The M.I.C. Moneymakers de Gribaldy were a Belgian cycling team active during the 1970s - featuring riders like José Sersté, Eric Leman, and most famously the great Herman Van Springel - pictured in these shots.
It was in the 1974 version of this jersey - in splendid orange and black hoops, that Herman simultaneously won and lost, the now defunct Bordeaux-Paris race, doing so in famous fashion, as Herbie Sykes wrote for us:
'If ever a race characterized a rider – and his career – it was the 1974 edition of the Derby. Herman won it by fifteen minutes, as was his wont. Then, however, it went pear-shaped in the best Bordeaux-Paris tradition. It transpired he’d gone off course, and as a consequence ridden seven extra kilometres. He’d ridden 600 instead of the allotted 593, and a certain Jacques Cadiou had gotten wind of it. He was simultaneously a world-class pedant and sports director of second-placed Régis Délepine, and as he saw it Van Springel had committed a clear infraction of the rules.
Cadiou and his team, Merlin Plage-Shimano-Flandria, were about as much good as an ashtray on a derny. As such, they hadn’t won a thing all season, and he wasn’t much interested in fair play. He opted instead for good old-fashioned sophistry and lodged a complaint. Thus Herman Van Springel was disqualified for having ridden too far, but Délepine, of all people, intervened on his behalf…
He informed the jury that he’d no interest in a pyrrhic victory, and told Cadiou to desist from being such a mealy-mouthed, pedantic cry-baby. In effect, he was appealing against himself (a first even for a sport as daft as cycling) and when the dust settled Herman was invited to share the win with him. Our hero duly accepted, and that explains the legend of the 1974 Bordeaux-Paris.'