, and if it's good, it's going out there. And it's going to be there forever as well. It's going to be there forever for, yeah, your grandkids and grandkids' grandkids to find. I've got grandkids. Well, I've got eight grandkids, so that's quite cool. How old? Two and a half. Nice. Are you feeling... So I've got a kid. She's two and a half. I can see my partner's parents reliving the best parts of being a parent all over again with Romy without having to do all the shitty bits. I think they're really digging it. Well, I don't know if this was your experience, but when my son Jack was born, my wife knew she was pregnant and she felt pregnant.

4:29And I think I was ambushed. I knew I was a dad, but it wasn't until really the day of the birth. I remember I was shooting a music video for a band called Atari Teenage Riot. and my wife went into labor i got home literally gave her a back massage and um her waters burst and we went to the hospital and we stayed all night and it was quite cool because it was st thomas's with a view of of big ben and it was great and then the next day i was harangued to go into the edit i remember walking across walking across westminster bridge and there's somebody playing summertime and i just burst into tears and start handing money to people and like i'm a dad and all that and yeah then it hit me but yeah but the single best thing i've ever done in my life Yeah, it's good.

5:10Romy. Good name. Romy, yeah. Good name. Ah, thank you. Yeah, no, it is great. As you say, single best thing I've ever done. Second best thing I've ever done, and this can segue wonderfully into our podcast chat, was find this guy called Eddie Merckx. This is my genuine passage into road cycling. So I've been a cycling journalist now for 13 years, started off like lots of kids on mountain bikes, and then at some point thought, screw this for Game of Tin Soldiers. mountain bikes are a pain in the ass. They break all the time. They get really dirty. But I do like cycling. I'm going to take up road cycling.

5:45Went on eBay, went searching for a cheap frame, and this aluminium Eddie Merckx popped up. And somehow, without knowing - Was it yellow? It's a sandy yellow color. Yeah. It's an aluminium one, though. So it's not like - Yeah. Yeah. Oval tubes. That's right. It's called an Alu Sprint. Yeah. Yeah. And it looks like the guy that welded it was, you know, he was winding down the clock until he went for his Friday afternoon leaving drinks because the stays are like, the bottle cage doesn't quite line up, but it's a top bike. But I just knew somehow about Eddie Merckx. It's kind of mad. I knew nothing about road cycling, but I knew the name.

6:20As soon as I saw it, I knew the name. He's not going to like you slagging off his bikes, is he? I mean, you're not exactly helped yourself there, have you? I mean, he was meticulous about all of that. He wouldn't, no, but this, I guess, this was, that's the 20th anniversary, but I date it to about 2000 right so by my reckoning mercs had kind of passed well i don't know he was still he was still involved in the company but he'd he'd gone off the steel had gone and the the love of the frame building was not really it was just a brand do you know what i think happened what i think happened i think we should probably agree on is that when it left the factory it was fantastic it was beautiful and then some herbert on some hill climb had a little bit of a dink on it and and you bought it secondhand on eBay, not knowing that.

7:05Because it wouldn't, I can tell you right now, it would not have left the factory like that. Because he had Ugo de Rosa come and teach everybody. He had obviously old Nostal Carnago. If there was one thing Eddie was meticulous about was equipment. Always had the best equipment. So yeah, I don't buy it. But hey, it's a good story. I've still got the bike. It is a fantastic bike. I can take it back and get it sorted for you. I can take it back and get it sorted for you. No extra charge. Do you reckon they could fix a slight hairline fracture in the bottom bracket, which I'm just ignoring? I don't think it's going to be problematic.

7:39No, it's going to get good. It's aluminum. It's going to go at some point, isn't it? It's going to let go. Stress factor. It's just, you know, it's obviously the power you're putting out. It's the power. Oh, yeah. Like, do you know what I mean? Absolutely. Absolutely. But I've owned multiple Merck's bikes since then. I currently just have that one. But somehow that was my way in. but when you and I were talking prior to actually coming onto the pod I was asking you over email how did you find Eddie Merckx? Was it from a love of cycling or just I don't know, how did it come about? I've got to go into the other room for two seconds and I can help you, hold on, two seconds Not done for dramatic effect or anything just thought I'd realise was that that is a picture of my bedroom wall in I think about 72 or 73 so I had And obviously, Muhammad Ali, Bobby Moore in the football shirt, but Eddie Merckx in the Mali Rosa.

8:33And I don't know why. I don't know why because I don't have any history of sightseeing of that age. I did like Elvis at that time. Just he was so cool. And that was on my wall. And I kind of, I cycled a little bit. I rode as a sport. Not rode as in a bike, but rode in a boat as a sport. And then I was always building bikes. I think I built my first bike when I was 11. I suppressed my nose against Holdsworth in Putney on the way to the boat club and built a bike and then got around London really on a bike. My son developed asthma at the age of nine and just was like falling off a cliff and we went to see this consultant and he said well when Jack gets asthma he's just straight to a nebulizer.

9:14He needs to do a lot of sport. So he started swimming and he started swimming and it was quite good competitive swimming but swimming I think it has a really strong bullying culture from coaches. They are brutal. And I went to pick him up and he was looking even more red around the eyes than he would normally. And he got in the car and he just started bursting out. He just burst out crying. And I'm not betraying a confidence. And he just said, he said what they were like. And I said, yeah, I know what they're like. And I said, I'm not doing it. I said to Jack, you know, your asthma is really, really good.

9:43It's kind of gone. You need to do something else. And he just went cycling. You're always on a bike. I went, yeah. And so we lived near Hearn Hill, about a mile from the track. And so I took him down there on a Saturday morning and put him on a bike. And those wonderful people at VCL, I mean, they are amazing. For 50p, Jack cycled all day long and learned how to ride on the bike. And it was at that time where there were quite a few people. Laura Kenny was there. And he just cycled and cycled and cycled. And then he got picked up by Sean Yates and John Sharples. and at the time that he started cycling I said right I'm done and I kind of pushed the Colnago to one side and said I'm not cycling anymore because I didn't want to be that competitive dad yeah and so I said look I'll drive you to races I'll help you but I'm not cycling with you we went up the Tourmalet a few times and we went up the Pesce Road and we you know we did things like that but I made a point of saying this is your sport because it takes the joy out of it so cycling I suppose was always there I just thought it was a beautiful sport and it's very European and I feel very European.

