They called Bernard Hinault le Blaireau — the Badger — for the way he raced: head down, teeth bared, dangerous when cornered. He won five Tours between 1978 and 1985 and remains, four decades on, the last Frenchman to win the race. He won a sixth that he arguably should have, lost in 1980 to a knee injury he rode on far too long, and finished his career on his own terms at thirty-two, the day he said he would.
What separates Hinault from Merckx is instructive, and it is the whole point of this piece. Merckx raced everything and burned bright and brief. Hinault was selective. He targeted. He built his season around objectives and arrived at them sharp, then allowed himself to be ordinary in the races that did not matter to him. The Badger understood something that took sports science another generation to formalise: you cannot be at your best all year, so choose when your best needs to land, and build toward it.
Periodisation, before it had the name
The modern word for what Hinault did is periodisation — organising training and racing into blocks, each with a purpose, so that fitness peaks for a chosen event rather than drifting along at a permanent middling level. A base period to build the engine. A specific period to sharpen the qualities the goal demands. A taper to arrive fresh. Then a deliberate let-down before the next build.
For a professional with a thirty-year-old's recovery and a full support staff, that is a luxury. For a masters amateur with a job, a family and eight to twelve hours a week, it is a necessity. You do not have the time or the recovery to be race-fit in March and still race-fit in September. The riders who improve year on year are the ones who pick an A-event — the Étape, a target gran fondo, a club hill climb — and reverse-engineer the calendar back from it.
Racing into form
Hinault also trusted something amateurs find hard to accept: that you can race your way into shape, that the early-season form you are panicking about is supposed to be missing because the build isn't finished yet. Form is not a switch. It is the output of a process that has a date on it.
So borrow the Badger's discipline rather than his aggression. Decide what day you need to be flying. Work backwards. Let the unimportant rides be unimportant. Arrive angry, arrive sharp, and let everything before it be the building, not the proving.