Where Have You Gone, Bernard Hinault?
10 July 2009 by French for a While
AFTER THINKING ABOUT it for some time, I have to ask the question: what has happened to French cycling? After yesterday's win by Frenchman Brice Feillu and Thomas Voeckler's win a couple days ago, one may be tempted to think that French cycling is doing just fine. It's not.The French have a great cycling tradition. It is no accident that the Tour de France is the most important bike race in the world and it isn't just a coincidence that there have been more French winners of the Tour (36) than any other country (Belgium is second with 18). But these numbers hide a reality that isn't talked about much in France: French cyclists don't win much anymore.
I began to look into the numbers and found they were more startling than I thought. Since great cyclists are usually measured by their performance in the so-called Grand Tours (France, Italy, and Spain -- Spain being a distant third in terms of prestige), I checked how long it has been since a Frenchman won one of these hallowed events. Here are the last indidividual French winners of the three Grand Tours:
- Tour de France: Bernard Hinault (1985)
- Giro d'Italia: Laurent Fignon (1989)
- Vuelta a Espana: Laurent Jalabert (1995)
But that list only reflects individual winners. French teams haven't done much better. In the last 25 years French cycling teams have produced:
- 1 Tour de France winner (Hinault in 1985 for La Vie Claire)
- 3 Giro winners (Italian Gianni Bugno for Chateau d'Ax, Laurent Fignon for Super U-Raleigh-Fiat, and Hinault for La Vie Claire);
- 0 Vuelta a Espana winners.
That's 4 winners in a combined 75 Grand Tours. Add Laurent Jalabert's win in Spain in 1995(riding for Spanish team ONCE) and the total number of wins by Frenchmen or French teams equals 5. By way of comparison, in the last 75 Grand Tours, Spanish riders have won 22 times, Italian riders 15 times, and American riders 11 times. [Note: the French team Cofi
dis did win the team classification in the Tour de France in 1998 -- let by American Bobby Julich in 3rd place overall].
While the Grand Tours are the biggies in cycling, there are many other important races throughout the year, the most well known being the Spring Classics and the one-week Tours that dot the calendar between March and June of each year. Have French cyclists fared any better in these races? Since there isn't time to examine every race, I'll pick a few of the biggest: Milan-Sanremo, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Paris-Roubaix, Paris-Nice, and the Dauphiné Libéré. Here are the number of French winners of these races since since 1985:
- Milan-San Remo - 3 winners (none since 1995)
- Liège-Bastogne-Liège - 0 winners
- Paris-Roubaix - 4 winners (none since 1994)
- Paris-Nice - 4 winners (all riding for Spanish teams)
- Dauphiné Libéré - 5 winners
So you could say the results are better, but the point of this entire post is to examine how French cycling has fallen in the past couple of decades. I purposely chose 1985 as my point of reference because that seems to be the year when French cycling began to decline rapidly. To illustrate the point, consider the following statistic: in the 25 years before 1985, a French cyclist won the Tour de France 14 times. The numbers are similar for other major Classics and one-week Tours.
Can French cycling rebound and produce winners again on a consistant basis? I hope so, but I'm not putting any money on it yet. There has been a lot of hope pinned on the shoulders of the likes of Chrisophe Moreau, Sandy Casar, and Sylvain Chavenel in recent years but none of them appear to be real GC contenders in the big races.
A new French champion will come someday and I hope that day comes soon. When I'm not rooting for American riders I'm pulling for the French. Allez les Bleus!
Oh, and for at least today, a French cycling team will hold the yellow jersey (AG2R).
CJS
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