He’s a legend, a real one, who has just left us. At 90 years old, Henri Van Looy, “Rik” for the whole world, left on Wednesday and he leaves a mark in the history of Cycling that is difficult to compare. A career as long as an arm and an equally impressive track record. A monument, king of Monuments. The only rider in history, with his compatriots Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck, to have won the five great cycling classics. In the elite of Belgian cycling, only the great Eddy, a standout, can hold his own.
His phenomenal career stretched from the dawn of the 1950s to the 1970s. Because he had succeeded Rik Van Steenbergen, he was first nicknamed “Rik 2”, before being crowned as “The Emperor of Herentals”, named after this Flemish town where a certain Wout van Aert was born, much later. A name more suited to it. To the excess, even, of the one who scrapped with Van Steenbergen only to experience at the end of the road the advent of Merckx.
Van Looy was above all the king of the northern classics. Two Tours of Flanders and three Paris-Roubaix. But when it came to running for a day, nothing stood in his way. Milan -San Remo? Check. Liège-Bastogne-Liège? Check. Lombardy? Check. Nothing, nothing is missing. If he is one of the three cycling giants with five Monuments, he is the only one, yes, the only one, to have won absolutely all the major classics on the calendar, even beyond the Monuments. And Merckx, who has never won Paris-Tours, did not do that.
Nearly 500 victories
A hungry for victories. Almost 500 in total to his credit, between his triumphs among amateurs and his boatload of arms raised among the pros. It was at the crossroads of the 50s and 60s that he gave the best of himself. He conquered all his Monuments between 1958 and 1965. Without forgetting his two consecutive road world championship titles in 1900 and 1961.
Rik Van Looy (sur Paris-Nice 1968)
Credit: Getty Images
He was an ogre, always looking for challenges and success. A tough guy, who had to go to work at the age of 12 to contribute to the family’s needs. He was notably a newspaper deliveryman. By bike, of course, and he liked to say that it was there, every day, from five o’clock in the morning, that he had shaped his legs of iron and fire and even more his tempered steel character.
He lacked the skills of a climber and the soul of a roller. Stage races were therefore not really cut out for him. Especially the big Tours. But he still made his mark: 37 stages in total (7 on the Tour, 12 on the Giro, 18 on the Vuelta). On the Grande Boucle, the green jersey was obviously his thing. He brought it back to Paris four times. During the Tour of Italy, he even managed to get a best climber’s jersey and he was proud of it.
Over the years, Rik van Looy had moved away from the scene. He hardly liked recounting his memories, although they were innumerable, as he had seen and known everything. The evocation of his own glory was not his cup of tea. Last December, the town of Herentals wanted to celebrate the 90th birthday of the local hero. With his Flemish accent to cut with a knife, he then implored that we not do “not too much fuss“, but had not escaped the inauguration of a new bronze statue in his likeness. Two days before the 91 candles, he therefore left the stage for good. The legend of Emperor Van Looy will survive him.
