Theo Middelkamp

Theo Middelkamp

Personal information

Full name

Theofiel Middelkamp

Nickname

de Fiel, Fiel Boel

Born

23 February 1914
Nieuw-Namen, the Netherlands

Died

2 May 2005 (aged 91)
Kieldrecht, Belgium

Team information

Discipline

Road

Role

Rider

Major wins

Grand Tours

Tour de France

2 individual stages (1936, 1938)

One-day races and Classics

World Road Race Championships (1947)

National Road Race Championships (1938, 1943, 1945)

Medal record

Men's road bicycle racing

Representing Netherlands
World Championships
	1947 Reims	Elite Road Race
	1950 Moorslede	Elite Road Race
	1936 Bern	Elite Road Race

Theofiel ("Theo") Middelkamp (23 February 1914 – 2 May 2005) was a Dutch road cyclist. In 1947, Middelkamp became world champion. In 1936, he was the first Dutch cyclist ever to win a stage in the Tour de France.

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Biography

Middelkamp was born as the second son in a family of nine children. At an early age, he wanted to be a footballer, but he soon realised that there was much more money to be earned in cycling, as football was not yet a professional sport in the Netherlands.

Middelkamp was the first Dutchman to win a stage in the Tour de France. When he came to the Tour, he had never even seen mountains, coming from the very flat parts of the Netherlands. However, in his first Tour, on 14 July 1936, he won the difficult mountain stage from Aix-les-Bains to Grenoble, which went over the Col du Galibier. That year, he finished 23rd overall. In 1937 he had to quit the Tour because of a fall, in which he broke a finger.

In 1938 he won the seventh stage (Bayonne-Pau). In that tour, he won 8,000 francs, much less than he could have earned in races in Flanders, and so he decided not to participate in any later Tours. As Middelkamp famously said, "I cannot live on fame and honour".^[1]

During the Second World War, Middelkamp earned money by smuggling, but he was caught and spent several months in prison. After the war, he went back to full-time cycling.

In 1947, Middelkamp became the first Dutch world champion on the road, in Reims, after having been close to that title in the previous year.

Middelkamp ended his career in 1951, when he bought a pub in Kieldrecht. For a long time, he would not talk to journalists about his cycling years, until he spoke about his famous 1936 stage win in a television program in 2003. Middelkamp died in 2005.