10:46And I think it's, you know, and having had loads of insults wearing cycling gear during my life, I always thought it annoyed people in the right way. And so I think that was quite good. So it wasn't a hard push to think about it. And then I guess in lockdown, I mean, I've been a director for 30 years or so, but in lockdown, I came across an article about Eddie and I just thought, why has no one made a decent film about Eddie since La Corse on Tet or Sunday in Hell in 76? and I just thought well yeah why not why not so I tried to contact Eddie and there's a bit of a wall around Eddie he's quite well protected and it's quite impenetrable and I wasn't getting anywhere but I was kind of getting through to kind of decent journalists that knew him but it wasn't clicking through and I thought okay I think about this a different way so I contacted Axel and it's kind of serendipity really I contacted him the day after he'd said to somebody why doesn't somebody make a film about my dad.

11:40Really? And I literally phoned him. Well, I actually contacted him on LinkedIn. I mean, that's shameless, isn't it? And he emailed me back with a telephone number and I phoned him back and it was literally within five minutes and we just started talking. And we got on. He's a really lovely man. And this film would not have happened without Axel. I mean, absolutely not. I mean, he's been the person that's really steered it through everything. And we knew that we wanted to make a film about Eddie, what made him tick. But from the inside viewpoint, the family is very inward looking they're lovely they're wonderful people and um no one really gets through that everyone talks about us being the cannibal and this kind of this this automaton this robot this kind of but he's funny he's gregarious he's very private and loving and we wanted to just really get to that so we made a decision early on it was quite funny because i started talking to him i then wrote in an old mate of mine simon simon hardy who i made a lot commercials with he was a creative director and um i said uh and it's good he knows nothing about cycling which is great because we wanted the film to have a perspective we wanted to cross over like senna did we realized that the cycling world will want to see it and that's lovely and we want to do them proud and we want to do cycling proud and we realize that people are interested in sports documentaries might be interested in it but we want to tell people who he is who eddie is and the fact of you know just this kind of greatness so um we started to do zooms with axel and then Sabrina, his sister.

13:08And it was kind of during one of these Zooms, I think I said to him, make sure you tell your dad this. And he said, it's okay, he can hear you. I'm thinking, oh, Eddie's off camera. He's listening to the Zoom. And talk about a jolt of adrenaline. I felt like, you know, I felt like I was waking up in a hospital room or something. And so then we agreed to go and meet them. So Simon got on a plane from Vancouver. We were only going to see excellent Sabrina and um we were trying to kind of engineer a meeting with Eddie we're saying we'll take you to lunch we know but I think they were very cool and very clever and um Eddie lives in this house which is a little bit like um it's on a quadrangle so it has an internal courtyard and we're going through the doors and I'm going to Simon this is Eddie's house I've seen pictures this is Eddie's house it's the old factory because that's where they used to make the bikes in the backyard right yeah literally yeah literally well this is just in one wing yeah big wing of the courtyard yeah and so as we're going across i said this is the factory but this is where he lives and axel comes out and um you say hi and stuff like that i can see eddie in the in in just in the doorway and he comes out and says hello i am eddie and i'm going yeah i kind of know who you are and it was surreal so we sat down and we were worried about talking about savannah and blois and 69 and all the sensational stuff that happened there but i thought well let's talk about it let's see where we are and we we talked about that and eddie was great and we tried to get to come to lunch, but they were cool.

14:35They wanted to know who we were first, really. And so an hour and a half went by. We were just chatting with Eddie, you know, and it's really free. And Sabrina's there and Claudine, his wife's there and Axel's there and everything's good. And they're smiling. And Eddie says, do you want a coffee? And I said, yes, please. And he goes and makes me a coffee. And then he brings me a beer. And I said, no, thank you. And then he just says, lunch, let's get lunch. I'm going, okay, we'll get lunch. Fine. He said, but first I show you my bikes. I'm thinking, yeah, okay, we'll have the bikes. So we go around the factory and he's showing us the bikes.

15:02and he's so proud. And then I've got a ratty Volvo, really. I don't have any more, but I had a ratty Volvo. And he said, I come with you. And I went, oh God, my car's so messy. So he gets in the car. And Simon goes in the car with Axel and then Sabrina and Claudine go in another car. And we get to the first junction and I turn around to look. And I haven't forgotten that he's there, but he's there. And I'm going, God. I said, sit back, Eddie. I can't kill you, for God's sakes. So we get to the restaurant and the first thing Eddie says, champagne? I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, great. And then I'm thinking, okay, I've got to pay for this.

15:36Okay, great. And then we have a really amazing lunch. And about halfway through the lunch, towards the end, I sneak off to try and pay. He's already paid. He's already paid. And I say to Eddie, that's amazing. That's been very naughty of you. Next time I pay, but it'll be somewhere really cheap because this place was locked. So yeah, so that's how we met really and um uh it took um it took a long time i mean we we've been filming now for nearly two years and we've been filming very slowly because we wanted to raise the money independently and be able to make the film we we want to make a film which honors cycling um there's been too many polemics too many negative things we wanted to just make a film about this absolute phenom I mean, he's a feed-bomb, isn't he?

16:22I mean, it's just like kind of, it's ridiculous what he did. 525 races in nine years. It's ridiculous. One year, he won 50 races. Two Tour de France's, he won eight stages. 19 monuments. Five Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Three Roubaix. It's ridiculous. 19 monuments. 11 Grand Tours. And so we wanted to try and make something that was about all of that, but also to try and show the fact that he was slightly more than the cannibal. And also it's worth pointing out that they raced, not just Eddie, people of his day, but Eddie particularly. We've got a lot of chat about Pogacar at the moment and I'd like to come to that later.

17:00But if you look at Pogacar's racing season, he's something like, you know, he races a lot and it's something like maybe 60 days, something like that. Whereas Merckx was like 130. So you're racing, racing, more than that? Up, up, up. Oli Ritter, who held the hour record before him, 310 races, 310 days a year. 200 races, they were racing, you know, ridiculous. I mean, I think one year between the Tour de France, in fact, the 74, I think 74, when he was the first person to win the Triple Crown. So he won Giro feeling sick. Then he went straight to the Tour de Suisse. 10-day race, the Tour de Suisse, won that.

17:40Then he went to the Tour, won that. Had a burst kind of blood vessel in his legs halfway through. Then he took 30 days off between that and going to the World Championships. In that time, I think he won 40, no, he raced in 43 criterions. And then he went and won the Worlds. Yeah, because that's something that people often overlook, is the Kermesses and the Crits that they used to do as part of the contract work after the Tour. So now if you finish the Tour de France, I'm not saying that Pogaccio won't also occasionally maybe appear in something. But you finished and then you also really set to work making money for you and your team over dozens and dozens of more kind of just like appearance type races.

18:19but they're all still races and they were races on the track as you just alluded to the Blah Velodrome race particularly that's something we'll start to chat about but he's racing across the board too he's not just doing high mountains or one day classics he's doing cobbles he's doing Tour de Suisse something like that is insanely high and then you're also in the same breath the beginning of your season starts with just the most punishing races of them all, Holy Week Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. No, his season was the six days. He was doing six days from like kind of just before Christmas through.

