A time-trial rider without equal, between 1953 and 1966 Jacques Anquetil claimed a record nine victories in the ultimate race of truth: the Grand Prix des Nations
Words Giles Belbin Photography Ullstein Bild Dtl/Getty
A moment in time
‘Monsieur Chrono’ they called him. Or Maître Jacques. Utterly dominant when riding alone against the clock, Jacques Anquetil was his era’s time-trial king, often catching riders who had been sent on their way minutes before and with the Arrivée banner still nowhere to be seen. A passage from Paul Fournel’s book Anquetil, Alone, describing a scene from a 68km time-trial between Bourgoin and Lyons during the 1962 Tour de France, encapsulates perfectly the demoralising effect this must have had on his rivals.
‘Raymond Poulidor, who set off three minutes before Anquetil, is about to be caught,’ Fournel writes. ‘His trainer Antonin Magne ignores the regulations and pulls alongside him. Instead of shouting at him he simply says, “Move over Raymond, and watch the Caravel as it sails by.” And the two men watch the Caravel go by. “I couldn’t see him pedalling,” Poulidor confirms. “He was gliding along.”’
Nowhere was Anquetil’s supremacy against the clock demonstrated more than in the Grand Prix des Nations, a race the seeds of which had been sown back in 1931. That year the Road Race World Championship, still in its infancy, had been held as a 172km time-trial rather than a mass-start race. Reporting on the event in Copenhagen were two writers from Paris-Soir, a newspaper looking to introduce a new race to help boost circulation.
After watching Italian Learco Guerra win the rainbow jersey by more than four minutes, the idea of a long time-trial in early autumn began to take hold. And so it was that a little more than 12 months later, 25 riders assembled for cycling’s newest event: a 142km time-trial, from Versailles to the Buffalo Stadium on the southern reaches of Paris, called the Grand Prix des Nations.
You’ve seen nothing yet
That first race, won by France’s Maurice Archambaud by more than six minutes, was claimed by Paris-Soir to be an unprecedented success, with hundreds of thousands of fans flocking to the roadsides. The race would quickly grow in popularity and would go on to be considered the unofficial time-trial world championship.
Anquetil’s first appearance at the race came in
