Put Me Back on My Bike Read online

  Alongside Taylor in the British team car, Hall watched Simpson’s progress each day. After a strong first week, he was handily placed in sixth overall when they went into the Alps, but that was as good as he would get. The first of his ‘hit days’, over the great Galibier pass, with its one in eight slopes, its snowdrifts and desolate scree slopes, did not go to plan. Simpson’s health problems were brought home to Hall after the stage, when he cleaned Simpson’s bike: it was ‘covered in shit’. The British leader had been unable to keep his food down, he had diarrhoea and stomach pains. The mechanic and Taylor sat behind in the car as Simpson stopped at the foot of the Galibier to evacuate his system and then spent 15 miles of ascent chasing the leaders.

  ‘When he got back to the field the leaders had gone, so he rode all the way up on his own. You could see them in front, you could see he was catching them, but the top came too early. He did go hell for leather down the other side, took a few chances’ – on the same descent where he had ruined his Tour the previous year – ‘but he ran out of steam and lost time,’ remembers Hall.

  Simpson was convinced that, had it not been for the stomach trouble, he would have stayed with the leaders according to his plan, rather than dropping to seventh overall. Perhaps this was true, but stomach trouble on the Tour is simultaneously a symptom and a cause of weakness: it drags the body down into a spiral of gradual decline. His teammate Vin Denson also noticed Simpson’s physical troubles. ‘I remember when we finished [one stage] in the Alps we had to carry him up the stairs. He was ill and couldn’t eat. I was telling him “have some soup, some broth”; he just said “I’m going to be sick” but the next morning he was as bright as a button.’

  Three days later, Simpson was at the foot of the Ventoux, a sick man with minimal team support, but driven on by his intensely competitive mind and his need to make money. The consensus from those in the team is that he was strung up, but outwardly relaxed. He still had the stomach trouble: he had had a bout of it the previous evening, and talked then of seeing the race doctor about it the next morning.

  Hall prepared Simpson’s bike meticulously that night, wrapping new tape round the handlebars – an old mechanics’ trick to boost a rider’s morale: when he looks down, he sees a bike which looks new. In the little red notebook, Hall listed the extra low gears he fitted on the bikes of what remained of the team: Denson, Colin Lewis, Barry Hoban and Arthur Metcalfe. By now, the other five team members had abandoned. He tinkered with Simpson’s machine until one o’clock in the morning outside the team’s hotel in Marseille. When he took it out for a test ride he was stopped on a deserted backstreet by the old port by a gendarme who thought he had stolen the bike. Then as now, the words ‘Tour de France’ can work wonders, and Hall was quickly let off the hook.

  For most of stage 13, Hall, Alec Taylor and the driver, Ken Ryall, went through their usual daily routine in the Great Britain team’s Peugeot 404 saloon. After the early morning start in Marseille, they followed the main bunch of riders. They listened to Radio Tour, the short-wave radio station which provided news of what was happening up ahead, and were on the alert to deal with punctures or any mechanical trouble. They overtook the field before the feeding station in the town of Carpentras, where the race was to finish after a loop up the thirteen-mile climb to the top of the Ventoux and down the other side. The heat was intense, the air filled with the high-pitched whirring of the cicadas, the little grasshoppers which are everywhere in Provence. The whole field was feeling the heat. Liquid food in the cyclists’ bottles curdled and they regularly dived into bars and ran to roadside fountains to get drinks.

  In Carpentras, Hall, Taylor and Ryall handed the riders their musettes – cotton bags with food and bottles of water – and then they drove hard to catch up the peloton again. Shortly after they got back behind the main group of riders, by now on the lower slopes of the Ventoux, Hall saw the first of a number of things that would later strike him as peculiar. Hall liked to make home movies of the major races, which he showed to his cycling clubmates in the winter, and he knew Simpson ‘was destined to do a ride that day’. So as they rolled slowly along the lower slopes of the Ventoux in the blistering heat, he was sitting on top of the car getting his cine-camera and film ready. ‘It was just before we started the Ventoux, an area where you are going through some trees, beginning to climb quite steeply. We got onto a quiet stretch of road and all of a sudden I saw Tom’s bike in the grass on the right. I said to Alec, “Hang on, that’s Tom’s bike,” and Tom came running out of a wooden hut. He was just banging the top of his bottle to put the cap on.

