José Luis Viejo, 2013

6 July 1976. Stage Eleven: Montgenèvre to Manosque

224km. Mid mountains

His is a name that is only ever mentioned in connection with one obscure but impressive achievement. Otherwise, it has faded from the cycling record books; and in any case, it was never in bold type. A career, in short, that passed almost without note or notice.

Apart from one stage.

He meets you at the train station in Azuqueca, a dormitory town thirty minutes east of Madrid. He is not tall but wiry, grey-haired, wearing silver-rimmed spectacles and a striped shirt. He drives you in his modest car to his modest first-floor apartment. And in his living room he shows you his trophy cabinet, which is large and has pride of place, and suggests the record books might be lying; or at least not telling the full story. There is a glut of silverware; three shelves, packed with trinkets, ribboned medals and big-eared cups. A bronze medal from the 1971 amateur world road race championship, where Freddy Maertens was second; a trophy for winning the amateur Tour of Poland, the only Spaniard ever to do so; awards for stage wins in the week-long stage races that pepper the Spanish calendar.

Now in his early sixties, José Luis Viejo can also boast of a fifth overall finish in his national tour, the Vuelta, in 1977. But that is not what he is known for. Instead, his fame, if it can be called that, is of the pub quiz variety. The biggest winning margin by an individual rider on a stage of the Tour de France? That would be José Luis Viejo, on stage eleven in 1976.

It is a historic feat, yet one that earns only a couple of pages in Geoffrey Nicholson’s wonderful The Great Bike Race, a book that tells the story of the Tour through the reporter’s travels on the 1976 race. Nicholson’s book is all the more remarkable for it being a pretty unremarkable edition of the great bike race. In fact, Viejo’s achievement was one of the most notable things to happen, but Nicholson doesn’t dwell on it; he wasn’t to know that the record would endure into a fourth decade, and is unlikely ever to be beaten. For Viejo himself, it is the source of great pride, but also frustration. Not least because the true story, or his story, is not the official one.

‘José Luis Viejo is not a name that anyone has bothered to conjure with so far in the Tour,’ writes Nicholson. He mentions a couple of minor placings, ‘but the proper function of this long-faced, twenty-six-year-old Castillian has been to cater for the needs of the two Super Ser stars, Luis Ocaña and Pedro Torres.’ Which, says Nicholson, ‘is not a particularly thankful job when the stars themselves are waning.’

Viejo’s best performances – the 1971 worlds, the Tour of Poland – were as an amateur. As a professional, his problem was that he was good at everything rather than excellent at any one thing: ‘a proficient climber, sprinter and time triallist – a coureur complet, if not of the highest rank’.

The stage began on top of Montgenèvre, where the previous day, a stage won by Joop Zoetemelk, had finished. It looped south, through the Hautes Alpes and Alpes de Haute Provence, with four category-three climbs in its 224km. It was a classic transitional stage after two tough days in the Alps; it would be followed by a rest day and then four days in the Pyrenees. It’s a stage that is wedged in between these decisive and difficult days, which perhaps offers a partial explanation for the strange events of 6 July 1976.

Nicholson described the scenery, spectacular and ugly at the same time – ‘an oppressive landscape of rocks striped like cross-sections in a geology textbook. Pipes the size of brickyard stacks ran down the mountainside with no attempt at concealment; red and white pylons marched brazenly down the valley; the Durance was flowing like lava’ – but concedes that it is a day when not much is expected to happen. This might explain why he and other reporters race ahead and stop for coffee in Embrun. It means they miss ‘the start of a puzzling sequence of events’.

Freddy Maertens, in the midst of winning eight stages, claims the hot spot sprint in Embrun after 54km. Nicholson reports an attack at this point by Viejo’s team-mate, José Casas, his second attempt of the day. Eight riders try to follow, ‘including the unknown warrior, Viejo’. Then Nicholson tells us that Viejo goes alone, and bridges up to Casas, joining him as they ride through the feed zone at Savines-le-Lac after 64km.

