Description:
Realistic acrylic painting of the French former cyclist who won the Tour de France five times, Bernard Hinault, painted by the Dutch fine artist Paul Meijering - the Original painting is 90 x 90 cm and for sale
Bernard Hinault is one of only six cyclists to have won all three Grand Tours, and one of two cyclists to have won each more than once (the other being Alberto Contador). He won the Tour de France in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1985. He came second in 1984 and 1986 and won 28 stages, of which 13 were individual time trials. The other three to have achieved five Tour de France victories are Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain; of these, Hinault is the only one to have finished either first or second in each Tour de France he finished. He remains the last French winner of the Tour de France.
Hinault was nicknamed Le Blaireau (the badger), as he would often don a hairband, thus resembling a shaving brush. In an interview in the French magazine Vélo, however, Hinault said the nickname had nothing to do with the animal. He said it was a local cyclists' way of saying "mate" or "buddy" in his youth – "How's it going, badger?" – and that it came to refer to him personally. According to Maurice Le Guilloux, a long-time team-mate of Hinault, he and Georges Talbourdet first used the nickname when the three riders trained together in their native Brittany in the early years of Hinault's professional career.