  ‘I remember what I said to him. He came round the back of the car, got on his bike, and I said something like “Hey, Tom, that’s naughty, you shouldn’t be doing that,” and he just winked at me and put his bottle in his cage and pedalled off.’ Afterwards, Hall was told that Simpson had put cognac in his bottle; a commissaire – race referee – who witnessed the incident, Jacques Lohmuller, confirmed this.

  The incident would not have been notable had it not been for the tragedy which was to follow. Until the 1970s, la chasse à la canette – the hunt for water – was common on the Tour on baking days like this when the riders would soon exhaust the two small bottles they carried on their bikes. They were not permitted to take bottles from the support cars, as they do today, so they would grab water from anywhere they could.

  Hall went back in later years and tried to work out where the building was; it was no longer there. But what he had seen was another ingredient being added to the fatal cocktail swishing around the British leader’s system. Simpson had already emptied two of the three tubes of amphetamines in his back pockets and he had already drunk part of a bottle of brandy grabbed by his room-mate Colin Lewis in another café raid earlier in the stage.

  Simpson’s ‘guts were queer’, he told Lewis. He had not been able to drink the liquid rice which Naessens usually gave him in his feeding bottle and had thrown it away. To one teammate, Vin Denson, he ‘looked as if he was grimacing, pulling his face, rolling his head a bit, as if he was trying too hard’. Clearly, when he arrived at the mountain and saw the observatory 5,000 feet above him to his left, he felt he needed a second dose.

  Hall and Taylor stood in the front seats of the cut-down car, looking up the mountain as they went past the also-rans being spat out on the first section of the climb, through the Bedoin forest. They could just make out what was going on at the front of the race, a couple of hundred yards up the slope, and occasionally glimpsed the white-clad figure of Simpson, who escaped early on but could not hold the pace set by Julio Jimenez, one of the finest climbers in the race. Simpson slipped back, to be overtaken by five other riders four miles from the top, where the road swings left past the café at Chalet Reynard and across the mountainside on the final approach to the summit. One of the five, Lucien Aimar, noticed that Simpson was in a peculiar state. ‘I offered him a drink but he couldn’t hear me. His look was empty. The bizarre thing was, he was trying to get away from me. He got about two and a half metres ahead and I said, “Tom, stop fooling about,” but he didn’t answer. His behaviour was completely bizarre.’

  About one and a half miles from the top, Hall captured the start of the drama on his cine-camera, as Simpson began to zigzag, first almost going over the edge and down the scree to the left, then coming close to falling up the slope to the right. ‘He was out of control for a moment or two. I thought he was going to go over the edge – if he’d gone over the left side he’d have gone and gone. He pulled himself up a couple of times, jerkily,’ Hall recollects. Initially, the mechanic was worried about how Simpson might fare on the descent. ‘I said “he’s not going to get down”, or something like that, because he was losing his control.’ Taylor realized that Simpson’s chances of winning the Tour were slipping away and shouted to him to concentrate.

  When cyclists are at the point of exhaustion, any minute physical peculiarities in their riding style – a weak shoulder, a slightly bent knee
– will become exaggerated as they fight the bike. Simpson’s head had twisted towards his right shoulder at an angle of 45 degrees, like a bird with a broken neck. This was the posture he automatically adopted when he had one of his jours sans, as the French call a day when a cyclist is drained of physical strength.

  This is where Hall’s home movie ends – the moment when he realized something was horribly wrong. Part of the brief sequence is on Something to Aim At. So too is Hall’s footage of Simpson making his way back up to the bunch on the lower slopes after his café stop. Hall speculates ironically on what he might have made in royalties. But he felt the same about the film as the number plate: it was ‘a thing I didn’t want to look at for years and years’.

  Simpson fell for the first time roughly a mile from the summit. ‘It isn’t like it is now,’ says Hall. ‘It was a narrower road, with no room for a car to pass, cut into the bank with quite a drop down onto the grey-white stony stuff. I thought he’d just blown. He fell more or less against the bank.’