For 10km, the team-mates ride together, says Nicholson, building a lead of four minutes. Which is unusual enough: a breakaway consisting only of team-mates. But then something odder happens: Casas sits up. He is not dropped; he voluntarily returns to the peloton. It leaves Viejo on his own with 160km to go. ‘A pure suicide mission,’ as Nicholson puts it.

The climbs lie ahead of him: the Col de Saint-Jean at 97km, where Viejo’s lead has increased to twelve minutes; La Javie, 40km later, where he is twenty-one minutes ahead; Poteau de Telle after 183km; and finally Mont d’Or on the six-kilometre finishing circuit. In Digne, a little before the third climb, his lead stretches to twenty-seven minutes. He had started the day seventy-seventh, forty minutes down, so he poses no threat overall. And behind him the peloton switches off. Nicholson again: ‘The race was quietly getting on with its own business and making no demands on anyone, but the Spaniard was moving along in a world of his own.’

Up front, our lone leader rides powerfully, even brilliantly. Observers are forced to admit that even if he has been let go, he rides with strength and grace, ‘dancing round the corners’ on the Poteau de Telle. At one point he punctures, ‘which costs him precisely 22 seconds,’ writes Nicholson. When he arrives in the finishing town of Manosque, he still leads by over twenty minutes. The peloton is still more than six kilometres from the town, where they will have to ride the six-kilometre finishing circuit.

Viejo’s ride around the finishing circuit could be a lap of honour. He crosses the line with both arms in the air. Then he stands ‘on the platform and watches the peloton pass through like any other spectator’.

Finally, twenty-two minutes and 50 seconds later, the other riders finish. Twenty-two minutes and 50 seconds: the biggest winning margin by a single rider in the history of the Tour then, and still a record to this day.

The inquest followed. The reporters spoke to the riders, directeurs, and tried to piece it all together. ‘It was only afterwards that we found the explanation,’ wrote Nicholson. The race thus far had been a disaster for Viejo’s team, Super Ser. Ocaña, the winner in 1973, was past his best. Torres had been King of the Mountains the same year as Ocaña, after so many battles with Eddy Merckx, finally triumphed. But neither Ocaña nor Torres was performing well in 1976.

Now, according to Nicholson, the management ‘delivered an ultimatum; unless the team put on a show before Manosque, it would be withdrawn’. Ocaña and Torres, though below par, would not be allowed any freedom. And so Casas and Viejo were ‘detailed … to do or die this day’.

Nicholson writes: ‘The rest was diplomacy. As the bunch rolled along, Ocaña explained the team’s predicament to Van Impe and the other leaders; and though he may no longer be a contender, he remains a person of influence among them. Casas they would not accept; although 29:32 down overall he could still cause some upset if his escape got out of hand. But they could see no possible harm in Viejo … If he went off alone, they agreed not to make things too difficult for him.

‘So Viejo was given his freedom, but no more, it seemed, than the freedom of a condemned man to choose his last breakfast.’

* * *

Thus was written the official story of Viejo’s stage win. There was no asterisk next to his name, but there might as well have been. He had been gifted the stage; it was a consolation, an example of solidarity by the peloton; a charitable donation to a team in trouble.

Only, this is not quite how Viejo remembers it. Even the reported length of his escape, he says, was wrong. He says he was away for 194km, not 160.

It is true he was under orders to attack. His directeur sportif, Gabriel Saura, had ordered aggression. ‘He said the Tour was over for Luis, and that we had to go for stage wins,’ Viejo says. ‘So I attacked after thirty kilometres.’

What about Casas, the team-mate with whom he was reported to have joined forces? Casas attacked before the first feed station, confirms Viejo. But he had been brought back by the time he launched his own bid for freedom. Viejo attacked through the feed station, he says. Etiquette dictates that the racing is neutralised here, as the riders collect their musettes, so was that fair? ‘Hey, everything’s fair in racing,’ protests Viejo. ‘In fact, Merckx used to do that, pick up his food before the feed station and then attack so that his rivals wouldn’t get the food. And so did Maertens in the Vuelta he won [1977].’

