2010: Reconquering the Tourmalet (10/10)
At the turn of each decade, the Tour de France has gone through organisational changes and backstage struggles that have variously turned out to be decisive or utterly inconsequential. The journey back in time proposed by letour.fr comes full circle with an ending on the Tourmalet. 100 years after the peloton launched its first assault on the Giant of the Pyrenees, a stage finish at the top of the mountain thrust the technical aspects of the Tour into the spotlight. Overcoming that logistical challenge a decade ago opened the door to summit finishes on peaks such as the Galibier and the Izoard.
The Tour de France sure knows how to celebrate its anniversaries. 2010 marked the centennial of the first appearance of high mountains on the route of the race. A hundred years after Alphonse Steinès‘ odyssey (retold in episode 1 of this series), the Tourmalet again took centre stage. This time, the plan was to draw the finish line at the top of the mountain, a whopping 2,115 metres above sea level. While it was not the first time that someone had come up with the idea —Jean-Pierre Danguillaume had won a stage here in the 1974 Tour—, much had changed in the intervening 36 years. At a time when media coverage of the Tour had boomed around the globe, the resources needed to broadcast the race worldwide were at least five times as big. „I wanted to take the Tour where sport wants us to go, gambling that we would be able to adapt our resources to the terrain“, points out Christian Prudhomme. Jean-Louis Pagès was tasked with finding a solution to the logistical conundrum. In essence, the stage finish designer was asked to fit a dozen elephants into a matchbox. „I was a bit reluctant at the time because I was an old-school man“, explains the former history and geography teacher, who joined the Tour in 1984. „Having time, place and action on the same wavelength was my core tenet. This time round, we had to enter the era of resource fragmentation.“

The team had to think outside the box to make a stage finish on the Tourmalet possible. Only a handful of structures would be set up on the mountain for radio and TV crews, who would have to get there by ski lift. Guest coaches would have to park in Barèges, while the press room was to be set up in La Mongie, on the other side of the massif. On paper, at least, it seemed possible to crowbar everything into the limited space available, „although we only had half as much room as we usually had“, says Pagès. However, the weather threw a curveball on 22 July 2010. „To top it all, it started raining, so we had to improvise from the morning to save the lorries from getting bogged down. We made room for them on the road and it worked because we overhauled the layout. Cramming everything into that space was a technical wonder, but I stayed calm. I used to send Christian a picture of the finish around 11 am to let him know the finish line was ready. This time, we were still rushing to set up the timing control room at 2:30 pm, so I didn’t send him anything.“

In the end, everything was in place for Andy Schleck to outsprint Alberto Contador for the stage win on the fog-shrouded and rain-soaked Tourmalet. „Those moments were packed with strong emotions because I knew it was a test run, that it would allow us to envisage other finishes in spectacular places“, explains Pagès, who comes from the Lozère department but is now enjoying life in Nîmes. Indeed, it only took one year for the Tour to organise a stage finish on the Col de Galibier, 2,645 metres above sea level and with the technical area spread out across three levels. Sometime later, in 2017, the concept produced a spectacular finish on the Izoard, where Warren Barguil came out on top clad in the polka-dot jersey. After this string of successes, the format will be used again in the 2020 Tour, in which a similar concept was used to design the finishes on Puy Mary and the Grand Colombier.
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2000: The Tour on the archi-pedal-o (9/10)

