Selling the Yellow Jersey

by Eric Reed

  Second World War, few road racers employed personal managers, but more

  and more of them began to hire agents in the late 1940s.52 For 10 percent of

  their clients’ winnings,53 personal managers negotiated terms of employment

  with team sponsors and lucrative appearance fee contracts for one- day com-

  petitions, acted as liaisons between race organizers and cyclists, and gener-

  ally directed the careers of their clients by dispensing informed advice about

  business deals, contracts, and public relations. In the late 1940s, one personal manager, Frenchman Daniel Dousset, had a near monopoly on the Tour stars

  of the 1950s and 1960s: He managed Tour winners Fausto Coppi (1949 and

  1952), Louison Bobet (1953 – 1955), and Jacques Anquetil (1957, 1961– 1964),

  as well as André Darrigade, winner of twenty- two Tour stages between 1953

  and 1966. Dousset’s only major competitor in France was Roger Piel, who

  managed the careers of Henri Anglade, a ten- time Tour participant, and Ray-

  mond Poulidor, the Tour’s “eternal second.”

  Journalists also participated directly and indirectly in molding the public

  personas of top Tour stars. Postwar journalists built on the methods of ha-

  giography pioneered by the prewar press and fashioned cycling’s new stars

  into a living pantheon of stylized, idealized athletic heroes. In the decade

  after 1947, the press also seized on the trend toward “provincializing” cy-

  cling’s stars. Frenchman Jean Robic, who grew up in Rennes, won the fi rst

  postwar Tour, and journalists fashioned the champion into the postwar era’s

  fi rst heroic caricature by drawing on the rider’s Breton roots. Jacques Goddet praised the Tour winner as “stubborn” ( têtu) and “aggressive” ( hargneux), which were perceived to be stereotypical character traits of France’s rural

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  Breton population.54 Robic became the archetype of caustic individualism,

  Breton rebelliousness, and gritty combativeness. In the forward to Robic’s

  autobiography, journalist Hervé le Boterf concluded, “There is not a cycling

  champion of the postwar that better symbolized his province than Jean Ro-

  bic. . . . [He was] more Breton than the most Breton of all the Bretons.”55

  Robic’s 1980 obituary in Vélo Magazine, a subsidiary publication of L’Équipe, even praised the rider’s refusal to abide by the Tour’s regulations and his utter lack of respect for the race’s organizers. The piece recalled with fondness how Robic “was constantly fi ghting with [race] referees and organizers” and

  included a lengthy account of his most infamous episode of cheating. Dur-

  ing the 1953 Tour, the diminutive Robic stopped at the peak of the col du

  Tourmalet, the highest of all Tour mountains, and loaded his bicycle with

  two lead- fi lled water bottles to increase his weight. Robic claimed with pride that he “gained more than a minute during the descent” thanks to the ruse.

  Tour judges discovered his cheating when Robic discarded one of his lead-

  fi lled bottles at the bottom of the mountain and crushed the toe of a by-

  stander.56 Gradually, the media developed nomenclature that endowed fa-

  mous cyclists — both French and foreign — with “provincial” personas. In a

  1957 essay, Roland Barthes observed that, in the popular imagination, Tour

  stars’ names had become synonymous with their provincial or ethnic moni-

  kers: Jean Robic became “The Celt,” André Derrigade “The Gascon,” and

  Spanish rider Bernardo Ruiz “The Iberian.”57

  Many Tour stars also hired sports journalists as “ghostwriters” when they

  compiled their autobiographies. French cyclists Jean Robic, Jacques Anquetil,

  Raymond Poulidor, Cyrille Guimard, and Bernard Hinault employed ac-

  knowledged journalist ghostwriters. Other French cyclists who wrote autobi-

  ographies probably employed unacknowledged ghostwriters. The important

  role of journalists in recounting the life stories of famous Tour stars also helps to account for the highly formulaic nature of their autobiographies.

