Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal (15 page)

It was now after lunchtime, and all those continuing their journey, their Giro, had left Merckx behind. The cycling world that seemed to spin like a basketball on his fingertip had stopped turning at ten o’clock that morning. Claudine, Van Den Bossche and Valente remained in the room, their attention all on him. ‘Milan’ and ‘this afternoon’ were among a handful of words that penetrated the daze when Valente spoke. Van Den Bossche pulled on a grey turtle-neck sweater, Merckx his zip-up tracksuit top and they began gathering their things.

Gladioli – the symbols of moral integrity, but also of a gladiator’s sword piercing the heart. They were still in reception when Merckx left.

benefit of the doubt?

‘Eddy, if I hug you, it’s because you’re an honest lad. I don’t make a habit of embracing Judas.’
A
DRIANO
R
ODONI

PROFESSOR GENEVOSE, WHO
had watched Doctor Cavalli perform the ‘B’ test, agreed there could be no doubt: the concentration of the offending substance was ‘
altissimo
’ – extremely high. And yet for hours, days, weeks and years after Vincenzo Giacotto had delivered his mortifying verdict, doubt is what continued to flourish.

If it hadn’t been for the clear empirical evidence staring him in the face, not even Genevose would have believed it. He was on the race as the riders’ medical representative, and had got the call at four in the morning: one of the five riders tested the previous day – Roberto Ballani and Marino Basso, respectively first and second in Savona, Merckx the
maglia rosa
, and the randomly selected Enrico Paolini and Luciano Luciani – had tested positive. Genovese threw on some clothes and hurried to the mobile laboratory where Cavalli was waiting to test the second sample. Only four hours later, when the second test was complete and had yielded the same conclusive result as the first, had Genovese discovered that the sample belonged to Merckx.

‘I left no stone unturned before accepting the result of the analysis. I didn’t know who the test concerned, but I pleaded with Doctor
Cavalli
to keep checking
ad nauseam
. I can tell you that we were even more careful than on Gimondi’s case [in 1968], so horrified was I by what had happened. I can rule out any imperfections in the analytical procedure. Everything was done technically perfectly.’

The professor’s reaction was no different from anyone else’s: how and why now, in Merckx’s ninth test of the Giro and at the end of a stage almost devoid of difficulty? The Ferretti team’s directeur sportif, Alfredo Martini, called the idea of Merckx cheating in this context nothing less than ‘a joke’. Martini pointed out that the hardest climb on the road to Savona had been the three-kilometre, 2 per cent Piani d’Invrea – barely a ripple on the Ligurian coastal cruise. And as the race leader and holder of the pink jersey, Merckx knew that he would be tested.

Everyone, indeed, had greeted the news with disbelief and disgust. Not at Merckx but whoever or whatever was responsible for what was surely a grave miscarriage of justice. The most outspoken were those who had already encountered the same ‘problem’; yes, it was amazing how their language could change, and the euphemisms flow, months after the event. Adorni had had his own little ‘mishap’ at the Giro di Sardegna in Faema colours the previous year. ‘It’s impossible. We should all protest and go home,’ he fumed now.

The chorus of discontent contained many variations on the same refrain.

Gimondi, himself positive the previous year: ‘It’s impossible. I know Merckx as a rider and as a man. Now we should protest and all go home.’

Motta, also shamed in the ‘68 Giro: ‘You would have had to be stupid…and Merckx is extremely intelligent.’

Altig, nicknamed ‘The Cycling Pharmacy’ after his admission in one French cycling magazine in 1969 that he was smart enough to
use
products that didn’t show up in urine tests: ‘We’re exposed to the actions of some stranger who offers you a drink, and you don’t know what it is that you’re swallowing.’

Gastone Nencini, the directeur sportif of the Max Meyer team, whose injections had so appalled doctor Enrico Peracino in his racing days: ‘The riders shouldn’t start today, out of solidarity with Merckx.’

The handwringing was understandable coming from either current or recently retired riders. Part of it was sympathy – if not for what they all seemed to think were improprieties in the test, then at least with Merckx for getting caught. Their outpourings also reflected the power he and Faema now wielded – not least their capacity to mete out suffering in the bunch. Because there was another thing that no one believed: Merckx’s affirmation, in the rawness of his distress, that he might give up cycling. They all knew that he would be back in the peloton and inflicting pain as soon as his ban had ended.

