88 Facts About Freddy Maertens

Freddy Maertens was born on 13 February 1952 and is a Belgian former professional racing cyclist who was twice world road race champion.

Freddy Maertens's career coincided with the best years of another Belgian rider, Eddy Merckx, and supporters and reporters were split over who was better.

Freddy Maertens's life has been marked by debt and alcoholism.

At one point early in his career, between the 1976 Tour and 1977 Giro, Freddy Maertens won 28 out of 60 Grand Tour stages that he entered before abandoning the Giro due to injury on stage 8b.

Freddy Maertens was the son of what his wife, Carine, described as a hard-working middle-class couple: Gilbert Freddy Maertens and Silonne Verhaege.

Freddy Maertens's mother was the daughter of a shipbuilder in Nieuwpoort harbour.

Freddy Maertens had a grocery and newspaper shop, which delivered newspapers.

Gilbert Freddy Maertens, the son of a self-employed bill-sticker, was a flamboyant and restless man who was a member of the local council and on the committee of the town football club.

Freddy Maertens ran a laundry with a staff of four behind his wife's shop.

Freddy Maertens is one of four brothers: he, Mario, Luc and Marc.

Freddy Maertens read enthusiastically and showed a talent for languages.

Freddy Maertens could make himself understood in French, Italian and English as well as his native Dutch by the time he turned professional.

Freddy Maertens then went to the Onze Lieve Vrouw [Our Lady] college in Ostend.

Freddy Maertens had been sewing shoes for her father, a cobbler, since the previous year.

Freddy Maertens mentioned to his colleague, Paul de Nijs, that one of the engines made an odd noise.

Freddy Maertens rode his first race at Westhoek when he was 14, in 1966.

Freddy Maertens won 21 times and came second 19 times to a rider named Vandromme.

Freddy Maertens asked his father permission to leave school in his second year as a junior, or under-19, rider.

Freddy Maertens's father made him promise that he would train regardless of the weather.

Gilbert Maertens gave his son his first bike, which Freddy Maertens described as "a second-hand thing that he'd got from a beach business for a bargain".

Freddy Maertens knew how much and how often his son trained, what he ate and drank, how much he slept, who he went around with.

Freddy Maertens intervened with the army, when his son was called for national service, to ask that he not be given an easier time because of his reputation.

Freddy Maertens rode well only when he had a dominant figure behind him: first his father, then Briek Schotte and then Lomme Driessens.

Freddy Maertens's wife described him as trusting and vulnerable, that he needed care because otherwise he would be "like a bird waiting for a cat".

Freddy Maertens won 50 times as a senior, including the national championship at Nandrin.

Freddy Maertens competed in the individual road race at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

Gilbert Freddy Maertens was more impressed by the Belgian businessman, Paul Claeys, who had inherited the Flandria bicycle company.

Freddy Maertens pushed his son to sign a contract for 40,000 francs a month as an amateur and then double in his first full year as a professional.

The family needed the bike concession because Silonne Freddy Maertens had fallen ill and closed her shop.

Freddy Maertens suffered what he called the poor organisation and penny-pinching attitude of Claeys and his Flandria company.

Freddy Maertens complained about the weight of Flandria frames; rather than ride them, he had his frames made in Italy, by Gios Torino, and had them painted in Flandria colours.

Freddy Maertens was never paid in 1979, his last season with Flandria, which had failed.

Rik Vanwalleghem says Freddy Maertens was naive as a new professional.

Freddy Maertens did not observe an unwritten rule that new professionals establish themselves gradually and not try to humiliate established riders.

Freddy Maertens had said he was not willing to ride for Merckx.

That angered Merckx's supporters who, Freddy Maertens said, six times threw cold water over his legs.

Freddy Maertens said none of the others took up the chase and so he chased by himself.

Freddy Maertens agreed to lead Merckx in the sprint and allow him to win.

Freddy Maertens said to me, 'Freddy, we have to talk about Barcelona.

Freddy Maertens started as a masseur and soigneur for Fausto Coppi.

Freddy Maertens was a team director from 1947 to 1984.

Freddy Maertens had, he said, hidden his exhaustion and therefore his ability to win so as to mislead Maertens into losing.

Freddy Maertens was a dominant figure whose wish to control extended to standing over Carine Maertens to tell her she was not cooking minestrone correctly.

