Had the Tour de France been around in the 18th Century, Samuel Johnson really could have insulted the French.
As it was, this very first Dr. J had to content himself with asking
”What can you expect of a nation which eats frogs?”
To begin with, this was wrong, as are so many epigrams: e.g. early to bed and early to rise makes you dull. Frogs legs, as even many an Englishman would now agree, are delicious.
A far better question would be: What can you expect of a nation which every summer goes ga-ga over the sight of 200 guys in shiny shorts pedaling themselves into exhaustion for 2,100 miles all around France?
Such, at least, is the legend of the Tour de France, and if you doubt that legend is VERY important here you should see what they just did about the 50th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle`s call to resist the German occupation. To the outside world, the legend is best known through those classic photographs of the old women in little villages splashing water on grateful racers, of the bicyclers straining up one Alp or another, of young Frenchmen bunched around a radio getting the latest results.
Well, maybe that will all happen later. Perhaps on July 22, when the survivors make the 183-kilometer sprint from Bretigny-Sur-Orge to the finish line on the Champs-Elysee in Paris, all of France will be engaged. And if there is a repeat of last year`s close finish as Greg LeMond, the only American ever to win the race, edged Frenchman Laurent Fignon at the end, much of the rest of the world might tune in, too.
But as this 77th Tour began with two days of time-trial runs at the weird Futoroscope outside Poitiers, the Tour de France seemed nowhere near the talk of Toute de la France.
Though it may be true, as an American in residence here said, that ”you can never tell what the French are thinking,” you can tell what they`re seeing on television and reading in their newspapers, and it wasn`t too much about Le Grand Boucle, or the big buckle, as they would say in Peoria.
Bookstore windows were empty of books on bicycle racing. The covers of the magazines were about those usual French passions: politics, sex and philosophy (where else would the cover story in a popular magazine be about nihilism?). In the world of sports, there seemed to be far more interest in the World Cup soccer tournament (though France`s team was eliminated in the regional rounds) and in Wimbledon. Even rugby, the game of disdained England, was getting more attention.
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Not that there was not a goodly crowd on hand for the opening events. But the number of spectators was almost equaled by the number of participants, if one includes as participants all the support crews, corporate sponsors and their guests, policemen and reporters of various media and nationalities.
In fact, what was clear on opening day was that, even in France, bicycle racing is one of the cult sports. Like auto racing, motorcycle racing and boat racing, its appeal is limited to enthusiasts, fairly large in number but still a small proportion of the people.
Especially in the television age, it isn`t easy for such sports to get a wider audience. It`s hard to watch them. All that`s visible is some vehicle zipping by. Most of the fans are people who do or did participate on some level.
In the case of bicycles in France, that used to be a vast number of people. Men, and some women, have always raced for sport whatever they used for transport and commerce-chariots in Rome, camels in Arabia, sled dogs in the Yukon. For decades starting in the late 19th Century, the bicycle was the average Frenchman`s transportation, and racing them was sport for young men and boys in every village.
So it is no surprise that early in this century, French kids wanted to be like Lucien Petit-Breton, or that their children in the 1930s idolized Andre Leducq, or that their children in the 1960s dreamed of emulating Jacques Anquetil, all multiple winners of the Tour de France.
But something very interesting has happened in Europe. Its people stopped fighting wars and started getting rich. Frenchmen can afford motorcycles and cars. There is hardly an un-motorized bicycle at large on the streets of Paris, and the only ones visible in Potiers belonged to the professional racers. A young Frenchman who loves speed can now race something faster, more glamorous, and a whole lot easier to coax up an Alp.
Some Europeans say it`s now the Dutch who care most about the Tour de France, which figures because while Holland, too, is prosperous, it`s so crowded that if everyone drove there would be no room for the tulips. So the bicycle remains common transportation.
None of this mattered to the French, Dutch, Germans and others who attended the opening day. They cheered their favorites, rang bells and watched the results on a huge television screen as LeMond surprised and scared the field by coming in second in the first contest, depite his recent illness.
The winner, and wearer of the first yellow jersey, was French rider Thierry Marie, who finished the 6.3-kilometer run in 7 minutes 49 seconds.
Though the first day`s run was not a long one, each rider gave it his all, and finished breathless and bone-weary. Several of them quickly pedaled across the highway to their hotel, where the proprietor and his helper were seated before the television set watching races. Motorcycle races.