Frans Verbeek - THE FLYING MILKMAN

As founder of clothing manufacturer Vermarc, Frans Verbeeck has had more impact on the sport since retiring than he did in his pomp in the 1970s, when ‘The Flying Milkman’ gained a reputation as the nearly man of the Classics

Writer: Peter Cossins
Procycling, April 2015

What does it say about Frans Verbeeck’s racing career that he’s best-remembered not for the dozens of races he won, including the Amstel Gold Race, La Fleche Wallonne and the Belgian national title, but for his unforgettable nickname: ‘The Flying Milkman’? Well, that and for delivering the most memorable quote ever made about the Ronde van Vlaanderen. 

Seventeen times a runner-up in major one-day races, Verbeeck had just finished second once again at the Ronde in 1975. The only rider who had been quick enough and strong enough to respond to Eddy Merckx’s attack at the foot of the Oude Kwaremont, Verbeeck spent the next 95 km with ‘The Cannibal’, barely able to hang on, let alone offer a hand with the pace setting.

Finally dropped 5 km from home, Verbeeck rolled home 30 seconds down on Merckx. Totally spent, he was hauled off his bike by a fan and helped up onto the podium where the Belgian television commentator Fred De Bruyne thrust a microphone in front of him. “I have to tell it like it is,” said Verbeeck. “Merckx rode 5 kph faster than the rest of us. I couldn’t do anything against him. He’s from another world. I don’t think he’s ever been as strong.” Meanwhile, a couple of metres away, Merckx was conducting a television interview of his own in which he admitted, “I’ve never ridden as well as that.”

Tall, solidly built and renowned even among the likes of Merckx, Roger De Vlaeminck and Freddy Maertens for the severity of his training regime, Verbeeck is among the best riders never to win a Monument. Eight times on the podium in the five major one-day races, he finished top six in all of them. In all, he finished second in a Classic no fewer than 17 times. Consequently, his reputation as the Raymond Poulidor of the Classics was well-deserved. Like the Frenchman, who had eight Tour de France podiums to his credit, Verbeeck won a legion of fans, attracted partly by his status as the ‘nearly man’ but also by the doggedness that enabled him to rise to the very top ranks.

Verbeeck turned pro with the Wiel’s-Groene Leeuw team in mid-1963, and spent the next three seasons there. Verbeeck barely won a thing and his earnings were so meagre he struggled to cover the mortgage payments on the family home. After riding the Setmana Catalana de Ciclisme stage race halfway into the 1966 season, he retired to take up a milk round in Wilsele, on the northern edge of Leuven.

Out at 5.30 am every morning with his wife, Angèle, Verbeeck still felt a tug towards the racing scene. “I could see riders who had less ability than me were winning races,” he recalled.

In 1968, after 18 months out of the sport, he returned to the pro scene with the Okay Whisky-Diamant team but he combined racing with his milk round to guarantee financial security.

His breakthrough came towards the end of the 1969 season when he finished second behind compatriot Herman van Springel at Paris-Tours. Verbeeck’s team-mate Roger Jochmans was third. “We went there with just six spare wheels and we were so happy to get second and third place! We split the money between the team and it wasn’t actually very much but it seemed like a lot to me. I appreciated every franc because I’d experienced how difficult it was to earn anything. That always stayed with me. That’s why I battled so much on the bike,” Verbeeck said of that initial second place in a big Classic.

Better was to come, thanks initially to bigger investment in the team, which became Geens-Watney. The team began the 1970 season with a training camp in Sardinia. However, wild winds soon had Verbeeck on a plane back to Belgium, despite thick snow back at home. He returned to his usual regime of the milk round at 5.30 am and then training from 8 am, often using a fixed gear of 48x18 on which he used to climb the Kesselberg in Leuven up to 45 times per session to build up the strength in his thighs.

Just as it is now under its new title of Het Nieuwsblad, Het Volk was the first Classic of the season. The day of the race, Verbeeck started the morning with his milk round as usual, then ate sandwiches as his father drove him to the start line. Late that afternoon, the pair of them did the return journey with the winner’s trophy on the back seat of the car after Verbeeck proved fastest in a five-man sprint.

“That victory was a huge boost for me and from that day I got a good dose of self-confidence. Het Volk is one of the most beautiful races that a rider can win, because it is the first Classic of the season and public interest is particularly high in the sport. The publicity you get for a victory in Het Volk is definitely worth more than first place in Liege-Bastogne-Liege,” said Verbeeck, who won the title again in 1972 when Merckx was one of his victims in a four-rider gallop.

He continued that 1970 season in the same competitive fashion. Ninth in Milano-Sanremo, fourth in Flanders, sixth in Roubaix, Amstel and La Fleche Wallonne, Verbeeck, with the tall and solid build so typical of Flemish riders, showed that all those reps on the Kesselberg made him a threat in the hilliest of the Classics when he finished second in Liege-Bastogne-Liege. It was a notorious finish thanks to the shenanigans that went on out of sight from the commissaires and TV cameras in the tunnel leading to the Rocourt track where the race then finished. Erik De Vlaeminck allegedly held Merckx back, allowing brother Roger to get a gap and win the sprint ahead of Verbeeck, with Merckx an angry third. Verbeeck continued to be just as competitive over the next seven seasons but a pattern emerged. Although he invariably chalked up several victories each year, major ones eluded him. Largely this was the consequence of a surfeit of one-day talent during that period, headed by Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck.

