Merckx 69, by Tonny Stroucken & Jan Maes

Title: Merckx 69
Authors: Tonny Stroucken & Jan Maes (with a prologue by Eddy Merckx, translation by Rebekah Wilson)
Publisher: Bloomsbury (by arrangement with Cannibal Publishing)
Year: 2014
Pages: 180
Order: Bloomsbury
What it is: A time capsule taking you back to what many believe to have been Eddy Merckx's finest year
Strengths: Lavish production values, some wonderful photos and some pretty prose
Weaknesses: It's an act of hero worship

I saw him at work in snow, wind and storms. I drove behind him. I saw how he overtook riders who'd broken away. I saw something unique: the directeur sportifs in the following cars stopped to applaud him. When a champion gets his opponents to stop and clap him, he has reached the top of his sport.
~ Bruno Raschi

By the time the 1969 cycling season opened Eddy Merckx was already a two-time world champion (amateur and professional road race) and had won the Giro d'Italia, along with Milan-Sanremo (twice) and Paris-Roubaix. Add in a couple of Belgian Classics (Ghent-Wevelgem and the Flèche Wallonne) and a couple of Italian semi-Classics (the Tre Vali Varesine and the GP di Lugano) and he was clearly the man to watch for the coming season. And that season ... it was the sort of season riders have dreams of. It was also the sort of season riders have nightmares about. A season that swept high and crashed low. The nightmares are famous: thrown off the Giro in Savona having failed a dope test, and crashing on the track in Blois. The dreams, they include three monuments (Milan-Sanremo, the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège) and the Tour de France. Merckx 69 is a celebration of a very special season.

Made up of photographs taken by Tonny Stroucken (with, in the case of Blois, images from a few others) with Jan Maes serving up an epistolary monologue - letters to Merckx, from different points of the season - Merckx 69 covers the full length of Merckx's year, from the early season races, through the Spring Classics, past the Grand Tours, across the critérium circuit and into the Winter season on and off the boards. It is easy to say of Merckx that he was a man for all seasons, was winning in Winter and Autumn and well as Spring and Summer. It's harder to comprehend what that actually means. One aid here is to look at Merckx's performance throughout the year. The race results that follow are just a quick accounting of Merckx's calender, pulled from different sources quickly available but even with some gaps, show just what "winning in Winter and Autumn and well as Spring and Summer" really means.

Merckx opened his 1969 road season in Italy and then moved on to France where - in Aix-en-Provence, "an insignificant preparation race in the south of France" - he "looked into the flower girl's eyes for the first time." The first part of the season culminated with la Course au Soleil, Paris-Nice, where Merckx was up against a host of stars: five Tour de France winners (Jacques Anquetil, Lucien Aimar, Felice Gimondi, Roger Pingeon, Jan Janssen), as well as the nearly man of of the Tour Raymond Poulidor: "It was as if they'd drawn up a mutual agreement. They took it in turns to attack and try to break you. In vain. They had no chance of succeeding and had to bow to your dominant athletic ability."

On the final day, in the second part of a split stage, Merckx time trialled his way up the Col d'Èze - "the only beautiful place on the Côte d'Azur between Nice and Monaco" - and 300 metres from the line the torch was symbolically passed from one generation to the next when the Belgian passed the five-time Tour champion Anquetil. After, Merckx said that if it hadn't been about winning he wouldn't have passed Maître Jacques. But with Merckx, it was always about winning ("I never really wanted to be famous, I just wanted to be first").

