Regarding Eddy Merckx

I don't mean to sneak up on Eddy Merckx, but I don't see any other way. My plan is to approach him from behind as he finishes his ride. I could employ a facing tactic, stand by the entrance to his hotel as he pedals in, but that might seem confrontational, even a little creepy. Of course, I rather wouldn't surprise Eddy at all. If this were a normal assignment, I would call or text him, and he'd either say sure, I'll join you for a beer after my ride, or, sorry but I'm going to take a nap. But there's nothing normal about Eddy Merckx. (Unless you use "normal" as a synonym for "balanced" or "grounded," but that's getting ahead of the story.) After more than 40 years of global celebrity and countless journalists demanding his time and angling to get inside his head, he takes a friendly but firm approach to dealing with the media.

During these few days in Penticton, British Columbia, Eddy wants me to arrange our meetings through Axel Merckx, his 39-year-old son. That worked for my initial contact, an interview that took place yesterday at Axel's house on the shore of nearby Okanagan Lake. But Axel is organizing an inaugural gran fondo to be held here this weekend and has more pressing matters than relaying messages from a magazine writer. After a day of waiting for Axel to return my calls requesting additional time with his father, who will ride in the fondo and help promote it, I go rogue.

Guessing that Eddy might like a tune-up ride this afternoon, I drive to his hotel, arriving just in time to see him depart—a burly man in his 60s pedaling out of the parking lot, dressed in an all-black kit, riding an EMX-7, one of the models from the company that bears his name. I follow him across the street, watching as he stops for a minute to get off and adjust his saddle in a characteristic gesture, but I soon lose his trail in heavy afternoon traffic. I drive back to the hotel parking lot and here I sit, awaiting the return of The Cannibal.

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Merckx earned his nickname for the insatiable competitive drive that defined his unparalleled cycling career. He won an astounding 525 pro races over 13 seasons, notching his first major victory at the 1966 Milan–San Remo Classic, when he was 20, and logging his final big win at the same race in 1976. In between came five Tour de France titles, five wins at the Giro d'Italia, and one Vuelta a Espana victory. Merckx won each of cycling's five Monuments, the one-day Classics universally acknowledged as the most prestigious in the sport. (Besides Milan–San Remo, these include the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and the Tour of Lombardy.) Only two other riders in history won all five, but Merckx won them a combined 19 times, eight more than number two, Roger De Vlaeminck. In 1969 he became the only rider ever to sweep the overall, mountain, and points classifications at the Tour de France. He twice won eight stages in a single Tour, holds the record with 34 overall and for the most days in the yellow jersey, 96. In 1971, he won nearly half of all races he entered, and from 1969 to 1973 never won less than a third of his races—an astonishing rate of success in a sport in which a single victory can sometimes make a rider's season successful. His plaque in the Cycling Hall of Fame succinctly tells the tale: "Eddy Merckx is simply the greatest rider of all time."

In a 2005 poll, his countrymen voted him the second-greatest Belgian of all time. (The renowned missionary Father Damien won top honors.) A station in the Brussels metro system is named after Eddy Merckx. Belgium's King Albert II proclaimed Merckx a baron in 1996. Merckx has been the subject of several full-length biographies and hundreds of newspaper and magazine profiles. In the classic 1974 documentary film La Course en Tête, the French auteur Joel Santori followed Merckx for a full year during his competitive prime, filming the rider on 50-mph mountain descents and at home spooning farina to his young children during intimate family dinners. An inspired, exhaustive attempt to depict the inner man though his outward actions, the film probes the inevitable, essentially unsolvable mystery regarding Eddy Merckx: What angels and demons conspired to transform a quiet, unassuming son of a shopkeeper into the quintessential cyclist of the 20th century?

Now it's my turn to take a crack at the riddle. During my interview with Eddy yesterday, I'd brushed close to a solution, albeit in an ineffable, ultimately frustrating manner that left me with more questions than answers. Our conversation took place, fittingly, on the edge of the deep, beautiful, and mysterious lake.

