A personal happy birthday to Eddy Merckx from Chris Sidwells and Cycling Legends Media
Like every cycling fan, I know Eddy as the greatest male cyclist of all time. The Cannibal. The man with five Tours de France, five Giro d’Italia, three world road titles, the Hour Record, more monuments and simply more big victories than any other rider in history.
But for me there will always be another connection.
When Eddy came to the Peugeot-BP team as a young professional, the team leader was my uncle, Tom Simpson. Eddy was just starting to be everything he would become, and Tom was one of the biggest names in the sport.
That bond mattered. When Tom died in 1967, Eddy came to his funeral in Harworth. I was a child then, but I remember him being at my grandparents’ house, stood outside on their lawn as Tom’s coffin emerged.
I saw this repeated recently on some old black and white news footage, Merckx to the left of the front door, a bewildered little kid to the right, stood with his mum. At the time I could not possibly have understood the weight of it; who the young man in the dark suit was; what he would be, or how deeply those links would stay with me.
Years later, I spent the first of several happy occasions interviewing Eddy. And always, somewhere in the background, there was Tom. A shared reference point. A human thread running through the history of cycling. Eddy’s stories about him, about their friendship and Tom’s guidance, provided new stories for our book about Tom, Cycling Legends 01 Tom Simpson - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/products/cycling-legends-01-tom-simpson
That’s what Cycling Legends Media is about. Those connections. Not just results, records and races, but the people behind them. The friendships, loyalties, memories, grief and moments that make cycling history a living thing.
Eddy Merckx is the greatest male cyclist ever. But to me, he is also part of a story that reaches back to Peugeot-BP, to Tom Simpson, to Harworth, to my family, and to a childhood memory I have carried all my life.
Photo - John Pierce
