Freddy Maertens

Freddy Maertens (born 13 February 1952) is a Belgian former professional racing cyclist who was twice world road race champion.

His career coincided with the best years of another Belgian rider, Eddy Merckx, and supporters and reporters were split over who was better.

Maertens' career swung between winning more than 50 races in a season to winning almost none and then back again.

His life has been marked by debt and alcoholism.

It took him more than two decades to pay a tax debt.

Maertens rode his first race at Westhoek when he was 14, in 1966.

The field included riders of 17 and 18, including some from France.

The race was open to riders who did not have a licence from the Belgian federation, the BWB.

He had trouble riding in a group.

His second race went better.

Among the riders he beat was Michel Pollentier, later a friend and a team colleague as a professional.

Maertens continued to ride unlicensed races in 1967.

In 1968 he took his first licence from the BWB, riding in the nieuweling or beginners' class.

He won 21 times and came second 19 times to a rider named Vandromme.

Maertens asked his father permission to leave school in his second year as a junior, or under-19, rider.

He won 64 times as a junior.

They married in November 1973 and rented a house in Lombardsijde.

She said: "I got to know a young boy who was more adult than his years and who knew what he wanted: to be a professional bike rider. I fell for him. Not because I thought he could become a great rider but because I felt straight away that I could play a role in his life, that he needed me. Three years later we were married. Our dream had started. We didn’t know then that it would turn into a nightmare".

At one point early in his career, between the 1976 Tour and 1977 Giro, Maertens won 28 out of 60 Grand Tour stages that he entered before abandoning the Giro due to injury on stage 8b.

Eight Tour stage wins, thirteen Vuelta stage wins and seven Giro stage wins in less than one calendar year.

Maertens was the son of what his wife, Carine, described as a hard-working middle-class couple: Gilbert Maertens and Silonne Verhaege.

His mother was the daughter of a shipbuilder in Nieuwpoort harbour.

She had a grocery and newspaper shop, which delivered newspapers.

Gilbert Maertens, the son of a self-employed bill-sticker, was a flamboyant and restless man who was a member of the local council and on the committee of the town football club.

He ran a laundry with a staff of four behind his wife's shop.

Maertens is one of four brothers: he, Mario, Luc and Marc.

Marc also rode as a professional.

Maertens went to the St-Bernadus college in Nieuwpoort.

He read enthusiastically and showed a talent for languages.

He could make himself understood in French, Italian and English as well as his native Dutch by the time he turned professional.

He then went to the Onze Lieve Vrouw [Holy Mother] college in Ostend.

Maertens and Carine Brouckaert met at a cycling club dance when she was 15.

She had been sewing shoes for her father, a cobbler, since the previous year.

The two were introduced by Jean-Pierre Monseré and his wife, Annie.

Carine was Annie's niece.

She had never heard of Maertens.

On 25 May 1979 he flew to the United States to see a doctor, to confirm that he had no drug problems.

He and a medical advisers flew from Amsterdam to New York City in a McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

Maertens mentioned to his colleague, Paul de Nijs, that one of the engines made an odd noise.

After Maertens disembarked in New York the plane continued towards Chicago but crashed on take-off when an engine fell off, killing 279.