THE THIRD CAMPIONISSIMO
Perhaps the most impressive exploit in A Sunday in Hell, Jørgen Leth’s celebrated documentary of the 1976 Paris-Roubaix, turns out not to be the winning move in the race. Francesco Moser has missed the decisive attack by Roger de Vlaeminck and Walter Godefroot on the lengthy stretch of cobbles around the village of Bachy, and makes a huge effort to bridge to the duo, who have escaped with Hennie Kuiper and Marc Demeyer. Behind, Freddy Maertens has fallen off and Eddy Merckx is nowhere to be seen. It’s a key moment.
Through the dust clouds, Moser appears in his red, green and white Italian national champion’s jersey, churning a huge gear to fly between two other men who can also sense that it is now or never. The late Raymond Poulidor and the Peugeot leader Jean-Pierre Danguillaume can do nothing as the Italian passes them. Danguillaume makes a brief attempt to latch onto Moser’s wheel, but the pair cannot raise their pace enough. In a flash Moser is gone, “with his distinctive style, his still aerodynamic position on the bike, an imposing sight of almost effortless rotary action,” says the commentator David Saunders, in the English language version of the film.
The burly Italian’s forearms are almost flat, at times parallel with the base of the drop of the handlebars. His back is best described as über-flat - sloping ever so slightly downwards towards the stem. His way of riding as captured in