  Television began to play an important role in image making, as well. Tele-

  vision coverage of Raymond Poulidor, who became a professional racer in

  1959, illustrates how television magnifi ed a cyclist’s popularity and how star cyclists used the medium to shape their own public images. Poulidor became

  one of the most popular French cycling stars of the postwar era, even though

  he never won the Tour. The Limousin native competed in fourteen Tours

  between 1962 and 1976. Poulidor remained a contender for the yellow jersey

  throughout his career and fi nished in the top three eight times. So famous and popular was Poulidor, whose adoring fans referred to him as “Poupou,” that

  the term poupoularité — a play on the word “popularity”— entered French slang in the mid- 1960s.58 Poulidor’s fame was based on his “peasant” image

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  c h a p t e r f o u r

  and “everyman” character, which journalists helped to create and to which

  the media constantly referred.59 In a television piece after he won the 1961

  Milan – San Remo race — in only his second year as a professional— French

  reporters visited Poulidor at his family’s home in rural Limousin. The fi rst

  images depicted Poulidor in the kitchen with his mother, who appeared un-

  comfortable in front of the camera. The piece stressed Poulidor’s continued

  connection to the earth and to farming, and several video clips of the racer

  working in the fi elds followed the kitchen shots. The narrator commented,

  “After visiting with his family, Raymond immediately goes out to the fi elds to make sure that the strawberries are growing well after spring’s early arrival.”60

  In a television interview prior to a stage of the 1962 Tour, the fi rst question posed to Poulidor — “You understand perfectly the techniques and methods

  of sheep breeding, right?”— concerned farming rather than racing.61 Tele-

  vision allowed cycling fans to see and hear Poulidor’s provincial manner-

  isms, which served to intensify his “peasant” identity and popular appeal.

  French television polled roadside spectators informally during the 1972 Tour

  and asked them to comment on why French fans identifi ed so strongly with

  Poulidor. An elderly woman replied, “He’s a provincial. . . . He [speaks with]

  the Midi accent.”62

  Poulidor’s fi rst two autobiographies, written in 1968 and 1972 with the

  assistance of ghostwriters Georges Durand and Pierre Joly, and the biogra-

  phy written about him by his team’s coach, two- time Tour winner Antonin

  Magne, served to reinforce the famous rider’s provincial image. Poulidor

  dedicated nearly a quarter of his fi rst autobiography to his childhood. He

  was born in 1936 in the Creuse département in the Limousin region of central France. In their foreword to the book, his ghostwriters described Poulidor as

  a “perfect model of the Limousin native.”63 Poulidor was the fourth son born

  to his parents, who were poor agricultural tenant farmers and had never ven-

  tured outside their region: “The fi rst thing to note is our faithfulness to the Limousin region. My family’s entire existence took place . . . within a [geographic] square that was forty kilometers to a side.”64 The details of Poulidor’s childhood conformed perfectly to the romanticized, nostalgic caricature of

  peasant
life. “I was fourteen years old, I had never yet been to the movies.

  I had never taken the train. I had never visited a single city, not even Limo-

  ges.” His only entertainment was the family’s daily veillée, or evening gathering for conversation, storytelling, and game playing. The Poulidor family

  slaughtered and roasted a pig every Christmas Eve, and each year young Ray-

  mond received one Christmas present — a pastry.65 Poulidor left school at

  fourteen to work full- time on his family’s farm. His military service — three

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  99

  years spent in Algeria (1956 to 1959)— whetted his appetite to explore France.