At the turn of each decade, the Tour de France has gone through organisational changes and backstage struggles that have variously turned out to be decisive or utterly inconsequential. The journey back in time proposed by letour.fr continues with the run-up to the 2000 Tour de France, when a spectacular start on Guadeloupe, almost 7,000 km from Paris, had been planned and preparations put into motion. A transatlantic Tour was almost within the realm of possibility.
Seen from the mid-1990s, the year 2000 was an equally thrilling and daunting prospect. For the Tour de France, it was an exciting opportunity to craft a route like no other. A lot of good ideas were thrown around, but one in particular stood out from the rest, especially because it came directly from the French president. Jacques Chirac told Jean-Claude Killy, the president of ASO at the time, that he would do everything in his power to support a Tour start from the French overseas territories and, especially, Guadeloupe, then governed by his ally Lucette Michaux-Chevry. No other part of overseas France was as passionate about cycling, with a generation of track cyclists bursting onto the stage and a bicycle race that had been an integral part of the archipelago’s sporting scene ever since its launch in 1948.
For Jean-Marie Leblanc, the boss of the Tour, this left-field idea hit all the right buttons: „I liked the idea because we needed something compelling for 2000. It was a powerful symbol and a great way of showing that the French overseas territories are an integral part of the Republic.“ Meetings were soon held and reconnaissance trips organised to study the feasibility of the project. Jean-François Pescheux, who at the time served as director of competitions, took on the leading role in meticulously analysing the plan: „The key issue was taking as little material to the other side of the Atlantic as possible. We had decided to get rid of the prologue to preclude the need for time-trialling bikes, to allow each team a single car and to significantly cut down the size of the publicity caravan. The route itself was interesting and featured a flat stage in Grande-Terre and a hillier one in Basse-Terre, both of which would have finished in the same place near Pointe-à-Pitre Airport“ Indeed, the second big problem with taking the Tour to the Antilles was „shortening the distance“ and mitigating the impact of the time difference with mainland France.
The „Guadeloupe plan“ hinged on a significant logistical assumption: the Concorde was the only aircraft that could be used to transfer the riders without putting them through the wringer of jet lag.
In order to avoid throwing the riders‘ circadian rhythm out of whack, the idea was to travel to the island as late as possible and get out as quickly as possible. Furthermore, Brest was chosen to host the first European stage to gain an extra 20-odd minutes. Pescheux’s timetable covered all the bases: „If we scheduled stage 2 to finish at noon, when it was 4 pm in metropolitan France, riders could be in bed in Brest by midnight and ready to tackle a short 120 km stage to Quimper the next morning. This overcame all the problems.“ Guadeloupe had more than enough hotels to host the Grande Boucle, while ASO communications manager Philippe Sudres, at the time in charge of relations with broadcasters, had already designed the outline of the TV production set-up: „The idea was to source the helicopters used to cover the race, along with other heavy equipment, from Florida.“
However, the „Guadeloupe plan“ hinged on a significant logistical assumption: the Concorde was the only aircraft that could be used to transfer the riders without putting them through the wringer of jet lag. Pescheux recalls that the talks with Air France were what finally buried the dream: „We met with the Minister of Transport and we came to the conclusion that our plan required six Concorde aircraft. However, their fleet was not big enough and, at any rate, they could not stop all their other operations just for us. It was a real pity because it would have been amazing to use the Tour to show just how close the Antilles are.“ At the time, the waivers that have since allowed the 2009 Vuelta a España to start in the Netherlands and the 2018 Giro d’Italia to start in Israel by starting the race on Friday and/or adding an extra rest day did not exist yet. In the end, the Tour gave up on its dreams of coconut palms and got the show on the road in Futuroscope near Poitiers, where the prologue saw a promising young power rider, David Millar, seize the last yellow jersey of the 20th century in his race debut.
@ASO

1970: Leblanc, a team rider with huge potential (7/10)

At the turn of each decade, the Tour de France has gone through organisational changes and backstage struggles that have variously turned out to be decisive or utterly inconsequential. The journey back in time proposed by letour.fr continues in 1970, in the slipstream of Jean-Marie Leblanc, a rider competing in his second Tour de France after some minor successes in other races. A career in journalism beckons for the man from northern France, who has no idea yet that he will one day become the director of the Tour. Yet the seeds of the attributes needed to helm the race have already taken root in this humble team rider.

Those who still have vivid memories of cycling in the late 1960s would no doubt argue that Jean-Marie Leblanc was a good rider despite his modest results -no offence meant to the Grand Prix d’Aix-en-Provence or the Circuit d’Armorique. He was also what journalists know as „a good customer“, someone who can be relied upon to offer a quote that will grab the reader’s attention before the start of the race and never fails to spice up conversations with anecdotes that can be used to flesh out the „news in brief“ section. A paradigmatic example can be found in the coverage of the 1970 Tour by L’Équipe. The Bic rider was working as a devoted domestique for Jan Janssen and Luis Ocaña in what was only his second Tour de France (58th in 1968), but he seemed to appear in the newspapers far more often than would have been expected from his performance on the road. The mystery was solved in the first week of racing, when author Guy Lagorce wrote A brief portrait of a future colleague and gave the floor to Leblanc: „Starting a career in journalism would also be a way for me to prove to the world that cyclists are more than just a bunch of lads with big thighs […] I won’t deny it: every time that things get tough out there and a press car overtakes me, I feel a pang of jealousy when I peek inside. You have no idea how soft the cushions of a car look when seen from the saddle of a bike.“
Just as Leblanc showed glimpses of the potential of a future journalist, he also had the makings of a man devoted to the best interests of cycling.