Yet Viejo’s break was pre-arranged, wasn’t it? ‘No,’ says Viejo, with more than a hint of indignation. So there is no truth to the story that Van Impe allowed him to go, as a favour to Ocaña? ‘None whatsoever.’ Nor, he adds, is it true that he was ever with Casas. ‘There was a guy chasing behind me, some Dutch guy not on our team, but they caught him on the big climb [the Col de Saint-Jean]. I attacked alone, and then I kept going and for about thirty kilometres I was at a minute, a minute and a half, and Van Impe’s team wouldn’t let me go.

‘Finally, I ended up getting half an hour’s advantage, and my time gap would have been bigger but I punctured on a seventeen-kilometre climb, a front wheel puncture. It took a long time to repair, because my team car had dropped back at that point to try and find out what the time gap was. I was so far ahead that the race radio frequency had dried up. So I lost a lot of time waiting for them to come back up to me, and change the wheel. Maybe a minute and a half.’

It is the idea that his escape was easy, that he was simply allowed to go, that most frustrates Viejo. Especially the story that he was given a pass by Van Impe. Of all people, Van Impe! ‘Just look at how the bunch was a minute and a half behind me for thirty kilometres,’ he says. ‘There were times when I could see them, just behind me; I could actually see them chasing, and I thought, “These bastards are going to get me.”’

So why did they eventually give up – as they must have done, given the way his lead expanded so dramatically? ‘There was a small classified climb and Van Impe lost a lot of team-mates there and that’s when they sat up. And from then on, I got time. But the stage was not easy at all. About fifteen or sixteen riders were eliminated; they missed the time cut. And it came right after the Alps, so everybody was tired.’

Behind Viejo, in the Super Ser team car, were his team’s assistant directeur sportif and Jaime Mir Ferri, a moustachioed, larger-than-life character who became a feature on the Spanish scene in the 1970s. He was part soigneur, part public relations man. But he was also an actor, appearing in 125 movies, mainly crime films, between 1970 and 1994 (with his moustache, he also made a convincing Mexican bandit). Four decades on, Mir Ferri is still around; him and his moustache, still larger than life.

On the day of Viejo’s great escape, Mir Ferri was in the team car, yelling encouragement. ‘Mir kept on telling me, “Take it easy, you’ve got it won!” But I didn’t believe him, and in fact nobody knew what the time gap was, because the race kept on splitting up behind. Even so, I didn’t feel weak, not at all. I was on such a good day that day and I’d been strong all the way through the Tour.’

Viejo says he had seven minutes’ advantage after the first climb, the Col de Saint-Jean, not twelve. ‘I thought the big names would attack there and start to pull me back.’ But his lead kept building, and building, and building. Yet, throughout, he was oblivious because the radio contact was so patchy – partly, though he didn’t appreciate this at the time, because he was so far ahead. Even on the finishing circuit he wasn’t sure he would hang on. ‘There was a climb in Manosque, through the town, which we had to do twice. It was maybe three and a half kilometres or four and starting in the city, but a real wall. It was tough.

‘And just coming over the top of that climb was where I thought, for the first time, I could win it. By that point we’d completely lost contact with Radio Tour, even when the car dropped back. It only went back so far before they had to come back to me again. It was only when a race motorbike which used to buzz around with food and water for the riders crossed the divide between me and the chasing teams and told us what the gap was, that I realised I was going to win.’

Second time up the climb he knew, for sure, he had it. The peloton hadn’t even reached Manosque yet. Still, ‘I wasn’t interested in starting the celebrations early. I wanted the win too badly and I wanted to be sure of it before I did.’ Viejo admits that his stage victory ‘saved my team’s Tour. It happened on 7 July, which was the day of San Fermín, so that was good, too.’ San Fermín is the patron saint of Pamplona, where Super Ser had their headquarters.

