the blois crash was caused by a power outage during a paced derny race. the immediate blackout caused the crash which injured merckx's back and killed his pacer.
walter "it's 10 deg F in detroit this morning" manning
==========
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 17:42:13 -0500
From: Jerry & Liz Moos <moos@penn.com>
To: Hilary Stone <Hilary.Stone@Tesco.net>
Cc: stregesmith@qwest.net, classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR] Best Riders of all time
No doubt Merckx's record is is by far the most impressive. Those who would
favor
another as greater must point to the sadistic distances and brutal road
conditions of early races (such as the early P-B-P when it was a real race)
or to
the fact that Bartali had many of his best years stolen by WWII. One rather
suspects that Merckx would have dominated any era, however. Merckx mentions
the
Blois crash in his book "The Fabulous World of Cycling" and says that he
suffered
a lot of pain from it for the remainder of his career. Anyone know where to
find
a detailed account of the Blois crash?
Regards,
Jerry Moos