De Bobet
I’ve become a little bit obsessed with Louison Bobet of late. It’s the Tour de France Centennial hoopla that brought him back to my attention. Seeing black and white photos of Bobet in the mountains really showcases how epic the tour is – both in terms of the physical demands of the race and in consideration of the historical sweep of this event.
Little Louis got his first bike at age 2. Legend has it, he was a bicycle messenger for the French underground resistence during World War II. Now that’s some serious bad azz cycling.
I imagine it as cyclocross with secret documents and Nazis. Call it Cyclo-IronCross.
But cycling in the war was just a warm up to his professional career. Bobet won the Tour De France three times in a row from 1953 – 1955. And as Wikipedia tells us:
His career included the national road championship (1950 and 1951), Milan – San Remo (1951), Giro di Lombardia (1951), Critérium International (1951 & 52), Paris–Nice (1952), Grand Prix des Nations (1952), world road championship (1954), Tour of Flanders (1955), Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré (1955), Tour de Luxembourg (1955), Paris–Roubaix (1956) and Bordeaux–Paris (1959).
Not too shabby. But what caught my eye in the TDF centennial minidoc were Bobet’s shorts.
In ’53, Bobet rode for Stella. Those kits had serious fucking panaché. Dig the way the Stella logo wraps around the leg. Oh why oh why isn’t someone designing cycling bibs like that anymore? I know Rapha’s got that look but I want some Stella shorts.
But cycling shorts don’t make the man. (Or, for that matter, cycling stats.) There’s something more. Something you can catch a glimpse of in photographs. A certain look in the eyes. A steely something to the gaze.
Bobet’s got those hard eyes.
The eyes of a fighter.
Or a hunter.
Or a mafia don.
Or a heating engineer in a retro-future world.
Is it just me or does Bobet look a lot like De Niro?
Just a Rule #5 reminder.