Pic of the Day 22 March, 2008 "Four Badgers"
A mud-spattered Bernard Hinault on his way to winning the 1983 Flèche Wallonne, a race which he controlled from start to finish. Hinault was on a tear that day, accelerating on the finishing circuit around the city of Huy and dropping most of his adversaries including Jan Raas, Giuseppe Saronni, and Hennie Kuiper.
Hinault wears a unique black Renault jersey. This isn't the team's all-black winter trainer as this one has short sleeves, worn here with black arm warmers (the normal yellow striped jersey can be seen in the background). I think this may have been the only appearance of this particular design. During the early 1980s team leaders occasionally wore slightly different jerseys, allowing their teammates to located them more easily.
Note the badger patch applied to the front of Hinault's helmet. Early
in his racing career Hinault earned the nickname "Le Blaireau" (The
Badger) because of his stubborn tenacity. The badger design also
appears on the plug of his Cinelli 1-R stem and below the "Gitane" label
on the headtube.
>From "Eddy Merckx - The Fabulous World of Cycling - 1983 Season", 1983,
Offpress s.a., Brussels, Belgium.
http://www.wooljersey.com/
Aldo Ross
Middletown, Ohio
États-Unis d'Amérique