The Tour de France

It’s always an issue for a preacher to decide what kind of language to use in a sermon, especially if the subject is esoteric and so will suggest words that will require defining phrases or sometimes even paragraphs, if we chose to use the words at all. This is one of those sermons, though the words are for once not theological ones like eschatology. Rather, a lot of the words we'll be using will be plain, ordinary and French, with special meanings that come from their context. Rather than duck them, I’m going to try to lure you with them. By the time this sermon is done, you'll know what Tour de France, maillot jaune, domestique, Jaja, peloton and lanterne rouge all mean. Best of all, there will be no quiz.

A long, long time ago, in a land far far away, well, 500 miles from here, people spent hours every day motionless, watching other people in a land even further away in constant motion. I was one of the motionless group—not unusual in one whose life has been given much more to the lofty realms of contemplation and inspiration, not so much lofty levels of hydration and respiration. What is the extraordinary appeal of the most demanding sporting event in the world, that draws everyone from those contending in it to those watching it with feverish attention half a world, or more, away. This is my topic this morning—and oh yes, of course, as usual, to suggest ways it might inform our own spiritual journeys as liberal religious individuals and as a faith community. This is a sermon after all.

Most of you know that I take my vacation time in the summer to spend it with my parents who live in Massachusetts on Cape Cod. I take my dog, arrange for the care and feeding of my cats, and head up to New England. I go there at the end of June and early in July, I start to get a niggling feeling. It’s not unlike, perhaps, the feeling a bear gets when it’s time to hibernate or wake up, a bird gets when it’s time to start building a nest, a salmon gets when it’s time to head for the open sea or back to native rivers. It’s a deep, nagging, itchy, inchoate something—and it doesn’t take long for me to figure out what it is. I’m already where I ought to be, and awake—and I don’t hibernate—so that doesn’t leave a lot of other options... aha, that’s it, it’s time for the Tour de France.

This coming summer will be the 100th anniversary of the Tour de France, which first took place in July, 1903. It was conceived of as a gimmick in increase the readership base for a French cycling and sport journal called Le Velo. It wasn’t the first long distance race—even by then when the bicycle was still a fairly recent invention, there had been a bunch of races, of which the roundtrip Paris—Brest—Paris was the most grueling. But this new idea, this Tour de France, a circuit of the entire country; it dwarfed everything. Paris to Lyon to Marseille to Toulouse to Bordeaux to Nantes to Paris. Of the 76 riders who began, 60 of them were professionals. Only 21 people finished. The winner was a wiry young man with an impressive moustache named Maurice Garin. On November 20, 1904 Le Velo went out of business. But the race it started was already a phenomenon, and would endure.

From the first, it took an enormous toll. Alan Gayfer, a cycle magazine editor, tells the story of talking to an old man at the top of one of the harrowing mountain climbs by the side of the road. It turned out that the old man had himself been a rider, back in the 1920’s. Gayfer mentioned that the roads must've been terrible then and the old man agreed, they’d been very rough. Gayfer wrote "I pointed at the way the riders would be coming and said I'd seen the climb in the days of bobet and Coppi, when there were holes in the surface and stones and rocks on the road. Now, of course, they’re in a very good state, more or less smooth like any other road. And he looked very surprised and said “Non monsieur, you don’t understand. We didn’t come up there!” And he turned and pointed at a tiny goat track behind us, all rocks and tufts of grass, no more than a few yards wide. “We came up that road there!”

Over time the roads developed and so did the race, and the sport of cycling generally which is a much bigger deal in Europe than it is here. People rode on routes so stark, so remote that most people were afraid to go there at all, let alone on a bike. Many of the early riders and victors of the Tour died in World War I.