As far as his countrymen were concerned, within hours, that had become the key issue: if not clearing Merckx’s name, then how to get him back riding in time for the Tour. The Giro had left Savona with a new leader, Gimondi, who tomorrow would finally pull on the pink jersey relinquished diplomatically today, erasing all trace of its previous incumbent. The Giro was over – at least for Merckx. His father, Jules, had asked an Italian journalist who called the house shortly after the news broke whether Eddy could still be readmitted to the race once his innocence was established. Jenny seized the phone out of her husband’s hand and roared, ‘It’s a scandal!’ She then reached for and puffed on a cigarette for the first time in her life.

No, the priority now was to have the sanction lifted and Merckx’s good name restored in time for the Tour. Giacotto had set about the task even before leaving Savona. The Faema manager summoned the journalists Gianpaolo Ormezzano, Michel Seassau and René Jacobs
to
witness Merckx give a urine sample, which was then taken to a private laboratory in Milan for analysis. Faema were also soon studying other options, or perhaps ‘loopholes’ was a better word: Giacotto recalled that every team had been asked for its written consent to the testing arrangements presented to them on the eve of the race, and that Faema had agreed only verbally. He informed the race jury, who immediately called the Italian Procycling Cycling Union (UICP) in Rome. There was nothing doing – as far as UICP were concerned, Faema knew and had agreed to the rules like everyone else.

It was now late in the afternoon. In Savona in the morning, an impromptu gathering of senior riders had mooted the idea of a strike, before finally deciding that the show would go on for any other rider and so should for Merckx. Under cold and grey skies, their speed in the first hour had been that of a funeral cortege. Normal service and a brisk pace had then resumed before the Dane Ole Ritter’s decisive attack on the run-in to Pavia. It was impossible to know whether some of the banners at the roadside had been prepared before or after the rude awakening of a few hours earlier. ‘Merckx, you’re greater than Charlemagne’ said one.

Merckx’s ‘best friend’ in the peloton, Italo Zilioli, was covered in his blood when he crossed the line. Somehow, a huge shard of glass from a jar had embedded itself in one of his sandwiches and shredded his lip as he ate. As often seemed to be the case with Zilioli, when it rained, it poured.

Merckx and his downfall monopolised RAI’s
Processo alla Tappa
. As Italians often do, the panel seemed to voice identical opinions while at the same time bickering furiously. The consensus above the racket was that Merckx was clean and had been wronged. The issue had already assumed such proportions that the most famous Italian journalist of all, on any subject, Indro Montanelli, was asked to wade in. ‘The other
riders
should go home and boycott the rest of the Giro. Merckx’s innocence is proven by common sense, if you ask me,’ he sniffed.

Again, contempt was directed not at the alleged crime, but, somewhat bizarrely, at the anti-doping institutions and procedures. The president of the Professional Riders Association, Fiorenzo Magni, had stated rather alarmingly that, ‘Merckx’s problem has always been anti-doping.’ Magni went on to explain, ‘Other riders have said that they don’t feel protected. It’s true: anti-doping lends itself to deception. We’ll get to the point where we have to flee the hotels, where we’ll have to eat in a caravan outside. The anti-doping law is a scam.’

Merckx, of course, had already ‘fled’ to Milan, more precisely the Hotel Royal. He was still crying intermittently, between threats to abandon cycling. At eight o’clock, his teammates left for Belgium from Linate airport. The telephone lines between the two countries had been humming all afternoon as the case rapidly turned into a major diplomatic incident. A telegram was already on its way to the Faema bosses from the Minister of Flemish Culture, Franz Van Mechelen, saying that he was saddened and had already demanded a full investigation from the Italian authorities. Another was winging its way from the Belgian Foreign Minister Pierre Harmel to his Italian counterpart Pietro Nenni, calling for a resolution of the ‘mystery of Savona’. Hundreds more, almost all expressing solidarity, had been picked up by the cleaning lady at Merckx’s home in Tervuren.

Speaking of diplomacy, Driessens had already excelled himself. ‘Eddy was the victim of a plot dreamt up by jealous people,’ he blustered. ‘What did he eat and drink on the rest day? Someone must have put a banned product in his food or drink. In Italy you can’t trust anyone or anything.’

