Jan van der Horst (80) gave his Tour ticket to his teammate and still regrets it

Legend has it that the thermal baths in the French Vosges town of Vittel have a beneficial effect on body and mind. Buses still stop every day, mainly with older people who, according to the tourist brochures, ‘give themselves a wholesome break.’

Blemish

Jan van der Horst (80) belongs to the target group at eighty years old, but when he chugs through France on his way to his holiday destination, he would rather drive a hundred kilometers than drive through the spa. In Vittel, his life took a turn in 1968 that he would rather not be reminded of. ”A blot on my career”, he says on the couch of his living room in Haarlem’s Leidsebuurt.

Reserve

As a second-year professional in the cycling team of Caballero (cigarette brand, ed.), Van der Horst is working on an excellent season that year, including a strong performance in Paris-Nice and a few spring classics. Nevertheless, the selection committee of the Royal Dutch Cycling Union (KNWU) initially thinks he is not good enough to be part of the team around leader Jan Janssen that will represent the Netherlands in the 55^st Tour de France (in those days there were national teams instead of sponsor teams).

Reluctance

The selection committee does ask him, in consultation with sports director Ab Geldermans, whether he wants to remain available in case riders get injured or cannot come to France for another reason. After the withdrawal of Rini Wagtmans, who has a dispute about the distribution of the money that the team would earn in the Tour, Van der Horst is promoted to his replacement.

In that capacity, he reports to Vittel on Thursday, June 25, 1968, two days before the start. Henk Nijdam also arrives at that moment. Nijdam is already a somewhat older driver, who reluctantly drove to the starting place because Van der Horst takes his place in the selection.

The weather is bad in Vittel, circumstances that remind Van der Horst of his fall in the Tour of Luxembourg a few weeks ago. ”I had recovered, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to France”, he says 55 years later, ”but you could still see the abrasions. And somehow it had gotten into my head, I wasn’t feeling very well.”

Last workout

The last training is nevertheless going according to plan, leader Jan Janssen also sees. “Jan came to me and said that I was riding very well and that I could serve him well for the next three weeks.” But Van der Horst is not sure. He fears that he will not be able to do the servants’ work that Janssen and sports director Ab Geldermans demand of him. In addition, Gé Peters, his fellow townsman and sports director at Caballero who accompanied him to Vittel, personally does not have good memories of the Tour de France.

Gee Peters

Peters tells him that he rode the Tour once, but was happy that he was allowed to return to the familiar Haarlem after the legendary fall of his leader Wim van Est in the ravine of d ‘Aubisque. Terrible, Peters thought the Tour. So that’s all in Van der Horst’s head and Henk Nijdam smells it from a distance.

Nijdam enters Van der Horst’s room the evening before the start and responds to the feeling of the Haarlemmer. Nijdam says that as an older driver he would like to cycle the Tour de France one more time. He regrets that he is no longer as young as Van der Horst, who will probably get many more chances to ride the Tour.

Van der Horst: ”On a whim I said to Nijdam: then you drive! Stupid, I wish I had turned it back. But I did say it. I was mentally a bit unstable because of that fall in Luxembourg.”

Sports director Ab Geldermans accepts Van der Horst’s decision and makes no attempts to talk to the Haarlemmer. Geldermans has something else on his mind in the days before the start. In the upcoming Tour, doping controls will be carried out for the first time in history. It is the answer to the dramatic death of Tom Simpson, who fell off his bicycle a year earlier on the flanks of Mont Ventoux and dies on the way to hospital. The cause of death is said to be a combination of drink, heat and doping.

Chaotic

”Suddenly nothing was allowed anymore”, says Van der Horst, ”even an ointment against sitting through was forbidden because it may contain something that was on the list of prohibited products. Geldermans was very busy with that, it was all very chaotic. I think he took notice of my departure. I think that’s the strange thing about the whole story: that no one has tried to talk me into it. Then I might have changed my mind about it.”

Wry

Although it takes him some effort, Van der Horst in Haarlem follows the activities of his colleagues in France. And not happy about that. The team soon thins out. Henk Nijdam also leaves the Tour in the second week. If that is not bitter enough, Nijdam will return a year later in the Tour de France.

In the last week, the Orange has only four riders in the race, but things are still starting to turn. On the last day, Jan Janssen takes the yellow jersey in a time trial and becomes the first Dutchman to win the Tour de France, 38 seconds ahead of the Belgian Herman Van Springel.

Jan van der Horst is watching the broadcast at that moment in cycling café De Congo in Breda, where he has just ridden a criterion. “I will never forget it,” he says. ”Peter Post (former rider and team leader, ed.) was sitting next to me at the bar and I see Jan being honored in yellow. What I thought then? I really wanted to be part of that team.”

Promise

Van der Horst will remain a professional for a few more years, but he cannot keep the promise he made as an amateur, so he will never ride the Tour again. That hurts, even now. “Of course I could never have imagined that this would be my only chance to ride the Tour. You take that feeling with you for the rest of your life. When the Tour is on TV, I watch, but always with a bad feeling. Like, I missed that.”

After that traumatic event, a difficult period also begins in his private life. He becomes overwrought, cannot tolerate crowds and seeks solitude. He gets help from a psychologist and his wife Ria, who is still his support. Ria says: “It had to go wrong. Jan laid floors at that time, a very hard life. And when the work was done, he went to train, back and forth to Scheveningen. He kept that up for years. Somehow the bicycle was his escape route. But he was about to get overwrought.”

Move sentences

There are those who have turned away from cycling for less, but he has not lost his love for cycling. He has just returned from a cycling holiday with Ria, now and then pedals through the Netherlands on his own for a week and, with a tent on the back, makes annual trips through France with a friend. It is the opportunity for him to change his mind, although he must admit that it is difficult for him to get his Tour trauma out of his head.

Guts

Van der horst: ”I hated that I didn’t have the guts to ride that Tour. Physically I was fine, but mentally I was a little weak. It was just performance anxiety. They sometimes say: if you have never ridden the Tour, you are not really a cyclist. That’s something that always haunts me.”