Freddy Maertens said Driessens' visits and interventions meant they were no longer bosses in their own house.

Freddy Maertens said what he called the "big boss" [grand patron], since dead, at Campagnolo [named in his biography as Tullio Campagnolo] drove beside the group and shouted "Sort it out between you but Shimano mustn't be allowed to win the championship".

Freddy Maertens said Gimondi won because he pushed him into the barriers at the finish.

Freddy Maertens alleges that a laxative was put in his drink during the world championship in Montreal in 1974.

Freddy Maertens was handed it while he was in the lead with Bernard Thevenet and Constantino Conti.

Freddy Maertens took the bottle because he trusted Naessens, with whom he worked from 1981 to 1983.

Freddy Maertens started favourite for the 1976 world championship, held at Ostuni, in Italy.

Freddy Maertens came to the race in good form and with the Belgian team lined in his support.

Freddy Maertens made his move seven kilometres later, with Tino Conti.

Freddy Maertens was disqualified during the race after changing his bike on the Koppenberg hill.

Freddy Maertens says De Vlaeminck promised 300,000 francs, which De Vlaeminck denies.

Freddy Maertens says De Vlaeminck paid 150,000 francs, which Freddy Maertens gave to Michel Pollentier and Marc Demeyer for their help.

Freddy Maertens often benefited by the help of his team-mates, Michel Pollentier and Marc Demeyer.

Freddy Maertens won the points classification in 1976 and again in 1978 and 1981.

Freddy Maertens won the 1977 Vuelta a Espana by winning 13 stages, half the total.

Freddy Maertens imposed his will "like a South American dictator", according to the writer Olivier Dazat.

Freddy Maertens won the prologue time-trial and led the race from start to finish.

Freddy Maertens again took the lead at the start by winning the prologue.

Freddy Maertens kept it until Francesco Moser became the race leader on stage five.

Freddy Maertens was expected to take the lead again after Mugello, when there would be a time-trial.

Freddy Maertens abandoned the race and the rest of the team would have returned to Belgium had Maertens not persuaded them otherwise.

Freddy Maertens rarely finished races and shone only in round-the-houses races, where his contract fees were needed to pay his tax debts.

Freddy Maertens did not defend his title in the 1982 world championship at Goodwood, saying he had injured his knee on a gate.

Freddy Maertens became fatter and rode for small teams for equally small salaries.

Freddy Maertens often forgot to go to races and was fired again.

Freddy Maertens was disqualified from second place in the 1977 Ronde after changing his bike on the Koppenberg climb.

Freddy Maertens won the season-long Super Prestige Pernod International in 1976 and 1977.

Freddy Maertens was a talented time-triallist and an excellent sprinter.

Carine Freddy Maertens said money "flooded in" when her husband reached the top as a professional.

Freddy Maertens received only half his salary in 1978 and none of the cash to be paid without its being registered in the accounts.

Freddy Maertens lost money entrusted to others to invest, including 500 000 francs in the Flandria Ranch, run by his sponsor.

Freddy Maertens lost 750 000 francs in a furniture business which burned down.

Freddy Maertens said he was riding for nothing during the day and spending every evening with lawyers.

Freddy Maertens owed interest on interest and lost all he had.

Freddy Maertens calculated his tax bill at 30 million francs [almost US$1 million].

Freddy Maertens spent long periods without a job and without unemployment benefit and his wife cleaned houses.

Freddy Maertens was angry when Belgian television used his photograph as a backdrop to discussions about drug-taking in the sport.

Freddy Maertens was first found positive after Professor Michel Debackere perfected a test in 1974 for pemoline, a drug in the amphetamine family that riders believed to be undetectable.

Freddy Maertens was disqualified in the Fleche Wallonne of 1977 and found guilty the same year in the Tour de France, the Tour of Belgium and the Tour of Flanders.

Freddy Maertens had a positive finding for cortisone in 1986.

Freddy Maertens told a reporter, Guy Roger, that the stories were exaggerated.

Freddy Maertens attended meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous until word spread that he was there.

Freddy Maertens retired at the age of 35 in 1987 after deciding during a training ride that he no longer wanted to train in the wind and rain of Flanders.

Freddy Maertens worked as a salesman after retiring, including in Belgium and Luxembourg for Assos, a Swiss clothing company.

Freddy Maertens left Assos, he said, when supplies became erratic.