Date	Race		Place
Thu 6 Feb	Six Days of Milan (with Patrick Sercu)	General Classification	1st
Fri 7 Feb
Sat 8 Feb
Sun 9 Feb
Mon 10 Feb
Tue 11 Feb
Wed 12 Feb
Sat 15 Feb	Trofeo Laigueglia			2nd
Mon 17 Feb	Aix-en-Provence	87.5 km	1st
Sat 1 Mar	Omloop Het Volk	193 km				10th
Mon 3 Mar	Vuelta a Levante	Stage 1 Elche 112 km		2nd
Tue 4 Mar		Stage 2 Elche to Benidorm 142 km		2nd
Wed 5 Mar		Stage 3 Benidorm to Cullera 141 km	1st
Thu 6 Mar		Stage 4 Cullera to Buñol 182 km	1st
Fri 7 Mar		Stage 5 Valencia to Benicasim 175 km	1st
Sat 8 Mar		Stage 6				5th
Sun 9 Mar		Stage 7 Villareal 75 km			3rd
		General Classification	1st
		Points Classification	1st
Mon 10 Mar	Paris-Nice	Stage 1a Villebon-sur-Yvette 4 km		2nd
Mon 10 Mar		Stage 1b Villebon-sur-Yvette to Joigny 153 km			3rd
Tue 11 Mar		Stage 2 Joigny to Le Creusot 211 km	1st
Wed 12 Mar		Stage 3a Paray-le-Monial to Saint-Étienne 147 km				5th
		Stage 3b Saint-Étienne (ITT) 6.5 km	1st
Thu 13 Mar		Stage 4 Saint-Étienne to Bollène 205 km
Fri 14 Mar		Stage 5a Tavel (TTT) 20.5 km
		Stage 5b Cavaillon to Hyères 207.5 km				6th
Sat 15 Mar		Stage 6 Hyères to Draguignan 137.0 km
Sun 16 Mar		Stage 7a Draguignan to Nice 105 km
		Stage 7b Nice to Col d'Èze 9.5 km	1st
		General Classification	1st
		Points Classification		2nd

Three days after climbing the Col d'Èze, Merckx was descending the Poggio, en route to this third victory in four years in la Primavera. The Spring Classics season had begun. A week and a half later Merckx followed up his win in Milan-Sanremo by adding the Ronde van Vlaanderen to his already bulging palmarès. Attacking 70 kilometres out, on the flat, Merckx infuriated his directeur sportif Lomme Driessens. who tried to convince Merckx to temper his enthusiasm and hold his fire ("Your response to him was to the point, although not particularly godly I heard."). It was proper Flandrian weather that day, and maybe that's why Merckx rode away from the others, he just wanted to get home and out of the rain and the others weren't getting there quick enough. Or maybe - as Maes wonders - Merckx's packed calender meant he didn't get to spend enough time with his wife and, with Claudine waiting at the finish to accompany him to the airport and a flight to Spain, going harder gave Merckx more time in her company.

Victory salute in the Ronde van Vlaanderen

Three weeks after the Ronde came la Doyenne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège. In between was more racing and not much luck: illness took Merckx out of the Spanish race and defeat followed in Paris-Roubaix, the Amstel Gold Race and Flèche Wallonne. They say Merckx was hungry by the time he reached the start in Liège. He said he wanted to be the winner when he reached the finish in Liège. Few knew what to say when he did just that, having turned the last hundred kilometres into a two-up time trial with team-mate Vic van Schil and put more than eight minutes into his nearest rival, Barry Hoban (Mercier).

Wed 19 Mar	Milan-Sanremo	288 km	1st
Sat 22 Mar	Harelbeke-Anvers-Harelbeke (E3 Harelbeke)	215 km				7th
Tue 25 Mar	Gand (Omnium, with Robert Lelangue + Frans Mintjens)		1st
Sun 30 Mar	Ronde van Vlaandern	259 km	1st
Mon 31 Mar	Vuelta a Mallorca	Stage 1 Palma 176 km
Tue 1 Apr		Stage 2a
		Stage 2b Benisalem to Palma 180 km	1st
Wed 2 Apr		Stage 3				DNS
Sun 13 Apr	Paris-Roubaix	264 km		2nd
Tue 15 Apr	Anvers (Omnium)		1st
Fri 18 Apr	Amstel Gold Race	259 km			3rd
Sun 20 Apr	Flèche Wallonne	222 km				5th
Tue 22 Apr	Liège-Bastogne-Liège	253 km	1st

The next major rendezvous on Merckx's schedule was the defence of his Giro d'Italia crown, three weeks after the end of the Classics season. Those three weeks, they were filled with more racing for Merckx.

