Legends of the road — Champagne cycling with Eddy Merckx

At one point in La course en tête, a classic documentary film about the Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx, the rider’s wife, Claudine, considers what might happen when he can no longer race. “The glory never lasts,” she says as we watch Merckx put on his woollen Molteni team jersey for the start of the 1973 tour of Italy, the Giro d’Italia. “It would kill him to think of the day he must retire.”

The film follows Merckx at the peak of a career of such voracious dominance that he was known as “The Cannibal”. As supreme on high mountain passes as he was sprint finishes, Merckx won 525 races, including five Tours de France, five Giros d’Italia and 19 “monuments”, the sport’s most prestigious one-day events.

Almost half a century later — and 43 years after his retirement in 1978 — a man who is still regarded as the greatest cyclist of all time is preparing for a rather different ride. Sitting on a bench outside a hotel in the Champagne region of France earlier this month, he puts on his cycling shoes, struggling slightly with a dodgy hip.

“Are you looking forward to this?” I ask Merckx, who is now 76. It has been raining all night. Low cloud is only just releasing its grip on the hillside vineyards that surround the Royal Champagne, a luxury spa hotel north of Épernay. “Non,” he says, looking at the sky with a trademark enigmatic smile.

Merckx, who was known for his sphinx-like reserve even in his prime, is not used to this sort of thing. And if there is any glory being claimed this weekend, it will probably be done by the 40 guests of a new British travel company that has used connections — and an undisclosed fee — to draw The Cannibal down from an old farm near Brussels, where he still lives with Claudine.

LeBlanq started running weekend and one-day trips this year — part of a continuing boom in the corporate entertainment and luxury travel offshoots of a sport some have dubbed “the new golf”. In recent years numerous former professionals have been brought in as star turns on riding holidays but LeBlanq is perhaps the zenith of the trend, pairing the biggest names with smart hotels and food from celebrated chefs. So far, I’m worried that Merckx might prefer to be anywhere else. But this is a burgeoning market that feeds on a sport in which the status of champions can still dwarf their earning potential.

Justin Clarke, a British former pro cyclist who went on to launch the Taste food festivals, got the idea in late 2016 at a festival in Australia. Ashley Palmer-Watts, a Fat Duck alumni who created Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner restaurants, had also flown out. The chef caught Clarke’s eye with the posh Pinarello road bike he had brought with him.

The pair got talking and pooled their contacts books, fleshing out the business in the pandemic hiatus last year. Sean Yates, another ex-pro who managed Bradley Wiggins’ Tour de France win in 2012, also has a stake in LeBlanq, which hosted its first weekend in Scotland in July with Sir Chris Hoy. It was Yates who brought in Merckx, an old friend of his.

The chef Raymond Blanc is here too, and will take over the hotel’s kitchens tonight. Wiggins, who featured in an earlier LeBlanq trip on the Isle of Wight (Claude Bosi of London’s Bibendum did the cooking there), was due to join us but family issues ruled him out at the last minute. The Cannibal’s stature and fee (“more than I had budgeted for because I didn’t believe he’d say yes,” Clarke tells me) perhaps partly explains why this weekend is by far the most expensive on LeBlanq’s calendar at almost £3,500. Yet Clarke says places sold out in days.

Merckx was such a draw that when Johan Museeuw, another retired Belgian cyclist, heard about his rare appearance, he asked if he could come along (he’s not paying but nor is he being paid). “The Lion of Flanders”, as Museeuw was known as a giant of racing in the 1990s, is now sitting next to The Cannibal, the rainbow stripes on his shoes marking his World Road Race Championships win in 1996. In footballing terms, this would be like spending a weekend with Pelé and Romário.

Soon it’s time to roll out of the hotel in LeBlanq kit designed for the trip. Four groups will take on different distances at varying speeds. I’m in the group going long with Museeuw (Merckx, who has various niggles and hates hills, will ride less and at a more leisurely pace). We’ll take on a 130km (81-mile) loop north of the Marne river, through the hills, forests and vineyards that lie between Épernay and Reims.

As the clouds part, we drop first through the vines into the Marne Valley, where the river might as well fizz, so steeped is the region in the traditions of champagne. The road soon rears up steeply through the pretty village of Hautvillers, past a 16th century abbey where a monk named Dom Pérignon used to look after the cellars.

I had been sceptical about cycling in France without seeing a mountain. But I grow fond of Champagne’s bucolic splendour, quiet roads and rolling hills. Clarke says he’s not interested in amateur cycling’s “glory in suffering” fetish. “So many events have this aspiration to mimic professional riding but most cyclists get totally broken by a Tour de France stage,” he says.

Clarke, who is planning new trips in Norway, Ibiza and Bordeaux, says that when he was riding in a professional team, anyone not working hard enough was angrily dismissed as “un touriste!”. “Now that’s a good thing. We want you to appreciate what’s around you, somewhere you might not have cycled before.”

With more than 2,000 metres of ascent in total today, there’s plenty to test my legs. Moreover, if you drop a group of keen cyclists on any stretch of asphalt, they will find unspoken ways to test themselves and each other. The speed at the front gets taxing at times and there’s no idling up the hills.

A fleet of Aston Martins trails the groups. They are not the most practical or sustainable support cars but fit the image LeBlanq is trying hard to project. They also reveal the extent to which brand partnerships drive the enterprise. It’s nice to get flashy new kit, for example, but it also turns guests into rolling billboards — there are more logos on my jersey than a pro’s.