Stories of the Tour are incredible.
Eugene Christophe, the first to wear the famous yellow jersey that identifies the overall leader of the race at each day’s stage, and at the end, the winner. In 1923 he had a two hour lead over his closest competitor when the front fork of his bike broke. He walked ten kilometers, carrying the bike, to the nearest village. The village blacksmith couldn’t help him—race rules required that riders receive no help of any kind. Officials arrived to make sure Christophe did whatever he did alone. Allowed, though, to use the tools, he repaired the bike himself. For allowing a young boy to pump the bellows at one point when his hands were full of bike and hammer, he was fined more time. But he came in 29th that day, beating 15 other people. The small square in the village where he fixed his bike is now known as the Place Eugene Christophe.

Napoleon Paoli, 1920, who hit a donkey on the road to Bayonne, somehow by luck (it couldn’t have been intent) found himself on its back, galloping back along the route he'd just ridden. Finally it hurt its leg and stopped, whereupon he ran the long way back to his bike and started up again, though in pain. But a brief time later a rock fell from a cliff striking him hard on the head—at which he kept going but not well, and finally abandoned the race at the beginning of an immense mountain, going to sleep in a hut. (The Unknown T de F., p. 44).

A Frenchman, Victor Fontan, shot twice in the leg in WWI didn’t think he’d ever compete in the Tour. But when he was 36, in 1929, he was selected, and took the yellow jersey, the lead, in the crushingly difficult Pyrenees that were his own region. He crashed in the middle of the night and broke both forks on his bike. He set to walking, came to a village, and began knocking on doors, waking all the residents, who were astounded to find the wearer of the Maillot Jaune, the yellow jersey, at their door. Someone lent him a bike and he pedalled off, but he'd lost too much time, and eventually abandoned the race. (The Unknown T de F., p. 48)

One of the best known stories is the one of Wim van Est, in 1951, the first Dutchman ever to wear the yellow. They were in the mountains, he'd taken the lead the day before, and slipping on ice, snow and sharp stones, he went off the road and fell over 60 feet, finally landing by chance on the one ledge on the otherwise sheer face of the col. He was badly bruised and shaken, but nothing, miraculously, was broken Some riders went by, but his teamates all stopped, pooled all their tires and spares, made them part of a tow rope, and pulled him back up to safety. None of the team could ride on, all their tires were ruined. But they vowed to return the next year, and got all the publicity that comes with such moments. (Publicity remains one of the raisons d'etre for the Tour.) (The Unknown T de F., p. 50)

It must be said, in recounting the history of the Tour, that it’s not all irony and heroism and drama and feats of amazing strength—drugs have been a part of the Tour since its inception, and of bike racing since before that—a rider died of drugs in the very late 19th century. Trainers dropped cocain on the tongues of riders or massaged it into their legs with butter. (The Unknown T de F., p. 57).

Doping remained part of cycling from then on. The pharmacy widened and deepened—many kinds of amphetamines, steroids, often taken with liquor either to boost or balance the effect, pills, injections, suppositories… unlikely the last seem for someone who sits on a hard narrow seat all day, day after day—whatever worked, and quickly went into them in the morning and with them during the day. Stories abound, but the worst is probably that of Tom Simpson, a British rider who rode for Peugeot in the 1960’s. 1967 was going to be his last Tour, he was retiring that year and just wanted to make enough to pay off a new car and support his family. He was one of the leaders on the day they climbed the otherworldly, crippling heights of Mont Ventoux in the south of France.

Mont Ventoux has no trees; they were all cut down a long time ago. Its landscape now is bizarre and moonlike—no colors, no life, just dust and rock, rising to an enormous, terrible height. When it’s hot in the south of France, the heat at Mont Ventoux is literally stifling. On the day Simpson was riding, tar was running down the road in rivulets. He was one of the first out of the trees onto the mountain, then suddenly weakened. He rode on for about a mile. Then he began to weave from one side of the road to the other. He ran into loose stones at the bank of the road and stopped and fell over. Support people came to help and Simpson told them to get him up, that he wanted to go on. Simpson did ride on, seemed a bit better, but collapsed again a half a mile from the summit, still strapped to his pedals. He died there, despite the best efforts of support staff. In his jersey, and in him, were found a lot of amphetamines, and alcohol was also in his system. He died of exhaustion and heat, exacerbated by altitude and drugs. The place where he died is marked by a sculpted gravestone, erected by contributions from other riders and the cycling community. (The Unknown T de F., p. 60—63.)