Fri 25 Apr	Rome (Omnium)		1st
Sun 27 Apr	Omloop der Vlaamse Gewesten	183 km				10th
Wed 30 Apr	La Roche-sur-Yon (Omnium, with Robert Lelangue + Frans Mintjens)		1st
Thu 1 May	Garancières-en-Beauce	130 km			3rd
Sun 4 May	Championnat du Zürich	261 km				4th
Mon 5 May	Yvetot (Omnium)		1st
Sat 10 May	La Trimouille	110 km	1st
Sun 11 May	Bruxelles - Meulebeke		1st
Tue 13 May	Milan (Omnium)			2nd

Lady luck seemed to be smiling on Merckx in Italy. At the end of the race's first week, when the Giro arrived in Terrachina, the Belgian had already won three stages. The last of those three, in Terrachina, was a bunch sprint: "Intuitively, you felt that this would be a dangerous sprint. That's the only reason you rode at the front. But then that darned [Marino] Basso turned up. You couldn't let an opponent win! You persevered and won the sprint you hadn't really intended to win." The story of the day, though, was being written behind Merckx: a stand full of spectators collapsed, killing one young boy and taking out a few riders following the sprinters home. Merckx was spared. As he was spared when a bottle was thrown at him by one of the tifosi, it missing him by centimetres. And spared again when his rear wheel was shunted by a motorbike as the Giro neared Savona.

The Giro's sole rest day came a week later, by which time Merckx had stretched his stage tally to four and was wearing the maglia rosa. In the individual time trial before the rest day Merckx dominated his rivals. The Italians declared him fuoriclasse, an hors catégorie rider. There was then a sense of inevitability about what was to come, even though the Dolomites were yet to appear: Merckx was going to arrive in Milan in the pink jersey and, three weeks later, make his début at the Tour de France. The only question was would he join Fausto Coppi and Jacques Anquetil in doing the Giro-Tour double. And then came Savona, the day lady luck turned her smile - and Merckx's world - upside down.

"You left Hotel Ecxelsior. On the reception desk stood a bouquet of gladioli, the flowers that symbolise moral integrity. They didn't look right there at all. This hotel deserved better, a bouquet of flowers with a pink ribbon. Yes, that should have been there when you passed by to head off to the start. But instead there was just the stupid gladioli. not even in a real crystal vase but a cheap fake one. You didn't pass by to head off to the start. Instead, you set off for home, without any flowers and without the pink jersey. After much deliberation the peloton set off in the direction of Pavia, without you and your team-mates. They didn't allow you into that area. Your bike was loaded and the only thing in your case was disillusionment. Yet I still believe it will turn out all right. In spite of everything, I still believe Savona will only make you greater."

Fri 16 May	Giro d'Italia	Stage 1 Garda to Brescia 142 km
Sat 17 May		Stage 2 Brescia to Mirandola 180 km				11th
Sun 18 May		Stage 3 Mirandola to Montecatini Terme 188 km	1st
Mon 19 May		Stage 4 Montecatini Terme (ITT) 21 km	1st
Tue 20 May		Stage 5 Montecatini Terme to Follonica 194 km				15th
Wed 21 May		Stage 6 Follonica to Viterbo 198 km				18th
Thu 22 May		Stage 7 Viterbo to Terracina 206 km	1st
Fri 23 May		Stage 8 Terracina to Napoli 133 km				16th
Sat 24 May		Stage 9 Napoli to Potenza 173 km				12th
Sun 25 May		Stage 10 Potenza to Campitello Matese 254 km				7th
Mon 26 May		Stage 11 Campobasso to Scanno 165 km				8th
Tue 27 May		Stage 12 Scanno to Silvi Marina 180 km				6th
Wed 28 May		Stage 13 Silvi Marina to Senigallia 166 km
Thu 29 May		Stage 14 Senigallia to San Marino 185 km
Fri 30 May		Stage 15 Cesenatico to San Marino (ITT) 49.3 km	1st
Sat 31 May		Rest Day
Sun 1 Jun		Stage 16 Parma to Savona 234 km
Mon 2 Jun		Stage 17 Celle Ligure to Pavia 182 km				DQ

