Eddy Merckx? He's retiring and after twenty years, the great classics - and not only those - will have to do without him. No, we're not crazy, but we want to tell you a curious story, emblematic of a country where cycling is a religion. A cliché? It seems not, reading between the lines of the story that Klaas Maenhout told in Het Nieuwsblad and which we thought to share with you.

It's the story of Frans Geldof, the man who for twenty years has been playing the role of Eddy Merckx and who today, at 65, has decided to hang up his bicycle.

They say the Cannibal never appreciated this much, but Frans never cared too much. For twenty years he has entertained Belgium at races, fairs, nursing homes, everywhere.

Attention, not a mere imitator or caricature: Frans was truly Eddy Merckx, wearing the blue suede Molteni jersey, black canvas shorts, perfectly recreating all the bicycle models used by the Cannibal, stickers included. Frans rides eight kilometers a day, will run a marathon in autumn and cycled 15,000 kilometers in 2024. "But today - he confesses - the magic has simply vanished. And as a cyclist, I look less and less like Eddy Merckx, so I'm stopping."

Some laughed at him over the years, others considered him sacrilegious, many applauded him at the Tour or on the Borsberg or on the Mur de Huy, where he would pass an hour before the race.

Since childhood, people told Frans he looked like Merckx: as a young man, he discovered he was the same height, same shoe size, and as he grew older, even the same wrinkles on his face. The oil he used working in a butter dairy had given his arms the typical cyclist's tan, so in 2005 the idea was born: he made ten Merckx jersey replicas himself, dyed his hair black, grew sideburns like Eddy wore in the seventies and started his adventure.

Geldof left nothing to chance: he used the same gears, inner tubes, and shoes as the great Merckx, even the numbers on the jersey were those of each specific race.

"I felt like Merckx" he confesses. And adds: "I wanted to introduce Eddy Merckx to younger generations. And I gave back youth to the older generation".

Not by chance, Geldof would go around nursing homes to entertain the elderly: a ride on rollers, a few songs, and some chat were often enough to create emotions.

He met the real Merckx only a few times, but he met the king and Hinault and a thousand other personalities. And received thank you letters from all over Belgium and beyond, but also letters from terminally ill patients' relatives who wanted to see Merckx again, and of course, he accommodated them.

And people in these twenty years gave him lots of gifts, almost all related to Merckx. Today he has suitcases full of old newspapers, spare parts, LPs, material from the period when the Cannibal broke the hour record in Mexico. Who knows, maybe he'll sell them, maybe donate them to a museum, perhaps accompanying them with a dedication: "from the man who just wanted to be Eddy Merckx".