Henri Van Looy Obituary

Henri “Rik” Van Looy has died aged 90. Van Looy is cycling’s best classics rider for the absolute reason that he won hundreds of races and among them every genuine classic and prime one-day race on the calendar at the time, a feat nobody has since matched.

In a land where champion cyclists are venerated, Van Looy went from hero to celebrity, with his family part of this too. In retirement he distanced himself from his imperial glory, avoiding the limelight and content to watch classics and grand tour stages from his sofa.

Henri Van Looy was born in 1933 in Grobbendonk, a village to the east of Antwerp. His introduction to cycling wasn’t for pleasure, skipping school he started work as a newspaper delivery boy, sometimes leaving home at dawn and returning after dark in the winter where his mother would cook him horse steak and fries so he could sleep and do it all again.

All this cycling wasn’t an immediate help. Prompted by a local bike shop and a friend he entered his first race only to get dropped, then lapped. But as he told Humo magazine in in 2023 “it got better and better and I won my first race in Booischot. And then I suddenly won fourteen or fifteen in a row“. His mother was supportive of his racing while his father wasn’t only she died leaving his father, a bricklayer, in charge of the family.

Van Looy turned professional in 1953 but barely earned a living from racing local kermesses. He married Nini Mariën in 1955 and she was earning more as a cafe waitress. But Van Looy said he was hardly training either.

He resolved to fix this for 1956 with two moves. First he went to see a doctor, Dries Claes, who offered support and coaching (son Toon Claes and grandsons Tom and Steve are famous in Flanders for their collarbone and knee repairs at AZ Herentals, the hospital where corridors are lined with framed cycling jerseys from grateful patients).

Dr Claes had Van Looy up early each morning to do gymnastics while wife Nini became part of the performance team too, on hand when he came home from sessions and instructed by Claes to shrink food portions. This resulted in a claimed ten kilo weight loss but he retained the muscular thighs that would deliver him so many sprint wins.

The second step was a move to Faema, the team backed by an Italian coffee machine company. It was the multinational of its era, Van Looy joined Charly Gaul, Federico Bahamontes and Albéric “Briek” Schotte. His first big win was Paris-Brussels, then a major classic. Joining him on the podium that day was Rik Van Steenbergen, the Flemish champion who Van Looy had regarded as a hero. Only now Van Looy was standing above him.

Both riders got monarchical titles. Van Steenbergen was “Rik I”, the upstart Van Looy became “Rik II”, (the diminutive of Henri being Rik). In 1958 Van Looy said he would not ride the Belgian championships, only to show up at the last minute and win the race, reportedly lapping Van Steenbergen on the way to a surprise but premeditated triumph. Soon the monarchy was overthrown and another journalist branded Van Looy “the Keizer of Herentals”. The imperial title stuck.

Gent-Wevelgem the highlight of 1957, Milan-Sanremo in 1958. This win, part of a streak of sprint wins by foreigners, prompted the organiser Vincenzo Torriani to include the Poggio, supposedly the climb would thwart sprinters and tilt the race back to home winners. It didn’t work, Italians had to a wait a decade for Michele Dancelli but the race’s identity today owes something to Rik II.

Van Looy though was among the contenders to be the top rider in Flanders and beyond but not yet above the rest. Paris-Nice and Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner Alfred Debruyne was a rival but was seen off in 1959 thanks to wins in the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Tours and Lombardia.

In 1960 Van Looy established himself at the top with his first World Championships win. As French newspaper Le Monde wrote that year, sometimes the World Champion can be won by a rider who doesn’t deserve it but Van Looy was “the man who we agree… … is the best ‘classics’ specialist in the world”. Van Looy was in his pomp and winning regularly, he would repeat the Worlds win again in 1961.

1962 was a golden year for Van Looy but it did not start well. A car crash on the way back from the Berlin Six Day race saw him severely injured. The press at the time were worried  if he would ever race again. Fortunately this was forgotten by the spring when he won the Tour of Flanders solo – a fading 39 year old Van Steenbergen opting to ride a criterium in Switzerland that day instead – and then he took the mid-week Gent-Wevelgem before winning Paris-Roubaix the next Sunday, achieving a triple that nobody else has done.

The ease of wins and their regularity meant Van Looy was always being interviewed and quoted. His straight talking and self-confidence were easily taken for more. “Cycling’s Arrogant King” ran a headline in the English press, “Public Enemy Number One” another in France, where he was often too much for Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor.

