Quim Cambalhotas disappeared 40 years ago

This Friday, May 10th, marks four decades since the disappearance of Joaquim Agostinho, the best Portuguese cyclist of all time.

A fall in Quarteira, while competing in the Volta ao Algarve, would end up proving fatal. Agostinho was wearing yellow, but was unable to avoid a dog (the doubt remains whether it was one or two). The truth is that he still got up and, with the help of two colleagues – Benjamim Carvalho and José Amaro –, crossed the goal which was 300 meters away.

Then it was a fight against Augustine’s stubbornness and charisma, who initially refused to get into the ambulance. He went to the residence where the Sporting team was, but the dizziness was more severe and, against his will, he allowed himself to be taken to Loulé Hospital. At the Algarve unit, he was diagnosed with a skull fracture and the urgency to head to Lisbon, at a time when Portuguese roads were an authentic labyrinth. He fell into a coma near Alcácer do Sal and when he entered the operating room at Santa Maria Hospital it was already too late. The cyclist, the best ever born in Portugal, died and the legend began.

In Quarteira he had the last fall of a long series, so much so that he was nicknamed, from an early age, Quim Cambalhotas.

Tantrums and doping
Joaquim Agostinho was an unschooled cyclist, clumsy at pedaling, and who started the sport too late due to the military service he had to carry out in the former Lourenço Marques, today Maputo, capital of Mozambique.

His career, strictly speaking, only began at the age of 25 at the hands of João Roque, a former Sporting cyclist.

And his journey was peppered, in addition to the falls, with a lot of anger, controversy and tantrums related to doping.

From 1969 to 1973 Joaquim Agostinho won five editions of the Volta a Portugal but would end up losing the first and last at the secretariat. In 1969 Agostinho would win the premier race on the national cycling calendar, but before that he had been invited by the French team Frimantic to compete in the Tour, in which he would finish in 8th position, something considered absolutely fantastic. Forced to win the Tour of Portugal – no one expected anything else – Agostinho fulfilled what was expected with a final time trial of enormous class. The coup de theater occurred when he accused amphetamine and methylamphetamine, common substances in international cycling… “I only took the usual vitamins. I didn’t drink anything, when I arrived in Alvalade the only thing I drank was a Sumol”, explained the cyclist who also saw the soft drink brand make a statement demarcating itself from the situation.

Between the lines
In 1972 and 1973 new cases. First at the Tour, with its sporting director, Jean Gribaldy, accusing “the Tour mafia”. Then in the Volta a Portugal. Augustine once again performed an impeccable time trial that earned him, everyone thought, victory, however, the harvests would record mentylphenyl, a compound from the drug Ritaline, a blood vessel dilator, and which Augustine acknowledged taking but with an addendum – “ That’s not a drug at all.”

Then he cut ties with Portugal and decided not to race on Portuguese soil again.

Doping and falls have always haunted the cyclist born in Brejenjas, municipality of Torres Vedras, even though in 1982 he left a kind of admission of guilt, although without saying so definitively: “Does anyone believe that a cyclist, to do 200 or 300 kilometers, in the sun, rain, going up, down, doing impressive averages of 40 or 50 kilometers/hour, don’t you need something to help you withstand that effort? Whoever wants to answer, or let them submit themselves to similar efforts and then say whether or not they have to take stimulants…” For the benefit of the connoisseur…

At international level, Joaquim Agostinho always followed the sporting director who believed in his qualities, Jean Gribaldy. His greatest achievements were his two podiums in the Tour – 3rd in 1978 and 1979 – and he became an icon of the Tour de France when he won, in a demonstration of great category, the Alpe d’Huez, a performance that earned him a bust in the 14th corner of this stage.

In the Tour, in 12 participations he was in the top 10 on eight occasions, having won five stages, two of them in his debut year, in 1969.

Spanish-style fraud?
It would be in 1974 that he came very close to winning a major international competition. He finished the Tour of Spain in 2nd place, 11 seconds behind José Manuel Fuente, after riding in yellow for five days. But there are those who guarantee that there was fraud in the timing to favor the man of the house.

Between all these episodes he still had a complicated fight with his usual club, Sporting. In 1974 he was angry with the lack of conditions that the club provided him, he made peace with the then president João Rocha, after he guaranteed investment so the team could compete for victory in major international races. The project was unsuccessful, Sporting suspended the section but reactivated it in time for Quim Cambalhotas to wear the Lions jersey again, in 1984. Soon after, the tragedy that no one expected happened. It was 40 years ago this Friday, May 10th.

The memory of Joaquim Agostinho remains very present through the Museum named after him, located in Torres Vedras.