A picture of EDDY MERCKX soigneur and devil-does-all GUILLAUME MICHIELS.
"THAT LITTLE FAT ONE became The Greatest of All"
Eddy Merckx calls Guillaume Michiels for good reasons "his second brother". The two men stay already together almost their whole lives and ofcourse together they have been through a lot, good days and bad days.
"My mother worked as a cleaning lady in the family Merckx. Eddy was five years old, I was fifteen. I was already a coureur (cyclist), Eddy dreamed of the vélo (bike)."
All what follows is History. Guillaume was only for a short time professional cyclist. Then he became carpenter and hammered a lot of coffins together!! But more and more he went everywhere to races with young newcomer Eddy, as permanent caretaker and guardian. He became devil-does-all, from soigneur, road trip driver, bike cleaner, handy man, suitcases carrier to etc… etc… name it and Guillaume did it. Guillaume therefore passed through all the great triumphs and all tragedies at first hand. That creates an Indestructible bond.
Guillaume learned to know Eddy through and thorough and also knew how to handle a champion of that caliber! "Eddy was always very focused. Already the day before the race. The less he said, the faster he rode. When he had super legs but he didn’t win, then you had to leave him alone and be quiet. Alone in his own world and waiting until he said something. Well, those were my tactics. ‘Damn, today I rode like a fool’, he said suddenly. And then we talked about the race. At that moment he already had his battle plan for the next day in mind."
Ever after the heaviest defeats Merckx got it done to recover quickly and hit back hard! " For example the stage to Orcières-Merlette in the 1971 Tour where he lost almost nine minutes on Ocana. Two days later, during the stage to Marseilles, Eddy hit back and it was war from start to finish! Yep, that was Eddy."….
(exerpt about Guillaume Michiels, soigneur of Eddy Merckx, in "Titans", May 2015)