Lightning flashed above the mountains on the far shore, thunder grumbled, and a fitful wind raked the deck of Axel Merckx's home, which he shares with his wife, Jodi, a former pro triathlete, and their daughters Axana, six, and Athina, 10. The couple settled here in the Okanagan Valley, about a four-hour drive east of Vancouver, after Axel retired from his own professional cycling career in 2007. Eddy and Claudine, his wife of 44 years, had arrived two days earlier, after 20 hours of travel from Brussels. Eddy had been up since 5, he told me, when he watched the telecast of the fourth stage of the 2011 Tour de France. Afterward, he called in his observations to a Belgian newspaper. Merckx had rounded out the morning with a two-hour bike ride with his daughter-in-law.

Rather than appearing jet-lagged and exhausted, however, the 66-year-old Merckx looked rested and composed. He has turned bulky in late middle age, but not soft. In his svelte competitive days Merckx appeared more Spanish or Italian than Belgian; now he looks vaguely Slavic. His hair remains black, and his brown eyes emit a default light of amusement. Like many great athletes, Eddy, in repose, projects an air of preternatural stillness, calm, and command. As he sprawled in a thronelike easy chair overlooking the lake, I could imagine Merckx settling the stormy waters with the wave of a trident.

Befitting the setting, and his station in life, Merckx was in a retrospective mood. He acknowledged that his competitive career seemed increasingly distant and abstract—"All those races, all those victories and losses, it's as if they happened to someone else"—while his postcycling career as a manufacturer of high-end racing-bike frames remains more vivid. "A rider didn't make as much money in the 1960s and '70s as he does today," Merckx explained.

"I earned more than other riders, but even in my best year I never grossed more than about $300,000. With a wife and two children to support, I didn't have enough money for me to do nothing. So I started my business. I began it on March 28, 1980, and sold it on October 22, 2008." (He still works with the company as an adviser in the design of the frames, and as its public face.)

The thunder again sounded, closer now. "We built a good product, that gave good value," Merckx continued in lightly accented English, one of his four languages (along with French, Dutch, and Italian).

"I wasn't a figurehead. Every day I was on the factory floor. I traveled to all the trade shows in Europe, the U.S., and Japan. You need just as much drive to be a good businessman as you do to excel as an athlete. The difference is that the athlete knows how good he's doing at the end of the day by looking at his results. The businessman doesn't know until the end of the year when he looks at his balance sheet."

Eddy leaned forward in his chair. "I started from zero and built up a factory employing 30 people," he said. "I made a good profit when I sold the company. We're not Trek or Cannondale, but we did okay."

Merckx's solid success as a bike manufacturer seems as telling as his spectacular success as a cyclist. "After he retired from competition, Eddy rolled up his sleeves and learned the bike-manufacturing business from the ground up," says Sandy Nicholls, marketing director for Gita, which distributes Merckx bikes in the United States.

"That would be like Michael Jordan, after he quit playing basketball, going to work every day at Nike, learning how to manufacture Air Jordan shoes. And once he learned the fundamentals, Eddy pitched the scale of his company to the limit of his abilities and resources. If you're looking for what made Eddy a transcendent cyclist—the work ethic, the clarity, the attention to detail—you could start with the qualities he exhibited as a businessman."

Merckx says he learned those qualities from his father, Jules, who owned a grocery in a small town near Brussels. From his father, Eddy also learned what mistakes to avoid. "My father had a good business but as hard as he worked, he should have made more money. He put too much faith in the wrong people. He was too willing to give a customer a free beer. He had some bad luck and he died early, at 63."

Eddy's cell phone rang, and he apologized for having to take the call. I stood and stretched, admiring the mountains, vineyards, and roiling sky above the glacier-sculpted valley. Lake Okanagan hosts the Ironman Canada Triathlon and is also home to the mythical 50-foot-long sea serpent Okopogo, Canadian cousin to the Loch Ness Monster. For the length of Eddy's stay, I thought, two legendary figures would inhabit the valley. The monster and The Cannibal remained equally elusive. If clear eyes, a sturdy work ethic, and attention to detail were all it took to produce a transcendent cyclist, then the roads would be full of them. Something wild also goaded Eddy Merckx, some sort of desperate, inchoate hunger that only cycling—and winning—could appease.