18:58So he was, his season, I mean, his season was pretty much, I think the Trophée de Baraki, which was that two-minute time trial, was the last race of his season. And then he'd like, he'd have maybe a month and a half off, but he'd be going cross-country skiing and keeping his weight down and stuff like that. And then you have to understand, I think in his best season, I think the most he ever earned was$300 ,000, I think. He had to race because that's how you raised your money. And he could win on six days, obviously. Him and Serku won everything for so long. He could win the monuments. He could win a sprint.

19:33He could win in the mountains. If you took him gravel racing, he could win at that. If you took him mountain bike racing, he could win at that. I mean, it's ridiculous. And I'll put it into perspective. and I do believe that when you compare Merckx, Pogaccia, even Eno, right? It's like saying spaghetti's the same as fish and chips is the same as mushy peas. I mean, they don't compare. But just for reference, this year, Pogaccia, I think, has won 20 races. I think this year, Mathieu van der Poel has won 10 races. They are immense. They are the two best riders around at the moment, I think. Merckx won 50 races in one year.

20:1050. Incredible. 50. So if you added, if Tade had a twin and they combined with Mathieu, they'd be the same as Eddie. It's phenomenal. And I think that what we miss, and he is, I mean, Pogaccio's the first person that's come along that's really, really as good as Merckx. But he's going to have to do some. He's going to have to do 19 monuments. Tade needs eight more monuments. I think he's got 21 Tour de France stages. I think he'll get that. I don't think there's any doubt that he'll get that. Will he get 11 grand tours? Not sure he will. Will he be as good as Eddie? Yeah, people are already saying he's better.

20:46Eddie says he's better than he was. He said that Tade Pogacar is better than him. But the great thing about this situation, I suppose, is that Eddie will never tell you how good he is. He won't. That's why we had to interview the amount of people we had to interview because Eddie just says he was the best of his time and full stop. And it's very, very, very humble and dignified. and that's one of the things that we want to show and we do show in the film, I think. Have you ever come across that quote which is attached to a brilliant picture from a book that came out a couple of years ago about Beryl Burton by a writer called Jeremy Wilson and it's a picture of Merck stood next to Beryl Burton at the funeral of Tom Simpson and it's so, you know, it's just such a...

21:26And Merckx has got that sort of slightly anxious look where he's seemingly almost aware that the camera's there and that's attached to a story of a fan going up to Merckx in, I don't know, 2020 or something, and saying who was the greatest cyclist of all time when he and Burton were getting inducted into this cycling hall of fame. And he just said, Beryl Burton, the boss of us all. And I love that humility and also understanding of a female rider in the days where women's sport grossly underrepresented or at least under publicized. And to know that, yeah, Beryl Burton, like Merck's 525 victories, Burton, much different kettle of fish because so many races, she was amateur her whole career, so the racing is very different, but estimates are about, she probably won about a thousand races, which is insane.

22:15Can I support that and actually say, we interviewed Lizzie Daynon the other day, Lizzie Armistead of old, and I was asking about Eddie, and she won the first Paris-Roubaix for women, and Eddie was, he was out doing press, he wasn't there, he was at some junket that he was expected to speak, and he disappeared. and everyone's saying where's Eddie he's gone like three three and a half hours and eventually he comes back and they said where were you he said I've just watched the most amazing race I've ever watched and Lizzie Daynan won Paris-Roubaix and I just thought that's pretty good you know to be that much of a fan and just just he loves cycling and I think it's in his blood and I think it'll always be in his blood and I can't think of Christian Prudhomme the director of Tour de France we interviewed him and he said that apart from being dignified, the amount of respect he had, he was absolutely brilliant about Eddie, but he said that every single cyclist, old, now, future, has something to learn from Eddie.

23:12And I would say it's true. Yeah. You've obviously done a lot of looking back over Eddie's career, piecing all of this together through history books, but also the roster of people in 525 is incredible. You've got the Vlamink, You've got Claudine, his wife. You've got Axel. You've got Christian Prudhomme. You've got Mark Cavendish. You've got Wiggins. You've got Sean Kelly. You've got Bernard Heena. I could go on and on and on. There's more. You've just alluded to Lizzie Dagan. So when you look back at his career, what do you think was his kind of 1958 Pele at the World Cup moment or Muhammad Ali or Cassius Clay beating Sonny Liston?

23:51What was that breakthrough where the world went, this guy? Well, that's the thing. We called it the Unstoppable Eddie Merckx because there's probably about nine of them. But he would say his most important, and Axel as well would say his most important day on a bike was Marenques at the Tour de France when he won his first Tour de France. And he won it under, obviously, difficult situations. He was eight minutes up. One of his teammates had announced that he was leaving FEMA to go to Maltini. And they were going over the thing, and he asked to get the prime going over the top. And then he thought, no.

24:24And then he told me this story. He dropped down off the Tourmalet. at the bottom, he was a minute ahead. We interviewed a guy called Tony Struken, photographer who was on a bike following Eddie the whole way. Lom Dreusens, his ZS, who Eddie didn't get on with, told him to slow down and Eddie said, I'm just going to go. He bonked. But at that moment, you have to understand that the context of this, he'd been thrown out of the Giro at Savona for questionable, very questionable states. He still says 55 years on that he didn't take anything, that it sustained on his career, that's in the film. And there's lots of things that we go into that kind of, you know, the Giro had 130 riders that year.

24:59He was the reigning champion. 117 of them were Italian. Anyway, so he gets thrown out in shame, goes home, banned from the tour. They allow him to go to the tour because they've obviously sold it on the back of his first tour. He gets in with three days to go. He's eight minutes up. At that time, the tour have just announced that they're going to, if you'll get caught for anything, they're going to give you a 15-minute time bonus. Sorry, penalty. Bonus, that would be wrong, wouldn't it? So he goes on this mad 145-kilometre solo. Coming off the tourmalade is crazy. And he wins by another eight minutes.

25:37He's told his soigneur, Gwilhem Michels, who was also in our film, saying this, that he was going to get 10 minutes. It's going to take 10 minutes. And I've tried for a long time. I've never read. I've never read. I've never read. But I assumed, and I knew this thing, and I just thought, if he's 18 minutes up, which is what he wins it by, the biggest margin since 1961, if he's 18 minutes up and somebody decides to play a dirty trick on him like they did in Savona, he still wins. Yeah. And I think Mario Navigna, his DS at FEMA, he said the same thing. That was his day on a bike. And it was redemption.

