frtour1-9, Exercise 2: Barthes's epic applied to a recent Tour

Model answer (check the details); the Tour chosen is illustrative:

Hero: the rider who wins and wears the yellow jersey, presented in the press as brave, suffering and loyal to his team.
Villain: a rival who attacks unfairly, a cheat exposed by a test, or "the mountain" or the weather as an impersonal enemy.
Journey: the three-week route round France, from the Grand Départ to Paris, with the Pyrenees and the Alps as ordeals.
Moral: effort is rewarded, suffering is a virtue, and the team's help is sacrificed for the leader.

Where the idea fits badly:
- Doping scandals disturb the moral: heroes can be revealed as cheats, and the epic breaks down (Chapter 6).
- A modern Tour is global, with many nationalities and teams, so it is less a national story than Barthes's.
- Television and data (power meters, race radios) make the race calculable and take away some of the mystery.
- The women's race and non-European riders were absent from Barthes's cast.

Care: Barthes wrote about the 1950s; read his essay to see how far a modern application is fair.