Jersey tales

No23: ADR. In just three years ADR claimed some of the most prestigious races in cycling and won the most exciting finish in the Tour’s history

The 13 spring lambs of Paris-Roubaix waste no time… are they on the road to stardom, or are they lambs to the slaughter?’

Those were the words of CBS Sports commentator Phil Liggett as he watched a small breakaway form just 44km into the 1988 edition of Paris-roubaix. With more than five hours of racing still to go and with the sun shining and the teams of many of the main contenders represented, the peloton was more than happy to sit back and let the 13-strong group lead the way to Roubaix.

Among the escape was the ADR rider Dirk Demol, who hailed from Kuurne, a town 35km or so north of Roubaix. Demol was riding for teammate Eddy Planckaert, winner of the Tour of Flanders the previous week. Demol hadn’t been selected to ride Flanders, instead going on a seven-hour training ride as his team leader claimed a famous victory, and it took a phone call to his ADR sports director José De Cauwer the next day to push his case for making the

Roubaix team. Demol proved persuasive and as the escapees’ lead grew, the Belgian rode in the knowledge that by being ADR’S sole representative in the group he had rewarded De Cauwer’s faith.

Things would get even better for Demol. With Switzerland’s Thomas Wegmuller pulling the break along, the gap increased as the kilometres clicked by. In the peloton the realisation was dawning that perhaps the escape had been given too much leeway. A chase was launched but it was too little too late.

A car drew up alongside the break, and inside was Mr Paris-roubaix himself, Roger De Vlaeminck. Demol had ridden for De Vlaeminck in his first year as a pro on the DAF team in 1982 and his then-leader leaned out the car window and told his former charge that the chase was done and dusted. The winner, he said, would come from the leading group.

When Wegmuller tried to break away alone on a cobbled sector with less than 20km to go, Demol was the only man able to match the Kas rider’s pace. It would come down to a two-up sprint for the win on the streets of Roubaix – the finish having been moved from its traditional velodrome climax.

As the riders readied themselves for the final dash to the line a plastic bag got snagged in Wegmuller’s derailleur. A true sportsman, Demol waited while the Kas team worked to clear the obstruction, but it meant Wegmuller could no longer change gear. With the finish line in sight the Belgian eased past the Swiss to claim by far the biggest result of his cycling life and the second Monument for the ADR team in a week.

‘I couldn’t do bunch sprints, but in a small group I was fast, and I knew for sure I would win,’ Demol reflected in 2018. ‘I knew that if I could stay on his wheel I could beat him.’

The most famous Tour

The ADR team – the title sponsor was car rental company AD Renting – had been born in 1987, rising from the Fangio team that had Guido

No one was sure whether Lemond could return to his previous heights but ADR said yes when offered the chance to sign him

Reybroeck at the helm. In its debut season, notable results were scarce: second place in Paris-roubaix with Patrick Versluys and a few stage wins at week-long stage races such as the Midi Libre about as good as it got.

The following year De Cauwer was brought in as sports director and the outfit’s fortunes changed overnight.

‘Forty riders in the team and a sponsor that was completely crazy,’ was De Cauwer’s later verdict on what he found when he arrived. Nevertheless, within the first four months of the 1988 season the team had snared that brace of Monuments – Planckaert’s Flanders win, which came after he easily beat Australia’s Phil Anderson in the final sprint, followed a week later by Demol’s Roubaix adventure.

Later that year Planckaert added the Tour’s green jersey to ADR’S season haul despite not winning a stage.

The team’s peak, however, would come in 1989 when they signed Greg Lemond. The American was feeling his way back from the freak hunting accident that effectively robbed him of two years of his career. No one was sure whether he could return to his previous heights but the team said yes when offered the chance to sign the 1986 Tour winner.

‘Immediately I was positive,’ De Cauwer later reflected. ‘I believed in myself to say that we will do everything to bring him back… maybe not to his highest levels, but to a good level.’

As it turned out, the American would indeed return to his pre-accident heights. After a tough Giro d’italia where signs of the old Lemond only started to emerge in the final week, his 1989 Tour win a little over one month later became the most famous and well documented of all Tour de France victories.

Lemond’s remarkable eight-second win on the Champs-élysées came despite very real financial problems within the team, with staff going unpaid and threatening to leave the race at the same time as Lemond was fully engaged in the battle for yellow with Laurent Fignon.

‘We had mechanics that hadn’t been paid for three or four months,’ De Cauwer said last year. ‘I paid a lot of bills from my own money.’

Lemond followed his win in Paris by claiming the rainbow jersey in Chambéry, bringing a tremendous season on the road to a close. But the ADR team was on its last financial legs. For a sponsor that had long claimed money was no problem, making promises that couldn’t be fulfilled, the writing was now on the wall. ADR bowed out of cycling at the end of the season, to be replaced as lead sponsor by

Tulip Computers.

Other notable riders to have worn the ADR jersey during its three-year existence include Tour of Lombardy and Milan-san Remo winner Fons De Wolf, who was approaching the end of his racing days when he signed in 1987, and a young Johan Museeuw, who started his professional career with the outfit in 1988.

This jersey is part of Paul Van Bommel’s collection of memorabilia, on display at the Bike Experience Centre in Boom, Belgium. Go to deschorre.be/develodroom.html

Staff were going unpaid and threatening to leave the race at the same time as Lemond was fully engaged in the battle for yellow with Laurent Fignon