CYCLING: He was also world champion …
The cyclist Ferdinand Kübler, the first Swiss rider to win the Tour de France in 1950, has died at the age of 97 years, announced this Friday by the Swiss agency ATS.
Swiss cycling legend, the one called The Eagle Aldliswil died Thursday afternoon said his wife journal Schweizer Illustrierte. Besides the Grand Loop in 1950, Ferdinand Kübler had won the world title on the road in 1951, as well as twice the classic Liège-Bastogne-Liège, three times the Tour of Switzerland, and twice the Tour de Romandie.
“I became champion because I was poor,” he explained to l’Equipe Magazine on the occasion of the centenary Tour (2003). “I was struggling to eat, to have a better life. I won the Tour de France because I dreamed of, because I knew that after I would never be poor. ”
Kubler, who had stopped his career in 1957, remained very popular in Switzerland. To the point of figure, well before the term became fashionable, advertising icon in his country.
