Erik De Vlaeminck: the greatest ever cyclo-cross racer, with seven world championships to his name

He was such a skilled bike handler that he could ride along a railway rail for kilometres at a time without slipping off

It was said that the cyclist Erik De Vlaeminck was such a skilled bike handler that he could ride along a railway rail for kilometres at a time without slipping off. Another of the urban myths that grew up around him was that in his racing years, De Vlaeminck led such a wild, drug-fuelled lifestyle that at one point the Belgian Cycling Federation would only give him a licence for one day at a time. What is beyond question, though, is that De Vlaeminck remains cyclo-cross’s greatest ever racer, taking the World Championships no less than seven times.

Hugely popular in the Low Countries, cyclo-cross consists of racing road-bikes in off-road circuits through the cold, rain and ice of north European winters: arguably, no other two-wheeled discipline is simultaneously as technically and physically demanding. When De Vlaeminck added a third element to those two qualities, he was invincible. “He also raced very intelligently,” says Marc Ghyselinck, chief cycling reporter at Het Laatste Nieuws. “For example, knowing his rivals would follow his chosen line round a circuit, he’d choose the hardest line possible so they’d end up wasting energy and then, without them realising, switch to an easier one.”

De Vlaeminck grew up in a trailer camp in a family of travelling clothiers in eastern Flanders, along with his younger brother, Roger, who became one of Belgium’s top road-racers in the mid-1970s. By then, Erik had already racked up a staggering run of success in cyclo-cross World Championships in a near unbroken run from 1966, aged just 20, to 1973. The one year he was beaten, in 1967, by the far more experienced Italian Renato Longo, De Vlaeminck’s bike had been wrecked in a crash.

On the national scene, he had hard-fought duels with fellow Belgian Albert Van Damme, who limited De Vlaeminck’s number of national cyclo-cross championship wins to a comparatively low total of four. But often De Vlaeminck was in a class of his own, like in the 1970-71 season, when he won 32 of his 34 races, and all but lapped his arch-rival Van Damme in one of them. In total, he won roughly 200 races, including, in a brief venture into road-racing, a stage of the 1969 Tour de France.

However, De Vlaeminck’s addiction to amphetamines – cycling’s drug of choice in the 60s and early 70s – was indirectly responsible for his sudden exit from the sport he had dominated. Aged 28 and at a point where he was spending everything he earned on the drug, De Vlaeminck was sent to prison in 1973 for falsifying doctor’s prescriptions and for involvement in a hit-and-run accident, as a result of which he could not defend his world title in 1974. A brief comeback to racing failed to work out, and after a spell as a builder, he worked, successfully, as the Belgian national cyclo-cross coach.

On a personal front, though, his life continued to be a rollercoaster. One of its most tragic low points came with the death of his son, Geert, of a heart attack during a cyclo-cross race. De Vlaeminck himself had major health problems, suffering from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s before dying aged only 70.

Erik De Vlaeminck, cyclist: born Eeklo, Belgium 23 March 1945; married twice (two sons, one daughter); died Eeklo 4 December 2015.