26:10The only statue he has in his house of a win is the Hall of Fame from the Giro d 'Italia, which he was inducted in, first of all, before Gimondi, before Motta, before Pantani, I don't know if it's Pantani, I don't know, but the first one, and that, I think that statue represents redemption, and I think he was very badly, very badly treated, but it goes into it in the film, I think at the end of it you'll see where it is, and I don't want to give away too much. I've seen, what do you make of it from a filmmaker's perspective, when, because there's lots of, there's clips, which lots of people have seen, of cameras basically busting into reporters busting into Merckx's hotel room.

26:53They knock on the door. No, they don't. No, they bust in. They do bust in. Yeah, they bust in. So going into his private space, he's just had the news or he gets given the news, I think. He gets given the news. At that moment. He gets given the news, yeah. Yeah, and this is 1969 Gerard Italia, and he's in the lead. And what do you think of that as a kind of documentary filmmaker? Do you look at it and go, I mean, awful, the poor guy, but blimey, that's a moment in cinema. How do you treat something like that? Or do you think, I mean, obviously you've got your sports hat on and you're a fan of Mercs, so you're going to sympathise and say that's not on.

27:27But I don't know, I just think that's an amazing thing. You would never see that ever in sport today, would you? And cycling was so much different in the way it was reported back in the day to any other sport. Well, I think that the race director, is it Toriyani, was known for doing stunts. They burst into his room. They tell him he's been disqualified. Now, bear in mind, he knew he was being tested. He'd been tested nine times already, all negative. When he got tested that day, none of the protocols had been followed. The company that was supplying the mobile technology, it wasn't sanctioned to test.

28:05The only sanctions to test were in Rome, Paris, and Brussels, I think. You had to have all the drug testing done there. But they had this mobile lab that needed recalibration going over the bumpy roads. More than the humiliation of walking into somebody's room and live on television going, you know, straight to these live. And when you watch the footage, there are four guys in the studio saying he's been thrown out, the champion of last year, blah, blah, blah. And what happens is the Giro stops. All of the captains of the team come up to his room and offer their condolences. Nobody believes that he's done this.

28:42He's crying. He's being interviewed live on air. I mean, forget for one moment that he's somebody that you like or somebody you revere or something else. Yeah, it's very dramatic, but so is execution by hanging. It doesn't make it right. The children, Axel and Sabrina, had a very strong view about it. What Axel said was he came back and proved them wrong in the best way possible. When they asked him to come back to the tour, he insisted that he was tested every day. And they said, no, no, no, no. They said, no. I want to be tested every day. Because he wanted to be able to say, look, this is rubbish.

29:17Yeah, with impunity. Yeah, and I think, you know, good on him for that. But Axel said in the film, he said that there was something that he never got back, they took away his innocence, and that he never fully trusted people again. Which is why, probably, it was quite a tough nut to crack in the first place and us get access to him, because they all closed inwards and remained that way. But, you know, I don't know. you'd think that I think we wanted to make the film originally just about 1969 because there is all the drama there you know but we realized there was much more to it you can't you can't show the two three years he won the Giro tour double the the obviously the hour record the triple crown all of the monuments it just seemed too narrow casting really um and there was more character there than that and I think that's the obvious thing and I think that's probably why we started with it.

30:06And 1969 is obviously his breakthrough year. So the answer to your original question, 15 minutes later, and I hope your Edison's going to have a lot of fun with this, sorry about that, is that that was a massive breakthrough. The first win in 1966 at Milan San Remo, he'd left Solo Superior, which was run by Rick Van Looij. There are three people that have won the five monuments. Rick Van Looij, Eddie Merckx and Roger Zavlamic, and he'd been really bullied at Solo Superior. because I think maybe Rick was jealous of this upstart and quite rightly, I'm sure, from his point of view. And so winning that, Eddie said, I knew I could be a pro because he'd been a world champ in 1964, amateur champ, and it's quite hard to transition from amateur.

30:53So he realized by doing that that he would be a pro. Then winning the world championships in Herlin in 67 as a 21-year-old and then just repeating and repeating and then his first tour win at the Giro in 68. Tresin de Lavaredo, who will tell you was his best day on the bike, going up through the snow, overtaking everybody. At the end of it, Jimondi, Felice Jimondi was crying because he put eight minutes into him. And this is Felice Jimondi. This isn't like some schmuck. This is Felice Jimondi. So that would be a big point. The 72 hour would be a big point. There are people out there, you know, I know, there are cyclists out there that might win two races and they've got a career.

31:32This is 525 races. Where do you start? Greg LeMond, I think. Did Greg LeMond win 35 races? I think. I could imagine because he mostly just raced the Tour de France. Yeah. So three Tour wins and two World Championships. Eddie won 50 races in one year. Yeah. I mean, these aren't, as Philippe Gilbert said, these weren't small races. I've been riding with the Hammerhead crew for a fair bit now. and beyond the slick screen and the 35 hour battery life I'm really getting into the Caroo's climber function. Now what climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride whether it's a pre-planned route or not and then when that climb comes up this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and color-coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation.

32:25So it's amazing for places I've never ridden like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before but the crew guide you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort. It's like having a little team DS on your handlebars. You can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on it so a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go. So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award.

33:03Then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase. Just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout.

33:19Lee what was your favourite interview? Claudine his wife. She hasn't been interviewed in 35 years and she said she wouldn't do it. We really wanted her to do it because she is completely the power behind the throne. Eddie would not have done what he did without her. Yes, physically phenomenal athlete, absolutely. But she took everything away. And we asked and we asked and we asked his children. His children asked and asked their children asked. And there was a no, no, I've done it, I've done it. And we had borrowed some of Eddie's shirts, you know, just a world championship shirt from 74 and, you know, the first yellow jersey or, you know, We were shooting them up in one of the rooms.

33:58And we brought them back because we were really worried about, like, these are worth money. We'll take them back. And I cornered Claudine on the door. And she said, oh, thank you. And I said, no, thank you. I said, listen, about the interviews. She said, no, no, no, I'm not doing it. And I said, well, it's going to look funny. Your son's in it. Your daughter's in it. Eddie's in it. Goulain, the soigneur's in it. All of these people are in it. And you're not in it. And people are going to go two and two is seven. and I said, we need to, we need to ask you some questions and she said, she looked at me, she thought about it and she went, okay, I do it.

34:31So, yes, she did and she was brilliant and the 20, we only interviewed her for 27 minutes and I could use 23 of them. She's phenomenal. I mean, talk about strength. I mean, amazing. Tao said a lovely story about Tao cycled for Axel's team, Blistle Development Squad it was at the time and Tao is what, 19? He's obviously going to be an amazing cyclist. He ended up in the bosom of the family, so to speak. And he said that Claudine had made him some eggs one morning before a race. And she was a bit nervous. And he said to us, he said it was really quite beautiful because she's getting me to finish my eggs before Eddie got back from his ride because Eddie didn't believe in eating eggs before a race.

