Patrick Sercu

Patrick Sercu, whose record 88 Six-Day race victories will surely never be beaten, passed away on April 19th of this year, effectively ending an era. An incredibly versatile racer, Sercu could win everything from one-kilometer track sprints to the Green Jersey in the Tour de France.

Sercu burst onto the international scene in 1963 at the World Track Cycling Championships in Liege, Belgium, where the 19-year old sprinter was racing in his home country at a time when track sprinters were accorded the same prestige as road racing champions. Sprinters such as Sir Reginal Harris and Antonio Maspes were then household names throughout Europe.

 While modern sprinting is a matter of massive gears and an almost drag racing style on 250-meter velodromes, where the smaller track size often rewards sprinting “from the front”, in Sercu’s time, velodromes were generally larger, 333 to 400-meters, and the racing beautifully tactical. The “surplace” or track stand, was a crowd favorite, where the front racer would literally stop on the track, balancing himself to try and force the rider behind to the front, a tactically disadvantageous position. The surplace’s could go on for over an hour at times, turning into  contests of will, strength and endurance, especially the if the racers were stopped on the steep banking. On a personal note, I absolutely love match sprinting. There is such an exquisite buildup of tension as the riders slowly circle, just as boxers or judoka carefully spar and search for first openings, looking for the physical and psychological advantage before the final 300 or so meters when they commit to their sprint. The explosion from calm to intensity is wonderful to anticipate, the speed exhilarating, the danger real. Sprinters take no prisoners – it can be a vicious sport.

 Sercu was in the final against defending World Sprint Champion, Sergio Bianchetto. The Italian was coming off a defeat at his national championships, where, after a 63-minute surplace, he simply collapsed on to the track from exhaustion leaving the title to Giovanni Pettenella, the future Olympic Champion. Oh, to have been in the Italian crowd for that one….Bianchetto was infamous for his dark arts bike handling skills and quick jump, with a favorite tactic of pinning his opponents at the top of the fourth turn before exploding down the banking for the win. The young Sercu, who was described to me as a “flamboyant” sprinter, handled the veteran Italian with ease, anticipating and countering his every move to win the world title. He was joined by his great friend Eddy Merckx in the Amateur World Champion club the following year when Eddy became Road Champion in Sallanches, France. The irresistible pairing of the two as Madison partners was destined (the Madison is a two, or sometimes three-man team track race where riders take turns slinging each other into the racing action. Also called “The American”, it takes its name from Madison Square Garden where it was invented), and they won 15 pro Six-Day races together. The closest thing to the Merckx-Sercu pairing in modern times was Brad Wiggins and Mark Cavendish. 

 Six-Day races are difficult to explain along the lines of traditional sport as they are (were) a professional entertainment product that embraced the excesses and decadence of the Weimar Republic / Roaring Twenties mentalities. The racers swirled around the tiny and steeply banked indoor tracks while swells dined at cloth service trackside tables to the sounds of an orchestra playing jazz tunes: the track center crowds danced deep into the nights. Politicians, cops, and gangsters (Al Capone once financed the Six-Day of Chicago) joined movie and popular music stars in the celebration, while bums slept in the rafter seats – coining the term “Peanut Gallery” – the Sixes on both sides of the Atlantic welcomed every strata of society. 

 Jack Simes, who is one of the last living connections to the glory days of the American track racing, which was at one time the richest circuit of any sport in the world with Madison Square Garden as its epicenter, (Jack’s father and grandfather were both pro riders) was a pioneer racer in Europe. Along with John Vandevelde (yes, Christian’s father) and sprinter Tim Mountford, the trio landed rides in the Sixes and rode so well that they opened the European doors for the Americans who followed.  Jack described his first Six-Day in Antwerp as rolling on the flats – bottom of the banking – by 11:00 am, then up on the banking by 1:30 pm with the afternoon sprint races beginning at 2:00. The track bosses kept the riders going until 5:00 am when the last partygoers finally went home, and the riders could catch some sleep in their spartan trackside bunks.  A 100-hour, work week was the norm for the Six-Day riders – the winning time for the 2018, three-week Tour de France was 83 hours, 17-minutes as a comparison – and this is where the misconceptions come in. 

 It’s impossible to “race” for 100-hours, especially since your job as a Six-Day racer is to keep the fans in their seats and drinking beer. So the Sixes became highly choreographed affairs, almost like Broadway shows, with riders given orders on how to race and excite the crowd. It was much harder that straight racing – the riders had to perform and “take laps” (lap the field) at high, 55-kph speeds, no matter how they felt. 

 Danny Clark, the Mad Max Australian track racer, quite possible one of the hardest men on earth, forced his way into the Sixes in the mid-70’s. Danny, who Jack describes and the greatest Six-Day man in history – he calls Sercu the greatest all-arounder – was always an outsider on the Euro-centric circuit and had to fight every inch of the way to get in. To get a contract for one particular Six-Day, Danny had to try and beat the world flying kilometer record every night of the race. That, in addition to all of the rest of the racing. He also had to sing – Danny still trains his voice – for the crowds during breaks in the racing. Serious. Jacques Michaud, a Tour de France stage winner (Morzine, 1983) described racing a Six with Sercu. They were in a points race and Sercu decided to lap the field on his own. Except, he did in by racing around the top half of the track while everyone else was on the bottom in an incredible feat of power that still has Jacques in awe, 30-years later. Those sorts of efforts, terribly hard and making no sense in straight racing, enthralled the crowds, and kept them excited and, most importantly, drinking. But, in the end, the top teams always won. They’d go to war during the crucial races and lay down the law. 

 I’d seen Patrick Sercu race the track a few times, once at the 1975 Six-Day of Munich with Merckx as his partner (that was something) and at Trexlertown when Dave Chauner and Jack were reinventing modern American pro cycling. Sercu had given up sprinting after the 1960’s when the transformation from pure sprinting to the Six-Days became too hard for his body, and he began to race the road to better prepare his winter efforts. Well, eleven Giro stages, six Tour stages, the Green Jersey in the Tour and the Dauphine Libere, and much more shows just what kind of talent he was. I talk a lot about style on the bicycle, who is smooth and balanced, who is efficient or not. Patrick was a perfect pedaling machine. The Six-Day racers only used a small, 52 x 16 gear, but pedaled from 120 to 160 strokes a minute with none smoother and more efficient than Patrick Sercu. 

 I was in a Belgian race and the wind was blowing. It was 1982.  Patrick and I were fighting to get on to the tail end of the echelon and I was staring at him. Track riders always stood out in the peloton, their bicycles were polished in ways that no one else’s were, their styles impeccable, their showmanship clearly on display. His inner knee muscle, the Vastus Medialis I believe, looked almost liquid – like a giant mollusk sitting on his knee. It would flex up, and the leg would smoothly follow, flex down, the same. I’d never seem such absolute athletic perfection in my life. He got mad, I refocused, and we made the echelon. Mine was an odd career, most of my energy was spent in trying to get into the races, let alone prepare for them. But for all of the disappointments, that moment next to Patrick Sercu, to witness his perfection under pressure, that unforgettable moment shared with the great man, that, made it all worthwhile.