There are a number of grim stories in the Tour, and in cycling generally. Though they taint the Tour, they do not destroy it, because the Tour offers so much more than just a single victor, a single story, a single strategy.

One of the neat things about the evolution of the Tour is of course that nowadays it is raced by teams. The teams are built around one or more stars—and the stars can be good at different things. They might be a sprinter, one of the bright, streaking riders who dash and jockey for position and suddenly dash off like all the others are standing still. They might be a climber, one of the strong, extraordinary riders who accelerates when going uphill, up—mountain really, who can pull themselves up frightening heights and accelerate away down the perilous switchback roads at highway speeds. Or they can be that rare thing, a really gifted all—around rider, good on the flat, able to turn on speed when they want, able to climb and clim—and those are the types who win the Tour, because the Tour includes stages that are team time trials, when the whole team shares a time they contribute to over the course of a day, individual time trials when you’re on your own, fairly flat riding through the middle and north of France where wind and distance take their toll, and mountains, the Pyrenees and the Alps, which speak for themselves. So if you can’t do it all, you’re sunk...unless you’re willing to help others, which is, after all, what teamwork is all about.

The overall Tour winner gets the yellow jersey, we all understand that by now. But the stage victories each day also matter, and the maillot jaune passes around at least a few times on the way to the overall victor. In addition, there are other, mini—races within the Tour. The sprint victor, who wins the most sprint stage points during the Tour is also a winner, and gets their own jersey, a green one. The mountain victor, who wins the most mountain stage points during the tour is also a winner—it’s like new gamesL everyone’s a winner, well, not quite—and gets a striking white jersey with large red polka dots. The new young rider to do the best out of their peers is also a winner and gets a plain white jersey. And the last rider to complete the race, but not be so far behind that they actually get disqualified, is acclaimed in Paris, the lantern rouge, the red light, named after the red light that shines on the rear of the caboose, the rearmost train car.

So there’s a lot going on in the race, altogether and each day. And that’s where all the teamwork comes in. Not everyone can be a star, but everyone can make a contribution, and the ones who contribute to the team or the star are called the domestiques, the servants. The term started as a derisive one, but the place has become very respected. These are riders who are far better than you or I, good enough to be professionals, but not quite good enough to win the whole shebang. So they ride for the team—helping to respond to the challenges of other cyclists when they try to break away from the pack, riding very hard in rotation trying to wear other leaders down and draw them back in from a successful breakaway, dropping back to the rear of the main gang of riders, the peloton, to take on supplies of water and food and such from the team cars following the riders and ferry them back to the team. This kind of riding takes tremendous versatility and a real sense of responsibility—your leaders are depending on you, so even if you’re feeling really good and with to just ride off yourself in a breakaway, they need to be able to count on you. Last summer, the lead was held in the early stages of the Tour de France by a Spanish team, ONCE, and their leader Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano. ONCE’s lead was lost because of one of their own riders, a domestique who took off on a breakaway when de Galdeano was laboring, needing help, not to be pushed further. The field took off after the breakaway, which broke valiant de Galdeano entirely and lost him and the team the jersey, and the vainglorious rider was caught and brought back into the peloton anyway.

So what the domestique does or doesn’t do really matters. They are sometimes rewarded with a chance to take a day’s stage victory, but also the riders who may have to risk or lose their own good day’s ride to stay with their leader and offer any help necessary if the leader has a flat tire or crash or needs help making their way up a mountain—everyone has a bad day occasionally. Whatever nemesis might come along the road, the domestiques are there to help.

