A new life

In the closing stages of his time at Motorola, Hennie meets Marianne Hetterscheid (born 1947; in full, Maria Hendrika). Sport means nothing to Marianne; cycling holds no interest for her. After a stormy period she has just about got her affairs back on track, has plans to open a beauty salon and has no intention whatsoever of starting a new relationship. Nevertheless the two of them quickly hit it off. Marianne: ‘At first I still thought: what am I doing with a man who has been Olympic and world champion in a sport I know absolutely nothing about?’ Slowly but surely the cyclist draws her into that new world. ‘I adapt easily to new situations. I got that from home.’ For years she worked as a secretary and administrator at her father’s knitwear factory in Arnhem, married a man who worked in education and – after the marriage broke down – wanted to fulfil her childhood dream – a beauty salon of her own – until she began a relationship with Hennie. That leads, on 21 June 2000, to a marriage which – how could it be otherwise – takes place in Denekamp.

Hennie and Marianne in their home in Enschede

By now she feels at home in the cycling world. Being at Hennie Kuiper’s side makes that easier. ‘With Hennie you can go anywhere. Everyone likes him. Sometimes I think he’s too nice, that he overdoes it. He does a lot for other people. He visits the sick, and he really does care about them.’ Hennie Kuiper is synonymous with sport. ‘He’s interested in every sport,’ says Marianne, ‘but as soon as the talk turns to cycling, his eyes really start to shine. He has tremendous willpower, is still active in sport and has got me into it as well.’

At the start of the eleventh stage in Luchon in the 1998 Tour, Hennie Kuiper gets into an animated conversation with Crown Prince Willem-Alexander

Mobile skybox

After his career as a directeur sportif, Kuiper starts a sports consultancy with two partners, the former professional footballer Gerard Somer and Geert Jan Bittink, under the name KSB – sponsorship consultants. But even before the partnership gets under way it becomes clear that Hennie really only wants to work in cycling. For the agreement states that if he is offered something in cycling that appeals to him, he may leave the consultancy. That happens quite soon, when in 1996 Rabobank launches a large cycling sponsorship project with a big professional team as its showpiece. It gives the bank the chance to introduce the mobile skybox: guest cars in which important clients are treated to a day at the real Tour de France. At the wheel, preferably, a great name from the past. In 1996 Kuiper is not yet available, but from 1997 that changes. Hennie proves to be cut out for the job. He knows the route like the back of his hand, initiates the guests into the secrets of the Tour and has an endless fund of anecdotes at his disposal. Who wouldn’t want to be driven around by such a charming great from the past?

At first it keeps him busy for thirty days a year, a number that later grows to eighty. Speaking in 2017, Hennie says: ‘That period with Rabobank enriched my life. I met a great many interesting people and learnt a lot from them.’ He also organises cycling tours and clinics, among others for large groups of readers of regional newspapers, and not only the Twente press. ‘With Hennie to l’Alpe d’Huez’ becomes an institution. It even earns him a place in the Guinness Book of Records. And just as Ine was his support during his years as a professional rider, Marianne is now his anchor in his present activities, in which she plays a part herself. For don’t imagine that Hennie has rested on his laurels. Kuiper is busy with clinics, with cycling tours, with talks and with commercial activities. He was, is and always will be a charming, friendly but very busy little fellow. ‘You’re allowed to be a bit prouder of everything you’ve achieved,’ Marianne has told him more than once.

Museum

In 2017 a museum devoted to his career was opened. The museum, named Hennie Kuiper Native, gives a good impression in words and pictures of the cycling life of this Twente star. Jan Goossink and Hans Stokkelaar are the driving forces behind it. Hennie Kuiper Native is part of Erve Kuiper, the Kuiper farmstead where Hennie was born. It stands next to the farm run by his nephew Erik and Erik’s Hermien. It is a wonderful experience to walk through the rich history of one of the greatest riders in Dutch cycling history while looking down, one floor below, on the magnificent cows of nephew Erik, who is also an acclaimed champion ice-cream maker.

For a long time, despite his Olympic, world and national titles, Hennie Kuiper was regarded above all as a leading stage-race rider. His overall win in the Tour de Suisse and his impressive performances in the Tour de France bear that out. In his second career, from 1981 onwards, he shows that he also belongs among the world’s best in the classics. In his racing life he finished in the top ten of the big one-day races no fewer than 51 times. He achieved that tally in the Omloop Het Volk, Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, Ghent-Wevelgem, the Amstel Gold Race, Paris-Roubaix, the Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Rund um den Henninger Turm, the Championship of Zurich, Bordeaux-Paris, Paris-Brussels, Paris-Tours (the Grand Prix d’Automne) and the Tour of Lombardy.

HENNIE’S RESULTS All Hennie’s top-ten placings in the various classics

Category A (total: 23)

Category B (total: 22)

Category C (total: 6)

Total

Total: 51

The class of Hennie Kuiper the cyclist does not show in a streamlined position on the bike or in elegant pedalling. Hennie Kuiper the rider had other qualities. He undeniably had a great deal of talent; otherwise you do not build up an honours list like his. Hennie unquestionably had an enormous engine, which let him keep going where others cracked. Perhaps the finest compliment comes from Roger De Vlaeminck – not the least of riders himself – at the reunion of the DAF team in 2005: ‘On his good days, Hennie Kuiper was perhaps even stronger than Eddy Merckx.’ But he had no sprint, and that automatically means his palmarès is limited in length. It is not the number of his victories that commands respect, but their quality. It is other qualities that mark Kuiper out as a rider of undeniably great class: perseverance and willpower. In those qualities Hennie Kuiper is the undisputed champion: Champion Willpower.

At the start of Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2009 Hennie Kuiper proves the perfect host on behalf of Rabobank. Together with Mart Smeets he gives an admirer two priceless photos

In September 1997 the KNWU replaces women’s national coach Piet Hoekstra with Hennie Kuiper. Hoekstra has been removed after a letter of protest from five female riders. Kuiper takes over the team in the run-up to the World Championships in San Sebastián and is seen here instructing Chantal Beltman and Meike de Bruijn. Debby Mansveld, however, will be the best Dutch rider in Donostia. She finishes eighth

The little plaque in the showers of the Vélodrome André Pétrieux on the Avenue du Parc des Sports in Roubaix is the silent witness to the ultimate kilometres of perseverance of Hennie Kuiper, Champion Willpower

In April 2017 the permanent exhibition ‘Hennie Kuiper Native’ opens in Denekamp, in the farmhouse where Hennie Kuiper spent his childhood. Among other things there is now a library, where Hennie, Joop Zoetemelk and Jan Janssen reminisce about times gone by at the festive opening