Aware that he would never be good enough to earn a champion’s wages, the young father and media darling was already planning his future in a different field. By 1970, he had ample experience in this area after taking advantage of the winter breaks to lay the groundwork for his transition. Half a century later, he still remembers his first foray into the sports press clearly: „I was shy, but in the winter of 1966–67 my friend Philippe Crépel persuaded me to call Émile Parmentier, the sports editor of La Voix du Nord. He welcomed me with open arms and I’ll never be able to thank him enough for it. He sent me to report on cyclo-cross, of course, and put me in charge of the boxing section. I loved it and I even obtained a coaching diploma to be a credible source in such a special world.“ A cyclist in the summer and journalist in the winter, the young Economics graduate was definitely not your average cyclist.
Jean-Marie Leblanc continued to learn in the 1970 Tour, eagerly fielding questions. „I loved hearing them talk about this profession I wanted to practise“, insisted the aspiring reporter, who would eventually be hired by La Voix du Nord in 1971, right after the end of his final season in the peloton. Just as Leblanc showed the promise of the future journalist who a few years later would receive a call from the chief editor of L’Équipe, Noël Couëdel, offering him the post of cycling editor, he also had the makings of a man devoted to the best interests of cycling. It was his thorough understanding of the matter that led to him becoming the secretary-general of the National Union of Professional Cyclists (UNCP), where he proved his mettle as a leader: „At UNCP, for example, we fought to get two-year contracts for neo-pros, which did not exist before that. I had always wanted to help organise my profession, and when I became a journalist, I took on an active role in the trade union of French sports journalists (USJSF)“. Jean-Marie Leblanc took it to a whole new level in 1988, when he became the director of the Tour de France a mere 20 years after his first participation as a rider.

Discover or rediscover the previous episodes in the series:
1960: When President de Gaulle greeted the Tour (6/10)
1950: Divorce Italian style (5/10)
1940: The Tour that wasn’t (4/10)
1930: The Tour revolutionizes (3/10)
1920: “sportsmen”according to Desgrange (2/10)
1910: Alphonse Steinès’great deception (1/10)
More information on www.letour.fr/en/
@ASO

1950: divorce Italian style (5/10)

At the turn of each decade, the Tour de France has gone through organisational changes and backstage struggles that have variously turned out to be decisive or utterly inconsequential. The journey back in time proposed by letour.fr continues in 1950, marked by the collective departure of the Italian riders after incidents that resulted in Gino Bartali being threatened and assaulted by French spectators in the Pyrenees. Between the resurgence of the old internal squabbles within the „Squadra“ and the diplomatic consequences of the Col d’Aspin affair, the 1950 Tour extended well beyond the roads of France.
A quarrel between neighbouring countries on the Tour de France is both simple and, at the same time, much more complex than an anecdotal overzealousness and wine in the ranks of the supporters of both sides. In 1950, traces of World War II remained and the memory of the Mussolini regime’s collaboration with Nazi Germany was still fresh. On the political front, there was a genuine desire to reintegrate Italy into the community of nations on both sides of the Alps, but progress was slow and sport had its place in this process. In the world of cycling, the Italian federation (UVI) was not readmitted into the UCI until 1947. In concert with the authorities, the organisers worked to bring consistency to the peloton and to provoke a maximum number of encounters between the champions of the two countries, for example with the creation of the Desgrange-Colombo Challenge, in tribute to the founders of the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia. As a symbol of the newfound friendship, Sanremo hosted a stage finish on the 1948 Tour, where Gino Sciardis won ahead of Urbain Caffi… two French riders of Italian origin!

