Frank Vandenbroucke: The final interview

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Eventual 1999 Vuelta champion Jan Ullrich (Telekom) leads Frank Vandenbroucke (Cofidis) and Jos(Image credit: AFP Photo)

Three weeks after Frank Vandenbroucke spoke to Daniel Friebe about his newly rebuilt life, the ex-pro was dead. Procycling recounts that last interview and remembers the Belgian cycling superstar.

Earlier on that day all those years ago, I’d foolhardily accepted an invitation to join Frank Vandenbroucke (VDB) and Lampre on a training ride, only for VDB to mysteriously elope halfway through the session. Hours later, I found him sulking in the restaurant of the Lampre team hotel. Just weeks into what was already his fourth pro deal, the team’s bosses looked as alarmed as their enfant terrible looked miserable.

In Mendrisio, it was different. "Chat?" he said, "Why not? Find me in the press room later." The World Championship road race was due to begin in a few minutes and although VDB wasn’t competing, he seemed to be in his element, waving to the crowds that lined the road as he wore a satin blazer which was clearly his Sunday best. His eyes were bright, his skin tanned and glossy. He seemed to exude good health and happiness. For a self-confessed recovering cocaine addict, not to mention someone who tried to kill himself in June 2007, it appeared that he’d already overcome a great challenge – the one to get his life back.

Like many people, I’d fallen under VDB’s spell in the mid- and late 90s, aka "the EPO years". To me as a teenager, he was a headstrong prodigy who happened to ride for my favourite team, Mapei. Watching the videos now, I can appreciate that he was so much more than the sum of the 26 victories he amassed before his 25th birthday, including a stage in the Tour of the Med when he was barely 19. Doped or not, on the bike, Vandenbroucke represented a rare marriage of grace and power. Katarina Witt, Johan Cruyff and Roger Federer all achieved not just sporting brilliance but also beauty.

We ended up having our most recent conversation on the Sunday afternoon, midway through the men’s road race. At lunchtime, in the marquee tent next to the press room, I’d noticed him eating and talking cheerfully with journalists from Italy, France and Luxembourg. Earlier in the week, he’d stridden into the press room, seen two reporters from the Walloonian newspaper La Dernière Heure and exclaimed, "Now we’re colleagues!" Soon, it was "If you need to know anything, just ask," and, "If you’re thirsty, just let me know." Three weeks later, the same writers would pen his obituary.

We sat outside, Vandenbroucke straddling a plastic chair, me crouched on the curb. The interview lasted no more than 15 minutes, because he had a race to watch and a column to write for the Flemish daily Het Nieuwsblad. The last I’d heard of him was that he’d recently walked out on Cinelli-Down Under, his 12th team in 15 seasons. He claimed they’d never even gone to the trouble of offering him a contract, let alone paying him a wage. "After Tom Boonen, I’m still the second biggest name in Belgian cycling," he’d apparently harrumphed.

With hindsight, his lapse into the third-person may have suggested that all was not as well as he claimed. In a brilliant 2007 documentary about his performance in the 1999 Vuelta, Vandenbroucke reflected, "I was like an extraterrestrial. Maybe that was the drama. It was all too easy. That caused me a lot of problems later..." Despite his protestations to the contrary, there were signs in Mendrisio that the extraterrestrial hadn’t yet completed his landing on planet Earth.

For those 15 minutes, though, VDB held me in a trance, just as he had years earlier. When I’d finished my questions, I thanked him and said, in all sincerity, that it was good to see him looking so well. He smiled and replied that he’d enjoyed the interview. What he really liked, I think, was any recognition of the efforts that were so much greater than anything he’d ever had to muster on a bike – his fight to live a completely normal life.

VDB: Nothing’s ever very far away in Belgium. My parents live 45 minutes away and I have my group of friends nearby. My oldest friend, my old racing buddy, Nico Mattan lives 35 minutes away. We see each other whenever we feel like it. My house is in Zottegem, by the finish-line of the first stage of La Panne. I also have a house just South of Milan, close to Lodi, where I spend less time, but I go there to train in winter or to see my daughter, who lives in Florence now with her mum. It’s a good set-up. I like being able to live in two different countries.

VDB: No, not this year. I’m also the marketing director of the Walloon branch of a metal manufacturer, which takes up a lot of time. I decided to do that because the days are long, and you have to fill them somehow. I also did my column for Het Nieuwsblad during the Tour, and of course I still train, so I do three jobs. It’s a bit too busy if anything, but it also opens up lots of different horizons.

VDB: I was a drug addict. It’s not a secret, I wrote it in my autobiography. And as a former addict, you can never be completely cured. You always have to stay well away from whatever it was that you were addicted to. I’m completely clean now, but you can never think you’re totally in the clear, even when you’re 65. I’ve had a lot of help from a lot of people. I have a psychologist, Jef Brouwers, who has been close to me every step of the way. I still sometimes speak to him three times a week. I owe him a huge amount, because it would have been easy for him to say quite early on that it wasn’t working, that I was hopeless, but he persevered. I owe him a huge amount.