Paris-Roubaix 1960 was an especially historic edition. It was the first race ever to be televised in the way racers are today, with motorbike mounted cameras relaying live coverage to a helicopter receiver. The signal was then relayed from the helicopter to a distributer, which in 1960 was called Eurovision. And from Eurovision to TV sets all over the continent.
So why this photo? Well, all the technology was so new that it wasn’t possible to cover the entire race, only the last hour, and for 56 minutes of that hour TV screens were full of this rider. Britain’s Tom Simpson authored a long lone breakaway, and was only caught at the entrance to the Roubaix Velodrome finish, so his image occupied most of that hour.
Once on the track Simpson was caught and passed by a few more riders and finished 9th, which wasn’t bad for a 22 year-old in his first full pro year, especially at a time when riders generally matured later than they do today.
The winner was interesting too, a Belgian called Pino Cerami, who was a few days short of his 38th birthday. Cerami was also unusual as a Roubaix winner because he wasn’t a Flemish Belgian, but a French-speaking Walloon. He was also born in Sicily, only becoming a naturalised Belgian in 1956.
He moved to the country as a child when his father, like many Italians, got a job in a coal mine in the industrial region of Hainaut, which is a neck of French-speaking Belgium squeezed between France and Flanders. Many Italians made the same journey, and they were always given enthusiastic support when Italian riders did well in the big Walloon races – La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Hainault has many things in common with Roubaix. It even has its own cobbled race, which is growing quickly, especially in notoriety. Some of the 16 sectors of Le Samyn’s cobblestones are just as bad as those crossed by the race to Roubaix.
The race is named after José Samyn who won its first edition in 1968, when it was called the GP Fayt-le Franc. He was another local to Hainault, and was a promising rider who sadly died during a race at Zingem, East Flanders in 1969.
