The full title of this engaging read from Andy McGrath, longtime editor of Rouleur magazine and stalwart freelance cycling journalist for an array of other British publications, is God Is Dead, The Rise and Fall of Frank Vandenbroucke, Cycling’s Great Wasted Talent. One suspects the publisher insisted on outlining the main plot points in the title, but you will find, as I did, that despite knowing the story, the book is still a page-turner.
The subject, aka God, aka VDB, was born straight into the teeth of the doping era, a precocious talent with true souplesse instantly anointed by his Flandrian countrymen as the next coming of Merckx, as if that moniker hadn’t sunk the careers of a dozen riders before him. VDB’s was a singular personality though, charismatic, searingly honest, tragically endearing, the sort of rider the fan’s loved to root for, even as comeback after comeback failed to yield the results his talent promised.
There is a book within a book within a book here. At once it’s a biography of Vandenbroucke, a sordid but true tale of the wild, early days of oxygen vector doping, and a sort of true crime sage, where everyone is trying to save the hero, but also possibly killing him at the same time. It reminds you how unforgiving the crucible of the pro peloton can be for riders without superhuman self-control to go along with their superhuman abilities.
McGrath has done yeoman’s work here, talking to everyone still willing to talk about VDB’s life and death, visiting all the places, and there were A LOT of them, where the rider tried to find a way forward despite crushing addiction problems, romantic turmoil, and the constant craving for love he thought could only come from winning bike races.
I have thought (and written) about the blood doping era (which we may still be in) quite a bit. I have read a lot on the subject, and my views of those riders, those races and that time have evolved. It’s as though cycling had its own pandemic, with victims at the sport’s top, middle and bottom. VDB’s early demise, like Patani’s before him, tells you that the disease didn’t spare even the most talented. That we can still think of these riders admiringly tells you that pro cycling is about more than a list of victories, a rounded palmares. It’s about style and courage, too, and Vandenbroucke had those things. If only, he hadn’t suffered for them so terribly.
God Is Dead is available from Powells and Barnes and Noble and Amazon in hardcover, paperback and ebook formats.
To hear more from the author himself, check out the Paceline Tandem interview I did with him.
