1. Charly Gaul was a national cyclo-cross champion, an accomplished time triallist and superb climber.
52 Facts About Charly Gaul
1. 2.
Charly Gaul's ability earned him the nickname of Angel of the Mountains in the 1958 Tour de France, which he won with four stage victories.
3.
Charly Gaul won the Giro d'Italia in 1956 and 1959.
4.
Charly Gaul worked in a butcher's shop and as a slaughterman in an abattoir at Bettembourg before turning professional on 3 May 1953 for Terrot, at the age of 20.
5.
Charly Gaul won a stage up the climb of Grossglockner during the Tour of Austria when he was 17, setting a stage record.
6.
Charly Gaul came second the same year in the Criterium du Dauphine Libere stage race.
7.
Charly Gaul rode his first Tour de France in 1953 but abandoned on the sixth stage.
8.
Charly Gaul started the 1954 Tour but again abandoned before the finish.
9.
Charly Gaul came to the 1955 Tour after winning the mountainous Tour de Sud Ouest and finishing third in the Tour of Luxembourg.
10.
Charly Gaul conceded a lot of time on the opening flat stages, not helped by being in a weak team.
11.
Charly Gaul's fight back started in the Alps, where the first stage was from Thonon-les-Bains to Briancon.
12.
Charly Gaul was on his way to winning the next day as well, when he crashed descending in the rain.
13.
Charly Gaul attacked again when the race reached the Pyrenees, winning stage 17 from ahead of the eventual overall winner, Louison Bobet.
14.
Charly Gaul won the mountains competition and finished third in Paris.
15.
Charly Gaul won the mountains prize again and two more stages, a mountain individual time trial on stage three and stage 18 to Grenoble, but his efforts did little good, and he finished 13th.
16.
Charly Gaul started the 1957 Tour but abandoned after two days with no stage wins.
17.
Charly Gaul began the chase and shed rider after rider, including the Spaniard, Salvador Botella, who held eighth place.
18.
At first the rest thought that Charly Gaul had lost too much time earlier in the race to be a threat, that he was looking only at the best climber's prize.
19.
Charly Gaul was within three minutes of the leaders at the top, with Bahamontes a minute behind.
20.
Charly Gaul took the lead and moved ahead as the race progressed through "a curtain of water, a deluge without an ark", as L'Equipe described it.
21.
Charly Gaul lost time in the heat of the Pyrenees but won the stage to Grenoble again, with the eventual overall winner Bahamontes second.
22.
Charly Gaul crashed in the Alps, on the descent of the Cucheron, bruising his hip, shoulder and knee.
23.
The 1962 Tour was contested by trade rather than national teams for the first time since 1929, and Charly Gaul's was not one of the strongest.
24.
Charly Gaul's final contested Tour was 1963, when he dropped out without winning any stages.
25.
Charly Gaul lost the 1957 Giro after stopping for what was described in French papers as "a natural need" on the road to Trieste.
26.
Charly Gaul was upset at a breach of race etiquette and still more annoyed to find himself referred to as Monsieur Pi-Pi, which in French rhymes with and means pee-pee.
27.
Charly Gaul was national cyclo-cross champion at the start and the end of his time as a professional.
28.
Charly Gaul came fifth in the world championships of 1956 and 1962.
29.
Charly Gaul won in Dippach in 1955, Kopstal, Colmar-Berg and Bettembourg in 1956, Schuttrange, Ettelbruck, Kopstal, Bissen and Colmar-Berg in 1957, Alzingen in 1958, and Muhlenbach in 1960.
30.
Charly Gaul grumbled as he climbed the Pyrenees and his eyes were flecked with blood.
31.
Charly Gaul stopped for good after a track meeting at Niederkorn in 1965.
32.
Charly Gaul never recovered from the hurt of being whistled by the crowd when he made his last appearance on the road in the country, riding for a poor team, Lamote, sponsored by a Belgian brewery and achieving nothing.
33.
Charly Gaul ran a cafe at Bonnevoie near the railway station in Luxembourg city before slipping out of public view.
34.
Charly Gaul's lightness was a gift in the mountains, where he won the climbers' competition in the Tour de France of 1955 and 1956.
35.
Charly Gaul pedalled fast on climbs, rarely changing his pace, infrequently getting out of the saddle.
36.
Charly Gaul dominated the climbs of the late 1950s, spinning up the hills at amazing cadences, his legs a blur while his cherubic face hardly showed the strain of his exceptional performances.
37.
Charly Gaul was a variable rider who could delight and disappoint, almost at random.
38.
Charly Gaul was talented in stage races but unremarkable in one-day events.
39.
Charly Gaul was taciturn and spoke rarely to anyone but a circle including Anglade, Roger Hassenforder, Nencini and Bahamontes.
40.
Charly Gaul was popular with fans but not among his rivals.
41.
Charly Gaul rarely shared what he won with those who helped him, said Rene de Latour in Sporting Cyclist.
42.
Charly Gaul said Gaul had no intention of discussing tactics or of sharing his prizes with the rest of the team in return for their help.
43.
Charly Gaul moved into a small hut in a forest in the Luxembourg Ardennes.
44.
Charly Gaul's isolation lasted until 1983, the 25th anniversary of his victory in the Tour de France and the year he met his third wife, Josee.
45.
Charly Gaul moved with her into a house in the south-west suburbs of Luxembourg city.
46.
Charly Gaul died of a pulmonary embolism two days before his 73rd birthday, following a fall in his house at Itzig.
47.
Charly Gaul made his first public appearance there, with his daughter, Fabienne.
48.
Charly Gaul received the Tour de France medal from the organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc.
49.
Charly Gaul attended a reunion of former Tour winners when the centenary race was presented in October 2002.
50.
Charly Gaul began following cycling again, particularly Marco Pantani, the leading climber of the time.
51.
Charly Gaul was a guest at many races, including stages of the Tour.
52.
Charly Gaul rode in an era before drug tests and drug rules.