Jan Raas had presence. He was a powerful bike rider with a powerful personality. Strong, fast, durable, Raas was the cobbled classics rider of his generation with victories in the Tour of Flanders (1979 and 1983) and Paris-Roubaix (1982). He was road race world champion in 1979, and he won his Dutch home classic, Amstel Gold Race five times.
He won lots of other single-day races, as well as stages in grand tours, and he would work for others. There were no days off in stage races for Jan Raas. He was an incredibly loyal team-mate, but not a man to disrespect, as some Italian fans discovered to their cost in 1979.
The story comes from Raas’s TI-Raleigh team soigneur, Ruud Bakker. He was Dutch and knew Raas well. Soigneurs know all their riders, not only caring for their bodies but when required for their mental wellbeing as trusted confessors.
The Italian incident happened the day after the 1979 world championships in Valkenburg, where Raas scored a home victory in the men’s professional road race. As usual in those days loads of contracts were waiting for him to sign for well-paid exhibition races all over Europe, including one next day in Italy. Ruud Bakker did the journey with him, so we’ll let him tell the story.
“Jan thought it was a two-man team time trial because he’d contracted to ride the race with Henk Lubberding, but it wasn’t. It was an individual time trial, and he hated those.
“He was in a bad mood when he started, but the Italian fans added to it because they were very hostile. The reason was, the day before in the worlds their big star, Giovanni Battaglin had crashed in the finale, and the fans blamed Raas.
“It got bad, through one section they were spitting at him, then someone knocked his handlebars and he fell. I was driving behind, and I really thought Jan was in danger, so I picked him up, got him and his bike in the car and started to drive off.
“But then Jan opened his car door, and you could hear it hitting the fan’s shins. They were hopping about, shouting and screaming, and Jan was shouting back: “You can boo Jan Raas, but you don’t spit and you don’t knock his handlebars.”
You can read more stories about the TI-Raleigh team in the second edition of our Cycling Legends collection, TI-Raleigh here.
📸 John Pierce, PhotoSport International