35:14And she's like, you know. And he said it's a really beautiful kind of like way of doing it. We had so many. and Cavendish tells us about, you know, her making him pasta before a race and just saying it's surreal, staying in the house. And like, you know, I know that because Eddie made me a coffee and then he got me a beer or maybe another coffee. You know, it's just this idea that he cares. Christian Prudhomme told us a story about how, you know, Eddie would hold a door for everyone. He said, this is Eddie Merckx. I mean, it's, yeah, it's crazy. So she was lovely and she was just a great interview.

35:49Devlamic was wonderful. I thought he would be tricky, but he was just beautiful. I mean, he was really lovely, apart from the fact that he will only speak Flemish, and that was difficult. Bernardino frightened me, obviously, because I believed the height. Did you go and see him? Yeah. Did you see him on his farm, or did you see him? No. Well, see, we were trying to work out what the best way of doing it was, and I asked a few friends who'd kind of interviewed him before, and they told me what to do and what not to do. And I had this kind of brainwave. I said to Axel, I said, would you interview Bernardino for me?

36:22He went, yeah, yeah, sure. Because Bernard loves him. He doesn't know me. I mean, what am I going to get? Nothing. So they were doing the tour of Normandy. No, tour of Brittany. And he was working on it and Axel's team was at it. So we went out and spent a couple of hours with Bernard. And he was brilliant. Not frightening at all. Don't believe the blero thing. I mean, he's a bit brusque, but a bit wonderful. and he just told us what a champ, you know, what an idol Eddie was of his. We just met lovely people. I mean, you know, Christian Prudhomme's like, like he's been fed into the electricity, like somebody's plugged him up to the mains.

36:58He's just jack in the box. Philip Gilbert, Sean Kelly, Johan Mazeo, Lottica Pecky, Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins. Did you have a translator for Sean Kelly as well? No, no, no, not at all. He's great. He's much easier to understand when you're face-to-face with him. I don't think the television necessarily does him any favours, but what a lovely man. He told us a story about beating Eddie Merckx in a sprint, which is in the film, which is funny. Cavendish, wonderful. Wiggins, wonderful. Sir Paul Smith was hilarious. If you asked me who was the funniest interview, it would probably be somewhere between Bradley Wiggins and Paul Smith, or Sir Bradley Wiggins and Sir Paul Smith.

37:38And I think Sir Paul Smith shades it because he's just funny. well um what so i haven't seen the movie and nor have i not well you've seen all the constituent parts i would imagine seeing all the rushes and stuff but there's a bit so i have seen and everyone can um jump on it now and check out it's a really lovely trailer um for the film and there's a really telling bit in it where you've clearly asked or you've put together edited together a similar sort of question you know describe eddie merks and kadir for example says a great white shark. Wiggins has a brilliant kind of synopsis. He's an assassin.

38:15He would take you out to deep waters and drown you. Claudine, his wife, is much more metered. And I think there's some nuance there, which I'd like you to unpack, because she says he's brave. I think we probably would all agree on that. He's a perfectionist, 100%. Just look at the guy's hair when he's riding, let alone the fact that he carries an Allen key in his pocket. And anxious. And anxious, exactly. So So how did that kind of come out, that sort of dichotomy really, between brave perfectionist, anxious guy? Because they do seem as psyches to be actually quite different. But yet that was Merckx, right?

38:50Yeah, I think people misunderstand that part of it. It's that most people think about, not most people, some people think about Merckx and they go, always adjusting his saddle height, always adjusting his handlebar height, everything. Even when he's riding on the bike, you see him with an Allen key. He would always have an Allen key in the back pocket or a spanner if it was pre-Allen key. And people would say, yeah, that's the result of the accident at Blois. And yes, Blois, hairline fracture in his hip, and it twisted his whole thing out of alignment. He still goes to see a chiropractor now. And that gave him a bit of relief, just the thing up and down.

39:25A good aside here while I'm here, Johan Moseo won the World Championships as Eddie coached him for the Belgian team. And Eddie said to him the night before the race, he said, you need to move your saddle up by one millimetre. Right? One millimetre. And I said, you're joking. And I said, what do you do? He said, Eddie Merckx tells you to move your saddle. You move it. And he won. Now, did the one millimetre do anything? No. But psychologically, he must have thought, I've got this power. Eddie's seen it. I've got it. Absolutely. Anyway, so getting back to the point was that I think that they missed the point is that people confuse the saddle thing all the time with blois.

40:03Yes, that's definitely a point. But I think what's also a point is that Eddie has slight kind of anxiety. So to be in control, control the controllables. Do that. If you're there, you can see it in Sunday in Hell, just before they stop for the strike, the newspaper people are striking, and there's all those newspapers everywhere, and there's a big logjam. They're already into the race. And Eddie goes to the Brooklyn team car and gets the spanner to move his saddle by the oomph. and it's chaos but he's consumed in that moment because I think maybe the chaos around him is stopping him and he wants to get to that point and I think the saddle is getting him to the point.

40:43It's not so much about the comfort, it's about being in control and that's him. But exercising something even if it's not necessarily there but having that perception that you're drilling down into the things that you can control and changing them a little bit. Yeah, we used a quote in the film, I hope we still keep it because we're not sure if we will but we used a quote in the film and we're using it just before Marenkes. And it's a quote from Eddie says, if you're going to do all the work, you may as well be alone. So why work for everybody else? So he does the work and I'm gone. Thank you.

41:11See you later. And I think that's him. He told me a story about somebody, I forget who it is, it's not in the film. It was in conversation. He said about somebody who really liked to eat and Eddie would go a kilometre before the feed zone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm going to take that away from you. and it worked because you know and I think who said it that if you came down in the morning and Eddie was grumpy for a race Barry Hoban said it Barry Hoban said if you came down to the race and Eddie says hello how are you no problem if you come down to the race and he won't talk to you and he's sulky and you think oh my god okay we're racing for second place because that was just the way he was mind space complete mind space can't lose children told us about playing games he won a win you know that was that's his person he is so tell me for people that don't know this is viewers that haven't heard this story tell me about so the crash at Blois Velodrome which curiously and amazingly and that sort of awesome way for the Mercs story happens 69 as you talked about earlier one of many but probably like a breakthrough moment Marenx at the Tour de France reproving himself you know silencing his critics after a horrible situation at the Giro.

