REPORTING – Our reporter followed the French team Groupama-FDJ which, around champion David Gaudu, carefully prepared the big event, which will start on 1er July. Objective: to be on the podium on arrival at the Champs-Élysées on July 23.
This article is from Figaro Magazine
Friday, June 2, 7 a.m., parking lot of the Best Western hotel in Pérignat-lès-Sarliève, a few kilometers from Clermont-Ferrand. Barely up, the day drops its already warm claws. Thomas Bourgeois, the mechanic of the Groupama-FDJ scouting team, is busy in the truck where the bikes have slept. He prepares for the training outing. Eighty kilometers to tame the historic Puy-de-Dôme spiral, an ascent that has entered into the legend of the Tour de France a scorching day in July 1964 that had cut the country in two.
Raymond Poulidor on the ravine side and Jacques Anquetil on the mountain side, shoulder to shoulder, mixed breaths, had played one of the most famous episodes of the event. For a few seconds that cross the years. Famous and rare on the Tour (absent since 1988), the dormant volcano, listed as a UNESCO heritage site, no longer allows access for bicycles or cars.
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