Freddy Maertens

Gilbert Maertens gave his son his first bike, which Freddy Maertens described as "a second-hand thing that he’d got from a beach business for a bargain". Not until he won a race on that would he get a better one. The author, Rik Van Walleghem, said: "The training school that Maertens went through with his father was hard. Horribly hard. Gilbert never lost sight of anything. He knew how much and how often his son trained, what he ate and drank, how much he slept, who he went around with. He imposed a merciless regime. And he had an eye open for the slightest thing that would obstruct his son’s progress. He worried, for instance, that Freddy’s male hormones would get the better of his son and drive him into the arms of bewitching young girl who’d put the slides under his mission. Women were the devil’s work; it had been like that in the Garden of Eden and little had changed since".

Carine Maertens said: "We let ourselves be sweet-talked by sponsors, team directors, managers, architects, accountants, tax advisers, bankers, investment advisers, doctors. We believed all these people. We believed them because they dressed well and they’d been to school and they could talk well. We had no experience with money, fame, celebrity. We built far too large a villa, we borrowed money until we were raw, we invested in businesses we knew nothing about. We were honest people who trusted others, who never knew there was such nastiness in the world. By the time we realised what was happening, our bank accounts had been plundered. We had a chic villa and not a franc between us".

Michel Pollentier is quoted as saying: "I told him I could see only one way out for him: to see a psychiatrist, advice he considered stupid. I’ve never hesitated to confess that I spent three weeks under the surveillance of Dr Dejonckheere at the St-Joseph clinic at Ostend and that after treatment I stayed under his control for another two years. Why hide it? It’s impossible to come out of a situation like that without the help of a doctor."

As well as the Tour, Vuelta and Giro, his stage race victories included Paris–Nice (1977), the Four Days of Dunkirk (1973, 1975, 1976 and 1978), the Tour of Andalucia (1974, 1975), Tour of Belgium (1974, 1975), Tour de Luxembourg (1975), Tour of Sardinia (1977) and Vuelta y Catalunya (1977).

He owed interest on interest and lost all he had. He calculated his tax bill at 30 million francs [almost US$1 million]. He insisted he owed 1.5 million francs [US$50,000]. He spent long periods without a job and without unemployment benefit and his wife cleaned houses. The problems lasted 30 years. They ended on 10 June 2011. He felt so bitter about Paul Claeys - "not a good guy; he promised and promised and...” - that he refused to attend his funeral in 2012.

Enmity between Merckx and Maertens lasted decades. It ended in 2007 when the two met in a hotel in France.

Maertens retired at the age of 35 in 1987 after deciding during a training ride that he no longer wanted to train in the wind and rain of Flanders. He worked as a salesman after retiring, including in Belgium and Luxembourg for Assos, a Swiss clothing company. He left Assos, he said, when supplies became erratic. He kept a distance from the sport. His weight rose to 100 kg. In 2000 he began to work in the Belgian National Cycling Museum ('Nationaal Wielermuseum') in his hometown Roeselare. Many visitors of the museum liked the presence of a real world champion during their visit. In 2008 he moved to the Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders Center) in Oudenaarde. In 2017, after health problems, he retired. He works when possible as a volunteer or special guest in both museums. The museum in Roeselare is now renamed to 'KOERS. Museum of Cycle Racing'. The bicycle shop "Maertens Sport" in Evergem on the outskirts of Ghent is owned by Freddy's brother Mario.

A year later his record faded again. He rarely finished races and shone only in round-the-houses races, where his contract fees were needed to pay his tax debts. He did not defend his title in the 1982 world championship at Goodwood, saying he had injured his knee on a gate. He became fatter and rode for small teams for equally small salaries.

There followed a wilderness period in which he did little of note. He started big races but often stopped after 100 km, or was dropped on unremarkable hills. It made his victory in the 1981 world championship in Prague the more remarkable. He finished in front of Giuseppe Saronni and Bernard Hinault, two short and stocky riders like himself. Journalists wondered whether the era of tall, lean riders such as Merckx, Gimondi, and De Vlaeminck was over.

In one of the most surprising comebacks in cycling history, Maertens won the 1981 World Championship, which was held in Prague. In a sprinting duel he had one ultimate jump left which sufficed to defeat runner-up Saronni.

He was never paid in 1979, his last season with Flandria, which had failed. It was the start of financial troubles with tax officials (see below).

Rumours intensified when Maertens' successes became erratic. He flew to the United States to see a doctor, to confirm that he had no drug problems. He and a medical advisers flew from Amsterdam to New York City on 25 May 1979 in a McDonnell Douglas DC-10. Maertens mentioned to his colleague, Paul de Nijs, that one of the engines made an odd noise. The plane continued towards Chicago but crashed on take-off when an engine fell off, killing 279.

The Flandria team was riding the Giro d'Italia when it heard rumours of trouble at the Flandria company. He received only half his salary in 1978 and none of the cash to be paid without its being registered in the accounts. In 1979, he was not paid at all. He lost money entrusted to others to invest, including 500 000 francs in the Flandria Ranch, run by his sponsor. He also lost 750 000 francs in a furniture business which burned down. By then he was being challenged by the tax authorities. He won little of significance. He said he was riding for nothing during the day and spending every evening with lawyers. He still disputes the tax that the government demanded. He and his wife lost their house, their car and their furniture.