42:29And then he moves into more of the off-season, starts doing the kind of contract racing. So he's doing a derny-paced race with Fernand Wampst, who's his derny rider. Thank you for naming him, because so many people don't name him. Which is tragic. I mean, just think, my goodness, imagine just doing something like that and then losing your life in that moment. So, I mean, you can tell the story. But yeah, I find it incredible that after this horrible year that turns into a miraculous year, it then turns back into this horrible year where he almost has, he sees his mate die. That's pretty bad. I mean, it's horrendous.

43:05He suffers a crash that could have been a career-ending crash. And actually, he goes on to win, from the 70s onwards, another 10, I think it's another 10, Grand Tours. So despite the fact that he's never... Another nine. Another nine. Is it another nine? Despite the fact that he's never the same again, and that's a quote from Merckx himself. So yeah, tell us about that day, but also what's Merckx's take on it now or like the people around him? Because I'm sure they will have talked to you about it now in hindsight and I bet it's a different story to the one that you can readily find in magazines or whatnot.

43:38A very difficult day. Gulen was there, his soigneur, lovely man. Gulen, when you meet Gulen, he's like an extra from kind of Goodfellas that's whacked 300 people. You don't mess with Gulen. He's lovely. He's old now, but he's lovely. But he has a presence and he was the guy that was, he was at Mexico. He's always in the background. He's the guy that took him motor pacing. He's the guy that arrived in the morning with the pistols, you know, the little breakfast kind of things to eat and take him out on, you know, he said a story between Savona and the Tour de France in 69. He came home. He didn't want to ride anymore.

44:12Eddie said, I'm done. I'm not doing this. And Goulem said, well, you're just going to hurt yourself, aren't you? So after about a week and a half of inactivity, he decides to get back on the bike. And they were doing 250, 300 kilometers a day. You know, crazy amounts, crazy amounts. And eventually, so anyway, so he goes, wins Tour de France, does the crit season, which obviously commences in crit, which is Blois sits in. So the night before, he's been out with Jacques Enquetil. And they're somewhere, they've been eating seafood and drinking a bit of wine. And Jacques Enquetil gets a bit pissed.

44:45And his wife has to take him home. And the next day, Jacques Enquetil is a bit kind of hungover and stuff. but they're kind of not sure if they want to race because it's raining, they need to make the money, the crowds will come in the rain. Eddie's kind of saying, well, maybe we shouldn't race. Jacques Honcatil wants to race because it's the end of his career and they decide to race. And going around, Ferdinand Wapst wants... It was a bit of a showboat. He wanted to take Eddie to the back and then ride him through everyone on the motor pace journey. Eddie didn't want to because it was a very narrow track and the conditions weren't good.

45:18and I think as they got from, I think it was sixth place, it could be eighth, but I think it was sixth place to coming up onto the shoulder of the leaders. The leading Derny lost the pedal. The Derny bike lost the pedal. It went down. And of course on a track, you're taught to always go up because everyone's going to come down. And for some reason, Fernand sees a gap and he goes down. He gets hit. He's dead straight away. Eddie catapults off. He's got like, you know, leather helmet, you know, leather, a leather helmet. Like the old hairnet ones. Yeah, the hairnet. He lands on the concrete thing and slithers into the grass.

45:55You've seen the picture. Bikes mangled. The nurse is there. Goulam says he was like 10 yards away from where it was. He ran up. He saw Eddie was in a bad way, didn't move him. And the nurse came and she was really, he said, we can do nothing for this one. This one's dead. And then they got Eddie into an ambulance and they took him to the hospital. He's out. He's out for, I think he was out for between, well, some people say 45 minutes. Some people say an hour and a half. Eddie can't tell you the story because he was out. Goulême then goes to find a telephone. No mobiles, of course, 969. And phones Claudine, 650 kilometers from Claudine's home.

46:35And he said, Eddie's in hospital. I'm going to come pick you up. So he drives. No motorways, not really. 650 kilometers. I'm imagining that Ghoulain knowing that he is was probably breaking a few speed limits I would imagine he gets to pick her up in the meantime Claudine's talked to Eddie's mum Eddie's mum says she wants to come too so they go and pick up Eddie's mum they drive back 650km to see Eddie and Eddie's kind of come around by now and you know he's kind of did this ok and he's got a big dash and he's aligned and he's kind of like they're worrying about whether he he will cycle again Claudine is pregnant with Sabrina They're now worried about whether they'll have any money for the baby.

47:15The first baby that's coming along, it's very, very fraught. Then Guillaume has to drive Eddie's mum back the 650 kilometres. He said, I was tired. I'm sure you were. I'm sure you were, Guillaume. And then the king, I think the king sends a plane and they repatriate Eddie and no one's told him about Fernand because you don't, do you? And I think Eddie learns that he's dead maybe the day before he leaves and obviously is very affected by it. And he says, the first thing I have to do to honor Gulen and my wife and Fernand is to get back on the bike. And so I think six weeks later, he's doing a six-day.

47:54And I think he had to retire that first six-day. But can you imagine that? I mean, can you imagine being the prime, you know, imagine being Pogacar or somebody or the best footballer or the best Formula One driver or all that money that's invested into you, that you're getting back on a bike because you need to make the money six weeks later and you don't know what's going to happen and you know he was winning he could never win in the mountains like he did before that had gone but on the flat he said he could still do it time trials flats cobbles if it was about suffering no problem but he didn't have that turn of speed that he had in the mountains before and prudom said 11 11 tour grand tours if he hadn't had blow up you're probably looking at 15.

48:36Yeah. And that's also what shortened his career. You know, he got so hated because he won everything, which is why he got punched on the Puy de Dome in 75. Oh, Tevenet, he was in the yellow jersey. Tevenet was attacking. He was about to try and pick up the last 400, 500 meters. He got punched by that guy. To his favor, it was great footage. Eddie gets back on his bike, and he's got this Adidas see-through kind of like rain mat, and he goes down, and he points at the guy, and that guy gets arrested. But there's a great argument on the side of the road where Eddie's just not engaged. He just points at him.

49:10The gendarmes come in. And then like, what, three, four days later, Oli Ritter and him have a crash and he breaks his cheekbone and his jaw. And to his credit, he cycles on for eight days. And Tevinet gets the world champion on the step when he gets his yellow jersey. And Eddie's there because his team's bonuses were really important and second place was better than nothing. And that's why he had a short career, because he was beat up. And who would allow that? That racehorse, that thing that you invest so much money in, who would allow that? Dignified, I mean, that's the word I would have. We started the film with a lot of people saying one word about him, and no one said dignified.

49:50And I really wanted somebody to say dignified, because that's what he is. He's like Mandela. There's something about him, an aura. Bit of a tangent, but as you're speaking then, and what occurred to me is the recurring question of who is the goat and you know that debate about is it Pogaccio already or will it become Pogaccio what does he need to do and it is apples and pears in some senses again as you pointed out you can't compare but at the same time there are comparisons to be made and one of the distinct differences is in Merckx's day you literally had to race to live even if you were Eddie Merckx.

