BIKE PORTRAITS - André Darrigade, The Other Dédé

André Darrigade -- for everyone "the other Dédé" a quarter of a century after the most illustrious Leducq -- was a great sprinter, but also a sort of an Ironman of the Tour de France: from 1953 to 1966 he rode them all, retiring only once, in 1963.

But in a kind of way it was also his qualities of speed and endurance to make him enter the old and varied history of The Curse of the Rainbow Jersey. In his case, an even retroactive curse.

Indeed, he had already lived his own tragedy well before he even wore it, the "damned" rainbow jersey. During the 24th and last stage of the 1958 Grande Boucle, 320 km (200 mi) from Dijon to Paris, while he was preparing himself to sprint on the glamourous Parco dei Principi (Princes’ Park) track, he violently struck against Constant Wouters, the general secretary of the place. Darrigade got up and managed to cross the finish line, but Wouters died at the hospital eleven days later.

Born on April 24, 1929 in Narrosse, department of the Landes, in the south-east of France, Dédé emerged in 1949 winning on the Vél d'Hiv track. But it would be on the hard tarmac of the Tour de France that he built a sound career as a sprinter specialist -- 22 stage wins, at the time the second best ever behind the other national Dédé, André Leducq (25). Nowadays, the top three of this chart are Eddy Merckx (34), Mark Cavendish (30) and Bernard Hinault (28). The other one at 22, the American Lance Armstrong, has seen revocation for doping allegations along with his seven consecutive Tour-winner titles.

Five in a row (also a record) instead are the Darrigade victories in the opening stages of the Tour, a race where he always had to perform as super domestique of his team leader such as Louison Bobet, Jacques Anquetil and Federico Martín Bahamontes. But when he would be free to ride his own race, he proved to be a true and complete great rider.

A rider who won the 1955 road national championship, the 1956 Giro di Lombardia and in front of the Italian Michele Gismondi and the Belgian Noël Foré even the 1959 world championship in Zandvoort. A year after that accident at the Princes’ Park. Cursed like that rainbow jersey.