'Moral Police' by Tim Krabbe

During Paris-Brussels, two weeks ago, Roger de Vlaeminck couldn’t control himself. He rode up to Hinault pointed to his cheeks and legs and asked what was going on. Hinault's face, and worse still, his legs, were unshaved.

`Vacances’, answered Hinault.

My thoughts turned to an incident eight years ago. In Kerkdriel, somewhere in deepest Brabant, I was to have ridden my final criterium of the season. Full of enthusiasm for the race I presented myself at the start, but, as an offical made very clear, that was as far as I was going. I was wearing purple socks instead of the regulation white and consequently I could not be allowed to take part. My pleas were in vain for there is nothing more implacable than a sports official with the regulations in his hand. Not even the fact that I’d come all the way from Amsterdam would persuade him to check the rules for possible exceptions.

A sympathetic rider gave me his car keys and told me where to find his spare pair of white socks and I managed to get changed before the starting gun.

At that time I also rode with unshaven legs, which was permitted under the regulations. All the other riders shaved their legs, but I thought it was ridiculous. They gave three reasons for shaving: it reduced the chance of infection after a fall, and it made massage easier. Those were the serious reasons. The third was always given so spontaneously and with such little reflection that it was obviously the one real explanation: it just `looked terrible’. You just weren’t soigne, and although this is a completely self-referential term, half way through my second season I also began to think that a rider ought to look soigne and consequently, I too began to shave my legs. Without immediately embracing all the principles of the Kerkdriel ogre, I began to believe that it was indeed unreasonable to profit from what a group has to offer if you are not prepared to wear the club colours of that group, so to speak.

Shaved legs for starters, polished shoes, a clean bike, white socks, in short: soigne. Naturally, long hair is totally out of the question (`Hey, mate, watch out your hair doesn’t get caught in the spokes’), and fortunately the moustache was particularly slow to make its debut in the peleton; where footballers adopt a look that was considered trendy a decade before, the time lag with racing cyclists is more like 25 years.

In fact there’s actually something of a moral police force operating in the peleton. When I’d finally realized the significance and importance of being soigne, I too became a member. If a rider attacked and it was obvious that he had unshaved legs, then as far as I was concerned the chance that he would be caught would be much greater than with a well-groomed rider. Who was going to grant victory to a rider who so emphatically placed himself outside the accepted order? Sport demands conformity, that’s what sport is for: there is only one, precisely defined, way to set yourself apart, and thus all the others should be dropped.

Consequently, De Vlaeminck must have been acting in the role of moral police sergeant when he spoke to Hinault. He issued a reprimand. By not shaving his legs the great champion was letting it be known that he wasn’t really taking this race seriously and he was thus devaluing the performance of the eventual winner

(October 1981)

translation, Niall Martin, 2000