Signing autographs for fans ahead of the Tour de France

Wed 18 Jun	Caen	58 km
Thu 19 Jun	Sint-Andries	132 km
Sun 22 Jun	National Championships					32nd
Mon 23 Jun	Ottignies	175 km	1st
	Rocourt (Omnium)					4th

Twenty-seven days after Savona - and after much politicking behind the scenes which enabled Merckx's positive test to be excused but not excised - Merckx arrived at the start of the fifty-sixth Tour de France. He may only have been making his grande boucle début but the Tour was already celebrating him, the Roubaix grand départ (where, as luck would have it, Merckx's name had been drawn to be the first rider down the prologue's start ramp) being followed by a visit to Merckx's home of Woluwe-Saint-Peters. And there, in the team time trial on the afternoon of the Tour's second day, Merckx donned the maillot jaune, he leading his Faema team across the line in front of neighbours and friends ("Woluwe was transformed into a southern arena of indomitable joy. [...] Cycling is a modern form of bread and circuses. The winner is cheered and is always right, the losers mocked and derided. 'Win the favour of the people and you'll survive the arena.' It'll be like that all the time from now on. Never again will you have to win the favour of your own people.").

The hero leaves home and sets forth on his quest
promising to return with an armful of
golden fleeces

The next day Merckx swapped yellow for white, his Faema team-mate Julien Stevens donning the maillot jaune while he donned the maillot blanc, which back then was awarded to the leader of the combination classification. On the last day of the Tour's first week the race reached the Vosges and the Ballon d'Alsace. The end of that day might just as well have been the end of the Tour, Merckx had taken the stage win and added to his lead in the combination classification the climbing and points classifications. And the overall. His nearest rival - Rudi Altig (Salvarani) - was at 2'03", all the rest already more than four minutes in arrears. Sixteen days of racing remained. The year before, the Tour hadn't been decided until the last day, Jan Janssen (Netherlands) usurping Herman van Springel (Belgium A) in the time trial finale and winning with the race's narrowest victory margin to-date (38"). All that could be hoped for in 1969 was that the peloton might somehow get its act together and stage a coup d'état.

The coup came on the Tour's seventeenth stage, only it wasn't staged by the peloton. It was staged by the man in yellow, Merckx himself. Across the Tour's history there are hundreds and hundreds of days that just blend one into the other, and there are a few dozen that will never be forgotten. Eugène Christophe in Saint-Marie-de-Campan in 1913. Albert Londres in that café in Coutances in 1924. The thunderstorm between Bayonne and Luchon in 1926. The French team in the Alps in 1930. René Vietto in the Pyrénées in 1934. Jean Robic on the road into Paris in 1947. Fausto Coppi en route to Sestriere in 1952. Federico Bahamontes on the Col de la Romeyere in 1954. Jean Malléjac on the Ventoux in 1955. Tom Simpson on the Ventoux in 1967. They are days that help define the Tour, some showing the race at its best, some at its worst. In 1969 Merckx added one of the best on the road between Luchon and Mourenx.

Between the Tourmalet and the Soulor, en route to Mourenx

"Mourenx was on tenterhooks waiting for your arrival. The applause was like a wind that had blown across the mountains. It had been accomplished. A breakaway that had everything: passion, daring, perseverance, class and emotion. The finish line lay ahead. On an ordinary road, not an avenue fit for a king. An ordinary road, not really worthy of this performance."

