CQ27_FINAL_SPREADS (1)

FROM PARIS TO THE
BLUE WAVES OF THE
MEDITERRANEAN,
FROM MARSEILLE TO
BORDEAUX, PASSING
ALONG THE ROSEATE
AND
He’d
DREAMING
already used the race
ROADS
literally to push the boundaries,
SLEEPING sending the Tour UNDER through the THE
disputed territories of Alsace-
SUN, ACROSS THE
Lorraine, urging the peloton to
sing La Marseillaise as an audible
‘Fuck you’. In the fevered climate
of the times, it was no surprise
that he would urge fit young men
CALM OF THE FIELDS
OF THE VENDÉE, FOL-
LOWING
to their deaths.
THE LOIRE,
WHICH FLOWS ON STILL
AND SILENT, OUR MEN
ARE GOING TO RACE
MADLY, UNFLAGGINGLY.
80
audible ‘Fuck you’. In the
fevered climate of the times, it
was no surprise that he would
urge fit young men to their
deaths.
Grand champions like Octave
Lapize, who had once raised his
fist and screamed “Assassins!”
at the impassive men who stood
and watched as he trudged
wearily up the unpaved roads
of the Tourmalet en route to
winning the 1910 Tour. ‘Curly’
was shot down over the
battlefields of France. Lucien
Petit-Breton, the first real stage
racing star, who had helped
mobilise the movement of
French troops in the taxis of the
Marne operation after winning
back-to-back races in 1907 and
1908. The gentle ‘Geant de
Colombe’, Francois Faber, the
Tour’s first foreign winner, who
dominated the 1909 race and
fell in the trenches fighting for
the French foreign legion. Just a
handful of the riders who went
to fight for France and never
returned from the Hell of the
North.
The Belle Époque sits uneasily
like a luscious cherry atop a
queasy confection of nationalist
niggles and territorial disputes
that eventually foment into
world war one. For France, the
indecently embarrassing ease
of the Prussian defeat just over
forty years earlier had left the
country searching for warriors.
By the 1870s the French Army
was a truly professional unit of
hardened military men, ideally
suited to pursuing Napoleon
III’s forever wars and global
ambitions. But while every
Frenchman was under the duty
to serve, a hangover from
Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign,
few ever did. It was an army of
the non-elite, the officer class
choosing to send replacements
if ever called to serve.
By contrast, the Prussians
preferred to train up the
entire male population and the
French never stood a chance
against a quickly mobilised,
highly scalable and ferociously
well-organised army of
reservists. Overwhelmed by
sheer numbers, the rout left an
indelible stain on the French
psyche and created far-reaching
changes in French society. The
passing of the Jules Ferry laws
of the 1880s created a system
of free, secular and mandatory
education across France. Never
again would the country be
caught out by the intellectual
inferiority of its soldiers. La tête
et les jambes was what was
required.
But if Jules Ferry had dealt
with la tête, it was French
sport that would provide the
muscle power. Jean Jaures, the
French socialist, encouraged
the bourgeois pursuit of
athletics to purify the lungs and
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