50:28You didn't just get a whacking great contract and this is no disrespect to any of the modern riders which meant that worst case scenario, your career sort of just finishes with that last contract. You probably got a few quid in the bank provided you haven't made too many mistakes. These guys, like you said,$300 ,000 in a good season, not an awful lot of money. And also, you're sharing with your team who got pretty much nothing if they were lucky. They probably have to sell some of their bikes and their kit at the end of the season to keep themselves going. So it's a really different driver, isn't it, I think, for a cyclist compared to most sports people, which do you get that sense as well from the guys you interviewed?

51:05I do, I do get it. I think the answer to your question is, I don't have an answer. I couldn't tell you if LeBron is better than Michael Jordan because I'm not interested. They're different people. Is today Pogaccia as good as Eddie? I don't care. I mean, you know, that's for them to do. I would hate to be called the next Eddie Merckx because I think that would be, you know, So Cavendish said it beautifully. Because I asked him about the 34 stages, 35 stages. I said, you know, you knew I was going to ask you. And he said, listen, it wasn't the number. It was being in the same sentence as Eddie Merckx.

51:37And then he said, and I'm not going to tell you what he said then, because you've got to see it. I can't waste it. I can't waste it. I can't waste it. So good luck to Pogaccia. I hope he becomes that goat. And I hope that they all, you know, look after yourself, you know, control the controllables. Deal with your own race in your own time. Don't let people get into your head and do all that stuff. I mean, I think that cycling is always different. You have to understand that, yes, your point is very right about Eddie having to race and not getting a$10 million contract or whatever. He was also hauling a steel bike up a hill with like 42.17 itchy wool clothing that weighed probably 15 or 20 times the weight of whatever kit they got now when it was wet.

52:18Saddle sores because you've got chamois on your ass. And, you know, I mean, it's a different, it's almost a different sport. What I do know is the good ones are good in that time. They find a way. If Eddie was now, he'd find a way. And to his dignity, he doesn't get involved in that. You don't hear him say, I've never heard him say he's the grope. He doesn't say it. He just says, I was the best of my time. And, you know, chapeau. What a brilliant attitude. And that's why we had to find so many people to interview, because he won't tell you that. They will tell you that. I mean, Eno said he's his idol.

52:52And if you're not going to listen to what Bernard Eno says, then forget it. The people that we know that we have, I mean, I don't think... I mean, we could have done more people for sure, but I think we covered the bases. I mean, when Roger de Vlamic tells you he's the greatest, when Bernard Eno says he's the greatest, when Philippe Gelber says he's the greatest, when Johan Muzayo says he's the greatest, he actually says he's that much better than Roger de Vlamic, but he does say he's there. As for them, they're more qualified. I just think he's pretty good and enough to spend two years of your life making a film out of.

53:24It's actually more than two, but I won't admit to that. Why do you think there are so few cycling documentaries? Because I think you just pointed out the two ones that have Mercs as the subject, if not the star, La Tette and Sunday in Hell. They're both within a year of each other. You also speak to Jorgen Leth, is that right? The director of Sunday, who's now sadly passed, right? He died in September this year. I spent two days with him in Copenhagen. What a man. What a man. Because he's a real, he does lots of other stuff, right? He's a big Danish, you know, he's a poet, part of the literati.

53:57Yeah, yeah. He's probably out of his time in as much. I mean, my dad's a similar age. And so that 60s and 70s were very different to now. I mean, but I'll just leave you with this, right? I'll leave you with this when we're talking about, I'll move on from Jürgen in a minute. Jorgen was the first person, I think, to put a Wescam in a helicopter or to use a Wescam in a helicopter for cycling, Sunday in hell. What's a Wescam? Wescam is like, it's a gyroscopic mount that you put the camera on so that the vibrations, like a gyroscope, you know those things? So it means that you have a steady camera.

54:32So the first time you had a steady camera in a helicopter and could shoot from above, would the Tour de France be without that? There would be no way. So that idea of putting, you know, did he have 30 cameras? Sunday in Hell is the greatest sports documentary ever made. If I made a film a third as good as that, I'd be proud. He's a genius and a lovely man and his son, Asger, I know really well now. And Asger's one of the last ones. Trier's producers. Jorgen taught all those guys. I mean, that's just fantastic. You just reminded me of those other cameramen that I came across recently back in the old days of motorsport and F1.

55:11where they strap themselves to the canopies of the cars with a camera either going forward or in the guy's face to get shots of them racing. Mental. This film of Graham Hill, I think, with a little Gazap camera, gaffer taped onto his crash camera like here. And you're thinking the weight of that... Yeah, going around the corner, yeah. Your neck's broken. I mean, if you come out. I mean, you know, there's a good story, I think, at the beginning of that Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and the director, whose name I've forgotten, straps the camera to this stag. He wants this stag's eye view, stag's eye view.

55:43I don't think the stag made it. I think the stag was a casualty of thing. But it's that kind of idea. You know, don't condone the stag dying, of course. But it's this kind of idea of... So Jürgen thought like that. He thought... He wanted long shots because he knew that he couldn't control the camera the way that it... No, it's just genius. Anyway, sorry, you were talking about something else. I'll just cut you off. well I just wanted to because I think I feel like we've we've massively overrun already so I'm sorry probably no no no I'm more than happy to talk but I feel like your guy's probably got to get back to the editing suite no I'm good I'm good I want to there's a couple of things I want to mention if I can because I think they're really good I wanted to interview Teo because because he was so endemic within that thing and he was almost like being a child orphaned in the war sent off to this kind of and he landed in this amazing household and I think it shaped him and Tao is really special really special very clever I really feel sorry for him that he had that serious injury and I hope the next year he has a good time but he he told me a story about kind of about Eddie and about how Axl were and about how special they were and how and actually you know what I should let that sit in the film I should just realise I'm giving away Give us the headline go on No I can't I'm really ruining it I'm going to leave it I'm going to do that instead Okay, well, I'm going to ask you a question.

57:08I'm going to swap a story and ask you for a couple more. So behind me, I don't know if you can see anyone that's listening to this. Is there a cycling shirt? There is a jersey. There is an old cyclist magazine jersey that I took with me to the Eddie Merckx factory to meet Eddie Merckx, to interview him when I was really still very green behind the ears. And this was a kind of meeting your heroes moment. And at the end of our day, and also, so this all speaks to the Eddie Merckx that you've painted the picture of. I know for a fact, and I don't think anyone would mind me saying this, that he was paid to be there because the factory and, well, the cycling brand and Eddie Merckx at that point, he was like a kind of ambassador, but he wasn't involved in the business.

