Henry Anglade

Henry Anglade (6 July 1933 – 10 November 2022) was a French cyclist. In 1959 he was closest to winning the Tour de France, when he won a stage and finished second, 4:01 behind Federico Bahamontes. In 1960 he wore the yellow jersey for two days while finishing 8th overall. He placed in the top five of the Tour on two additional occasions in 1964 and 1965. Henry Anglade was born in Thionville, in the Lorraine region of France close to the German border, the son of a soldier. His family moved south to Lyon at the start of the second world war. There he went to school with a boy called André Camus who went cycling on Sundays and on Thursday afternoons. Anglade turned down his invitation to join him. It was his father who suggested that he should go, offering him the heavy family bicycle "that weighed at least 25kg". He joined Camus and his friends and found they couldn't keep up. One suggested he should try racing and he joined the Vélo Club du Griffon, the oldest club in Lyon. That was when he bought himself a Longoni sports bike and tried racing. Anglade worked with an engineering company until he could support himself from racing. Anglade turned professional in 1957. In 1959, he won the Dauphiné Libéré, a mountainous stage race over a week; then the national road championship. He came second in the Tour de Suisse and then in the Tour de France, behind Federico Bahamontes but in front of Jacques Anquetil and Roger Rivière. In that Tour, Anglade – riding for the regional Centre-Midi team – was the victim of the tactics of Anquetil, Rivière and others in the French national team. They preferred to see Bahamontes take the Tour de France rather than Anglade, who was unpopular among French riders and, had he won the Tour de France, would have earned more than Anquetil and Rivière in the post-Tour criteriums that were then an important part of riders' incomes. Bahamontes was both Spanish and a poor rider in round-the-houses races and so of little threat.