Freddy Maertens Freddy Maertens (born 13 February 1952 in Nieuwpoort) is a Belgian former professional racing cyclist who was twice world road race champion. His career coincided with the best years of another Belgian rider, Eddy Merckx, and supporters and reporters were split over which was the better. Maertens' career swung between winning more than 50 races in a season to winning almost none and then back again. His life has been marked by debt and alcoholism. It took him more than two decades to pay a tax debt. Personal life Maertens was the son of what his wife, Carine, described as a hard-working middle-class couple: Gilbert Maertens and Silonne Verhaege. His mother was the daughter of a shipbuilder in Nieuwpoort harbour. She had a grocery and newspaper shop, which delivered newspapers. Gilbert Maertens, the son of a self-employed bill-sticker, was a flamboyant and restless man who was a member of the local council and on the committee of the town football club. He ran a laundry with a staff of four behind his wife's shop. Maertens is one of four brothers: he, Mario, Luc and Marc. Marc also rode as a professional. Maertens went to the St-Bernadus college in Nieuwpoort. He read enthusiastically and showed a talent for languages. He could make himself understood in French, Italian and English as well as his native Dutch by the time he turned professional. He then went to the Onze Lieve Vrouw [Holy Mother] college in Ostend. Maertens and Carine Brouckaert met at a cycling club dance when she was 15. She had been sewing shoes for her father, a cobbler, since the previous year. The two were introduced by Jean-Pierre Monseré and his wife, Annie. Carine was Annie's niece. She had never heard of Maertens. They married in November 1973 and rented a house in Lombardsijde. She said: "I got to know a young boy who was more adult than his years and who knew what he wanted: to be a professional bike rider. I fell for him. Not because I thought he could become a great rider but because I felt straight away that I could play a role in his life, that he needed me. Three years later we were married. Our dream had started. We didn’t know then that it would turn into a nightmare". Amateur career Maertens rode his first race at Westhoek when he was 14, in 1966. The field included riders of 17 and 18, including some from France. The race was open to riders who did not have a licence from the Belgian federation, the BWB. He had trouble riding in a group. His second race went better. Among the riders he beat was Michel Pollentier, later a friend and a team colleague as a professional. Maertens continued to ride unlicensed races in 1967. In 1968 he took his first licence from the BWB, riding in the nieuweling or beginners' class. He won 21 times and came second 19 times to a rider named Vandromme. Maertens asked his father permission to leave school in his second year as a junior, or under-19, rider. He won 64 times as a junior. His father made him promise that he would train regardless of the weather. Relationship with father Gilbert Maertens gave his son his first bike, which Freddy Maertens described as "a second-hand thing that he’d got from a beach business for a bargain". Not until he won a race on that would he get a better one. The author, Rik Van Walleghem, said: "The training school that Maertens went through with his father was hard.