He wrapped up the call and our interview resumed. Hoping that he'd speak to that hunger, perhaps give a hint to its inescapable dark side, I asked Merckx if he ever hated cycling. "I never hated it," he said, more bemused than unsettled by my question. "Well, maybe on some days when I had to ride through the snow I hated it. But mostly I always liked cycling. I still like it. Now I ride for fun, not for performance."

It was then, with our conversation winding down, that I directly asked the multipronged question that Eddy Merckx has likely heard at the end of a thousand interviews. What forces converged to transform an unexceptional Belgian kid into The Cannibal? Did those primal forces haunt him as much as empower him? Could they be replicated? Could they be coached?

Merckx lifted his hand in a helpless gesture. "What is talent, really?" he said. "Is it the fact that your heart pumps more volume than the average person's, or that your blood turns less acidic when exercising so that you recover faster? No—talent has to do with your capacity for suffering. You just learn to suffer more. In the end, maybe, there is no explaining. Why are some people so intelligent? Why is a brain surgeon so deft with his fingers? What is about his vision that makes a man a great artist?"

Eddy shrugged, then gave a sly smile and said, "A journalist once speculated that I came from Mars."

As I drove away from the house the rain fell in great crashing sheets. Despite the conditions, I couldn't stop looking at the lake. It seemed like the kind of afternoon that Okopogo might appear. I envisioned the monster imitating The Cannibal, surfacing for a tantalizing, breathtaking moment, then diving back to the depths.

 
After losing Eddy in traffic, I drive back to the hotel and await his return, daydreaming about a reporting assignment in Lille, France, in 1999. Hoping to snag a comment from the French rider Richard Virenque during the investigation of the Festina doping scandal, I had joined a group of journalists in front of the Palace of Justice, waiting for more than an hour in an icy rain for Virenque to emerge from a hearing. I don't remember much about Virenque from that afternoon, but I recall the acrid smoke of the French newspapermen's Gitanes, and ducking into a cafe for fortifying shots of vin rouge and bitter French coffee. The day seemed soaked in the romance of European cycling; a romance that the young Eddy Merckx, with his dash, swagger, and dark, blade-like good looks, also seemed to epitomize. My present, low-key stakeout feels like an appropriate way to pursue the older man.

About half an hour goes by. Finally, I see a black, flitting figure. It's Eddy coming in, riding straight and strong, his face the same flat, imperious mask as in photos from the 1970s, older and fleshier now but showing the same fierce indifference, the same iron resolve. During Eddy's competitive prime, journalists often complained about his evasive, monosyllabic interviews.

"When I could feel the full force of the interest bearing down on me, I would often clam up," Merckx later told a biographer.

"It was only when I was on my bike that I could be myself." Forty years later, he still looks at home, and perhaps most himself, leaning over the handlebar.

Eddy glides quickly to the hotel entrance. I jump out of the car as he dismounts, his back toward me. I start to call his name but hold back, reluctant to disturb his moment of privacy. At home in Belgium, Merckx had told me yesterday, he can't sit in a cafe without getting pestered by autograph seekers, nor can he ride his bicycle without passing motorists honking and waving. Here in Penticton, by contrast, Eddy appears to be taken for just another aging, spandex-clad tourist enjoying his afternoon exercise.

Now he's reaching for his room key. What endorphin-laced thoughts, I wonder, does the legendary Eddy Merckx think at the end of a ride? That's the kind of question I've been waiting to ask. Speaking loud enough for him to hear me but quiet enough, I hope, that he won't freak out, I take my shot.

"Eddy, hello, excuse me?"

Merckx turns, swiveling his broad shoulders, his brown eyes widening with alarm. At first he doesn't recognize me. Suddenly it's 1975 again, and Eddy is toiling up the Puy de Dôme on the 14th stage of the Tour de France. A crazed fan steps into the road to wallop Merckx in the midsection, bruising his liver. Eddy must fear that I'm some emotional descendent of that unhinged man, one of the multitude of admirers who've tormented him over the years, demanding an autograph or photo at best and a conversation or some other intimate encounter at worst.

"Eddy, it's me," I say quickly. "The reporter from the American magazine? The guy writing the profile?"

Merckx's eyes narrow. He's still trying to place me, still gauging my threat. Suddenly it's 1969 again, and Eddy Merckx has been bounced from the Giro d'Italia due to a failed doping test. All of Europe is going nuts, the newspapers that previously trumpeted him as a blazing young talent now call for his blood. Photographers thrust cameras in his face and writers concoct wild fantasies. One tabloid reports that the Belgian government has dispatched paratroopers to rescue Merckx from Italy.

Then the surprise fades and Eddy Merckx is back in the moment. He no longer seems wary. He just looks perplexed. "You are the guy from Bicycling," he says.

"Yes, that's right."

Eddy looks at me. "You came out to Axel's house for the interview yesterday," he says. His tone is friendly, but what Merckx really seems to be saying is: You had two hours one-on-one with me at my son's house, and now you want more of my time?

"Yes, that's right, thank you for that, but I was wondering if you might have a few minutes now..." I still don't understand what made you The Cannibal. We can sit by the pool. You can tell me your secrets.

His eyes betray a glint. He seems to recognize the game. "I'm going to take a shower now," he says, not unkindly. "Set it up with Axel." Then Eddy Merckx carries his bike inside, the door closing and locking behind him.

Late the next morning I arrange to meet Eddy at the Penticton convention center, the site of the fondo's expo. I had a hard time explaining to Eddy, via Axel, what I hope to accomplish. I want to "hang" with Merckx, observe him in action. But you don't hang with Eddy Merckx. That's sort of like hanging with the Dalai Lama. You make an appointment with The Cannibal, he shines his light on you, then it's the next reporter's turn.

Inside the expo, Eddy stands with Axel for TV and radio interviews. He seems more comfortable talking in one of his native languages (Merckx grew up speaking both French and Dutch, and is equally popular among both of Belgium's native population groups, the Flemish and Walloon) than in English. Merckx wears loafers and a black Nike T-shirt tucked into designer jeans; European street wear, slightly out of sync with the prevailing North American cargo-short dress code, but the look suits him.

He affably signs autographs and poses for snapshots. It's hard to believe that, during his competitive prime, Merckx was notorious for his silence and remoteness.

For example, the opening chapter of Rik Vanwalleghem's 1997 biography of Merckx is titled "The Sphinx." A fellow rider told Vanwalleghem, "Merckx was the biggest stranger in the peloton. Everyone recognized Merckx, but no one really knew him."

Now, a lion in winter, his sport's éminence gris, Eddy has grown more comfortable explaining things to people, if no more willing to reveal his inner nature. At the moment, he's explaining the gran fondo to Canada. Merckx spends most of his professional time at such citizen-athlete events. Fondos bearing his name are held annually in Belgium, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Austria.

"Cycling is not so popular in Canada and to get 2,000 people for a first fondo is quite impressive," Merckx tells a TV correspondent, while tossing out a small enigmatic smile, the same expression that he's been charming and mystifying people with for more than 40 years. Then he's off into the expo, family in tow. Merckx stops at a booth hawking high-tech bike-airline bags.

"Eddy at heart is a mechanic," says Nicholls.

"He likes getting his hands on a bicycle."

Claudine Merckx, Eddy's wife, a chic, composed woman of 65, appears to function as the matriarchal sun in the family universe, while Eddy plays the patriarchal comet, blazing in to light up the moment for his grandkids, one of whom, perhaps, has inherited his genes for endurance and explosive muscular power. Will she also inherit her grandfather's calm, I wonder, that almost animal-like presence of mind that will allow her to block out negative interior chatter and thus develop to full potential; to be in the moment, to focus ... to suffer?

Next for Eddy comes the hourlong autograph session, which proceeds like a ritualized piece of theater. The room undergoes an imperceptible shift from a diffuse, freewheeling trade show that could take place anywhere in the developed world into a kind of Eddy Merckx shrine. Suddenly Penticton is no longer a sleepy tourist town on the edge of the Canadian wilderness, a place where Eddy can anonymously go for an afternoon ride. The room transforms into a nexus for the sport, at least for as long as Eddy Merckx is in the house.

