However, for them, for the cyclists who want to be free and brave, the most important thing is that they are not considered forcedpunished, but hardworkingbrave, bold, and 100 years later their pride is the same, and their courage, as that of the one who denounced their condition of forced (convicts, sentenced to forced labour) make the Pélissier brothers, Francis and Henri, shine in the eyes of reporter Albert Londres, who does not miss a word he hears, what the two French cyclists who have just abandoned the race in Coutances, in Normandy, tell him, just as the third stage of the 1924 Tour de France begins in Cherbourg.
They are not ordinary cyclists. They are the kings, the most envied. Henri, the eldest brother, wore the number 1, the privilege of winning the Tour de France the previous year, 1923. They were the stars of France. They are obedient soldiers. They give everything, sweat and blood when they fall on the burning asphalt.
London, the most famous French journalist of the decade, star reporter of The Little Parisian, newspaper that sold a million and a half copies a day, he writes quickly in his notebook, feeds his imagination and gives literary texture to the words of the runners, who when they read it tell him: you have expressed much better than us what we really think.
“—A sudden impulse?”
“No,” said Henri. “But we are not dogs.”
-What happened?
—A question of boots, or rather a question of shirts! This morning in Cherbourg a commissioner came up to me and, without saying anything, pulled up my shirt. He was making sure I wasn’t wearing two shirts. What would you say if he lifted up your jacket to see if you were wearing a white shirt? I don’t like that sort of thing.
—What did he care if you had two shirts?
—I could be fifteen, but I’m not allowed to go out with two and arrive with one.
-Why not?
—That’s the rules. Not only do you have to run like hell, you have to freeze or suffocate. They say that’s part of the sport, too.
From his bag he takes out a vial:
—This is cocaine for the eyes, this is chloroform for the gums…
My name is Pélissier, no Goshawk [típico nombre de perro]“I have a newspaper in my stomach, I went with it, I have to bring it with me. If I throw it away, I will be penalized! When we are dying of thirst, before we hand our canister over to the flowing water, we have to make sure that it is not someone fifty meters away who is pumping it. Otherwise, you will be penalized. To drink, you have to pump it yourself! The day will come when they will put lead in our pockets, because they will think that God made man too light. If we continue like this, soon there will be only “vagrants” and there will be no more artists. Sport is going mad…”
These lines are taken from the famous book The Route Forces (The forced ones of the route), which collects the chronicles of the 1924 Tour written by London, genius of the long report of social denunciation. The most painful of those he wrote was Au Bagne (In the prison), about the penal colony of Saint-Laurent, Cayenne, in French Guiana. In it he described the despicable conditions in which the prisoners lived. forcedconvicts sentenced to hard labour. The parallel with cyclists was so easy, and so ridiculous at the same time, that London never used the word forced to refer to them. It was another journalist, Henri Decoin, who coined the expression: “With their numbers on their backs” [se refería a los dorsales, que en aquella época eran gigantescos]“They look like Albert Londres’ convicts.”
The epic is literature, a veneer of headline advertising. Cyclists are no longer forced, but hard-working, brave, spirited, encouraged, with a big heart and spirit. High-performance athletes and scientists to whom the Tour annually offers the stones of Roubaix so that they feel prehistoric. Pélissiers, pioneers of pedaling, and the fans enjoy it, and, a century later, in this Sunday’s stage, around Troyes, a pinch of roads like those traveled then – 14 sectors, 32.2 kilometers in total, spread over the 199 kilometers of the stage – but in a more chic setting, among the champagne vineyards of Bar and Aube, chardonnay that is in fashion.
They won’t be riding on iron bikes, but on atomic bikes, light, lightweight, with electronic gears, 30 or 32 millimetre tyres inflated to seven bars of pressure (more than seven kilos per square centimetre) and an army of helpers on the side of the road with spare wheels, drinks, food, encouragement. Oier Lazkano, the Spaniard with the most style for the route, shies away from a statement: “We’ll see.” Tadej Pogacar, a specialist on the not-so-similar white roads of Tuscany, happily welcomes the idea, a diversion that frees him from the stressful stages in which nothing happens; Remco Evenepoel, the clumsiest on the bike, says he doesn’t fear it because there are no sections with exaggerated slopes, and the others simply think about organising the logistics so that a fall or a breakdown doesn’t put them out of action.
The fans, of course, applaud, because it is not at all bad to occasionally move from the epic of the forced to the lyrical of the brave.
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