Frans Van Looy

Frans Van Looy

Van in Looy 1977
Personal information
Full name	Frans Van Looy
Born	(1950-08-26)26 August 1950 Merksem, Belgium
Died	20 September 2019(2019-09-20) (aged 69) Merksem, Belgium
Height	1.79 m (5 ft 10+1⁄2 in)
Weight	75 kg (165 lb; 11 st 11 lb)
Team information
Current team	Retired
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider (retired) Assistant team manager (retired)
Rider type	Sprinter
Professional teams
1972–1973	Novy–Dubble Bubble
1974	Carpenter–Confortluxe–Flandria
1975–1976	Molteni–RYC
1977	Maes Pils–Mini-Flat
1978	Mini-Flat–Boule d'Or
1979	Kas–Campagnolo
1980–1981	Vermeer Thijs–Mini-Flat
1982	Europ Decor
Managerial teams
1983	Perlav–Eurosoap
1984–1987	TeVe Blad–Eddy Merckx
1988–1991	Histor–Sigma
1992–2006	Team Telekom

Frans Van Looy (26 August 1950 – 20 September 2019) was a Belgian cyclist. Looy was professional from 1972 to 1982. He competed in the individual road race at the 1972 Summer Olympics.^[1]

After his career as a cyclist, Van Looy worked as a team manager with Team Telekom and T-Mobile until 2006 and had helped run his family's farm in Merksem. However, a local government order ruled that Van Looy could no longer live at the farm, despite a petition signed by 3,000 people to preserve the residence that Van Looy had been born in.^[2] After this order, which ruled his birthplace to be uninhabitable and led to his eviction, he committed suicide in September 2019.^[3]