What should we make of the inaccuracies in Nicholson’s – and others’ – reports? The truth may lie somewhere between Viejo’s and the reporters’ versions of events, since what is clear is that the information on the day was jumbled. If Viejo himself didn’t know what was going on, or how big his lead was, then how could reporters (especially if they had stopped for coffee in Embrun)?

Inadvertently, the episode highlights one of the most challenging yet also fascinating aspects of covering the Tour, especially in the pre-Internet, pre-live television feed age. The close relationship between newspapers and cycle racing was forged in the earliest days when the written word was the only medium by which the action could be conveyed. Unlike other sports, held in self-contained arenas, road races happened largely out of sight. It meant they were perfect for newspapers; it is no accident that the Tour de France, and so many other races, were founded and organised by newspapers, in the Tour’s case the precursor to L’Equipe, L’Auto. The reports of road racing were dramatic, poetic, florid; full of epic deeds, tales of suffering and heroism; and frequently speculative. They relied on the testimonies of participants who could, of course, be unreliable witnesses, because there was no way anybody could know everything that had happened. For years, writing about the Tour could be as much the work of the imagination as the reporting of hard and verifiable facts – hence novelists, playwrights and poets were sent by their newspapers to cover races such as the Tour, Giro d’Italia and Paris–Roubaix.

It’s what makes cycle racing such a rich subject for writers. A goal in a football match can be pored over; the build-up can be analysed; its context can be understood by watching the rest of the match with your own eyes. In a road race, despite the probing gaze of television cameras and photographers’ lenses, much remains unseen and unknown, even to many of the participants. The mystery is a big part of the appeal. It also means that the reports are not always accurate, and that the full truth sometimes does not emerge until later. Years, or even decades later. Or not at all.

* * *

What of the man who holds the record for the biggest margin of victory on a stage of the Tour de France?

The impression one has, speaking to Viejo, is that he looks back on his career with some disappointment; that he feels he did not fulfil his potential, either because of wrong decisions, a lack of confidence or flaws in his character. He wonders what else he might have been capable of, even at that 1976 Tour. ‘It was clear I was pretty strong because the next stage [after his win] finished at Pyrenees 2000 and I got eighth. In about ten stages I finished in the top ten, including eighth on the Champs-Élysées. And now that time’s gone past, I realise that if I’d worked more for myself, I’d have done a lot more.’

Viejo had started cycling at sixteen. ‘There was a village bike race here and I rode it on my family bike, which was a racer, just for a laugh. And I won. After that, I bought a better bike to race as an amateur. The following year they offered me a place in Federico Bahamontes’ [amateur] squad, La Casera-Bahamontes.’ Bahamontes, known as the Eagle of Toledo, was Spain’s first Tour winner, in 1959, and the winner of the King of the Mountains six times.

‘I won quite a lot of good races,’ Viejo continues. ‘The Vuelta a Navarra, the Vuelta a Toledo, some of the best in Spain, the Valenciaga, and in the international sphere I won the Tour of Poland and in the GP William Tell I twice got second – and that’s the hardest race there is out there [for amateurs] because at that point in the season everybody is building towards the world championships.’

There is another unforgettable, harrowing memory from his amateur days. ‘I took part in the Olympic Games in Munich, and from our building you could hear the shots when the Palestinians kidnapped the Israelis.’

But it is his Tour of Poland win from the same year, 1972, that stands out. He is still the only Spaniard ever to win, and to go there in the midst of Franco’s dictatorship cannot have been straightforward. Yet going was the easy part, says Viejo. ‘On the last stage, where I was winning everything, the mountains, the points, the lot, I had a thirty-seven-second advantage on a Polish rider, and the Polish national trainer got all the riders from the different regions together and told them to race against me. And they were pushing him along, pulling his saddle so he’d not have to pedal so hard, and it was so obvious what they were doing that the Swiss and the Italians opted to help me, just because they didn’t like it.

