Hardest Of The Hard

Frank Strack discusses cycling’s toughest riders, and aims to pick his top five hardmen.

- Dear Frank

I recently read your new book, The Hardmen. In it you discuss famous riders and the things that made them ‘hard’, but you fail to rank them. So who would be your top five, and why? Jez, by email

Dear Jez

The notion of this book (and four others) was sketched out in the proposal for our first book, The Rules. As it turns out, going from sketch to detail is something altogether different from pompously outlining something in a proposal.

One of the first things we discovered, pint in hand, was that there were way too many hard riders to put in a single book. What’s the timetable? Pre-War? Those guys didn’t even have gears! They couldn’t get help to fix their bikes. Post-War? Those guys had gears and support, so they could focus on pushing hard. Post-Merckx? Sure, Eddy was the hardest, but his hardness bred a whole new generation of strong riders from Hinault to LeMond. The 1990s? They were doped to the gills, but their brand of dope made the racing super-exciting and opened the door to suffering even more.