The Tour de France : a cultural history

430 Pages·2008·96.762 MB·English

by  Christopher S. Thompson

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous
contribution to this book provided by the
Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund
of the University of California Press Foundation.

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TheTOUR
de FRANCE
A CULTURAL HISTORY
Updated with a New Preface
Christopher S. Thompson
cp
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in
the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the
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UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and
institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.
Parts of this book were previously published in different form and appear here by
permission of their original publishers: part of chapter i, Christopher Thompson,
"Regeneration, Dégénérescence, and Medical Debates about the Bicycle in Fin-de-Siècle
France," in Sport and Health History, ed. Thierry Terret (Sankt Augustin, Germany:
Academia Verlag, 1999), 339—45; parts of chapters 1 and 4, Christopher Thompson,
"Bicycling, Class, and the Politics of Leisure in Belle Epoque France," in Histories of
Leisure, ed. Rudy Koshar (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002), 131-46; parts of chapters 1
and 4, Christopher Thompson, "Controlling the Working-Class Hero in Order to
Control the Masses?: The Social Philosophy of Sport of Henri Desgrange," Stadion
(Fall 2001): 139—51; part of chapter 5, Christopher Thompson, "The Tour in the Inter-
War Years: Political Ideology, Athletic Excess and Industrial Modernity," International
Journal ofthe History of Sport (www.tandf.co.uk) 20:2, special issue on the Tour de
France 1903-2000 (June 2003): 79—102.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2006, 2008 by The Regents of the University of California
ISBN: 978-0-520-25630-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
The Library of Congress has catalogued an earlier edition of this book as follows:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thompson, Christopher S., 1959—
The Tour de France : a cultural history / Christopher S. Thompson,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-10 0-520-24760-4 (cloth : alk. paper),
ISBN-13 978-0-520-24760-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Tour de France (Bicycle race)—History. 2. Bicycle
racing—Social aspects—France. I. Title.
GV1049.2.T68T56 2006
796.6'2'o944—dc22 2005023760
Manufactured in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASTM
D5634-01 (Permanence of Paper). ©
CONTENTS
Preface to the 2008 Edition vit
Acknowledgments xxiii
Introduction 1
1. La Grande Boucle: Cycling, Progress,
and Modernity 7
2. Itineraries, Narratives, and Identities 51
3. The Géants de la Route: Gender and Heroism 95
4. L'Auto s Ouvriers de la Pédale: Work, Class,
and the Tour de France, 1903-1939 141
5. The Forçats de la Route: Exploits, Exploitation, and
the Politics of Athletic Excess, 1903-1939 180
6. What Price Heroism? Work, Sport, and Drugs
in Postwar France 2/5
Epilogue 2$6
Appendix: Racers' Occupations 267
Notes 269
Bibliography
Index 56$

PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION
In late July 2006, just days after the conclusion of the Tour de France and
shortly after this book was published, I was cycling back to my apartment
in Paris from a training ride around the Hippodrome de Longchamps in the
Bois de Boulogne. As I rode up Boulevard Pereire, a teenage boy on the side-
walk stared at me and then shouted: "Sale dope [Dirty doper]!" A few days
later, I was in southwestern France, engaged in a 113-mile solo ride over three
of the major Pyrenean peaks of the Tour. As I struggled up the steep slopes
of the Col du Soulor I had ample time to note two words that had been
painted in large letters on the stone wall that borders the narrow road lead-
ing to the summit: "Vilains dopes [Evil dopers]!" Less than a year earlier, in
the fall of 2005,1 had concluded the epilogue of this book by reflecting on
the implications of the doping scandals that have plagued the recent history
of the Tour de France. I suggested that, far from being limited to the inti-
mate world of professional cycling, the repeated revelations about illicit dop-
ing by Tour racers—including many of the sport's stars—raised important
questions about the place of high-performance spectator sports and top-
flight athletes in contemporary societies. The anecdotal evidence provided
above from my own recent experience suggests that these questions con-
tinue to be relevant: cycling remains in crisis.
The questions raised by the apparently never-ending succession of dop-
ing affairs in professional cycling defy easy answers, in part because of the
sheer number of the sport's stakeholders and their at times conflicting in-
terests. They include the racers, represented by national and international
professional associations; the sport's commercial sponsors, who provide the
financial backing for teams and competitions; the race organizers; the com-
vii
munities that invest considerable sums to host competitions for the eco-
nomic benefits and favorable exposure they expect will ensue; the national
and international cycling federations, which govern the sport; the scientific
and medical communities, which are continually developing new therapies
and drugs that improve human physiological capacities; the media, who
cover the sport and seek to profit from that coverage (a dual objective
fraught with conflicts of interest); the national and international antidop-
ing agencies, which are leading an increasingly global campaign against il-
licit performance-enhancement by athletes; the antidoping laboratories,
which process the racers' samples and at times fail to follow the rigorous
guidelines established to guarantee athletes due process; and national gov-
ernments, which have passed a variety of antidoping laws and exhibited dif-
fering levels of commitment in enforcing them. To date these parties have
failed to formulate a common vision for cycling's future, in large measure
because they cannot agree about how to address the challenge that doping
poses to the racers' health and the sport's image.
In the less than two years since I completed this book, the sport's dop-
ing crisis has deepened as legal investigations into, and revelations about,
the extent of the practice among professional racers have multiplied. On the
eve of the 2006 Tour, the so-called Puerto Operation broke in Spain, im-
plicating dozens of professional racers in an apparent blood-doping enter-
prise of unprecedented scale.1 Determined to put behind them Lance Arm-
strong's seven-year reign over the event, which was dogged by repeated
suggestions that he had doped, the organizers decided to exclude from the
2006 Tour any contestants implicated in the Spanish affair, before any of
the latter had been formally charged or had the chance to present a legal de-
fense.2 Among the banned racers were several of the prerace favorites and
top finishers of the 2005 Tour. Such a draconian housecleaning—one that
did not spare the sport's stars—allowed some to hope, not for the first time,
that a new, "cleaner" era in cycling was dawning.
These hopes were soon dashed. In the days that followed his dramatic
come-from-behind victory in the 2006 Tour, it was reported that the Amer-
ican Floyd Landis had tested positive for synthetic testosterone, a banned
substance. The positive result had come from a sample taken the day of his
remarkable solo breakaway in the mountains, which had allowed him to re-
cover most of the time he had lost the previous stage when he had collapsed
on the final climb. Headlines extolling Landis's exploit, which was among
the most riveting in the event's recent history, were soon replaced by ones
viii PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION