A few weeks ago Gary B at BikeRadar.com woke up my old memory banks with a shotgun blast of great old “flying V” bike racing victory salutes. Since this blast of photos was flying at me via Twitter, and I am competitive, I set out to find my favorite victory salute of all-time, made by Pol Verschuere. It is hard to see from the video (about a minute in) but Pol gives a defiant “Blank You” upon winning the first stage of the 1986 Tour de France. Being an insider in the European pro peloton back then afforded me some of the hot scoop – probably more than I needed, or wanted to know, but I got it anyway. Pol’s forearm under forearm, fist high gesture was directed at his Fagor team bosses, who’d cut him from their Tour de France roster just a few weeks before the race, only to bring him back onto the squad just a few days before the start, to replace a sick teammate.

In the words of Arlo Guthrie though, “but that’s not what I came here to talk about.” I didn’t come here to talk about victory salutes, but one of cycling’s old characters. I didn’t know Verschuere very well at all, but he was always friendly toward me – even saved me in the final of a race in France once, when my team’s soigneurs forgot to find the feed zone. As with many of that era’s Belgian pros, the word “daffy” seems to apply really well to this guy. Pol was ever so slightly cross-eyed, and, whether or not this came from the fact that his eyes were not exactly on the same page, he sort of sat with his upper body facing left of his bike’s top tube. When I first rode next to the guy on his left side, I thought he was trying to get closer to my face so he could whisper something at me. What’s worse, even after figuring out that Verschuere just had some kind of funny riding position on his bike, I’d still almost always turn my head and grunt, “eh?” I was getting the neo-pro pranked by a guy who wasn’t even trying. But is was Pol’s obsession with the orientation of his saddle that will continue to make me giggle, from time to time, until the day I die. In his defense, I have never met a pro road bike racer who did not suffer from some sort of compulsive behavior, and for most of us it begins with us trying to point saddles and stems straight, before it ventures into complete insanity. Even all these years since “retiring” from professional cycling, people who know me like to attribute some of my antics to J0e-CD. Pol brought this affliction into the races too. Every couple of minutes or so he’d sit up, scoot back on his saddle and stare down at the tip of it. Apparently, over the course of the last couple of minutes or so, his saddle decided to point somewhere other than straight down the top tube, so he’d raise one hand up to about shoulder height and whack the tip of the saddle, hopefully centering it again. Shortly after “centering” the saddle, he’d be back, riding no handed, and would begin the ritual of sending the tip of his saddle back in the other direction. I like to see what ol’ Pol would do with all of these new, true north pointing seat masts?