CQ27_FINAL_SPREADS (1)

FROM PARIS TO THE
BLUE WAVES OF THE
MEDITERRANEAN,
FROM MARSEILLE TO
BORDEAUX, PASSING
ALONG THE ROSEATE
AND DREAMING ROADS
Desgrange editorialises that
Frenchmen are “tired, without
muscle, without character and
SLEEPING UNDER THE
SUN,
without willpower.”
ACROSS
The Tour
THE
would create the supermen who
CALM
would
OF
restore a
THE
nation’s virility.
FIELDS
OF THE VENDÉE, FOL-
LOWING THE LOIRE,
WHICH FLOWS ON STILL
AND SILENT, OUR MEN
ARE GOING TO RACE
MADLY, UNFLAGGINGLY.
82
develop the muscles. Scoutisme
became phenomenally popular,
with scouts developing their
mental and physical skills in
a heady stew of patriotism,
resourcefulness and honour. Farright
ideologues like Henry de
Montherlant – much admired by
Desgrange – celebrated an ideal
of the virile male body, ready for
the fight.
Looking back to the warlike
aesthetic of the cult of health
and physical beauty in Hellenic
times, the physical culture
movement preaches the
regeneration of man through
muscles. In the space where the
obsession with the physical male
body integrates with the body
politic, perfection is drawn from
classical statuary – from the
Mars Borghese and Achilles and
the Fighting Gladiator. Soon the
halls of the Gymnase Trait were
heaving with would-be Greek
gods. But for all its homoerotic
undertow, the purpose of
the cult of male physical
perfection was to foster healthy
childbearing and regenerate the
French race.
Desgrange cultivated a close
friendship with another young
cyclist, Dr James-Edward
Ruffier, a keen proponent of la
culture physique who regularly
wrote for l’Auto on the need
to create health and strength
through movement. Géo Lefèvre
was an early contributor to
l’Éducation physique magazine.
Still obsessed with France’s
loss to Prussia, Desgrange
editorialises that Frenchmen
are “tired, without muscle,
without character and without
willpower.” The Tour would
create the supermen who would
restore a nation’s virility.
Arguably one of sport’s most
influential media figures,
Desgrange’s opinions were
taken absolutely seriously.
And his fears that intelligence
might trump physicality, that
French manhood would fall prey
to surmenage or intellectual
burnout, were common at the
time – by the 1880s Republicans
were sponsoring bataillons
scolaires, young schoolboys with
rifles and uniforms. But it wasn’t
all sport that would create the
French superman. L’Auto often
derided the new American
import basketball as girly or
feminine, its no-contact nature
the antithesis of the physical
brutality and violence of longdistance
bike racing.
To be fair, H.D. was as good as
his word, volunteering to fight
in 1917. Géo Lefèvre joined him,
earning the Croix de Guerre
for bravery and becoming an
officer of the Légion d’honneur.
Desgrange joined up alongside
the poilus or hairy ones –
common soldiers, like the
British Tommy, but blessed with
luxuriant facial hair and gallows
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