Van Looy was an exceptional talent compounded by a team riding in his service. Others, like Fausto Coppi, had commanded a squad where it was almost lese-majesty if anyone else won. But the “Red Guard” was more than a hierarchy, it was a tactical formation and often cited as the first ever lead-out train for sprints. But it could also be deployed mid-race to split the field on a climb if required. The red was first thanks the colours of Flandria, a mass-market bicycle manufacturer that backed his 1962 team and the red stayed with Van Looy. Not always though as Van Looy kept blue kit ito stand out from his Rode Garde at criterium exhibition races.

Team work wasn’t always so easy. The 1963 Worlds were held in Flanders and a home win for Van Looy was on the cards. The week before he’d gathered Belgian team mates and agreed to pay them if they helped him win. Nearing the finish, Van Looy had gone back to find team mate Behoni Beheyt lurking in the bunch and asked for his help only for Beheyt to say he was cramping. So Van Looy reportedly told his junior just to protect his back wheel. This proved to be a golden lead-out.

Beheyt’s win became “The Betrayal of Ronse”. Photos of the finish show Van Looy’s sour face and Beheyt’s hand on Van Looy, pushing him away after he’d veered across the road as if to stop the upstart winner. Because of this Frenchman André Darrigade was in with chance if the commissaires relegated both Belgians. They conferred for a quarter of an hour. The verdict: Beheyt was world champion. Van Looy cried foul.

Newspaper reports of the podium ceremony describe Beheyt as “confused” and “embarrassed”. Beheyt would be hounded out of the sport because of this, although injuries played a part too. Indeed the incident was maybe not so clear cut, Beheyt said the pact was only to work for each other until the final kilometre. Van Looy had a pulpit in the media and the loudest version drowned out other voices. What annoyed Van Looy the most was not Beheyt’s victory but that he’d gone back on the deal.

With Humo in 2023 Van Looy was more reflective, pointing out Tom Simpson had taken a flyer in the final kilometre which obliged Gilbert Desmet to lead out the sprint early. As Desmet faded, Van Looy had to go too soon as well and admitted he effectively messed up the finish.

The media celebrated Van Looy for his ready quotes and he straddled a period where he went from print to radio and then TV. Van Steenbergen and Schotte were respected from a distance. In Schotte’s own words “we’re gods because they don’t see us.” Now Van Looy was beamed inside people’s houses. His race results mattered but soon people could see how he won, and then hear from him directly at the finish, his words no longer mediated by journalists or delayed by the medium of print.

This eager public wanted more. His family were visible at races too and became public property which compounded matters. Peroxide blonde Nini was branded the “Marilyn Monroe of Flanders”, “The Blonde” and the “Leading Lady”. She was often pictured on the front page of magazines.

At one point someone wrote to Van Looy threatening to kill his wife and children. When news of this leaked, it put Nini and their three children even more in the spotlight and by the mid-1960s the Van Looys were becoming celebrities: famous for being famous.

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Glance at Van Looy’s wins and most were from flatter races and bunch sprints. Any “sprinter” label though is insufficient. He’d get bored in races and attack from afar, he’d provoke moves and splits in crosswinds, he’d float on cobbles when others would endure them and he could win from a long breakaway or a solo attack. He’d finish twice on the podium in the Vuelta a España, granted not the vertical fiesta we know today in an era when Rudi Altig and Jean Stablinksi would win, but he won the Giro d’Italia’s mountains competition too.

Grand tours and especially the Tour de France proved to be his limit though. 37 stage wins in all including seven Tour stages wins is impressive but there could have been more. Adversity came in different forms, whether Jacques Anquetil or bad luck.

He made a belated debut at the 1962 Tour de France at the age of 28. He was portrayed as a rival to Anquetil. Only the contest never happened as he was seriously injured when a motorbike rider in the race convoy clipped him before the race reached the mountains. This was bad for him but reports at the time also framed it as a disaster for the race: the loss a star while background articles aired fears about race safety and the race growing too big and too fast; articles asked aloud if the race could still fit on country roads and make safe passage through towns.

Van Looy returned to the Tour in 1963 to finish tenth overall and win the points competition. It was a lively edition with write-ups describing a new style of attacking racing with riders trying to gain time any any point on the course rather than the usual set-piece mountain and time trial stages. Van Looy was among the exponents of this new form. He also brought controversy because his family were at the race. He’d spend time most evenings with Nini and their children, something unseen at the time and a cultural taboo that persisted for decades.

The Kaizer crashed out again in 1964 with people asking if he would ever return. Of course in 1965 he won opening stage in that finished in Belgium and collected the yellow jersey. The next day the race went to Roubaix and thousands of Belgians had crossed into France, many with “Rik” banners but accounts say he was carried away, showboating even and couldn’t feature in the finish.