But Verbeeck’s bullish attitude and refusal to be cowed also worked against him. In early 1971, after beating Merckx to win the Grand Prix de Monaco, Verbeeck sent his illustrious rival a photo of the finish, adding a few insults on the back for good measure. Merckx’s Molteni boss Lomme Driessens was livid and went out of his way to make things difficult for Verbeeck during races. Driessens was even angrier when Verbeeck responded by winning Amstel Gold Race.

Verbeeck’s hard edge and refusal to back down was often very visible on the bike, too. In 1972, he was one of seven Belgians disputing victory at the Ronde van Vlaanderen. Coming into the finish, 1970 winner Eric Leman led the dash for the line and Verbeeck saw a chance to come through on his right. As he started to gain ground, Leman moved over to the right and closed the gap along the barriers. Although Verbeeck called foul, the commissaires refused to overturn the result.

Three days later at Gent-Wevelgem, with that verdict still fresh in his mind, Verbeeck mimicked Leman’s long sprint and then realised that Felice Gimondi was coming through on his right. The Belgian swerved right to block him, the Italian responding by pushing him away. Verbeeck then made a grab for Gimondi’s jersey and the pair were still tugging at each other as the Belgian led over the line.

“Verbeeck is a bandit, a cheat. I demand justice!” Gimondi shouted. On the victory podium the pair traded insults in pidgin French, each insisting that the other was out of order. Once again, though, the commissaires went against Verbeeck, who was declassified, victory going instead to Roger Swerts, who had been second to finish.

There was controversy of a different kind in 1974 following Verbeeck’s victory at Fleche Wallonne. After the finish, Raymond Poulidor approached the Belgian and said, “You’d honestly have been better riding in a car.” The French veteran then explained to the press that Verbeeck had had two team-mates pushing him up most of the 18 hills. Poulidor’s directeur sportif Louis Caput was so disgusted by what he had seen that he pulled his team out of Liege-Bastogne-Liege, provoking an angry response from organising newspaper Les Sports: “By doing this they cast doubt on the victory of Frans Verbeeck, a conscientious, honest and consistent rider. We can’t and we won’t allow it,” stated an editorial, which went on to describe Caput and his riders as “bad losers”.

By the following year, Verbeeck’s reputation as the nearly man produced a crack in his rock-hard veneer. Losing to Merckx on his ultimate day of grace at Flanders was not hard to come to terms with, and Verbeeck suggested that “you have to be happy with second place to Merckx in a Classic.” But when he lost the Fleche title a few weeks later, he was far less sanguine. Once again, he was in the break with Merckx, together with André Dierickx. As Merckx drove the trio along, determined to ride everyone off his wheel just as he had done at Flanders, Verbeeck and Dierickx sat in. At the finish, they both jumped past Merckx but Dierickx proved to be the quickest.

“This is the third time this year I’ve finished second, the worst possible place,” Verbeeck moaned. “I have the impression that this isn’t the end of it. I honestly think I am cursed!”

Perhaps he was right, in as much as his run of near-misses continued. Second at Fleche and third at Liege and Gent-Wevelgem in 1976 he never took another major success before retiring at the age of 36 at the end of the 1977 season.

“I won 12 races that year and received offers to continue. In my heart I wanted that too but I decided not to because I’d ridden some farewell races,” he said after hanging up his wheels. His perspective on his career was upbeat. “I had nothing when I started and thanks to cycling I’ve achieved something. I didn’t get rich but I did get a lot of satisfaction. In addition, I also owed my new career to my life as a rider.”

The determination that enabled Verbeeck to combine his milk round with training and racing for many years - and had enabled him to compete with some of the all-time greats - pushed him in a new direction. Through his clothing company, Vermarc, he became an innovator and world leader. Even after retiring a second time, Verbeeck is still involved in the business, now run by his son. It’s been quite a journey for ‘The Flying Milkman’, who acknowledges he’s been blessed rather than cursed. Some of those defeats may still rankle but that stony face cracks into a huge smile when he talks about them now. “I owe everything to cycling,” he says.


Making a name for himself
After stepping away from racing, Frans Verbeeck opened a bike shop in Wilsele but quickly realised that he preferred being out on the road than cooped up in his new business. “I could see that money could be made from selling cycling clothing and I thought of Pietro Santini, who had promised me that I could work with him after retiring,” says Verbeeck. “Most people forget their promises to you when you remind them but Santini didn’t. I went to see him in Italy and became his distributor in the Benelux countries.”

Warned by his father that he’d end up living up in a caravan if it all went wrong, Verbeeck and his wife Angèle worked as doggedly as they had done on their milk round. Within 10 years, Vermarc, the company named after Verbeeck and son Marc, was importing half of Santini’s total production. Quick to realise that dye-sublimation printing offered Vermarc a way to take over the complete production process and cut the time required to supply customers, Verbeeck established a new plant in the Belgian city of Rotselaar.

Over the subsequent three decades, Vermarc’s clothing has been worn by many of the sport’s leading performers including victors from all the great Classics races. Vermarc’s racing partners this season include Belgium’s two World Tour outfits, Lotto Soudal and Etixx-Quick Step.