The Ronde van Vlaandren museum in Oudenaarde has in its window a lettered brick with the name of each year's winner. The 1977 race is shown as won by Roger De Vlaeminck. But above it is another, that reads: "Moral winner: Freddy Maertens."

Maertens won the 1977 Vuelta a España by winning 13 stages, half the total. He imposed his will "like a South American dictator", according to the writer Olivier Dazat. He won the prologue time-trial and led the race from start to finish. 14 of the 20 stages were won by Flandria, with Pollentier taking the other stage win.

He was disqualified in the Flèche Wallonne of 1977 and found guilty the same year in the Tour de France, the Tour of Belgium and the Tour of Flanders. He also had a positive finding for cortisone in 1986.

Maertens started favourite for the 1976 world championship, held at Ostuni, in Italy. He came to the race in good form and with the Belgian team lined in his support. His rival, Eddy Merckx, was in decline.

In 1976 he won eight stages of the Tour de France. He won the points classification in 1976 and again in 1978 and 1981.

Maertens also won the season-long Super Prestige Pernod International in 1976 and 1977.

Maertens was an aggressive rider who pushed high gears. He frequently rode 53 x 13 or 14. He was a talented time-triallist and an excellent sprinter. He nurtured another sprinter Sean Kelly. His time-trial record includes winning the Grand Prix des Nations in 1976.

Maertens alleges that a laxative was put in his drink during the world championship in Montreal in 1974. He was handed it while he was in the lead with Bernard Thévenet and Constantino Conti. He said his masseur, Jef D’Hont, had told Gust Naessens - Merckx's soigneur - that he was going to eat and asked him to hand a bottle to his rider. Maertens took the bottle because he trusted Naessens, with whom he worked from 1981 to 1983. Maertens said: "I got confirmation of that from Gust Naessens. I asked him, 'What did you do in Montreal?'" He said Naessens replied: "It was normal, Freddy. I was asked to give you your drink and I put something in it. You were too good for my guy, so I put something in it to block you". Merckx won.

Maertens was caught in drugs tests. He was first found positive after Professor Michel Debackere perfected a test in 1974 for pemoline, a drug in the amphetamine family that riders believed to be undetectable.

They married in November 1973 and rented a house in Lombardsijde. She said: "I got to know a young boy who was more adult than his years and who knew what he wanted: to be a professional bike rider. I fell for him. Not because I thought he could become a great rider but because I felt straight away that I could play a role in his life, that he needed me. Three years later we were married. Our dream had started. We didn’t know then that it would turn into a nightmare".

Relations between the riders and their fans reached their nadir on 2 September 1973 in the world road championship around the Montjuich climb near Barcelona. Maertens had said he was not willing to ride for Merckx. That angered Merckx's supporters who, Maertens said, six times threw cold water over his legs.

Despite his sprinting dominance, Maertens never won a one-day classic, coming closest with second places in the Tour of Flanders (1973) and Liège–Bastogne–Liège (1976). He was disqualified from second place in the 1977 Ronde after changing his bike on the Koppenberg climb.

Maertens won 50 times as a senior, including the national championship at Nandrin. In 1970 he came second to the Frenchman, Régis Ovion, in the world amateur championship. He competed in the individual road race at the 1972 Summer Olympics. He turned professional in 1972. The frame-maker Ernest Colnago and the former champion Ercole Baldini came to his house with an offer to join their SCIC team. They offered to support him in his last year as an amateur and then take him as a professional.

Maertens and his wife were naïve about money. Carine Maertens said money "flooded in" when her husband reached the top as a professional. Maertens estimated his earnings throughout his career as 10-15 million French francs, "which was a lot of money in the 1970s".

Maertens continued to ride unlicensed races in 1967. In 1968 he took his first licence from the BWB, riding in the nieuweling or beginners' class. He won 21 times and came second 19 times to a rider named Vandromme.

Naessens, now dead, was also Tom Simpson's soigneur when he died in the Tour de France of 1967. The following year he was banned from working in cycling for two years.

Maertens rode his first race at Westhoek when he was 14, in 1966. The field included riders of 17 and 18, including some from France. The race was open to riders who did not have a licence from the Belgian federation, the BWB. He had trouble riding in a group. His second race went better. Among the riders he beat was Michel Pollentier, later a friend and a team colleague as a professional.

Freddy Maertens (born 13 February 1952 in Nieuwpoort) is a Belgian former professional racing cyclist who was twice world road race champion. His career coincided with the best years of another Belgian rider, Eddy Merckx, and supporters and reporters were split over which was the better. Maertens' career swung between winning more than 50 races in a season to winning almost none and then back again. His life has been marked by debt and alcoholism. It took him more than two decades to pay a tax debt.

Guillaume "Lomme" Driessens was one of three father figures in Maertens' life (see above). He started as a masseur and soigneur for Fausto Coppi. Riders in his care won the Tour seven times. He was a team director from 1947 to 1984. He died in 2006.