After twenty-two days of racing uninterupted by rest days Merckx rode into the Cipale Vélodrome in the Parisian suburb of Vincennes, the last man home in the 1969 Tour de France, adding a sixth stage victory (seventh if the team time trial is counted) to his collection of the maillot jaune, the maillot vert, the King of the Mountains title, the maillot blanc, the combativity award and his share of the team prize. The fans cheered him home loudly, offered none of the coldness they had greeted Maître Jacques with in the Parc des Princes in another era. Merckx's mother and his wife, both were there to cheer him home too. As was Belgium's Prime Minister Paul van den Boeynents, who had brought his jet to Paris to whisk the conquering hero home to Belgium that night.

Sat 28 Jun	Tour de France	Prologue Roubaix (ITT) 10 km		2nd
Sun 29 Jun		Stage 1a Roubaix to Woluwe-Saint-Peters 147 km				5th
		Stage 1b Woluwe-Saint-Peters (TTT) 16 km	1st
Mon 30 Jun		Stage 2 Woluwe-Saint-Peters to Maastricht 182 km				15th
Tue 1 Jul		Stage 3 Maastricht to Charleville-Mézières 213 km				15th
Wed 2 Jul		Stage 4 Charleville-Mézières to Nancy 214 km				39th
Thu 3 Jul		Stage 5 Nancy to Mulhouse 194 km				4th
Fri 4 Jul		Stage 6 Mulhouse to Ballon d'Alsace 133 km	1st
Sat 5 Jul		Stage 7 Belfort to Divonne-les-Bains 241 km				28th
Sun 6 Jul		Stage 8a Divonne-les-Bains (ITT) 9 km	1st
		Stage 8b Divonne-les-Bains to Thonon-les-Bains 137 km				29th
Mon 7 Jul		Stage 9 Thonon-les-Bains to Chamonix 111 km		2nd
Tue 8 Jul		Stage 10 Chamonix to Briançon 221 km		2nd
Wed 9 Jul		Stage 11 Briançon to Digne 198 km	1st
Thu 10 Jul		Stage 12 Digne to Aubagne 161 km			3rd
Fri 11 Jul		Stage 13 Aubagne to La Grande-Motte 196 km				32nd
Sat 12 Jul		Stage 14 La Grande-Motte to Revel 234 km				31st
Sun 13 Jul		Stage 15 Revel (ITT) 19 km	1st
Mon 14 Jul		Stage 16 Castelnaudary to Luchon 199 km				4th
Tue 15 Jul		Stage 17 Luchon to Mourenx 214 km	1st
Wed 16 Jul		Stage 18 Mourenx to Bordeaux 201 km				56th
Thu 17 Jul		Stage 19 Bordeaux to Brive 193 km				34th
Fri 18 Jul		Stage 20 Brive to Puy-de-Dôme 198 km		2nd
Sat 19 Jul		Stage 21 Clermont-Ferrand to Montargis 329 km				62nd
Sun 20 Jul		Stage 22a Montargis to Créteil 111 km				54th
		Stage 22b Créteil to Paris (ITT) 37 km	1st
		General Classification	1st
		Points Classification	1st
		Mountains Classification	1st
		Team Classification	1st
		Combination Classification	1st
		Combativity Classification	1st

Merckx then set out on his victory Tour, that Shadow Tour of critériums and track races that follow and celebrate the main event, cycling's new hero taking time out on the Monday (before racing in Aalst that night) to meet the King and the Queen of the Belgians in Laeken and on the Thursday (before an evening critérium in De Panne) to parade through the streets of Brussels in an open-topped car ("It was like being in America. Confetti flew through the air and fluttered down onto you and Claudine. They lined the streets in their thousands: people hung from the windows of tall buildings just to get a glimpse of you.").