"He was always our reference point," says a fellow rider of Merckx in La Course en Tête. "Even if Eddy wasn't leading he was still controlling the race. You were always aware of him."

Eddy quietly takes a seat next to Axel at a table, and instantly, without an announcement, a queue perhaps 100 deep forms. Axel rode in eight editions of the Tour de France, serving as a valuable role player on several teams. He also won the 2000 Belgian national championship and a bronze medal in the road race in the 2004 Olympics. The director of the Trek/Livestrong U-23 developmental team, Axel, with the help of Jodi and large volunteer staff, is organizing the fondo as a side project. Tall and chiseled, with broad shoulders, a charming accent, and an easy manner, Axel's charisma is such that he would dominate just about any room he occupied—unless his father happened to be there, too.

Indeed, Eddy's current PR acumen seems one more aspect of his focus, pragmatism, and ability to adapt. "When it was time to be the self-absorbed athlete he did that," Nicholls says. "When it was time to sell his bikes, Eddy did that. Now that it's time to be the grand old man and promote the sport to a new generation, he gracefully plays that role."

The line moves along, right to left, Eddy signing first. There are fans of all ages, although the majority appears to be of Eddy's vintage, baby boomers who started riding in the 1970s before cycling became hip in North America; before the 7-Eleven team, Greg LeMond, and, most notably, Lance Armstrong. "Lance wasn't an all-around rider like Merckx," says Stuart Cooper, a rider from Edmonton, Alberta, who waits for an autograph. "Lance tailored all his training and racing for the Tour, while Eddy took every race as it came."

Then, of course, there's the drug issue. Armstrong's supporters point out that he never flunked a doping test, while Eddy flunked three (besides the test at the '69 Giro, Eddy also failed tests at Lombardy and Fleche-Wallone). Yet Armstrong's name has become synonymous with doping controversy, while Merckx basically skates free. "Eddy's violations got lost in his immense body of work, those 525 career wins," points out a citizen-rider named John Greig, who also waits in line. "Also, the drugs weren't as powerful in Eddy's time; amphetamines weren't as central to performance as EPO."

The late 1960s and early '70s were hardly a simpler time than the present, and they certainly weren't more innocent. However, that era did seem pitched to a more human scale. The power of technology did not yet seem to outpace the importance of heart and grit. Also, Merckx never filled the role of a saint; we trusted his suffering more than we trusted Armstrong's. Cycling, moreover, remained an almost exclusively European sport in the '60s and '70s. It's hard not to feel nostalgic for the Continental hauteur—those billed caps, those musettes with real food in them, those wine bottles—that Merckx personified. As if to drive home the point, La Course en Tête plays silently, in glorious black and white, on a big screen behind the autograph table. Thanks to 21st-century technology, ironically, Eddy's fans in Penticton get to have him both ways: in his fierce and stylish prime, and domesticated by the intervening years.

A middle-aged man named Andre Gerard and his 91-year-old father, Lucien, wait patiently in line. Andre explains that his father is a native of Belgium who emigrated to Canada in 1949. In 1969, when Merckx won his first Tour de France, Lucien was thrilled, and passionately followed the rider through the rest of his career. "My father especially loved it when Eddy won Liege-Bastogne-Liege," Andre says. "Liege is my father's hometown." Now, father and son live in Canada. "I'm not really much of a cyclist," Andre confesses. "I'm going to suffer like hell in the fondo on Sunday, but it'll be worth it to ride in the same event with Eddy Merckx." He looks at Lucien, and smiles. "This is the thrill of a lifetime for my father."

The line snakes on. Axel and Eddy sign cards, posters, retro jerseys. And here comes Wayne Mather, a 54-year-old man from Langley, BC, offering up his bicycle for Eddy to sign. When The Cannibal takes the Sharpie to the top tube, Mather lights up like a 12-year-old getting a new bike.

"As soon as I saw that Eddy was going to be here I changed around my entire summer schedule so I could ride in this fondo," he explains as he comes away from the table.

