I read a good article today about Frank Vandenbrouke’s somewhat suspicious death. I have to admit that when I first heard about the Belgian rider’s death and the possibility of it being a suicide, I didn’t really care. VDB had been a great talent, and he won some pretty impressive races, but I didn’t much care for him. I rode during the same era as his uncle – a guy that wasn’t all that well liked on any of my teams. I remember when the younger VDB started racing and then hearing all the hype when the guy turned pro. But he received the Belgian curse when he was supposed to be the next Eddy Merckx.



The morning after his death, as I felt beat up and tired from not sleeping, I was reminded that I’d had a similar hard night after hearing of Christophe Dupouey’s suicide. I started thinking about it, and remember also being wrecked when Steve Larsen died earlier this year. And then I go back to the night during the Milk Race that I rode – back to 1990 – and I remember hearing the news of my teammate Patrice Bar’s death. Patrice was a month older than me, and even though I didn’t like the guy, I was devastated. I hardly slept for a month.

The list of people that I have known, ridden with, been teammates with – the list of pro cyclists who have died untimely deaths, either as a result of drugs, suicide, disease, or accident is pretty astonishing. Granted, compared to casualties from war and a few other things, the cycling list is damn short, but then again, we are also a pretty small group.

The suicides are the ones that get me the most though, and I’ve been trying to think of a reason for that. The only thing I can come up with is that we give so much to the sport when we are doing it that life after cycling can be pretty empty. Think about the professional side of the sport for a minute – there really aren’t many other sports or professions that demand so much from a person. And yet we all want to do it – we all hung on as long as we could to the racing and the lifestyle. Compared to sports like baseball, football, soccer, etc, cyclists don’t make all that much money. Sure, Lance has done pretty well but think about how much dough he would have made if he’d been the Lance Armstrong of golf, or something. Our sport extracts a toll on the body, mind and soul, and yet even Lance has come back to it – a guy who doesn’t really need the paycheck.

Anyway, I really don’t mean to be maudlin about all of this, but somehow, even those riders I couldn’t stand to be around and those I downright hated are still part of the racing fraternity, so it is strange when they are gone. Like the song goes, “They were all my friends....”