The understood interest of the two organizing newspapers, L’Equipe and La Gazzetta was to ensure that their races had the highest possible density, coexisting with the chauvinistic fibre that also sold newspapers. But this approach tended to heat up controversy and in the 1949 Tour, the French riders were copiously insulted, pushed and targeted by stone-throwing Italian supporters during the stage leading to Aosta. After the domination of Bartali and Coppi in the two previous editions, and a minimalist strategy that hardly made Italian riders popular in France, the 1950 Tour began in a climate of hostility towards them. Heralded as the rider to beat when Coppi was unable to ride, Gino Bartali felt threatened from the very first days, when the Italians won three of the first five stages. In the time trial in Brittany, he narrowly avoided falling after a spectator threw a stick into his wheels, but his team manager, Alfredo Binda effectively negotiated with the Italian journalists present not to worsen the situation. Gino himself declared in La Gazzetta on the eve of the Pyrenees that „it is better not to win“, just to ease tensions.

Jacques Goddet paid a visit to the Hotel de France in Loures-Barousse. The boss decided to meet the Italian delegation and convince Bartali to stay in the race. But his arguments didn’t change a thing. The leader of the „Squadra“ felt he was in danger.

The fears of the two-time winner were well-founded and the atmosphere grew increasingly tense in the Pau-Saint-Gaudens stage. On the Col d’Aspin climb, the pressure of the crowd sent both Robic and Bartali off their bikes, then the situation degenerated. Accounts of this scene of confusion varied greatly, but the limits of simple intimidation were largely exceeded and there were certainly punches thrown. In any case, Bartali, enraged, managed to get back to the leaders of the race and won the sprint in Saint-Gaudens, while his young team-mate Fiorenzo Magni claimed the Yellow Jersey, and immediately afterwards decided to leave the Tour where he felt in danger. That night, Jacques Goddet paid a visit to the Hotel de France in Loures-Barousse. The boss decided to meet the Italian delegation and convince Bartali to stay in the race. But his arguments (including financial ones, according to some…) didn’t change a thing. The leader of the „Squadra“ felt he was in danger and explained himself diplomatically in L’Equipe: „In many circumstances, I’ve been wonderfully welcomed in your country. But I think it only takes one crazy person for a disaster to happen. And that’s the madman I’m afraid of. Please understand, I have children and a family. Why take such risks? No, it’s for Italy that I’ll leave tomorrow“.

In fact, opinions were divided in the Italian camp. Fiorenzo Magni, who led the general classification, could legitimately believe in his chances of going for the greatest victory of his career. Bartali did not like this, partly because of Magni’s militia past. Alfredo Binda, who coached the team, rather thought about the need to maintain friendly relations with the French, but finally agreed with Bartali’s position and assumed the group withdrawal of the two Italian teams, taking the „Cadetti“ with him. The situation helped Ferdi Kübler, the new rider in the Yellow Jersey, but more than anything else caused a lot of upheaval. Very soon after the departure of the Italians, it was decided to cancel the arrival in Sanremo scheduled four days later for fear of reprisals from the tifosi. In the rush, Goddet and his services took on the logistical challenge of preparing a fallback arrival in Menton, with more than 1000 people to house and feed.

Practical considerations were quickly relegated to the back burner, as the Aspin affair entered the judicial arena with the opening of an investigation, and political considerations as soon as the stability of Franco-Italian relations was compromised. The diplomats of both countries were much less heated than their respective supporters and tried to calm things down. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Robert Schuman, first of all hastened to send a message to the Italian ambassador, expressing his „deep regret at the incidents of which the Italian riders were victims“. The issue also came up in parliamentary debates in both countries, with Edouard Bonnefous, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, solemnly declaring that „the Italians are friends who came to our country to demonstrate their class, not to be insulted. We cannot allow a handful of scoundrels to jeopardise good relations between the two countries“. In the same spirit of appeasement, the Italian Ambassador in Paris replied that „the regret expressed by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs served as a reminder that such incidents could never disrupt the friendly relations between the two governments and the two peoples, whose collaboration will increasingly develop in all areas“. As far as cycling was concerned, the presidents of the two federations, Adriano Rodoni and Achille Joinard, met in the second week of August with the Tour de France organisers to talk about the future. The Italian riders would definitely come to the 1951 Tour de France.
More information on www.letour.fr/en/
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