Which brings me to last summer’s Tour, the year of the team, as Lance Armstrong put it. Some of you probably know that America has a team that has won the last four Tours in a row, with an extraordinary leader, Lance Armstrong. Lance is a survivor of advanced prostate cancer. He was a gifted young American rider, showed potential, even winning a stage victory in the Tour earlier in the 90’s, but sometimes made stupid choices that didn’t help him or his team. Dropped from his European team when his cancer was finally diagnosed and the odds were well against him, he was successfully treated and began training again, but couldn’t find a team to risk taking him on.

Somehow, a successful effort was made to lobby the US Postal Service, of all things, to start a team, building it around him. They did, and he trained like a dynamo, and he won. He’s been accused of doping himself to achieve the extraordinary times and victories he has in the Tour, but he is tested a lot, often in surprise exams, and has always come out negative. He says he doesn’t take drugs, that it’s the life experience and training that have made him so competitive and he does train more than almost any other rider on the circuit, riding up and down the mountains of France in all weather, at all times of the year. His heart turns out to be unusually large, which helps him convert oxygen to energy faster and longer than a lot of other riders, which no doubt helps. There are only a couple of riders right now who are even considered to be contenders against him, he’s just that good.

Two years ago, his main rival, Jan Ullrich of Germany gave him a run for his money. Ullrich rides for Telekomm. Watchers were always looking for the dark blue of the Posties, as the US Postal team is called, and the hot pink and black of Telekomm. There were other riders too who were giving Lance a run for his money. Frequently he was in a front—running pack of bright jerseys, his own team doing their best for him but eventually falling off. More than once, late in a day’s stage, one or more teams would be trying to wear him down and break him and he had no one to help him, he just had to keep answering their rotating challenges over and over and over again. What a feeling it was, watching his team finally drop away, leaving him alone and vulnerable to all those attacks. Incredibly he answered every one, and broke the teams instead.

But Ullrich, himself a Tour de France winner, was the real challenge. Ullrich stayed right with Armstrong for the first part of the race. Right behind Lance, far ahead of the peloton, going around a hairpin turn in the mountains, Ullrich careered right off the road and crashed down a small hillside. Armstrong looked to see what happened, and slowed down, way down, and kept going slowly. Ullrich came running up out of the brush, carrying his bike, seemed okay, got on it and started chasing Armstrong like mad. Nowadays riders have a speaker in their ear and a microphone clipped to their jersey which allows them to communicate with their team coach, so Lance knew what was happening and knew Ullrich was coming. He continued to ease along the route until Ullrich reached him, and then the race was on again.

Who does this? In what sport, when your opponent loses concentration and goes off course, do you wait for them? This is not the way it goes in the Olympics or the America’s Cup or the NBA. It’s like a scene from Robin Hood , the other guy drops his sword or trips, and is allowed by his opponent, because of honor, to get up, pick up his sword, and resume the duel. The question of whether chivalry is dead is usually raised in a feminist/sensitive new age guy context, but of course chivalry originally comes out of knightly combat situations, and knightly sporting situations, and of course much of sport is combat recast: opposing teams, conflict, the pitting of self against the other, sometimes physical battery as in boxing, fencing, hockey, etc., and victory, spoils, etc. So maybe it’s silly to be so surprised to see honor rear its handsome head in the midst of one of the most competitive events in the world...but what a nice surprise.

A bit later in the race, still in the mountains, Lance infamously turned around, gave Jan Ullrich just behind him and some other leading riders further back a long, enigmatic look—a challenge?—turned back around and rode away. Just rode away. The only way you could tell what he was doing was at all hard was to look at the riders he left, as a body behind, rolling their shoulders, grimacing in pain, pushing themselves back and forth on their bikes to try to answer his breakaway—and nothing. No one advanced, no one followed, no one reeled him in, not even Ullrich. It was the beginning of the end, and after that he slowly extended his lead each day. The French hated it—what was that look? He is so arrogant, he is insufferable, why doesn’t he speak better French since he lives and trains here half the year, he is doped, he… the French hate that he, an American, from Texas no less!—wins and are only slowly being won over by the sheer valiance of the man.