"Eddy succeeded at all distances, in all weathers, and he was always a gentleman, always a man of honor." Inspecting Merckx's signature, Mather beams. "I'm going to have to clear-coat this bike frame," he says. "This is as good as it gets!"

A man in his 50s named John Tilley walks away with an autographed poster.

"I'm going to have this framed and save it for my grandkids," he says.

Karla Segale, a 58-year-old American from Winthrop, Washington, gets her autograph then says, "Eddy Merckx is beyond a legend. More than any other rider, he's stood the test of time. He raced and won everything, and through it all he maintained his integrity and dignity." She looks at her poster and smiles. "He also signs a great autograph. I said hello to him in French, so he wrote in French above his signature. 'Bonne route' he wrote. 'Good riding!'"

Like Santori, the French filmmaker, these fans seem to see something great in the outward man, and attribute corresponding virtues to the inner one. This is almost always a recipe for disappointment, of course, both for the hero and the admirers. But unlike other modern iconic champions, Eddy Merckx hasn't flubbed his fame, nor has he allowed it to destroy him. Accurately taking his own measure, perhaps the greatest challenge facing a celebrity, he has fashioned a postcycling career in which his grasp has matched his reach, thus passing one of the fundamental litmus tests for contentment. Another key marker of happiness is a solid family life, which Eddy Merckx also seems to have achieved.

He was even a good father. "He never pushed me into the sport," Axel says, "and yet at the same time, by his steady example and love for cycling, he communicated the idea that the sport was noble and interesting and that it had value ... that despite cycling's difficulty—despite the suffering and dues-paying—there was no better way to spend your time and youth. Why wouldn't I try to emulate him?"

The morning of the fondo breaks sunny and clear, with wisps of clouds shredding on the mountains and a cool breeze blowing off the lake. At the convention center, preparing for the post-race party, workers erect a stage and local vintners unload their wares. Fondos are marketed as cycling's equivalent to the marathon, equally welcoming newcomers and competitive athletes. Organizers are careful not to bill the event as a race, but most riders are intently aware of the clock. The Granfondo Axel Merckx draws most of its 2,000-rider field from the Vancouver metropolitan area. All weekend the hotels and restaurants have been full around Penticton, making the local merchants happy. It seems impossible not to be upbeat on this golden July morning.

At their hotel Eddy and Axel mount up with an ease developed over thousands of mornings in the saddle. Axel will ride the 100-mile gran fondo, which has drawn the bulk of the field, while Eddy will ride the smaller, 50-mile event. They glide across the highway, make a quick stop at Starbucks, then roll to the start on the lakeside boulevard next to the public beach. Eddy and Axel put themselves together as they ride, snapping into their helmets and pedals, adjusting their kits, proceeding to the front of the pack, which stretches for a quarter-mile down the boulevard.

Eddy remains affable, shaking hands and pausing for cell-phone snapshots, but he's gradually assembling his game face, putting out that imperious vibe, and the citizens instinctively give him a wide berth. Even so, heading for a pit stop moments before the start, Eddy fails to notice a steep curb and suddenly he's down, banging his hip on the sidewalk. Pain creases his face but he waves off offers of help and takes his place at the line—for a brief moment the avuncular grand old man of the sport fades and The Cannibal rages. Axel says a few words of greeting and the mayor welcomes the cyclists. All along the boulevard the riders mount up, their sound of their feet clicking in a cacophony of cricketlike ticking, then the fondo is on, Eddy Merckx riding off in his all-black kit beside his daughter-in-law, Jodi. He looks stiff from his fall.

Meanwhile I jump into a car driven by a woman from the marketing department of the bank sponsoring the event. The vehicle is supposed to follow the leaders of Eddy's ride, but we start late and get ensnared in the back of the pack. I chafe to catch up with Eddy, but Jackie, our driver, continues to steer cautiously among the cyclists. Her main job, she acknowledges, is to display the bank logo and it doesn't matter much where she's positioned in the field. After a few minutes I stop fretting and enjoy the drive, admiring the morning sunshine glinting off the lake, and the orchards and vineyards heavy with summer bounty. I'll have ample time to catch Eddy at the finish line. Also, like the paparazzi-style scene at the hotel parking lot a few days earlier, a little race-traffic fiasco seems apposite when pursuing the mystery of The Cannibal.