‘The race itself was very well organised, although I remember the food and conditions were awful. We got an invite as the Spanish selection, and to tell the truth it was pretty rough. It was very flat, minus a couple of short hilly stages, four or five kilometres long, but there were a heck of a lot of cobbled sections and a heck of a lot of people. We got to stadiums for the finishes and they’d be packed.’

It was Bahamontes who became the dominant influence on Viejo’s career, but not a positive one. ‘In La Casera-Bahamontes, Bahamontes was the technical director. He had a lot of character and I don’t really think he was a good director because of his personality. He wasn’t cunning enough to handle a team of amateurs. Then I turned professional with [the professional version of the team] La Casera-Bahamontes and that was the worst thing that he did to me, because he made me turn pro with his team even though Dalmacio Langarica [the KAS directeur sportif] came down here to Madrid and wanted me to sign with them. The problem was Federico made me keep my word. I’d promised to turn pro with him and when I told him that KAS wanted me, and for a lot more money, too, he wouldn’t let me go, he said I’d made a promise. And I hadn’t signed with La Casera, but I couldn’t break my word, either. Which was a mistake on my part.

‘The problem was that there was a pre-established hierarchy at La Casera. It was like doing military service: the more experienced were automatically superior to you. I had done some good rides as an amateur, even against riders like Freddy Maertens. But in La Casera, even though I was better than guys like José Luis Abilliera and Andrés Oliva, I had to work for them because I was younger.

‘I won a couple of races, and then I went for Super Ser [1975] and I raced the Tour. I finished the Tour but there were people with more reputation and prestige like Ocaña and [Swiss rider Josef] Fuchs you had to work for. There were team-mates who would pretend they hadn’t seen when the big guys punctured; but I did, I always waited for them, I’d be the first to do that.’

His stage win in the 1976 Tour was certainly the high point of his career. Viejo finally got his chance with the KAS team the following year, and finished fifth in his national tour, the Vuelta. The next year he won a stage in the Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco, but abandoned his final Tour in 1979. Then he spent a couple of seasons with Teka before joining Zor for his final year, in 1982, ‘a much more modern team, and Pedro Muñóz was the leader. And Pedro had a good chance in the Vuelta, but, as for me, I went down with gastroenteritis, and after a few bad days I had to abandon. I won a stage of the Vuelta a Asturias, but I went down with brucellosis and I went to the Midi Libre before being really cured of the illness and I had to abandon. Then I went down with another illness, typhoid fever, and that was enough. I decided to quit.’

In retirement, he ran a bike shop in his village, which closed in 2008. Now he has an office selling lottery tickets – a common occupation in Spain – which employs his daughters. He has four daughters and one son, who isn’t interested in cycling.

His stage win at the Tour remains in the record books. His twenty-two minutes fifty-second margin of victory may never be beaten. But it didn’t change his life. It didn’t even do much for his career. Geoffrey Nicholson’s description was apt; then again, he is one of many unknown warriors.

‘No, it didn’t change my career,’ Viejo says. ‘But it’s the biggest stage race in the world, and that does make me proud. Proud that the record has stood for so long and proud I got there alone. Because going away in a group of three or four riders would be very different. They could get a half-hour lead easily.

‘But one rider? I don’t think so.’

Classement

1 José Luis Viejo, Spain, Super Ser, 5 hours, 42 minutes, 34 secs

2 Gerben Karstens, Holland, TI-Raleigh, at 22 minutes, 50 secs

3 Freddy Maertens, Belgium, Velda-Flandria, at 23 minutes, 7 secs

4 Wladimoro Panizza, Italy, SCIC-Fiat, same time

5 Gianbattista Baronchelli, Italy, Bianchi-Piaggio, s t.

6 Raymond Delisle, France, Peugeot-Esso, s.t.