The conquering hero gets his triumph

Once, the Belgians had ruled the Tour, for a time maybe even squeezed the life out of it. Odile Defraye, Phillipe Thys, Firmin Lambot, Léon Scieur, those four men had won every edition of the race between 1912 and 1922. They were followed by Lucien Buysse, Maurice Dewaele, Romain Maes, and Sylvère Maes who added another five titles between 1926 and 1939. The Belgian rule of the Tour, it began before the First World War and ended before the Second, eight Belgians delivering 11 Tour titles in 24 editions of the race across 28 years. Across the next 29 years and 22 editions of the Tour another eight Belgians could deliver no better than podium places: Brik Schotte (1948), Stan Ockers (1950 and 1952), Jean Branckart (1955), Jan Adriaenssens (1956 and 1960), Marcel Jannsens (1957), Jozef Planckaert (1962), Herman van Springel (1968), and Ferdinand Bracke (1968), with Van Springel having come closest to ending the drought. (Belgian cycling was not without its heroes in those years, they were the eras of the two Riks, Van Steenbergen and the Emperor of Herantals, Van Looy.)

Of the men who had stood atop the podium in Paris, Thys, Scieur, Buysse and Romain Maes were still alive to witness the birth of a new Belgian hegemony at the Tour. All bar Scieur (who was ill and would die in October that year) were on hand to greet Merckx when he was paraded through the streets of Brussels. As was the original Belgian, Cyrille van Hauwaert, the man who had lit the torch by winning Milan-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix in 1908, inspiring his compatriots to turn Belgium into a cycling nation.

Mon 21 Jul	Aalst	100 km	1st
Tue 22 Jul	Renaix	81 km		2nd
Wed 23 Jul	Woluwe-Saint Lambert	75 km	1st
Thu 24 Jul	De Panne	115 km		2nd
Sat 26 Jul	Denderleeuw					DNF
	Rijmenam	110 km		2nd
Sun 27 Jul	Vincennes				3rd
	Vincennes (Omnium)		1st
Tue 29 Jul	Guerlesquin	104 km	1st
Sat 2 Aug	Remiremont	106 km	1st
Sun 3 Aug	Commentry	100 km			3rd
Mon 4 Aug	Château-Chinon	110 km	1st
Tue 5 Aug	Paris-Luxembourg	Stage 1 Paris-Rethel				4th
Wed 6 Aug		Stage 2 Rethel-Luxembourg	1st
		General Classification	1st
Sun 10 Aug	World Championships (road)	Zolder				DNF
Mon 11 Aug	Lokeren	80 km		2nd
Tue 12 Aug	Ostende (Omnium)		1st
Wed 13 Aug	Turnhout	85 km			3rd
	Honselersdijk	74.7 km		2nd
Fri 15 Aug	Londerzel	60 km	1st
Sun 17 Aug	Saussignac	90 km	1st
	Moorslede	90 km	1st
Tue 19 Aug	Bilzen	100 km			3rd
Wed 20 Aug	Auvelais	56 km	1st
Tue 26 Aug	Villeneuve-sur-Lot			2nd
Sun 31 Aug	Vincennes (Omnium)			2nd
Wed 3 Sep	Alès	96 km	1st
Sun 7 Sep	Châteaugiron	117 km			3rd
	Vincennes (Omnium, with Julien Stevens, Gerben Karstens + Andres Gandarais)			2nd
Mon 8 Sep	Châteaulin (Circuit de l'Aulne)	150.7 km	1st

A month before Léon Scieur died Eddy Merckx almost beat him into the afterlife. It was September 9, a Tuesday, on the concrete track of the Pierre Tessier vélodrome in Blois, France. For most of the 50 days since the Tour had ended Merck had been on the road, shuttling from one race to the next ("This was no longer the life of a cyclist, but the life of a gypsy. In the morning an appearance in Belgium, in the evening a race in France ... I counted them: between the end of the Tour and that fatal fall in Blois, you raced in 36 critériums."). Blois was just another day, another race.

The fall

The crash killed Merckx's Derny pilot but left the Tour winner - wearing his maillot jaune - with concussion, which caused him to be hospitalised. The other injuries were more lasting and wouldn't even be noticed for a while. And before they were, there was time for yet more races.

