‘A rider, said Anquetil, is made up of two parts, a person and a bike… and in climbing the thing is to make the bike as light as possible… So at the start of every climb, Anquetil moved his water bottle from its holder to his back pocket.’
I’ve always loved this tale from Tim Krabbé’s . I have no idea if it’s true, though I can quite imagine this happening in an era when riders stuck pins in their legs to stop cramp and only raced on tubulars that had been ‘seasoned’ – stored in