Mourning in the world of cycling. Federico Martín Bahamontes has passed away this Tuesday at the age of 95. The legendary cyclist, nicknamed El Águila de Toledo, was the first Spaniard to win the Tour de France when he won the 1959 edition. The news was released by the mayor of Toledo, Carlos Velázquez.
With the death of Federico Martín Bahamontes a legendary chapter of Spanish cycling closes. That of the postwar period, the “lead” bicycles, the internecine fights that always surfaced in the Vuelta a España or in the Tour, that of the great feats in the mountains and the no less fainting in any other terrain. Cycling that no one like him, like Bahamontes, knew how to star.
An exceptional climber, six times Tour mountain champion and the first Spaniard to win the yellow jersey (1959), Bahamontes was born in the middle of the summer of 1928, on July 9, the day of the Tour, in the Toledo town of Val de Santo Domingo. His parents, Julián, a road laborer, and Victoria moved a few months later to Toledo, where little Alejandro grew up, since that was his real name. “My uncle Federico decided that he had to call me after him, but I was born as Aleandro and I have official papers and deeds with both names,” he explained.
He became fond of cycling when he dedicated himself, with his bicycle, to distributing goods through Toledo and its steep slopes, while helping the family economy by transporting black market products that his mother sold on the outskirts of the market, dodging rationing. He was good at cycling, he tried some races with his father’s permission and after his first successes in 1954 he moved to Barcelona and made the big leap to professionalism. In the first chronicles he was often cited as Bahamonde, the dictator’s maternal surname. But very soon he became so famous that no one could ignore who Bahamontes was. And what he was capable of with a bicycle.
His leap to absolute popularity came in the 1954 Tour de France, the first of the ten he took part in. His climbing facility, his change of pace and the vigorous and constant pedaling that synchronized with the cadence of his shoulders allowed him to crown the most renowned Pyrenean and Alpine peaks. There was born “the eagle of Toledo”, in the admiring chronicles of “L’Équipe”. Because Bahamontes brilliantly conquered Aubisque (July 19), Tourmalet and Peyresourde (July 20), three more passes between Toulouse and Millau (July 22) and relapsed into the Alps, leading the way over the Alps Romeyère, by Laffrey, Bayard, La Faucille… and the Galibier, where he completed an exhibition never seen before. His return to Spain after the deeds of the Tour was his first great mass bath, his election as Spanish athlete of the year, the consecration. And that Bahamontes used to give up all the margin acquired in the mountains on the descents of the ports, at a time when the Tour rarely placed a finish line at the top of a port. As if something were missing to turn Bahamontes into a new legend of Spanish sport, in that 1954 Tour he starred in an anecdote told a thousand times: when he crowned La Romeyère alone, he got off his bike and calmly drank a vanilla ice cream “while I waited to their rivals”. Actually, he had broken several spokes on one wheel and preferred not to risk a fall on the descent and wait for the team car to arrive. But he himself fed the legend for years.
Cycling Spain was divided at that time between the supporters of the Toledan and the followers of the Basque Jesús Loroño, with whom he had bitter disputes in the Vuelta and in the Tour. They were two irreconcilable characters, each with part of the press in favor of him. The technical director, the Valencian Luis Puig, wanted them to collaborate, but it was impossible. In the 1957 Vuelta, the paroxysm was reached when they attacked each other over and over again despite being part of the same team. La Vuelta was won by Loroño, with Bahamontes second, but in some hotel they almost came to blows. And in the Tour another scandal: in the ninth stage Bahamontes abandoned due to pain in his arm caused by an injection of calcium given by Puig himself. It was there that another famous scene took place, with the director trying to convince the cyclist to get on the bike and continue and Bahamontes denying it over and over again. “Do it for your mother!” Puig implored. No. “For Fermina!” (his wife from him). No. “Do it for Spain, Federico!” No. “By Franco!”…
Bahamontes, described as eccentric, even lunatic, in France focused entirely on the 1959 Tour. That year there was even a final summit scheduled, the time trial climb to the Puy de Dôme. Bahamontes won it, of course. With the expert hand of a character director, Dalmacio Langarica, with psychological work and the support and advice of Fausto Coppi, who was the team’s sponsor, Bahamontes achieved the feat. Loroño, who had refused to work as a domestique, was not part of the team. “The Toledo put his legs and Langarica his brain,” he said to himself. But even with all these factors aligned, one more had to take place, the definitive one: the all-out fight between the best French cyclists, who preferred anyone to win over their local rival. Jacques Anquetil warned: “The organizers force us to run by selection, well, we will. But I am not going to help Rivière, on the contrary, I will run against him”.
On July 18, 1959, precisely that day, Bahamontes hugged Fermina, greeted the Spanish ambassador in Paris, the Count of Casa Rojas, and gave the honor tour of the Parque de los Príncipes wearing the yellow jersey, advertising Tricofilina Coppi on the chest and the winner’s bouquet of flowers. A photograph for posterity.
Bahamontes returned to the Tour in another five editions. He won the mountain, was on the podium in 1963 (2nd) and 1964 (3rd) and finally put his foot down in the 1965 edition, at almost 38 years of age. That Tour passed through Barcelona, ??where he was expected with expectation. But the man from Toledo, a capricious, unpredictable and uncontrollable character like all geniuses, left just the day before, on his way to Ax-les-Thermes, again showing his character. He attacked on the approach to Portet d’Aspet, went ahead and suddenly disappeared. Some versions say that he hid in some bushes, others that he made a mistake on a street in Aspet and when he returned to the race he was no longer running away, but lagging behind. In any case, while his rivals were wondering where he was and picking up the pace of their pursuit, he was already inside the broom car. Months later, on October 12, he said goodbye to the bicycle by conquering the Climbing of Montjuïc.
Bahamontes was always a loquacious character, even talkative, in the style of a Helenio Herrera in soccer. In the years of his old age, when he went to the occasional tribute to the Tour, he used to stop by the press room to analyze the race and emphasize that with the current bikes or with high finishes he would have won five or six Tours without a problem, all This while filling his pockets with the small packages of muffins that were freely offered to journalists, as if he were going back to the rationing days of his childhood. In 2013 he was chosen by L’Équipe as the best climber in the history of the Tour and he did not criticize that they placed Richard Virenque second and not Charly Gaul. “If that Virenque is a climber, I am Napoleon,” he said.