  When Hall jumped off the car, he thought Simpson had simply overdone it. ‘He [Simpson] was leaned up against the bank, and I undid his toe straps and said, “Come on, Tom, that’s it, that’s your Tour finished.” I was going to help him off, because he was just leaning against the bank, still on his bike, then of course he started protesting, “No no no no no, get me up, up.” He was a bit incoherent but he knew what was going on. “I want to go on, on, get me up, get me straight.” Alec had stopped the car and he came over. I said, “He wants to go on, Alec,” and Alec said, “If Tom wants to go, he goes.” So I just pulled him off the bank, and we wobbled him into the middle of the road, between us we were pushing him, and he said “Me straps, Harry, me straps”, so he knew that his toe straps were undone. So I had to quickly tighten them up for him, and we pushed him off.’

  Here, Hall’s reaction to the events seems to change. He was now being taken beyond anything he had ever experienced. He had seen riders pedal themselves into a state of exhaustion or hypoglycaemia before, but of Simpson collapsed against the bank telling him to put him back on his bike, he can only say, ‘At that moment I don’t know what I thought. I just don’t know.’ What Hall does know is that Simpson’s last words were murmured, in a rasping voice, just as he was pushing him off: ‘On, on, on.’ He could have been exhorting the mechanic, or telling himself to keep going; Hall seems to think it was both. This probably explodes the idea that Simpson’s final words were ‘Put me back on my bike.’ Hall does not remember Simpson using the expression at any point.

  Credit for ‘Put me back on my bike’ should perhaps go to the Sun’s man on the 1967 Tour, the late Sidney Saltmarsh. The writer used to claim to fellow journalists that, after Simpson’s death was announced, he was asked by foreign colleagues what his last words were, and he told them ‘Put me back on my bike.’ He uses the quote in his report of the stage in Cycling Weekly. Saltmarsh used to say that he made the quote up; if he did, it was a good guess. Equally, he might have asked Hall, Taylor or Ryall what Simpson said, and recieved the reply ‘He told us to put him back on his bike.’ Then, he simply translated their paraphrase back into direct speech.

  Taylor and Hall felt that Simpson might still make it over the climb. It was, after all, only just over a mile to the summit. ‘We got back in the car, we said “he’s managing now”, he was going quite straight, quite steady, bobbing away. He went straight for maybe 500 yards, it seemed a fair way. We thought he might just get over the top, if he gets to the top he’ll be OK.’ Suddenly, Simpson started to wobble again. Aware of what was coming, Hall and Taylor jumped out of the car and ran forward to catch him, and Simpson began falling as they got to him. Taylor supported Simpson on the left, Hall to the right, with three spectators also trying to keep him moving and upright as he zigzagged across the road

  Taylor and Hall, in their shorts and T-shirts, stumbled as Simpson’s weight pushed them across the road to the left, almost into the gutter. Then the three men veered to the right, with Simpson now completely unable to support himself as he was laid down on the roadside. The fight to keep him upright barely lasted a few seconds but Hall describes it as he might a process which took several minutes.

  ‘He was on his side,’ says Hall. ‘I was undoing his straps. I’d lifted him up. I’d slipped my body under his. I was trying to put him on my back and get him off the road, as you’re always aware that there’s stuff [the other cars and cyclists] coming and you’ve got to get out of the way, whatever you’re doing.’

  Now the long pauses between words begin, as if Hall is still trying to get a grip on the tragedy, still can’t quite figure out how to describe it. Thus far, he has looked me in the face, but his eyes now have a faraway expression. He no longer seems to be entirely in the same room. ‘The last terrible thought I had was . . . he wouldn’t release the bars. He was hooked on the bars. I had to say to Ken Ryall, “Get his hands off” and Ken had to peel his fingers off so that I could let the bike go and carry him.’

  Simpson’s fingers were locked on the bars as if in rigor mortis, which has convinced Hall with hindsight that by then he was dealing with a dead man. Simpson, he feels, died somewhere between the moment when he was put back on his bike, and his second fall. There was no sign of life when he was carrying him off the road: like a sleeping child, Simpson was not supporting himself. He was a dead weight.

