Women and Myth
The Tour de France
Course 1 · Chapter 9 · Women, Myth and Culture
So far the Tour in this course has been a men's race, as it was for most of its history. This chapter asks what happened to women's racing, and then turns to the other side of the Tour's life: the writers, filmmakers and musicians who made it a subject of art, and the amateurs who ride its mountains for themselves. It ends with the Tour as a national story. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
Women and the Tour
The 1980s Tours
A women's stage race called the Tour de France Féminin was held from 1984 to 1989, running at the same time as the men's race and sometimes on the same roads (check). The winners included the American Marianne Martin in 1984, the Italian Maria Canins and the Frenchwoman Jeannie Longo (check). Its organisers and its relation to the men's Tour changed from year to year, and it ended for lack of money and backing.
The gap
After 1989 there were other women's stage races under different names in France, but none with the men's Tour's name or its television, until 2014. Why the gap lasted so long is argued: the lack of sponsors and broadcasters, the attitudes of the organisers and the cycling authorities, and the fewer professional contracts for women riders (check).
Revival
From 2014 to 2021 the men's organisers ran a one-day women's race, La Course, held on the same day as a men's stage, after a campaign by riders for a bigger event (check). In 2022 a full stage race returned under the name Tour de France Femmes: eight days in July, shown on television, and won by the Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten (check). The next two editions were won by Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma, the latter by a very small margin (check).
Barthes and the Epic
- The essay. In 1957 the critic Roland Barthes included a short essay on the Tour in his collection Mythologies, "The Tour de France as Epic" (check). He treats the race as a modern epic, with a hero, villains, a cast of types and a journey round the nation.
- The ideas. He argues that the race turns a real event into a story that the readers of the newspapers shared: the whole of France as a stage, the riders as characters with names and roles, and suffering as a moral lesson (check). He also notes the role of the press, which gave the race its epic language.
- The use. The essay is useful as a document of how the Tour was perceived in the 1950s and as an example of how to read a popular event for its myths. Its claims are those of a critic, not of a historian (Chapter 10).
- Antoine Blondin. The writer Antoine Blondin covered the Tour for L'Équipe for many years from the 1950s, and his literary reports are cited as a high point of sports writing in French (check).
Films, Songs and Books
| Work (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Vive le Tour (1962) | A short documentary by the director Louis Malle, filmed during the 1962 race, which shows the riders, the caravan and the crowds. |
| Kraftwerk, Tour de France (1983) | A single by the German electronic group, who were keen cyclists. It uses sampled sounds of breathing, chains and gears. A full album, Tour de France Soundtracks, followed in 2003, the centenary year. A German musical link to the French race. |
| Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003) | An animated feature by Sylvain Chomet, in which a grandmother seeks her grandson, a Tour rider, kidnapped during the race. It is a comic homage to the Tour's mythology. |
| Paul Fournel | A writer and keen cyclist, author of essays on cycling such as Besoin de vélo (2001) and a short book on Anquetil (check). |
| Posters and prints | The Tour's posters, from the early 20th century to the present, show how its image changed from a gruelling ordeal to a family festival (check). |
For a historian these works are evidence of the Tour's image, not of what happened in a given year, so they need to be read with the right questions (Chapter 10).
Riding It Yourself
- L'Étape du Tour. Since 1993 a cycling event for amateurs has allowed thousands of riders to ride a mountain stage of the Tour on closed roads, shortly before the professionals (check). Tickets sell out quickly, and the result is a mass pilgrimage.
- Everyday cyclists. Cyclists of all abilities ride the famous passes in summer, take a picture at the summit sign and buy a souvenir jersey. Several of the great climbs have monuments, and some towns have museums of the race.
- Fans. The roadside culture of picnics, flags and painted roads is itself a tradition, with families who return to the same spot each year (check).
The Tour as National Story
The Tour has often been described as a mirror of France: its regions, its countryside, its rural life, its holidays in July and, in the 20th century, its relationship to Paris and to the rest of Europe. Historians point out that this mirror is selective, since the route for most of the 20th century showed a rural and provincial France and left out the industrial suburbs and immigrant communities (check), and that the race was also a stage for French rivalries with Italy, Belgium and, later, the Anglophone world. The same story has been told in a new way as the British, American and Danish winners have arrived. Whether the Tour is more French or more global now is one of the questions of the final chapter.
Exercises
Draw up a timeline of women's racing connected with the Tour, and suggest three reasons for the long gap with the evidence you would need to test each.
Apply Barthes's idea of the Tour as epic to a recent Tour: identify the hero, the villain, the journey and the moral, and say where the idea fits badly.
Choose one film, song or book about the Tour and say what it shows about the Tour's image and what it cannot show about the race itself.
Quick Reference
- Women: Tour de France Féminin (1984 to 1989); La Course (2014 to 2021); Tour de France Femmes (from 2022)
- Barthes: Mythologies (1957), the Tour as epic
- Culture: Malle's Vive le Tour, Kraftwerk, Les Triplettes de Belleville, Blondin, Fournel
- Amateurs: L'Étape du Tour (from 1993)