Le Vicomte
AUGUST 2016 | CYCLE SPORT MAGAZINE
DeGribaldy was known in French cycling as le Vicomte, the Viscount. He didn’t actually hold a title, but hewas descended from the aristocratic Italian Broglia family. The Broglias moved to the Savoie region of France during the 16th Century, with De Gribaldy’s forefathers taking the name Di Gribaldi, and the rest calling themselves DeBroglie. A distant relative, Louis de Broglie won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1929.
No money camewith the De Gribaldy name. The son of a farmer, Jean qualified as a clock repairer, but his heart lay in cycling. At the age of nine De Gribaldy saw Antonin Magne pass through his village wearing the yellow jerseyof theTour de France, and from that day all he wanted was to be a professional racer.
He wasn’t a huge success, but he achieved his ambition. He rode theTour de France twice, was second in the 1947 French road race championships, and took top-ten placings in Milan-San Remo and in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
After he retired De Gribaldy opened a shop in Besançon, which he built into a mini department store that sold bikes, scooters, kitchen appliances and televisions. By 1968 it had grown so big he could sponsor and manage his own pro teams.
De Gribaldy was great at getting co-sponsors for his teams, andhe brought several bignames into the sport, including Hoover, Frimatic, Magniflex and Miko. He evenpersuaded a richwidowof a Greek millionaire, Miriam De Kova to co-sponsor a team with him.
She was a singer anddancerwhowanted to break into the Paris nightclub scene, and De Gribaldy convinced her that sponsoring a cycling team would increase her profile. Whether it did or not the pink team kit was certainly eye catching.
Bargain hunter
De Gribaldy also had a knack of discovering talent from outside the mainstream cycling countries. He brought a Portuguese ex-soldier called Joaquim Agostinho into pro cycling. Another was the Danish amateur world pursuit champion Mogens Frey. They both won stages in the Tour de France. His knack wasn’t entirely altruistic, De Gribaldy knew that foreigners asked for less money than Frenchmen. Although he met his match with Sean Kelly.
Le Vicomte had a 12-seater private plane, which being a shrewd operator he hired out to celebrities when he wasn’t using it. On seeing Kelly’s name on the results when he racedas an amateur in France in 1976, DeGribaldy flew to Ireland then took a Taxi to Kelly’s farm, where he found Sean driving a tractor.
He offered Kelly a contractwith the French side of the Flandria team, whichDeGribaldywas putting together. Kelly hesitated, turning prow as a big deal back then. Only a handful of Irish riders had done it. But De Gribaldy upped the offer. Kelly said he’d think about it. The offer was upped again in the interim, and three weeks later the Irish rider signed his first pro contract.
Although he was signed for the French side of Flandria, Kelly was so good he ended up racing for the first team, which was the Belgian side. Then from 1979 until 1981 he raced for another Belgian team, Splendor. Le Vicomte had little to do with him until 1982 when Kelly joined the Semteam, where De Gribaldy was the manager, and he helped steer him though the best years of Kelly’s career.
Kelly thinks DeGribaldy was one of the best team managers; “Hewas very advanced inhis thinking. For example, he was one of the first to think that weight saving was asmuch for the riders as it was for the bikes. He realised that any weight you could save would make you go uphill faster.
“He gave us a tough regime, especially at the start of the yearwhenyoumight be carrying a few extra pounds. De Gribaldy would watch you very closely. Once the racing started it was easier to keep your weight down, and you could eat a little more normally. All in all though, we were eating in a way that was 10 years ahead of its time in the thinking behind it.”
It was also true that De Gribaldy took a different approach to the table-banging style of many of his contemporaries. In fact he didn’t even see himself as a traditional cycling team sports director. “I amnot a directeur sportif, I’m a counsellor. I say to a rider, ‘Here is the path, but you must decide to take it.’ I never shout,” he said at the height of Kelly’s fame.
LeVicomte also had a saying that many still quote today: “Cycling isn’t a game, it’s a sport; tough, hard and unpitying, and it requires great sacrifices. One plays football, or tennis, or hockey. One doesn’t play cycling.”
They should print that inside every bike rider’s racing licence.”
See this site about my uncle : www.jeandegribaldy.com
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