France has struggled to find a homegrown hero in cycling’s biggest race
William Fotheringham
Cycling as a sport was born on French soil, the French organise the biggest and brightest bike race in the world, yet the home cyclists have little chance of winning their own event, the Tour de France, which starts this weekend.
The 15 years since the last French winner, Bernard Hinault in 1985, is the longest the hosts have endured since the race was founded in 1903. Worse, no Frenchman has had a realistic crack at winning the race since Laurent Fignon failed gloriously by eight seconds, the closest margin yet, in 1989. And most depressing of all for Gallic fans, last year no Frenchman won one of the 22 stages – an ignominy not seen since 1926.
The roadside fans will cheer as ever for Richard Virenque, five times the winner of the polka-dot jersey awarded to the best mountain climber, but Virenque has never looked like a tour winner. He was a distant runner-up in 1997 to the German Jan Ullrich, but that was before he became embroiled in the drug scandal surrounding his Festina team. This has led to him being lampooned on the French equivalent of Spitting Image, Canal Plus’s Les Guignols, and will end with him on trial in October on a charge of inciting his team-mates to use drugs.
Virenque was the only French success story in last year’s race, but the organisers initially banned him from starting due to his bad image. His lawyers got him into the tour, he duly took his fifth mountains prize and by the time this year’s route was announced in October, he was welcome again – a sign of desperation if ever there was one.
France’s other current star, Laurent Jalabert, has not shone in the tour since taking fourth in 1995, and he did not actually race once in France last year in protest against the national Federation’s tough anti-drugs stance. Like Virenque, who is sponsored by the Italian vacuum-cleaner-makers Polti, he does not even race for a French team – his sponsor since 1992 has been Spain’s charity for the blind, Once. Jalabert, ranked number one in the world until recently, lives in Geneva and makes no secret of the fact that he is happier racing in Spain.
Like England’s Premiership football clubs, France’s teams have imported their stars from abroad. The Crdit Agricole bank’s team is built around two Americans, Bobby Julich and Jonathan Vaughters, and an Australian, Stuart O’Grady, and has had its biggest tour successes with the Briton Chris Boardman, who will miss this year’s race due to illness. Telephone banking company Cofidis will be led by a Belgian, Frank Vandenbroucke, and a Briton, the newcomer David Millar; while the Ag2R insurance company relied on an Estonian sprinter, Jaan Kirsipuu, for their successful race last year. The only French team led by Frenchmen is a new squad sponsored by the free newspaper company Bonjour, but its leaders, Didier Rous and Franois Simon, are honest grafters rather than headline makers.
Since 1998, French cyclists have been closely monitored by their federation and teams have been fearful of scandal, so they have put pressure on their riders to avoid banned drugs, leading to repeated claims that French riders are competing at a disadvantage compared to their foreign rivals, whose teams may not be as ethical.
In a definite case of ”where’s the beef?”, last year’s most ”mediatique” Frenchman was the ageing domestique Thierry Bourguignon, who gained popularity out of all proportion to his ability, purely because he appeared on French television each day previewing the race. He and his team, BigMat, are not considered good enough to be invited this year, and his mantle of media favourite will be passed to Jacky Durand, who at least reflects the state of French cycling with his nickname – ”Dudu”.
Durand, who rather bizarrely rides for the Belgian national lottery team, Lotto, has won stages and worn the maillot jaune, but the French public love the way he battles for the position of lanterne rouge, last man in the pack, and makes lone escapes that are never going to succeed.