Later, when I try to add my own socks, vest and arm warmers to the overnight kit laundry that is part of the service, I’m told that only my LeBlanq shorts and jerseys can be cleaned. It means the brands get back on the road for the photos the next day but also leaves me laundering the rest in my bath with a little bottle of Hermès shampoo. My branded kit comes back after breakfast in a branded tote that includes a discount voucher for a cooking website.

Clarke says he is wary of “gratuitous” brand presence. Guests seem happy with the balance; one rider who works in finance (there are a lot of finance guys, although the gender balance is pretty good by traditional standards) is so enamoured with the trailing Aston Martin that I gather he later buys one.

Soon I’m waiting for the car myself. My chain has slipped on the crest of a hill and gets horribly jammed. On my own Sunday ride I’d be calling for an expensive taxi. Here, I’m back on the road in minutes after a LeBlanq mechanic removes my pedal cranks to free the chain.

Neither man enjoyed such luxury while racing. ‘You only had champagne when you’d won,’ Merckx says

After more than 80km, past strangely picturesque grain silos and serried vines, I’m relieved to stop at a boulangerie for a jambon-beurre. Later, towards the end of the ride, we cut incongruous figures in the cellars of Laurent-Perrier. Clutching a glass of blancs de blancs, I clip-clop past vast oak barrels in my cleated shoes.

Back at the hotel, there’s a chance for a drink before Raymond Blanc’s dinner. I find Merckx and Museeuw chatting on a sofa. Neither man enjoyed such luxury while racing. “You only had champagne when you’d won,” Merckx says. He recalls spending nights in school halls and dusty attics during the Tour de France. “Here is too comfortable.” He’s smiling again.

It’s easy to forget that cycling is at its heart a working-class sport. Merckx, a shopkeeper’s son, welcomes its shifting profile if it means more people get on bikes. “It’s good for the sport,” he says. And for business, although I wonder if Merckx regrets long ago selling the eponymous bike manufacturer he founded in retirement (top models today cost €10,000).

Dinner is a triumph, even if those of us with calorie deficits reach for bread rolls for ballast. Courses include Blanc’s signature “tomato essence” and blackcurrant soft meringue, as well as roasted langoustines and a remarkable beef fillet wrapped in nori.

It’s getting late by the time we withdraw for an evening with Merckx and Museeuw. At one point, Museeuw interrupts proceedings to propose to his girlfriend. He is the showman of the two, and on the road happily recreates a celebration in 2000 in which he unclipped a shoe and pointed to his knee (an infected knee injury after a crash two years previously had almost cost him his leg).

Merckx wears his “greatest” status less comfortably, particularly when his biggest fans all but prostrate themselves before him. He questions the sense in comparing riders from different eras of gear, training — and drugs (both Belgians failed drugs tests in their day. Merckx has denied doping, variously blaming sabotage and rogue medicines for three positive tests; Museeuw has admitted it). But occasionally a champion’s steel returns to those inscrutable eyes; this is a man who knows how good he was.

There’s time the next morning for a shorter ride before a farewell lunch. The rain has returned. As the famous Paris-Roubaix race (an event nicknamed “The Hell of the North” thanks to its forbidding cobbled sections) gets under way 75 miles to the west, LeBlanq’s hardiest guests embark on a hilly loop towards Reims that includes a forest track, if not any cobbles. In a knowing nod to cycling’s gentrification we call our ride, which will also be a third of the length of the Paris-Roubaix, “The Hell of the Champagne”.

None of us blames Merckx or Museeuw for deciding not to ride today. The men have won the actual Paris-Roubaix three times each. Yet Merckx comes out in his jeans and V-neck jumper to wave us off. There is a genuine smile on his face as we roll into a downpour. While I’m out getting soaked — and loving every minute — The Cannibal packs his bike into his car and drives back to Belgium.

More high-end cycling adventures

Etape du Tour, France Organised by the same company that runs the Tour de France, the Etape is an annual amateur challenge over the route of a stage of that year’s Tour. Tickets for the 2022 Etape — a 170km ride on July 10 from Briançon to Alpe d’Huez, via climbs of the Col du Galibier and Col de la Croix de Fer — went on sale last week and promptly sold out, with demand only heightened by two years of pandemic-related cancellations. Cyclists can still take part, however, by booking a trip with a specialist tour operator such as La Fuga. Its most luxurious option (€2,250 per person for three nights) includes accommodation in a four-star hotel in Briançon and a smart chalet in Alpe d’Huez (thus avoiding the need for transfers on race day), as well as a mechanic to prepare guests’ bikes, guided warm-up rides, support stations along the route and a finish line hospitality tent. Departs July 8; lafuga.cc

Highway One, California Tour operator inGamba runs trips in Tuscany, Puglia, Portugal and other parts of Europe and beyond but its home base is Sausalito, California, and every year it runs a week-long “coast ride” along Highway One then inland to the wine-making town of Paso Robles. Rental of Pinarello Dogma F bikes is included, there is full support from mechanics and soigneurs and the ride is led by Eros Poli, the former Italian pro who won a stage of the 1994 Tour de France on Mont Ventoux (as well as an Olympic gold medal). Departs March 3, from $5,950; ingamba.pro

Ride to the Sun, France London-based tour operator GPM10 focuses on helping recreational cyclists “push their performance to the next level”; among testimonials on its website is one from former US secretary of state John Kerry. As well as training camps and corporate trips, it organises an annual ride from Chamonix to Nice, passing over the Alps and notching up 10,250 vertical metres of ascent and 564km in four days on the road. From £3,100 per person, with full on-the-road support and groups limited to a total of 10 riders. gpm10.com

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