A new challenge

Not long after the Tour, Kuiper’s new sponsor is announced to the outside world. Together with De Cauwer he is moving to Peugeot. After breaking his collarbone in the Tour, he first has it operated on at the hospital in Chambéry. Three weeks later comes a second operation, this time by the Belgian specialist Johan Derweduwen, who has gained a great deal of experience with injuries like this in motor sport. Hennie is able to resume training, and two days later he is already riding his first criterium in Kamerik, where he launches the first attack of the race! He wants to try to play a significant part for the rest of the season. But when the selection for the World Championships is announced, the 1975 world champion is not in it. ‘Post is behind that,’ Hennie knows. He does ride the Grand Prix des Nations, the famous time trial at the end of the season. Despite a mechanical problem he finishes third there, behind Bernard Hinault and Francesco Moser. His form is fine. Hennie can look forward with confidence to his French adventure with Peugeot.

‘Now it gets interesting,’ says José when the duo have ridden their last race for Raleigh. He is referring to Post’s habit of thwarting ‘deserters’. When Roy Schuiten leaves in 1976, the Raleigh riders sit on his wheel. When Thurau moves to another team in 1977, it is the same story. Hennie and José realise that the Raleigh riders will also try to make life difficult for him. ‘But there’s a difference,’ says Hennie. ‘Both Schuiten and Thurau left slamming the door behind them. I’m not a door-slammer. But I had left the team all the same, and then you’re a marked man.’ Yet Hennie is not afraid of any act of revenge on Post’s part. ‘When it really comes down to it, when they get onto terrain where I’m strong, they’re the ones who get dropped.’ And in practice that is how it works. Even so, in Hennie’s first year in a Peugeot jersey Gerrie Knetemann does everything he can to make sure Hennie does not win. He tailors every race to Hennie; sits on his wheel the whole time. Evidently an old wound from the past. Henk Lubberding remembers it very well. ‘In my Raleigh years – from 1977 – Kneet [Gerrie Knetemann] and Post were a double act. Two Amsterdammers of the straight-talking kind. Kneet used to go on about Kuiper and his golden willy. Then a breakaway would form with Hennie in it. But when that breakaway stayed clear to the line, Kuiper always finished fourth out of five, or even fifth.’ Knetemann would grumble no end about it. Lubberding: ‘“Why do you work on the front if you can’t win?” he would say. That happened mainly in the smaller stage races, which Gerrie could win. And Post would then take out his displeasure on Kuiper.’

At TI-Raleigh, all through those years, only one place counts: first. Henk Lubberding: ‘There were classics that Kuiper could handle well too. But winning, that was a problem for Hennie. He would also ride for a high placing, and within the team that was quite often seen as selfish. Knetemann was no less selfish, of course, but he was craftier than Hennie.’ In public Knetemann is disparaging about Kuiper. Even when Hennie wins back second place in the general classification in the final time trial in Saint-Étienne in the 1980 Tour, he has not a good word to say about Kuiper’s performance. He tells Jean Nelissen: ‘He sat on Joop’s wheel for the whole Tour de France. And I don’t really think that’s much of an achievement. When he was still riding in our team, he was an attacker. Now he has only ridden for that second place.’ Relations between De Kneet and Kuiper only return to normal after Gerrie’s crash in Dwars door België in 1983. Despite Gerrie’s belittling words, Hennie visits him in hospital in Ghent. That is Hennie all over. He is incapable of bearing a grudge. It makes him well loved. Over the years Gerrie’s initial aversion to Hennie turns into enormous respect. The Kuiper and Knetemann families even go on a working holiday to Guadeloupe together.

Bernard Thévenet and Hennie Kuiper merrily mark the move from TI-Raleigh to Peugeot on the seesaw in the French holiday village of La Norma

In La Norma in France – where he owns a chalet – Hennie Kuiper signs a hastily cobbled-together contract with Peugeot. Because air traffic controllers in Paris are on strike, directeur sportif Maurice De Muer and the representatives of Peugeot France fail to reach La Norma in time with the proper papers. The authorised representative Bert Kreber, director of Peugeot Netherlands, Bernard Thévenet, Hennie and Ine Kuiper and Jan Janssen try all the harder to smile broadly for the media representatives summoned for the occasion

Racing for Peugeot, Hennie Kuiper is often away from home, mainly because the sponsor’s interests lie chiefly in France. When Kuiper does come home, it is straight away a busy time for Ine and her washing machine. At the photographer’s request the rainbow jersey also hangs on the line, although Hennie has long since stopped being world champion and rides for a different sponsor. By hanging the jersey back to front, at least the old sponsor’s name is no longer visible