“ Wim van Est made a 200-foot fall, his heart stopped, but his Pontiac not at all!”

In 1951, Wim van Est nicknamed Iron William, was the first Dutch cyclist who was wearing the yellow jersey in his first appearance in the Tour de France. He obtained the yellow jersey after joining a small breakaway group during the twelfth stage, which gained eighteen minutes on then race leader Roger Leveque.
Iron William won the sprint out of his group, and not only captured the yellow jersey, but he won also the stage.
The thirteenth day the first appearance of the high mountains with a foray into the Pyrenees. Van Est had never raced in such terrain. He came from a poor family and had not the opportunity to travel very often so had almost never cycled in the mountains. He did well to stay in contact on the both climbs, but his luck soured when he had a flat tire at the summit of the second mountain, he lost three minutes. After this he had to take risks through each of the hairpin turns, eventually locking his brakes through a particularly nasty bend. The frond wheel locked, his tire blew and he sailed over a small wall into what appeared to be an endless abyss. He fell over 200 feet.

Van Est said about it: “I wanted to go left but the bike went straight on…”
Wim van Est suffered only minor scrapes and cuts and wanted to continue the race, but his manager ordered him into an ambulance and taken to the hospital for evaluation. This was the end of his reign in yellow and his bid to complete his first tour.
Back in Holland van Est’s fame grew following the Tour thanks to a successful advertising campaign run by watch maker, Pontiac. As it turned out, the company had given the entire Dutch team watches prior to the race’s start, and they were quick to capitalize on this fact by coining this clever slogan: “ Wim van Est made a 200-foot fall, his heart stopped, but his Pontiac not at all!”