With its “big saga of Tour de France”, France 2 runs yellow jersey

From the Balai car advertising caravan, from Poulidor to Lance Armstrong… Back in pictures on the legendary and popular history of the largest cycling race in the world.

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three days before the departure of the 109 e edition, the 1 ^{er July in Copenhagen (Denmark), France 2 launches “Son” Tour de France. This special evening, rich in cult archives and animated by Leïla Kaddour and Laurent Ruquier, takes the race in its most popular and heritage dimension. If, at the bend of an archive, Emmanuel Macron evokes in 2019 “a French mythology” by referring to Roland Barthes, the story is careful of any philosophical or even critical vision.}

The documentary puts this “July Republic” – his faces, colors, emotions and memories. At random, we see General de Gaulle almost as a simple spectator at the passage of the peloton by his city of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises (Haute-Marne) in 1960, the parade of Hollywood stars during the years of reign (erased since ) Lance Armstrong or a Raymond Poulidor frozen in his role as eternal second receiving the bell of a Jacques Anquetil letting him out: “You make a beautiful loser.” Only classic.

great moment of communion

Each plan, each comment recall the idea of ​​an event which is first of all a great moment of popular communion transcending classes and generations. The race itself is never just one element among others. The maniacs of the rankings can go their way. This “big saga” is aimed at a large audience, the one who takes place on his sofa every summer as much for this France now seen from helicopter – but never ugly or peri -urban – than to encourage Julian Alaphilippe or curses the bad luck of Thibaut Pinot .

The fact remains that the beauty of the images and the richness of the archives manage to forget this very didactic side. Some even manage to tell another, less polite reality. In the game on the yellow jersey, we are seized by this period micro-handwalk where spectators spit their hatred of Eddy Merckx, a monarch too Belgian and too sure of him to their liking. Further on, we see the five-time winner of the face to face with this Dupont-la-Joie who struck him in the liver in the rise of Puy-de-Dôme in 1975. Confused, he was very small ( “I didn’t even touch it”).

At that time, the documentary is touching on what cycling is. A hard sport, nasty and sometimes unfair where the spectator has the freedom to wait for hours in the lace of a collar to encourage or insult, free, a champion.

The tour may have become a postcard, the fact remains that emotion always arises from the race. In the part on Poulidor, even the one who knows his history of cycling and the genealogy of Limousin (died in 2019), is caught up in emotion when a Mathieu van der Poel in tears dedicates his yellow jersey, on the last lap, to “[Son] grandfather”-who had never worn it.