  Poulidor left his village to see the world as a professional cyclist.66 Antonin Magne, who signed Poulidor to the Mercier- BP team in 1959 for 25,000 francs

  per month, recalled that the Limousin rider even smelled like a provincial:

  “[When he entered the room he] brought with him . . . the aroma of the

  countryside.”67 Poulidor stressed that his ties to his family and farming in rural Limousin continued even as his fame and wealth blossomed: “My parents

  and my brothers are proud of me. But at my house, nothing has changed. My

  father is still the boss. [When I come home] I take up my workstation. I help

  out where and when I must. I work there the entire winter.”68

  Poulidor’s cycling style and his history in the Tour de France exemplifi ed

  the personal and athletic traits the French School valued and instilled in its

  students. Above all, the French understood the Tour as a showcase for noble

  human attributes as much as a competition meant to separate winners from

  losers. Christopher Thompson argues that France’s cycling heroes embodied

  cherished qualities of French masculinity that seemed threatened in mod-

  ern times, especially unbreakable human resilience, endurance, willingness

  to sacrifi ce oneself for the greater good, and the ability of men to overcome

  superhuman challenges like the Tour. For the French, then, hero riders pro-

  vided an antidote to the miseries of modern war and the decline of French

  greatness in the twentieth century.69

  The French public lionized racers who demonstrated such character in

  competition, whether they won or lost. Poulidor’s bad luck, crashes, and un-

  fortunate mishaps combined with his aggressive, attacking riding style and

  unbreakable determination to fi nish races in dramatic fashion made him an

  ideal French School hero cyclist. The Limousin rider’s breakout moments

  came early in his career and propelled him rapidly to fame. Poulidor entered

  his fi rst Tour in 1962 with his arm in a cast because of a broken wrist suffered in a crash earlier in the season. The rookie rider persevered even though he

  could not grip his handlebars properly and despite dizzying pain caused by

  the injury. After doctors removed the cast in the middle of the Tour, Poulidor

  attacked, won the mountainous nineteenth stage at Aix- les- Bains by more

  than two minutes, and fi nished third overall. In later Tours, Poulidor crashed, suffered mechanical failures, was hit by a motorcycle, and broke his nose,

  yet managed to fi nish the Tour on the podium eight times, although never

  as the overall winner. Poulidor also played the consummate, self- sacrifi cing

  teammate when necessary. In the 1967 Tour, which he entered as a favorite,

  Poulidor gracefully gave up his chance to win and worked as a domestique for his teammate, Roger Pingeon, when it became clear that Pingeon’s chances

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  c h a p t e r f o u r

  of victory were far greater than his own. Afi cionados of cycling and the gen-

  eral public reveled in Poulidor’s dramatic demonstrations of athletic panache,

  self- sacrifi ce, and endurance of suffering.

  5. Poulidor versus Anquetil: Rural Traditionalism

  versus Cosmopolitan Modernity

  After 1961, when the event’s organizers reintroduced the corporate team for-

  mula, a new generation of protagonists supplied the Tour’s drama. The ma-

  jor battles of the Tours of the early 1960s were fought between two French

  stars, Raymond Poulidor and Jacques Anquetil. Anquetil was the antithesis

  of Poulidor. Some characterized Anquetil as a “technocrat cyclist” who tri-

  umphed thanks to his clever racing tactics, his technical and physical superi-

  ority as a rider, and the dominant team of domestiques that his wealthy sponsors bankrolled. By contrast, Poulidor won races thanks to his combativeness,

  hard work, and fi ghting spirit.70

  Historians have characterized in different ways the meaning of the

  Anquetil- Poulidor polarity in the popular imagination. Anquetil represented

  cosmopolitan, modern society while Poulidor personifi ed rural, traditional

  France, and their duels symbolized France’s struggle to come to terms with

  modernity. Michel Winock and Hugh Dauncey portray the contrasting im-

  agery of the two riders as symptomatic of the larger inability of the French to reconcile the nostalgic traditionalism of la France profonde with the modernity of the technocratic Fifth Republic, a tension Winock dubbed the “Pouli-

  dor Complex.” Philip Dine argues that Poulidor represented an “amalgam”