57:51And so there was some money, you know, changed hands. That sounds very sinister, but anyway. So you'd think in a way he might be, you know, someone else might be reticent to be there. They just want to get in and out. Not at all. He spent the entire day there. We went and probably did, I don't know, maybe like an hour and a half interview, which is just unheard of for this sort of thing, you know, in our line of work, with someone he'd never met before, who was clearly asking all those really basic, like, what was your, like, best moment on a bike? And, you know, and was incredible, he was just a really, really lovely guy.

58:23And at the end of the day, I got this shirt out, and I said, I know this is really unprofessional, but could you sign this for me? And he was just like, yeah, signed it. And I said something like, oh, I heard on the radio the other day, You know when you do that thing where you're trying to like, I don't know, give somebody something so they like you basically. So I heard on the radio the other day that Mick Jagger has seen more people of any human ever to walk the earth because the Stones have played so many gigs to so many people. He's technically seen the most number of people. But I reckon that you have probably signed the most autographs because I've seen lots of pictures of you doing that back in the day.

59:00And he quipped back, no, I reckon it was the Beatles. I really like the Beatles. and then he just sort of walked off across the room and started singing Michelle. You know, Michelle, my girl. And I thought, when does that happen? When does somebody sort of almost, it's not like he was breaking character, but just show you a bit of themselves, completely unsolicited. And, you know, clearly just, I felt like sort of like level. He could see this fanboy coming out of me and met that with sort of like approval as opposed to making me feel a bit silly. And I thought that was such an amazing moment.

59:34but you obviously you obviously did a really good job because you know you engaged him and you you started that by saying that you know naive and didn't know what you're doing you did know what you're doing you engaged with the man and that's all you need to do isn't it we can ask all the difficult questions in the world i mean we were talking before we started shooting and i asked him how many times he'd been interviewed he does that kind of like that kind of that does that face and doesn't answer and um he said i don't know and i said what three thousand four thousand he said Yeah, probably.

1:00:04And I said, have you ever been interviewed by your children? And he started to smile and gazed, but no. I said, well, they're going to interview you. Axel and Sabrina are going to interview you because I feel that we'll get further to the truth that way. And it was, you know, I interviewed most of the people in the film, but it was really important that the family could control that environment because also Eddie sat there. He knows he's not going to be asked any dickhead questions, right? He's going to be fine. He knows his children, understand his life. So there's a level of sophistication about his life that no one else, even the people that have written the autobiographies, they don't know him like the children know him.

1:00:42And so actually what happened was that we managed to ask more difficult questions than he would have maybe allowed. There were some that we couldn't ask, and maybe we then came around the second time we asked him. And we also wanted to do something. We wanted to interview him in French, and we wanted to interview him in Flemish, because he got a lot of rubbish for being boucher-laz or French-speaking and stuff. And we thought, okay, right, we'll do it. He speaks Italian. He speaks Flemish. He speaks French. He speaks English. I don't know what the rest of it he speaks, but he probably speaks other stuff.

1:01:14But he became, I think he became an object for people to use, to vent and stuff like that. And so getting Sabrina and Axel to interview him. And we also got Sabrina to interview her mum. And it was lovely. I mean, it's lovely. you know, and I think we didn't want to control it. We control, you know, direct a film three times when you're writing it, when you're shooting it, and when you're editing it. And, you know, in finishing, I kind of just wanted to make a film that cycling could be proud of, that would show the great man in a way that you maybe not seen him before. And at the end of it, I think maybe Cavendish says it best.

1:01:52He said Eddie became a myth. It became a myth, you know, that talks in itself enough. and that's like, you know, you became, he did, he became a myth, he is. So yeah, and he's not the cannibal. That was it. He's not the cannibal. He's not the canny. Love it. Love it. So million dollar question, when will this love story about cycling come out and what platforms or cinema releases what are we looking at? Don't know. Don't know. We stayed away from everybody because we didn't want to have people telling us what to do. We just said, we'll raise the money all 100 % privately. Every single pound that we raise came from cyclists and cycling enthusiasts and a couple of sponsors that I can't tell you about, but that'll come out in due course.

1:02:30And we wanted to make the film and present the film rather than having somebody say, oh, that bit, can we have that? Or we don't like, yeah, no, this is it. Because we have to protect the film. So in answer to your question, there'll be something ready to show in the first week of April. We've got a screening in London, a screening in Belgium, and a screening in Milan, which is kind of like cast and crew related. The distributor will get the film in probably March, and then it's up to them, really. And there are people that are talking to us, but I believe in finishing it. Unless somebody wants to make a ridiculous offer now, which they haven't so far, so let's just finish it and make it the best we can make.

1:03:15And fall or survive on the basis of what we want to do. But it's got heart. I mean, that's the thing that we think it has. We have heart, and you're going to see the inside of all these people. So, yeah, I think, you know. I mean, the film's going to have immense heart. If it's getting anything, nearly, you know, even a tenth of the heart that you've given to this and just the passion. Oh, yeah, such a bandied around word isn't encycling the passion, but I've not met somebody who seems so passionate about a project in a long time. Well, money doesn't make projects. Passion makes projects. And as my son, I'm going to quote again, actually, don't half-arse it, Dad.

1:03:52Full-arse it. it's true just I mean if you could find what it is you want to do in life and do it and smile that's it isn't it you've won the ticket already it doesn't matter where it goes you know to be fulfilled in what you do I think that's what Eddie did I think that's what we tried to do with this film and I think that's what people should do people work too much find what it is you love and then it's not then it's not work is it yeah that's the old adage never work a day in your life yeah yeah why fantastic right well I've drunk me hibiscus tea excellent I've talked too much I would like to apologise to whoever's got to cut this because I don't shut up, so I'm sorry for that.

1:04:28But yeah, it's been fun.

1:04:33Lee Donaldson, ladies and gentlemen, I don't have much more to add to that. You're definitely bored of my voice by now. But I will say one last thing. You can check out the progress, the release dates, and also a really cool trailer for Eddie Merck's 525, the unstoppable Eddie Merck's documentary at sixdayfilms.com. So that's six, as in the number six, dayfilms.com, which is Lee's website and film company. So yeah, 525, the Unstoppable Eddie Merckx. Keep an eye out for it. It is going to be an absolute, do I say it? Yeah, it's an absolute banger. It's going to be an absolute banger. Nailed on.

1:05:09Keep an eye out for that film. I really look forward to watching it. And thank you, Lee, for joining us on the Sidecast Magazine podcast. And thank you, dear listeners, for joining us, lending me your ears, and I will be back hopefully with Will in a couple of weeks with another great guest. Ciao.

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