Meanwhile, in the Hotel Royal, Merckx tossed and turned in his bed as Claudine slept next to him. He replayed everything that had
happened
in that mobile laboratory in Savona for what seemed like the hundredth time in his head. He, Giacotto and Marino Vigna, Faema’s directeur sportif, still had many questions. Why had the officials not informed Merckx that his A-sample was positive, or for that matter waited for his authorisation to open and test the B-sample, as per the protocol? How was it that some teams had known that Merckx was positive on the night of his test, hours before the rider concerned had found out – this, at least, according to Vigna? Who was behind the rumours that had circulated since the start of the Giro that Merckx would be ‘eliminated’ before Milan? What did that person know about what had occurred in the last 48 hours?

The night had brought no rest and the morning came abruptly. Merckx rose wearily from his bed and pulled on grey slacks, a light green turtle-neck, and blue jacket. At nine o’clock, he and Claudine drove in their white Mercedes to the airport to collect the secretary of the Belgian Cycling Federation Maurice Moyson, and took him back to the Hotel Royal.

At around the same time, all over Europe, people were waking up and opening their newspapers. In Belgium, Merckx may not yet have equalled the popularity of Van Looy, but there was nothing like a foreign conspiracy to whip up a bit of patriotic fervour. In Francophile Wallonia,
La Dernière Heure
spoke of ‘a Machiavellian’ affair and the high probability that someone had spiked Merckx’s drink or food. The other big Walloon paper,
Le Soir
, questioned the legitimacy of the mobile lab unveiled amid such fanfare before the Giro.
Le Soir
pointed out that only three labs were officially recognised by the International Cycling Union, and they were in Rome, Paris and Gent. The French paper
Le Parisien Libre
also noted that, in France, A and B tests also had to be carried out in different laboratories, which hadn’t been the case here.

La Gazzetta dello Sport
’s Bruno Raschi had been the unhappy witness of a ‘bitter episode’, having gone with Giacotto to break the news to Merckx.
La Gazzetta
ran a picture of Merckx in tears on the hotel bed on their front page, the headline ‘Merckx forced out (positive in a medical test)’ and six pages of reports.
La Stampa
led with the more dramatic ‘Merckx disqualified: requiem for cycling’. Italian writer Giovanni Arpino complained in an editorial that ‘Because of an error or maybe even some ploy concocted by a third party, that greatest rider of our age, Merckx, a man as clean and pure as water, has to abandon the Giro and in all probability the Tour. Let’s say
grazie
to the organisers and the doctors.’

The centrepiece of that paper’s coverage was a photograph of the product believed to have been found in Merckx’s urine. It contained the banned substance fencamfamine, was sold commercially as Reactivan, and was produced by a pharmaceutical company called…Merck.

Midway through the second day after cycling’s apocalypse, Tuesday 3 June, a routine had already started to set in. It consisted of meetings, interviews, more tears, multiplying conspiracy theories, sleepless nights, postponements of Merckx’s return to Belgium and more threats to abandon cycling – and it lasted three days. It was also utterly inconclusive except as a gauge of Merckx’s standing in Belgian and in international sport. That and, possibly, as a challenge to the received wisdom that dope testing was a force for clarity and credibility in a sport dogged throughout its lifetime by cheating.

Merckx’s problem was that with every fanciful new theory, every unwavering yet seemingly unfounded pronouncement of support by an official or leading commentator, old resentments began to spawn. At times it could all look and sound like a conspiracy to absolve Merckx, not to condemn him. Shortly after he had fetched Moyson
on
3 June, the president of the International Cycling Union (UCI) Adriano Rodoni flew in from Switzerland. He immediately wrapped an arm around Merckx, who was again sobbing. ‘Eddy, if I hug you, it’s because you’re an honest lad. I don’t make a habit of embracing Judas,’ Rodoni whispered in his ear, within earshot of Belgian reporters. The next day, one Flemish paper issued a heartfelt ‘
Grazie signor
Rodoni’ on behalf of its readership, while another railed against Giro organiser Vincenzo Torriani for not turning a blind eye, even if Merckx’s sample was positive. The weekly magazine
Sport 69
alleged that Torriani had orchestrated Merckx’s demise out of spite towards the Tour de France and its director Félix Lévitan, who would again be deprived of the sport’s biggest star in July. There had been talk of Lévitan postponing the start of the ’69 Tour by three days, until after Merckx had served his one-month ban. Alas, this would be ‘impossible’, the Tour chief admitted.