This past Tour was the year of the team. An extraordinarily strong team of Posties, or Postmen as my mother calls them, as in “Here come the Postmen!”, led the race almost all the way around the country. Each day, there was a thin line of dark blue clad racers, leading the peloton. They weren’t always alone, the hot pink of Telekomm was with them some days, though Ullrich was out with a bad knee and then a drug suspension, and another pink team, ONCE, whose Igor Gonzales de Galdeano held the yellow jersey over the first third of the the Tour, was often challenging the men in blue. It wasn’t easy. As each day went on, the line would shrink, as its domestiques exhausted themselves working to give Lance the victory. In the mountains it would shrink quickly, sometimes in minutes, leaving only the two strongest climbers who are unimpressive on flat, but extraordinary, two Spaniards, leading Lance up, finally dropping away with nothing left, but having done their job so well that he was well—placed to take it away. The fact that a rider is led makes a huge difference—the rider in front expends far more energy than the one slipstreaming behind them. But it doesn’t make all the difference. Each day his teammates led Lance up the mountain, others tried to slipstream him, using him and the Posties to carry them up. But sooner or later they would almost all fall away, unable to keep up with the pace. The team helped Lance win, but he still earned it; no one else could keep up with his team, let alone outlast them.

All this is what combines to make the race so inspiring to watch. The little races within it — the sprinters so crazy and fearless at their jam—packed, hyperdrive finishes, the 2001 king of the mountains, Laurent Jalabert, who the cycling world calls Jaja, who retired having won once again in 2002. The dauntless, devoted, powerful little Roberto Heras, who led Lance up dreadful Mont Ventoux this year so that only one other rider, another Spaniard from ONCE, remained to challenge. Lance tried to breakaway early, to tire the challenger out, so he could drop back and give the stage victory to Heras who is the most capable and talented of the Postie climbers, but it failed and so Heras finished third. The self—sacrifice that day shows—the domestiques for the leader, the leader for the domestique. On the final day the field rides into Paris drinking champagne from flutes—uh, that doesn’t sound like the Olympics or the NBA either. It’s an extraordinarily harsh, unforgiving sport. Got to go to the bathroom—run to the side of the road or… don’t—those are your only options. There are no time outs, no redress for a crash that puts you out of comission, no one to spell you if you need a break. You ride your bike, freeze in the mountains, swelter in the valleys, ride against the teams, rivals, geography and time itself. Just to be in the Tour is an achievement. Like any community, goodwill matters and so standards and behavior count for a lot and make the Tour what it is. The chivalry amidst the squalor of drugs, the achievement that shines out from all the doubt of Armstrong’s abilities. The history of commitment that keeps people riding with injuries, carrying their bikes across the finish line. What a crazy, amazing race.

It can hold many meanings for us. How important it is for us to be there for each other. Sometimes we’re the leader, sometimes the domestique—either way, we need each other. Sometimes we’re the King of the Mountains, sometimes the sprinter, sometimes the lanterne rouge—or at least we feel like it. Sometimes we’re unstoppable, breaking away from the peloton like a streak, sometimes we’re just empty, dropping off the back of the peloton, our hopes shot for this year. Life, like the Tour de France offers little redress, so we need to depend on honor, goodwill, standards and behavior that ameliorate the toughness of the Tour we are doing. And like current Tour riders, we are inspired by others who came before or are before us now.

But I don’t want to belabor such connections which are in the end metaphorical and different for each of us. I don’t really love the Tour for its UU implications, I love it for itself. All these skinny men with concave chests and really strange tan lines, achieving the extraordinary, day after day, amidst humor and crashes and arguments and striving, in astounding surroundings, together and alone, while crowds of people line their route, occasionally obscuring it even. Each day of the Tour I was on my feet rooting for someone or heartbroken for another or both. The Tour de France. Around a country in 21—ish days. What a concept. What a reality. What fun, which we really need right now. I can’t wait for next summer.

Go in peace. Amen.