Cobble wrote:
jjh wrote:
You can't mention the Cobra and not bring up trying to transfuse his own blood out of fridge and almost dying while still denying it. And then once he was banned for 12 years claiming that he going to set strava records on all the big passes.
Frank VBD is the king though. Just google it, too much to list here. Od'd with a Senagalese hooker.
I don't think many Americans will know VDB but sure was something special. Beautiful style, extremely elegant. Such a talent gone to waste. Him and Gaumont took doing to a new level. One died and the other almost.
For those that don't know VDB- this video shows him leading the who's who of doped riders in the mountains during the 1999 Vuelta, and then he proceeds to ride them off is wheel and get the first of two stage wins in the 1999 Vuelta..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8MOQuF4_BI stage 16- Vuelta 1999 "Vandenbroucke (Cofidis), who is trying to rebuild his career and reputation after the "Dr Mabeuse" affair earlier this year, escaped with Spain's Jon Odriozola (Banesto) with approximately 55 kilometers to go, and quickly pulled away from the peloton. The pair had built a gap of nearly 5 minutes to an eight-man chasing group, and nearly 13 minutes to the majority of the bunch at the finish."
stage 19- Vuelta 1999 "Belgium's Frank Vandenbroucke gave a hint of what might have been during today's 19th stage of La Vuelta a España. In the past few days, the recently reinstated rider from Cofidis has started to show the form that he had at the beginning of the season, prior to his suspension resulting from the "Sainz-Lavelot" affair. The World Championships are surely firm in this man's sights now.
The final mountain stage saw a group of roughly 25 riders form with 75 km to go on top of the first category Alto de Pedro Bernado. As the stage progressed, Vandenbroucke showed his strength, dropping all but six others on the final climb, the second category Puetro de Navamoral. "
Lastly- this pretty much sums up VDB:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/...ucke-and-the-99-race "
The retired Italian rider, Nicola Miceli, really ought to have fond recollections of the 1999 Vuelta a España. In the second week, Miceli was riding as well as at any point during his career, twice finishing mountain stages in the top three. And, yet, at the same time, Miceli felt like packing up and going home.
"
That Vuelta a España was the only time in my career that another rider made me lose the will to race my bike.
I'm talking about Frank Vandenbroucke," Miceli says, for the avoidance of any ambiguity. "
He'd be coming back to the hotel in the small hours, with a girl, possibly drunk, and then going and killing us all on the road the next day. You know, you train hard, you go a month without sex before a grand tour - because you tell yourself that's what it takes - then you see that. It makes you think, 'What am I even doing here?'"
The annals record that Jan Ullrich won the 1999 Vuelta, but for most who were there - like Miceli - the race was in equal measures memorable and traumatic on account of Vandenbroucke's performances. The late enfant terrible of Belgian cycling won two stages, to Teruel and Ávila, and in the final ten days rode the the entire peloton, Ullrich included, into beleaguered, awestruck submission. Fifteen years on, what
El País called a "demonstration" stands as a mawkish monument to VDB's tragically short career and life, and an era that professional cycling hasn't yet worked out how to remember or forget.
