78 The EconomistNovember 30th 2019
E
ight times Raymond Poulidor stood on the podium at the end
of the Tour de France, soaked in sweat, exhausted and smiling
his big gap-toothed smile. He was just never on the top step. In 14
Tours someone else always pipped him or, to be honest, passed
him by quite a lot. He came second three times, third five times (in-
cluding in his last tour, not bad for a 40-year-old), but never put on
the treasured yellow jersey, the greatest prize in cycling. The clos-
est he came to that was when winners offered to let him wear it at
dinner parties, and he would shrug his big frame into it with no
bitterness at all. Because, with or without it, “L’Eternel Second”
was by far the most popular racing cyclist ever known in France.
His catalogue of mishaps in the Tour was long. In 1962, when he
came third, he had a broken finger. In 1964, when he came second,
he lost time at Monaco and had a puncture in the Pyrenees. In 1965,
Italian riders ganged up on him. In 1967 he fell badly in the Vosges,
and in 1968 he was hit by a motorbike. The race in 1973 began with
his nearest chance, when he was behind by a mere 0.8 seconds in
the Prologue, but he later fell down a ravine. In 1975, his worst Tour,
when he came 19th, he had bronchitis. Something always came be-
tween him and the glory of the maillot jaune. And all Frenchmen
and women who had ever repeatedly tried, and failed, to achieve
some goal took him to their hearts accordingly. He was “Pouli” and
“Poupou” (a stupid name, but he put up with it), carried aloft on a
sea of poupoularité.
They called him unlucky. He did not agree. He thought he hadhad a lot of luck, in fact. Over a 18-year career he had chalked up 189
victories in other races, including the Vuelta a España, his only
Grand Tour, La Flèche Wallonne, the French national champion-
ship and the Paris-Nice (twice) against the great Belgian Eddy
Merckx. He also won the Milan-San Remo, though true to form it
almost slipped away when he got a puncture 125km from the finish
and, on the final corner, was sent the wrong way by a policeman.
Yet he held off the chasing field and won, by three seconds.
He was also lucky, to his mind, to be cycling at all. The alterna-
tive was to be labouring, like his parents, on the rocky hills of
Creuse, trying to make the bad soil yield enough to get bread for the
table and rent in the landlord’s wallet. He had left school at 14, like
his three brothers, prepared to toil, but also aware that his best
times were when he was racing his bike between the villages on
fair-days or speeding round the hills with his brothers, for all the
world like one of the grim sleek riders in Miroir-Sprint magazine.
He could never be called sleek, more cuddly, and after his service
militairein Algeria pretty fat, but he shook off the weight and be-
came a professional cyclist in 1960, when he was 24.
What he did not shake off, but made much of, were his peasant
roots. Between races he went back to help on the farm, and his style
of cycling—dogged and determined on hills, a bit too leisurely on
the time trials—owed something to farm work, too. With his lined,
wind-burned face and slow Limousin drawl, he reminded his fol-
lowers of the old ways, la France profonde and all kinds of comfort-
ing verities that had been pushed aside by modern life. He kept a
peasant’s innocence, and in 1966 got into deep merdewith his col-
leagues for agreeing to a newfangled drugs test which they were all
refusing. But he also kept a shrewd business head on his shoulders.
He knew the value of a franc, ever since he and his brothers had
broken their bedroom window and been told, by their father, that
there would be no money to mend it until the spring.
It was therefore oddly satisfying that his great rival, Jacques An-
quetil, was everything he was not: a well-off, pale-faced, blond-
quiffed, almost ghostly Norman, withdrawn and unflamboyant.
Anquetil won the Tour five times, yet to his fury the French still
loved Poupou more. The depth of their duelling was witnessed by
half a million spectators when, in 1964, they battled up the Puy de
Dôme in Auvergne side by side, Anquetil on the mountain side and
Poupou on the precipice edge, so close that their elbows knocked
and Poupou could feel the hot breath of “Maître Jacques” on his
arms. He gained 42 seconds over him; it was not enough to win the
Tour. But he did not mind too much, as he never did.
One reason to be relaxed was that he was making a lot of mon-
ey—more even than Anquetil, some said. From the start he had
been astonished at what cyclists earned. His first prize, 80,000 old
francs for coming second, would have taken him six years to get by
farming (or substantially less time at the poker table, where he was
a skilled bluffer). The more Tours he lost, the more the crowds
liked him and the more he earned. At the height of his celebrity, in
the mid-1970s, almost half of respondents to one poll made him
their first choice as a dinner guest. In 1974 alone more than 4,000
articles were written about him, besides university theses and so-
ciological studies. He lent his name to sports bikes, and given half
a chance would stand in supermarkets shouting “Just the right
bike for you, sir!” Later, as a national treasure, he had a rose named
after him, and appeared along the route of the Tour in yellow out-
fits and with trinkets in his hands, cheered by all who saw him.
This adulation came not simply because he failed, but because
of the manner of his failing. He did not get up each morning with
the thought of winning. He did not think of winning at all. His
manager complained that he was always in a daydream, and it was
true. Everything that was happening to him was marvellous
enough. His memoir was called “La gloire sans maillot jaune”, glo-
ry without the jersey, which in the end he didn’t need. Eight times
he had got within touching distance, and lost them all. But he
could still say, as he often did, “Look how close I came!” 7Raymond Poulidor, cyclist, died on November 13th, aged 83