The Time of the V
In every Frenchman's breast lurks a passion more potent, if possible, than his love of the franc or good food. Its outward and visible symbol is the bicycle, but the emotions that bicycling inspires in France have little to do with transportation or exercise. For priests, market-bound peasants, bankers who would sooner pedal than be chauffeured, bicycling is a way to dream and drift in dignity, to twirl life like a long-stemmed glass of Alsace wine. "Vive le velo, un ami de l'homme" proclaims an affectionate Norman toast: "Long live the bike, a friend of man."
Just as the bullfight affords ordered release for the latent ferocity of Spain, bicycle racing brings Gallic veto worship to near ecstasy each spring and summer. It reaches its peak with the Tour de France.
Though the French boast more bicycle races than any other nation--close to 300 a year--the Tour de France is the most expensive, prolonged and perilous marathon of them all. This year's Tour pitted 132 brawny-thighed riders against a brutal 2,750-mile course. Starting at Rouen, the race cut through Belgium, leaped the Alps into Italy, streaked across the south of France into the Pyrenees, and wound northeast along the stately Loire to Paris. The sunburned, dust-caked riders quit at 5 p.m. each day, laying over at night in Tricolor-draped towns that paid up to $8,000 for the privilege. Reason: restaurants and shops can count on a 40% leap in business; hotels are booked months in advance. Nearly every newspaper in France has a 10% sales boost throughout the Tour.
17-Ft. Fly. In cities and sleepy provinces, where the Tour is remembered all year, schools and businesses close to cheer it through. A brassy blend of road show and county fair, the juggernaut blocks traffic for two hours as it passes. Founded by a promotion-minded sporting sheet with the inappropriate name of L'Auto, the Tour is financed by advertisers, who pay up to $4,000 for the privilege of following the racers with sound trucks that blare praise for products from aperitifs to aspirin. (The Tour's current sponsors are two French papers.)
The Tour's elaborate entourage includes three Red Cross cars staffed by nurses who can bandage riders as they pedal, mobile machine shops to keep the bikes in trim, truckloads of extra bicycles and parts. One of the promoters' biggest expenses is providing saddle snacks for the bicyclists, whose jaws work almost as busily as their legs. This year riders gulped 1,000 roast chickens, 300 lbs. of chocolate, 21,000 quarts of mineral water, 100,000 prunes. Barred from the menu: white wine and fried food, which induce cramps. Press helicopters hovered overhead. From tortuous mountain roads, where spills are bloodiest, TV cameras vividly pictured the struggles of storm-lashed competitors. A bottled-gas firm hired a dozen Paris revue stars, staged free shows in a portable theater at each stopover. Monstrous advertising floats included a 65-ft. hair-cream tube and a 17-ft. housefly whose electronic agonies boosted its sponsor's insecticide.
"Never, Never!" The riders, whose agonies were real, fought hazards on every hairpin bend. Half of them dropped out. Several were seriously injured in collisions or falls; the leading Italian rider was sent sprawling by a well-wisher who hurled a cooling bucket of water at his head. In last year's race, France's favorite whirled off a mountain road and broke his back; last year's winner suffered the same fate in a warmup race last March. Most riders take five or six bone-jarring spills a year. Spain's Federico Bahamontes quit the 1957 race crying: "No human being is capable of this kind of torture." Pleaded his trainer: "For your wife, for Spain, for Franco!" Groaned Bahamontes: "Never, never, never.'' Two years later, he was back--and won.
The ten-man teams (from nine countries and three French regions) usually agree among themselves to help their fastest rider win, e.g., by shielding him from wind, accidentally bumping challenging rivals. Jacques Anquetil, the fair-haired, phlegmatic 1957 winner, wrestled bitterly with a teammate in 1959, last year refused to ride with him. This year, in unchallenged command, he extracted a loyalty oath from each team member. Seizing a spectacular eight-minute lead by the second day--the winner often scrapes in by seconds--he stayed so far ahead of the pack that he started "relaxing" as he neared the finish by week's end. He is assured of fame. In a survey a few years ago, only 25% of French soldiers interviewed knew the name of France's Premier; 97% could name the Tour de France winner.
Boost on Bus. The Tour has inspired myriad tales of heroism and villainy over the years. A bronze plaque in Bayonne commemorates the gallantry of one Eugene Christophe, who in 1913 simultaneously shattered his shoulder and his third bicycle, hoisted the wreck on his back and trotted 14 miles to a blacksmith's shop, where a new frame was hammered out.
(He lost anyway.) One of the Tour's ignoblest chapters was written in 1926 by 47 riders who got caught in a rainstorm and hopped a passing bus. Bribing the driver to put them off near the end of the day's run, they finished, pedaling furiously, half an hour ahead of the rest of the pack. The ruse was not discovered until the bus driver asked a race official for his 47 fares.
Though contestants in the past often kept going on Benzedrine or hypodermic injections, in recent years they have been allowed nothing more than the "refresher" they carry in jugs on the handlebars. Each rider claims his formula is secret, but most consist of fruit juice, dextrose, caffeine, vitamin compounds.
What makes men endure the tortures of the Tour? Not prize money, which seldom amounts to more than $4,000 and is usually shared by the winner with his team. The real profits come from personal appearances and advertising endorsements that can earn the winner more than $100,000 a year. Also-rans have the thrill of being called "angels" or "eagles" in the Paris papers. And any Frenchman who enters the Tour de France knows that he will hold friends and family entranced for the rest of his life. In the land of le velo, he is forever un vrai hero.
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