Hinault was known as “the Badger” because of his tenacious and aggressive racing style, and his style was compared to a badger emerging from its burrow to attack. He refused to take a back step to anyone or back down from a challenge. As he himself said, “As long as I breathe, I attack.” That aspect of his personality was certainly a big reason he won his five Tour championships and totalled 156 wins over a 13-year career.
Being French, the Tour was, of course, a priority for him. In addition to his five GC victories, he won no fewer than 28 Tour de France stages, more than any other French rider has won and, in all probability, will ever win. His success is both an inspiration to young French riders as well as a constant reminder of their failure to follow in his footsteps.
The winning margins of Hinault’s Tour victories are impressive: 1978: 3:56, 1979: 13:07(!), 1981: 14:34(!), 1982: 6:21 and 1985: only 1:42. But that 1985 margin might have been even more impressive than the others because Hinault came into the 1985 Tour recovering from knee surgery and was experiencing tightness and pain; and then he crashed on stage 14, near the finish line in St. Etienne, and broke his nose. So that 1:42 margin of victory looks a lot bigger now, doesn’t it?
Coming into the race, Hinault suggested, because of his knee issue, that he might take a supporting role and work for, and mentor, his new La Vie Claire teammate, the 24-year-old American Greg LeMond. The keyword here is might because, though the two riders were officially named as co-leaders, Hinault was coming off a victory in the Giro d’Italia and believed that, despite the troubling knee, he could win one more Tour before retiring. The ambiguity over their roles led to tension during the race, probably not dissimilar to what UAE Team Emirates experienced in this year’s Giro d’Italia, when there was little clarity over the roles of teammates Juan Ayuso and Isaac del Toro.
But the matter was more or less settled after the long stage 8 individual time trial, 75 km from Sarrebourg to Straatsburg, which Hinault won, with Lemond coming fifth, 2:34 adrift. So that when Hinault broke his nose on stage 14, he remained convinced that he could win the race as he led the general classification by 3:32 – over Lemond. The rider sitting in third, the Irishman Stephen Roche, trailed him by a whopping 6:14.
But the rest of the race was hardly a formality. Hinault tired on stage 17, the final mountain stage, and finished 4:05 behind the winner, Spain’s Pedro Delgado. His lead had shrunk to 2:25 over Lemond, but that was enough of a cushion to secure victory and for the Badger to enter the record book with Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx, who also had five Tour victories. As for Lemond, he became the first non-European to win the Tour the following year, the first of his three Tour victories.
Hinault was probably the last of the tough guys of the peloton, a sporting hero with real swagger and punch. Asked why French riders can’t win the Tour anymore, he said. “Because today’s riders are soft.” Asked about the best way to win the Tour, he said, “That’s easy. You must attack!”
