Monsieur De Muer

Maurice De Muer, Hennie’s directeur sportif at Peugeot, likes to project a certain grandeur. He is well groomed, always struts about with short little steps, and usually sports sunglasses and a tan – whether natural or not. Only his intimates may address him as Maurice. To the ordinary run of riders he is ‘Monsieur De Muer’. To disguise his rather short stature he usually wears shoes with raised heels. That gives him a little more presence, or so he thinks. And of course he is quite the ‘monsieur’. He has won the Tour four times. No, not himself, of course, but directeurs sportifs are apt to claim the successes of riders in the teams they run as their own. The Belgian Lomme Driessens is the great champion in that respect. So Monsieur De Muer has won four times. Four times? Once with Ocaña and twice with Thévenet. That makes three, yes. But Maurice De Muer also counts our own Jan Janssen among ‘his’ winners. In 1968 – the year he wins the Tour – Janssen is the leader of a Dutch national team managed by Ab Geldermans. That may be true, but as a rider he earns his living with the Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune squad. And in those years that team is run by Monsieur De Muer. So Jan Janssen’s success is Maurice’s triumph too.

Well into the seventies De Muer regards himself as the undisputed number one among French directeurs sportifs. Now that Thévenet is rapidly going downhill, he is looking for a new trump card so that he can hold on to his position as number one. He feels Cyrille Guimard’s hot breath on his neck; Guimard, who won the Tour de France with Van Impe in 1976, but who is now climbing to the top surprisingly fast with the new talent, Bernard Hinault. Hennie Kuiper has to neutralise that threat. Yet by this time De Muer no longer has the burning ambition of the past. The Frenchman’s glory days are clearly behind him, and the same goes for some of his team. But those are matters that Hennie Kuiper and José De Cauwer will only come up against later. For now it is a new beginning for the pair, just as it is, for that matter, for their new French teammates. In the French press Kuiper and Thévenet are presented as the two leaders of the Peugeot team, although it very soon becomes clear that Bernard Thévenet is a mere shadow of the rider he once was. The result of excessive doping, it is whispered.

At first Michel Laurent, one of the leading figures in the Peugeot team, lets the French media know that he is disappointed in De Muer. Laurent is talented, as shown among other things by his victory in Paris-Nice in 1976 (ahead of Hennie Kuiper) and his win in the Flèche Wallonne in 1978. Laurent is also a climber who, on a good day, can stay with the best in the high mountains. Small wonder that he is hoping for promotion within the team, now that Bernard Thévenet is performing so indifferently. And now De Muer comes along with Kuiper… Yet Laurent proves cooperative, like almost everyone else in the French squad. Just how devoted Laurent is becomes clear later that year in the Tour, where he works his heart out for his team leader. In the stage over the Galibier to l’Alpe d’Huez, Hennie has his ‘jour sans’, as the French call an off day.

On the Galibier he watches one rival after another disappear from view. Then Michel Laurent appears at his side and helps him, morally and physically, over the Alpine giant. At the finish on l’Alpe d’Huez Kuiper has lost time to his rivals. That he is still able to hold on to third place in the general classification after that stage is entirely thanks to Laurent. De Cauwer is positive about the way he and Hennie were received in the team. ‘Hennie was someone who already had a reputation, after all. He had a world title to his name and had done great things in the Tour de France. That counted, and people respected it. We noticed that from the very first meeting.’

At Peugeot, Hennie Kuiper comes under the command of ‘monsieur De Muer’

Today Hennie Kuiper prefers the bike to the skis

To prepare for the 1979 season with Peugeot, Hennie Kuiper goes back to the French ski resort of La Norma to get ready. He alternates between his racing bike and the ski lift