For six years Rik van Looy was the one and only

“It was better alone.” The one and only stayed for six years. Then Eddy Merckx also won the Giro di Lombardia and Rik van Looy was no longer the one and only to win all five Monument Classics of cycling. On 10 October 1971 Rik van Looy used those four words to comment on the Cannibal’s victory in Como. The Het Nieuwsblad journalist couldn’t get anything else out of him except a shrug, a snort and a goodbye smile.

Rick van Looy in the first to achieve something that most thought impossible: winning Milan-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Tour of Lombardy in a career. The five most prestigious one-day races in cycling, those where winning one puts your season and career in order, winning three is phenomenal because apart from Sanremo they go in pairs: Flanders and Roubaix for people who are big and strong and have a strong pace and on the stones, Liège and Lombardy instead for light runners, those good for climbs. Imagine winning five.

And imagine if you were someone who was said to be faster than resistant. They thought Rik van Looy was a sprinter, someone good only for sprints. Rik van Looy said about himself that he liked cycling, that it was fast and it wasn’t bad. He explained that he shouldn’t have gone to the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki because it all started there: he was a rag, he retired and in Belgium they criticized him, writing that he was someone who didn’t know how to suffer. Instead he maintained that he was a kind of mule, someone who didn’t suffer from fatigue, but that he would have liked to be even more of a mule because mules don’t even suffer from climbing. And he suffered from the climb.

Guillaume Driessens, who was sporting director of both Rik van Looy and Eddy Merckx, said that if Rik van Looy had not suffered the climb “it would have been illegal”, indeed “he would have been Eddy Merckx but ten years earlier”.

Rik van Looy, however, suffered when the road went uphill for kilometers and kilometres, which is why he hated the climb “while running, however, because when I’m not in a group I like to climb to the top of the mountains, feel the changing air, see down and far away. I like open spaces, solitude at the top, knowing that every effort brings the gift of wonder.” He often pedaled alone during training sessions, he said they helped him think and reflect. One day he went to the mechanic and had him make a change to the gear levers on the frame to have them more central and ensure that they were not external to the tube. Over twenty years later Shimano also arrived and created the revolution. Another day he went to the sports director and explained his theory to ensure safer sprints. “He came to me and said: ‘If three or four get in front of me and start hitting the pedals hard, the group gets bigger, I have the same effort but I risk half as much and they have double the chance of winning because they’re all behind’. Basically he said to make a train”. Miguel Poblet had done it before him, but only in Spain and he had never seen it. Mario Cipollini also thanks to the “train” has become one of the most successful sprinters in history.

Rik van Looy also saw Roger de Vlaeminck join him and Eddy Merckx among the riders capable of winning all the Monument Classics. On 3 April 1977, after seeing Eeklo’s Gitano win Flanders, he used more than four words to comment on what had happened: “Roger is very strong, a great champion, a man of speed and resistance like I was. I am I’m happy that after my name those of Eddy Merckx and Roger de Vlaeminck will find a place, at least in this they will always be, even if only slightly, behind me. Now I hope that they will stop copy us.”

From 1977 to today no one has succeeded. Surely Rik van Looy will never know if anyone will succeed, if Tadej Pogacar will succeed (“he’s nice and strong, very strong” he said of the Slovenian). Rik van Looy died today in Herentals, Flanders. Because, as Rik van Looy said, “I’ve been around a lot, but I have to say that things are good in Flanders and what’s elsewhere isn’t so satisfactory”.