Jacques Anquetil was the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times, and he did it with a cool, almost lazy elegance that drove his competitors to distraction. He'd announce his race strategy in press conferences beforehand and still win. The confidence was not bluster; it was mathematics. He could calculate his effort with such precision that he'd win time trials by exactly the margin he needed and not a second more. Born in Mont-Saint-Aignan, Normandy on January 8, 1934, he grew up on a strawberry farm and started racing as a teenager. He won the Grand Prix des Nations time trial at nineteen, establishing himself as the dominant time trialist of his generation. His first Tour de France victory came in 1957, at 23, and he added four more between 1961 and 1964, winning the last of them by the narrowest margin in Tour history at that point. He was called "Monsieur Chrono" for his supernatural time-trial abilities. His aerodynamic position on the bike was years ahead of its time. He suffered visibly in the mountains but calculated his losses with such precision that he could claw back every second in the time trials. His rivalry with Raymond Poulidor defined French cycling in the 1960s: Anquetil always won, Poulidor was always more loved. Off the bike, Anquetil was defiantly aristocratic in a sport that celebrated peasant toughness. He smoked cigarettes between stages, drank champagne the night before mountain stages, and dressed in tailored suits. He made no secret of using amphetamines, which were legal in cycling at the time, and argued openly that banning them was hypocritical. He had a complicated private life involving relationships with his wife, his stepdaughter, and later his stepdaughter's daughter. He retired in 1969 and became a farmer and television commentator. He died of stomach cancer on November 18, 1987, at 53. French cycling lost its most stylish champion and its most honest cynic.