Tue 9 Sep	Blois					DNF
Wed 17 Sep
Sun 21 Sep	Schaerbeek	80 km	1st
Mon 29 Sep	Saint-Genesius-Rode					DNF
Thu 2 Oct	Trofeo Baracchi (TTT, with Davide Boifava)				3rd
Sun 5 Oct	Gand (Omnium, with Julien Stevens)		1st
Mon 6 Oct	Oostrozebeke	115 km		2nd
Sat 11 Oct	Soumagne	147.5 km		2nd
Sun 12 Oct	A Travers Lausanne	Stage 1				5th
		Stage 2 (ITT)				5th
		General Classification				6th
Fri 17 Oct	Cologne (Madison, with Patrick Sercu)		1st
Sun 19 Oct	Scorzè	108 km	1st
Sun 26 Oct
Fri 12 Dec	Six Days of Charleroi (with Julien Stevens)	General Classification		2nd
Sat 13 Dec
Sun 14 Dec
Mon 15 Dec
Tue 16 Dec
Wed 17 Dec
Thu 18 Dec
Thu 25 Dec	Gand (Omnium, with Roger de Vlaeminck)		1st
	Gand (Madison, with Patrick Sercu)			2nd
Fri 26 Dec	Charleroi (Omnium, with Ferdinand Bracke)		1st
	GP de Wallonie (Charleroi)		1st
Sat 27 Dec	Anvers (Omnium, with Jacques Anquetil, Rudi Altig + Harm Ottenbros)		1st
	Super Prestige Pernod		1st

Merckx 69 is a record of what many believe was Merckx's best year, of what was certainly the most important in his cycling career. It is not a record of all the races Merckx appeared in, not even a record of all the races he won that year, instead it is a selection of the best, broken into 12 sections (one to open the season (which includes some images from previous years), one for the Col d'Èze, three for the Spring Classics, two for the Giro, two for the Tour, one for the post-Tour celebrations, one for Blois, and one to round the collection out). The strength of Merckx 69 is its narrow focus, 12 'moments' from one year in Merckx's professional career. Stroucken doesn't have to select one solitary image to sum up a whole race, he can present a selection of images which have the space to breathe. And tell a story.

Each of Merckx 69's sections comes with a brief introductory text and a two-page letter from Jan Maes, which add colour to Stroucken's black-and-white photographs. Maes doesn't offer up race reports, rather he offers a fan's response to the events depicted by Stroucken. If you've already read Daniel Friebe's Eddy Merckx - The Cannibal, William Fotheringham's Merckx - Half Man, Half Bike or Jan Backelandt's Merckx 525 (or any of the Giro, Tour or Classics books that are out there) you will probably be familiar with the detail of the victories (and of Savona and Blois), in which case Maes's text adds depth to those accounts by approaching the subject from a different angle. If you're new to the Merckx canon, Maes says enough to tell you what you need to know of the detail to understand his response to those events depicted. And his response to those events really is what his words are all about.

Two criticisms. The first is that Maes is a fan and fans write hagiography. Maes's words are love letters from a fan to his idol. Merckx is treated like a cycling God, there is no criticism, no questioning. As beautiful as Maes's polished prose is - and it is a thing of beauty - I personally would prefer to see some sandpaper taken to the legend, get to see what is really behind the gilt. The other criticism is that the book only offers black-and-white images. I love black-and-white but colour photographs from the 1960s and 1970s have a peculiar beauty, partly (I think) coming from the film stock but also coming from the sport itself: the jerseys of the time were cleaner, simpler, not the cacophony of colour that came later, they used strong, primary colours, and used them in moderation (the red and white of 1969's Faema jersey, for instance). These, though, are minor points, rectified by the reader referring to the rest of the Merckx canon (four books in three years and doubtlessly more to come with all the fiftieth anniversaries about to rain down upon us).

After the Tour was over, being whisked back to Belgium by government jet