  They laid Simpson on the stones, with his legs in the road, with ‘a bit of a wet tea towel or something under his head’, and his bike thrown down any old how on the rocks between the bumpers of two cars parked up on the slope. Hall loosened his jersey and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with one of the nurses from the Tour’s medical team, taking it in turns to apply pressure to the lungs and do Simpson’s breathing. Taylor and Ryall had gone to watch for the team’s other riders, to ensure they did not stop and see their leader dying.

  Again he searches for words. ‘He was a sort of a yellowish colour . . . He was . . . It was hard to understand what was happening, because you were getting air into him when you were pumping him, and the air was coming out again.’ Gruesomely, he mimics the sound the air made as it left Simpson’s lungs: a drawn-out slobbering bubbling, like the tail end of a deflating balloon. Hall cannot remember how long his part in the fight for Simpson’s life lasted. He has no idea how many cycling fans had rushed over to watch. ‘I was taking no notice. You’re in your own little world. There was a load of people, it was a matter of [saying] “Keep back, keep back, give him air.” You’re thinking “He’s dead”, “No, he can’t be.”’

  Standing on the car, a breeze had kept Hall cool, but as soon as he got down, the heat struck him: merely breathing in the air was uncomfortable. ‘It was terrible, very glaring, because it’s all white stones it just seemed to intensify the heat. It’s the stillness . . . When I carried him to the side of the road it was oppressive, hot, like being in a cauldron, no air at all.’

  As he leans forward in his comfortable armchair in his sitting room, Hall can make a little pit form in the bottom of your stomach as you share in some of the adrenaline, feel the totality of the involvement. He can still see Simpson’s face. ‘He had a yellowy transparency – my lasting memory is of his eyes, just staring eyes. There was no sweat on his face. The sweat had gone. It had a waxy transparent look, with no colour on the top of his skin.’

  They had to leave Simpson there. The tour’s doctor, Pierre Dumas, had just brought an oxygen mask when Taylor, who wanted to get to the finish, came up to Hall and dragged him away. In the car, as they went through the steep succession of hairpins on the Ventoux’s north side, Hall, Taylor and Ryall were stunned. ‘You’re in a bit of a daze, wondering what’s going to happen. You think, well, maybe they can save him. You’re telling yourself, “Perhaps he isn’t [dead], perhaps there’s something they can do, perhaps they can give him an injection in the helicopter, he’s in good hands.”’ And so down the mountain: hoping against hope, but knowing inside.

  T
he British team were staying in the village of Malaucéne, on the descent from the Ventoux observatory to the finish in Carpentras. Taylor had to go to the race headquarters to find out what had happened to Simpson. Hall was left to deal with the team in the Hôtel du Ventoux, a three-storey building among the main street’s lime trees and shady squares.

  The two soigneurs, Naessens and Rudi Van der Weide, got drunk, locked themselves in their hotel room on the hotel’s first floor, and would not come out. Hall will not say what he said to calm them down: ‘I got to them eventually and what happened then is between me and the lads.’ Naessens had been close to Simpson for several years and regarded him as a son. He had looked after Simpson before this and other major races, and now, as well as being devastated by the shock, he probably felt responsible to some extent. In the light of their close relationship, it is almost certain that he knew that Simpson used drugs, although it is perfectly possible that he did not know precisely what Simpson was using and in what quantities.

  The race finished at about 4.30 p.m. in the tree-lined centre of Carpentras. Simpson’s absence had passed almost unnoticed. When the announcement had been made that no more riders were left to finish and he had still not arrived, the three British journalists on the race tried desperately to find out what had happened. No one knew what had happened to Simpson beyond the fact that he had fallen.

  The Tour’s press room that evening was the chapel of the Collège des Garcçons in Carpentras. The building is an imposing, domed, 17th-century Jesuit church, built of honey-coloured limestone in a backstreet close to the old centre and used today to house art exhibitions. At 6.30 p.m., the communiqué written and signed by Dumas was read out by Félix Levitan, the editor of the Parisien Libéré newspaper, a dapper little man who jointly directed the race with Jacques Goddet: ‘On arrival at the hospital in Avignon, Tom Simpson was in a state of apparent death. Specialist services at the hospital continued attempts at reanimation, without success. Tom Simpson died at 17.40. The doctors concerned have decided to refuse permission for the corpse to be buried.’