  of traditional virtues and modern sporting entrepreneurialism. Poulidor’s

  wild popularity provided “cultural reassurance in the face of major societal

  changes” and illustrated receptiveness of French audiences to “images of cul-

  tural continuity.”71

  Jacques Anquetil was born in 1934 in Mont- Saint- Aignan, near Rouen,

  but spent much of his childhood in Quincampoix, a small Norman vil-

  lage, living with his uncle, who was a strawberry farmer.72 At age fourteen,

  Jacques obtained certifi cation to work as a machinist /metalworker ( ajusteur-tourneur) and found a job at a factory near Quincampoix. Yet from a young age, Anquetil dreamed of “enlarging his horizons,” leaving his village, and

  exploring France.73 Anquetil became a professional rider at seventeen and

  followed a meteoric trajectory to the top of cycling. In 1953, at the age of

  nineteen, Anquetil won the world time trial championship, the Grand Prix

  des Nations, the fi rst of his six consecutive titles in the event between 1953 and 1958. Four years later, Anquetil won the fi rst of his fi ve Tour de France titles.

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  He also won the Tours of Italy (1960 and 1964) and Spain (1963), beat Fausto

  Coppi’s world one- hour speed record in 1956, and was the world’s dominant

  cyclist for nearly a decade.

  After his fi rst Tour victory in 1957, Anquetil emerged as the prototypical

  professional athlete cum businessman. His fi rst book read more like a profes-

  sional manifesto than an autobiography, and Anquetil devoted few pages to

  his upbringing or to developing an amiable public image for his fans:

  It is true that I am not particularly covetous of sporting glory. . . . I have never had smiles in my shirt pockets, all ready to be handed out to photog-raphers. . . . I am not suited for parades. . . . But I am not ashamed to say that I have a very acute sense of my interests. I am in 1964 the best paid [rider] in France.74

  Anquetil declared frankly (and frequently) that he raced for money rather

  than for glory or respect. “It’s stars [like me] who sell tickets. . . . It’s obvious that if I could get a million franc appearance fee
for competing in a race, I

  wouldn’t object. . . . [It is] morally important, in my view, not to accept less than I’m worth.”75 Anquetil refused to follow a traditional training regimen

  and had a well- known weakness for whiskey. He enjoyed living the lifestyle

  of a playboy and mocked those who insisted that professional cyclists devote

  themselves blindly to their sport and live “like Trappist monks.”76 Anquetil

  once quipped, “If there were only champions, this is the menu that I would

  recommend the night before a race: A pheasant with chestnuts, a bottle of

  champagne, and a woman. Unfortunately, there are not only champions.”77

  Television coverage of Anquetil underscored his modern, cosmopolitan

  lifestyle. Anquetil traveled widely, spent signifi cant portions of his year on vacation, and engaged in new, modern sports in the off season. In an interview recorded by RTF in the late- 1950s, Anquetil discussed a hunting trip in

  eastern France that he planned to take in his time off with Fausto Coppi, who

  became an informal mentor and advisor to the young French champion. An-

  quetil and his wife, Janine, showed off some of their gun collection, including a revolver and a semiautomatic pistol, and shot a wooden cutout of a lion —

  “the king of the animals”— with a birding shotgun. Unlike other cyclists who

  trained constantly even in the off- season to maintain their form, Anquetil

  disdained even discussing cycling in his extended “rest periods” such as the

  hunting expedition.78

  In 1960, RTF joined Anquetil at the Saint Gervais ski resort and broad-

  cast nearly a minute of footage of the French champion gliding and shushing

  down the resort’s ungroomed slopes. Anquetil explained that he spent at least

  a month per year skiing and up to another month per year at “rest,” during

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  c h a p t e r f o u r

  which time he traveled, visited with friends, and hunted.79 A 1963 newsreel

  feature showcased Anquetil at home at his mansion in Saint Adrien, near

  Rouen along the Seine River. Cameras joined the French champion as he

  raced his speedboat up the river to his private dock and strode up a hill to his turreted manor. Anquetil explained that his success and wealth afforded him

  the opportunity to travel the globe, the “dream of his childhood.” Anquetil