le grimpeur

The grimpeur in decline?4
Guy WR posted in Posts on February 22nd, 2010

A recent debate hosted by Cosmo Catalano on climbers in cycling raised two important questions: firstly, is there such a thing as a pure climber, a grimpeur; secondly, are pure climbers – assuming that there are such riders – becoming rare, due to better training by non-climbers and doping.

To address the first question, your author offered the following definition of the pure climber: the riders that win many mountain stages off the front and only ever rarely win a grand tour (though many famous ones have done so). They duke it out for the mountain points and leave the flatlanders wallowing – unless those flatlanders can also hold their own (Anquetil, Hinault, Fignon, LeMond). (more…)

Cooling off with le blaireau1
Guy WR posted in Posts on February 7th, 2010

A cold and rainy day in Vancouver might have been a good day for your author to complete his series of posts on Greg LeMond (see part 1, part 2, and part 3) , or to perhaps do some further research on an upcoming feature on the 1983 Tour de France and the arrival of the Colombians (much to the chagrin of Laurent Fignon, apparently).

Instead it was an opportunity for blog maintenance (finally replacing the lost pictures from a very early feature on the Col de la Croix de Fer), which was a reminder that le grimpeur first hit the blog-waves in January of 2007. While looking for the lost pictures, one classic shot jumped out of the file: a favourite of Cor Vos, part of a feature done for Pez Cycling News.

The picture captures Bernard Hinault at a light-hearted moment; for such a serious rider, there were – at least in this photo – some brief moments of levity. Whether he had words for the water thrower, though, is left undisclosed in the photo. If Hinault’s expression subsequently turned sour, perhaps the words he uttered might not have been fit to print anyway – in any language.

Back in the archives, too, is a feature on le blaireau and his climbing methods. For those readers who have not been following this blog from its inception, perhaps you may enjoy the article while the work on new features continues…

Climb like a badger – May 2007