SPECTATOR SPORT
A jangling jamboree
Frank Keating
ONLY TWICE, and briefly, have I dipped into le Tour. 'Dipped' is the word: both times I was hurried back to Dover as spon- sored as a newt.
We think we've got problems with corpo- rate hospitality? Silly us. Mind you, in France through July you need the relieving strong liquids to quieten the gorgeous din as commerce, sport and nationhood collide in a screeching, head-on, three-week, full- pelt major accident.
En velo! On yer bikes! Ringa dat bell! — except not a solitary soul can hear it above the adrenalin-charged honking, tonking, tyre-tearing tunes of 7,000 accredited advertising vans and trucks and scooters and faded-green 2CVs, full to the gunwales of flies, film men, freeloaders, physicians and physios and phonies. Not to mention pharmacists, agents and a jangle of journos from L'Equipe, all waving their arms in an effort to attract attention like Jacques Tati's postman when he was attacked by that swarm of bees. Not forgetting the bod with the puncture kit.
C'est le four. This year and every year. Jamais they close.
In the midst of this jangling jamboree, the pack, the gladiators, the chasers and the chased — vests and pants and gloves and hats, a kaleidoscope of tiny advertising bill- boards: eyes down and sunk in sallow, straining waxwork faces; shins and ankles a rotating egg-whisk blurr; reds and greens and purples and mauves and blacks and whites ...
But only one yellow jersey. Did you know, by the way, why the overall leader each day each day is robed in le maillot jaune? Nothing to do with Jason and the Golden Fleece or any classical Olympian baloney like that. The tradition arose sim- ply as a publicity stunt by the French sports paper L'Auto in 1903 — for as our FT is pink and our old Green 'Uns of a Saturday teatime were green, so the literal colour of L'Auto's pages in those days was yellow. It has ever been fast bikes and fast bucks.
The editor then of L'Auto (now evolved into the present sports paper, L'Equipe) was Henri Desgrange, the WG of the sport, and without a doubt cycling's first nutter (and there are a lot of them about on this side of the Channel too). In the 1890s, Des- grange, a failed Parisian law student, pub- lished a series of homilies as testament to his passion. At the turn of the century it was brought out as a single volume, Tete et Jambes, urging the French as a nation first to discover and then retain the soul and romance of the sport for all time. It became the biker's bible, the besotted Desgrange covering everything from saddle-sores to sex:
To excel, the rider must eat, live, and breathe his bicycle; his emotional commitment must overwhelm him; once that moment is acknowledged the rider is saved and he will have no more need of a woman than of his first pair of socks. The rider's self-denial is all ... but, oh, in the winter, with the tracks closed and the sun departed, then go to the ball with one, two, three, four women, as many as you want to make up for lost time in any way you can.
In 1911, Desgrange (who lived till 1940, aptly and for obvious reasons the first time le Tour was not run since its beginning) published his Acte d'Adoration to his 'divine' bicycle and his nation's debt
for the precious and ineffable love it has given us, and the host of memories sown over our whole life. I love it for its having given me a soul capable of appreciating it; I love it for having taken my heart within its spokes, for having encircled part of my life within its har- monious frame.
It remains any sports freak's credo. Well, nut joggers feel the same about their gym- shoes. Nor, like serious cyclists, are they ever seen to smile.
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