At the 1975 Tour de France, for instance, a few days after the crazed spectator jumped out on the road and slugged Eddy in the liver, he crashed on a rain-slickened mountain descent; a press vehicle skidded out and Merckx and a few other riders slammed into it. Eddy fractured his jaw in the fall and, from that point on in the race, ingested only liquids. The journalists agreed there was no way he could continue. But Merckx refused to quit. He gutted out the final stages, even mounting a quixotic charge to regain the lead, and ultimately finished second overall to Bernard Thevenet. Even more than his five Tour victories, including his dominating 1969 performance when he won all the classifications, that '75 race endeared Merckx to the French public and cemented his place at the top of the cycling pantheon. Eddy Merckx was able to even lose on a grander scale than other riders.

The fondo route loops back into Penticton, and Jackie drops me off near Eddy's hotel. I hustle a mile through town to the convention center, reaching the finish area just as a rider named Carolyn Russell comes in at 2:36.05, more than a minute ahead of the second-place finisher. The announcer apprises us of developments out on the course and offers up factoids regarding the British Columbia cycling scene. His amplified voice reverbs over the prairielike expanse of the lot, where perhaps a dozen spectators have gathered, basking in sunshine while awaiting the arrival of friends and relations who are riding. Then the narration kicks up a notch.

"We have just learned that the legendary Eddy Merckx is only a few minutes away from the finish!" the voice says. "The baron Eddy Merckx, granted heraldry by the King of Belgium in 1996! The five-time winner of both the Tour and the Giro, ladies and gentlemen, who recorded his last professional victory on July 17, 1977, almost 34 years ago today! A metro station in Brussels is named after Eddy Merckx! Not only has Eddy Merckx been voted the greatest cyclist of all time; his countrymen have nominated him the greatest Belgian of any category! And here he comes, ladies and gentlemen, coming in strong, 12th place overall at age 66, the legendary Eddy Merckx!"

He blasts across the line in 2:48.21, a blur wearing black, his face an imperious mask, Jodi laboring beside him. The spectators muster a sleepy smatter of applause.

I walk back to the chute and encounter Jodi. "Eddy killed me!" she says with a grin.

"He killed me! A 32.8K pace!"

Merckx heads for the medical tent, where he finds a massage therapist. His hip is hurting, he's limping and groaning, but at the same time he's grinning, his blood singing after the ride. He stretches out on a table and the therapist goes to work on the deep bruise in his left thigh.

"It hurt the whole ride," Eddy acknowledges. "Why did it happen? Because I'm old and stupid!" He gives a belly laugh.

The therapist works on Eddy's thick, trunklike legs. Jodi brings a couple of high-school kids to meet him. Another massage therapist snaps a picture of Eddy on her cell phone. John Greig, one of the riders, who had gotten an autograph the day before, circumspectly approaches. "Welcome to British Columbia, Mr. Merckx," he says. Eddy nods and shakes his hand. Greig grins. "I'm not going to wash this hand for a week," he says.

As the therapist continues to knead his muscles, Eddy relaxes into the pain, recalling various crashes during his career, especially the terrible accident at a track race in September 1969, when a pacing motorcycle crashed in front of him traveling 40 mph, killing Merckx's own pacer, a man named Fernand Wambst. Merckx spilled violently onto the track, damaging his pelvis. "From that day forward, 15 years, every race, I rode in pain," Eddy says.

The trickle of finishers thickens into a stream. The band starts tuning up for the after-party. Merckx falls silent. Perhaps he's remembering the details of that dreadful day. Maybe he's about to articulate the nature of his subsequent, careerlong pain; the singular, exquisite suffering through which an ordinary shopkeeper's son transformed himself, race by race, kilometer by kilometer, into The Cannibal. Or perhaps he's simply thinking about spending the rest of the day with his granddaughters.

I lean in closer, hungry to hear his secret, but Eddy Merckx had already expressed it.

.....

John Brant is the author of Duel in the Sun: The Story of Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America's Greatest Marathon.