He was considered as a GC contender but had trouble gaining time, even on the flat stages. One factor reason was the Flandria team. Van Looy was now riding for Superia, a rival brand of bicycles born out of a family feud when Superia split from Flandria, a Flemish version of Adidas and Puma. There was frustration with Flandria but potential overall winners like Jacques Anquetil and his Saint-Raphaël team were keen to shut him down in an era when a stage winner could take one minute in a time bonus.

By the mid-sixties he was in his thirties, his win rate slowing. An account on Belgian radio RTBF tells how in 1968 one of his sons came home from school with a bad report. Van Looy scolded him, only for the boy to retort with something along the lines of “well you haven’t won a classic for ages either”. Days later at the age of 34 he won the Flèche Wallonne, then held on a Sunday, part of the Super Prestige calendar of prime events and seen as superior to Liège-Bastogne-Liège. With this win Van Looy collected the only one day classic that had eluded him for years. This was a feat that even Eddy Merckx would not achieve as he never won Paris-Tours, then a highly-prized classic.

Having distressed others with his rise, Van Looy was now on the receiving end as he faded. Van Looy said he knew Merckx was set to be the best when the teenager joined his Superia team in 1966. Van Looy tried to put him down, at one point mocking his looks by branding him “Jack Palance” on account of his resemblance to the Hollywood actor. The cohabitation lasted less than a year. Merckx left for the Peugeot team and, still a teenager, started the next season on the podium in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad… thanks to Van Looy being relegated from second place in the sprint.

As Merck’s reputation grew, Van Looy was still a reference point in Flanders where Merckx could be seen as a stranger because he was from Brussels. Those bothered by the language Merckx used for his wedding vows or concerned if he spoke French around the dinner table could count on Van Looy as the authentic Flemish champion.

It wasn’t just Merckx snapping at his heels. Van Looy won a Tour stage in 1969 but little else and by 1970 he was being beaten by all, including those who’d never win but said aloud they’d finished ahead of the mighty Keizer. Rather than gift these boasters any more opportunities he quit racing mid-season.

In retirement he run Wittenberg, a showjumping stable in Herentals and was also president of the town’s football club. He later started cycling again, first on a mountain bike just to keep up with his granddaughters who were into running, and then became a regular along the Antwerp canal’s path, clocking 50km at close to 40km/h with a regular group while into his eighties. Trim and with the same haircut as before, to see him for real was like looking at a black-and-white photo turned into colour.

He’d almost put cycling behind him but helped to run the Vlaamse Wielerschool, the “Flemish Cycling School”, a base for children to learn bicycle skills and set them up for racing on and off-road, an idea copied as far wide as Japan.

He has a palmarès longer than almost anyone else and won the Monuments long before the cycling world picked them as the five prime one-day races and set them as goals for Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel. He won every classic going at the time, often winning multiple editions. He never won the derny-paced Bordeaux-Paris though. But he wore all three leader’s jerseys in the grand tours as well as being a national and world champion.

He revelled in fame and supremacy during his career but he didn’t trade on it later on. Visitors to his home would remark there were no trophies, not even a photo of him from back in the day. Similarly in 2017 when Herentals townhall wanted to make a statue of him, Van Looy agreed on the condition was it was made in his image as an octogenarian, he wanted to be known as who he was rather than what he used to be.

No longer defined by results, Van Looy wasn’t haunted by his defeats either. He met Beheyt over a beer and lunched with Merckx, although Merckx said they avoided talking about their racing days, presumably to spare Van Looy from indigestion. He followed the sport, content to watch races from start to finish from his sofa and if ever reached for a comment, he was more an avuncular elder rather than a rent-a-quote for the Belgian media, L’Equipe branded him the “silent emperor”. He shared views about Wout van Aert and Remco Evenepoel and they were mostly generous. Despite living just 500m away and seeing some of himself in Van Aert, he didn’t dish out advice to the jonge.

Nini died in 2021 and this left him bereft. Unable even to visit her grave, he preferred to keep a candle burning at home and to talk to her as if she was still in the family home.

When asked by L’Equipe’s Pierre Callewaert in 2019 what he’d tell someone new to cycling yet to hear of Rik Van Looy and all those wins, he replied “nothing, I wouldn’t even tell them I was a rider“. Instead he said “I just want people to remember my cycling school which allowed the youngsters to race. When I was 12 I didn’t race, I delivered newspapers by bike“. Little did he know that he’d be all over their front pages for years to come.