CONTENTS

Foreword by Phil Liggett

Author’s Introduction to Second Edition

Preface: Getting It Over With

1 A Boy and His Bike

2 Super Pursuiter

3 The Sparrow Flies Down Under

4 Distance Makes the Legs Grow Stronger

5 The Brittany Landings

6 Classics, Monuments, Marriage and the Tour

7 Darkest Before the Dawn

8 The Major Wears Yellow

9 The Lion Goes from Strength to Strength

10 Tommi Simpsoni

11 ‘I Hope That One Day, Mr Prime Minister’

12 After the Rainbow

13 ‘Put Me Back on My Bike’

Appendix: Tom Simpson’s Palmares by Richard Allchin

Reproduced by kind permission of Jeremy Mallard, from his
limited-edition print ‘Simpson on Ventoux’
 Preface

GETTING IT OVER WITH

When Tom Simpson died on Mont Ventoux whilst competing in

the 1967 Tour de France traces of drugs from the amphetamine
group were found in his body. Similar drugs were allegedly found
in his clothing. There, I’ve said it, got it out of the way right at the
beginning of the book.
Because of this, notwithstanding that the official cause of his
death, arrived at after investigation by the French authorities, was
heart failure due to dehydration and heat exhaustion, to which it
was said that the drugs could have been a contributory factor, Tom
Simpson has been portrayed as anything from a straightforward
cheat, responsible single-handedly for subverting the ethics of
sport, to a hapless victim whose wings got burned flying too close
to his dream of winning the Tour de France.
Neither of these theories are true and both do him, and come to
that the people who propound them, a disservice. Tom was neither
of these. He was a talented, driven professional who paid the
ultimate price for pushing a bad situation too far. He was no cheat.
To my mind a cheat does something his competitors do not and
thereby gains an advantage. This is clearly not the case. Stimulants
such as amphetamines were widely used in cycling in the sixties
and today the sport is still beset by a drugs problem – the events of
the 1998 Tour de France highlight that. Indeed, a drug culture has
existed in professional cycling almost since the first race was run.
As for being a victim, forget it! Tom knew what he was doing. It
was not something he did lightly, too often or without professional
advice.
 The truth is that Tom knew nothing of the dark side of professional
bike racing when he went to live in France in the spring of 1959,
but he quickly realised that sometimes he was beaten in races that
he just had to win by riders of lesser ability who had taken drugs.
What was he going to do? Forget about it all and take the next boat
home? Not Tom; he could never have done that, it wasn’t in his
nature. So, he turned to the people he’d met over there – people he
respected – and, like many before him, and since, he began to use
drugs – stimulants, because that’s what they used then. Not often,
but use them he did, and I can’t change that. It wasn’t something
he was particularly proud of, and I know that it worried him. He
would have liked not to have done it; indeed, as we shall see from
one particular incident later in the book, he was one of the few top
riders who supported what meagre efforts cycling authorities were
making at the time to rid the sport of this problem.
Unfortunately, the part that drugs played in Tom’s death has
been picked over to such an extent that it has overshadowed
everything he achieved in his remarkable career, a career that
more than 30 years after his death has yet to be equalled by any of
his countrymen. I hope that this book will go some way towards
restoring that balance. It won’t be a whitewash. I won’t try to present
him as a saint. I won’t be making excuses for him; he doesn’t need
them. I will just tell you the story of his amazing life, and I hope,
at the end of it all, that you will understand Tom Simpson and why
I felt that this book needed to be written for his sake. Why I could
no longer bear to see a man who had already lost his life, also lose
his reputation.
‘There is nothing to prevent him starting the stage, but everything to
prevent him finishing. He will be riding virtually one-handed.’ Under the
watchful gaze of Dr Dumas and a posse of photographers, Tom struggles
towards retirement during Stage 17 of the 1966 Tour de France.
Tour of Lombardy 1965: Tom, in the rainbow jersey, has ridden
everybody off his wheel to win alone on the Como track by
three minutes – ‘an exploit in the tradition of Fausto Coppi’.