[CR]Pic of the Day - the life and death of Camille Danguillaume

(Example: Events:Cirque du Cyclisme:2002)

From: "Aldo Ross" <aldoross4@siscom.net>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 22:37:15 -0400
reply-type=original
Subject: [CR]Pic of the Day - the life and death of Camille Danguillaume

Sometimes I wish there was a library I could visit, or a catalog I could peruse, which included one book for each person who ever raced bicycles professionally...

If you're a star, you get hundreds of books written about you, both during and after (even long after) your career. There were already books about Eddy Merckx before he'd ever ridden his first Tour de France.

If you live long enough, you get to write your own memoirs. If you live even longer, you get to re-write history time and time again, like Gino Bartali.

If you are a star but die young, or die during your career, others will write your book over and over again. Youngsters born long after Fausto Coppi's death 1960 have dedicated entire websites to the story of his life and career. Marco Pantani will remain a legend always, and legions will compose around his fame (and infamy).

The great heroes live-on in the pages of big, heavy books with titles like "The Giants of Cycling" and "An Intimate Portrait". Generations yet to come will know of the great deeds of Anquetil, Hinault, Van Steenbergen, Bobet, Binda.

But surely every racer has experienced moments, important and unimportant to the overall plot of professional cycling, which would make good reading. The crashes avoided, the crashes which cost them minutes or months, the good days and bad days, the illnesses and moments of near-greatness, the chances squandered, the kindnesses of strangers, life at home and on the road, romance and success and failure.

I wish I could read about them all.

When I first began buying old French periodicals, some of the riders on the covers where familiar, but many of the names and faces where unknown to me. Certain cover images stood-out more than others, staring across the decades as I searched eBay - Ferdi Kubler in tears as he tries to replace a tire, Rene Vietto strutting like Napoleon after a stage victory, Joy on the faces of Fausto and Serse Coppi when the latter won Paris-Roubaix.

Early in my shopping I came across one image which would stick with me more than all the others - the date on the magazine was June 19th, 1950, and the headline was simply "La Terrible Chute de Danguillaume, a Montlhéry", The Terrible Crash of Danguillaume at Montlhéry. The cover showed a rider with blood flowing from his ear and mouth, being carried by a man in a plaid shirt and a younger man in a cycling jersey. The image was like one from a war; serious, dreadful, horrible. I had not heard of this rider "Danguillaume" before, but a quick search of the wonderful French website "Memoire du Cyclisme" confirmed that a rider named Camille Danguillaume had died on June 26th, 1950, from injuries received during the French National Championships.

Through further research I learned that Danguillaume had ridden the Tour, won the 1948 Critérium National and 1949 Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and a few other races, but not much more information was to be found.

I didn't win the auction for that copy of the magazine, and I didn't see it listed again for a long time, despite specific searches for "Juin, 1950, Danguillaume" etc., but last month I finally obtained a copy with a collection of magazines bought from Patrick Lefevre of Aigues-Vives, France. So now I have this sad picture of the dieing man - someone you've probably never heard of before, except perhaps with a few images on "Pic of the Day".

I decided to search back through the years, and found a few dozen images and references to Camille Danguillaume - Danguillaume the reliable teammate, Danguillaume the friend of Idée, Danguillaume the sturdy work horse. No, I haven't found a book about this rider. just a few web pages listing his birth date, death, and racing palmares.

So here's what I've gathered so far - a collection of pictures with brief captions which tell, in part, the story of the life and death of Camille Danguillaume. I hope some of you will take time to look at the pictures... I can't explain exactly why it has become important to me, but I'd appreciate a few minutes of your time.

http://www.wooljersey.com/gallery/album101/First_Race

Aldo Ross
BlueBall, Ohio