The Futility, Glory, and Glorious Futility of French Cycling

The 2014 Tour de France has turned into one of the most exciting Tours in recent memory, owing largely to the fact that most of the favorites have crashed out of the race. That's bad for them—and probably bad news for any casual viewers tuning in—but good news for many fans, and to make it even sweeter there are a full two French cyclists who could conceivably win the thing.

That possibility is a big deal for France, which hasn't been able to claim a homegrown Tour winner in nearly 30 years. This is a distinctly French problem; Spain has nine of the last 13 Vuelta de España winners, and Italy is doing fine with 14 of the previous 18 Giro di Italia wins. But it's more than cycling. This is a nation that has to suffer through countless jokes about surrendering and the image of effete, lazy citizens. They could use a win, and history demonstrates that when they're on top, French cyclists can perform with ruthlessness and with style. And when they're not on top, when glory is out of reach, they'll take what they can get: spectacular, hopeless failure.

They'll probably have to settle for the latter of the two options again this time around. Italian Vincenzo Nibali is doing some mean, mean things out on the road, and neither Romain Bardet nor Thibaut Pinot seem to have the firepower needed to fight back. But if one can manage it, he would join a club of some legendary cyclists.

The last two Frenchmen to win the tour were Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon. Hinault was a monster, a four-time winner when he entered the 1985 Tour. Greg LeMond, then a promising young American, was on Hinault's team and the Frenchman made him a deal: Ride in support of my win this year, and I'll return the favor next year. LeMond took the deal and was faithful to his word, passing up his own very likely victory in order to return to his struggling team leader and help pull him up the hill. The story goes something like this: LeMond has a shot to win but is told that he has to go back to help Hinault. His team leader can barely pedal, comes the report, he's completely out of gas—he fell down a giant ravine and he even lost his hat. LeMond pulls up, drifts back and finds Hinault a little winded, but doing generally all right and certainly be-hatted… but by by that point it's too late for the Yank to launch a winning attack.

So, the 1986 Tour rolls around and Hinault goes to work supporting LeMond as promised, first by relentlessly attacking (in order to demoralize and tire out LeMond's opponents, you see), then by outpacing LeMond in the final time trial (this is harder to explain, as it's a transparent attempt to steal the race.) LeMond wins by more than three minutes anyway, cementing the French reputation for hungering for victory and the American reputation for hard work and defeating Frenchmen.

Fignon won the Tour twice, but it's one of his losses that is worth talking about. Fignon entered the final time trial of the 1989 Tour with a 50-second lead over LeMond, who by then was no longer young and promising, and was in fact recovering from being shot by his brother-in-law during a 1987 hunting trip and a subsequent series of nagging injuries. LeMond, dynamic American that he was, was experimenting with a new setup: a pair of handlebars that would allow him to ride in an aerodynamic tuck and a pair of goggles that would cut down on wind resistance. I can't say for certain that Fignon cried aloud that LeMond looked like an idiot, but he rode the stage in his spectacles and with his hair in a ponytail, his bike a dignified pursuit frame with disc wheels. He finished 58 seconds behind LeMond, and the American took the race with the narrowest margin of victory in the Tour's history. Yes, Fignon lost, but he will forever stand for an alternate history where cyclists don't look like weird spacemen.

In more recent history, French cycling's accomplishments have been more modest and ephemeral. I should explain: During a standard cycling race stage, a large pack of cyclists, the peloton, rolls out at the start. A small group of riders, anywhere from one to a dozen, jump off the front and form the breakaway. They ride hard and put some distance between themselves and the peloton, until the peloton decides it's had enough and chases them down. Sometimes the peloton never catches up and someone from the breakaway wins the stage. Usually not, though, and the members of the break turn out to have spent four to six hours riding as hard as they possibly can for nothing. This is where the French shine. There is no group of cyclists more dedicated to futile breakaway efforts than the French. They will jump off at the slightest chance, and their devil-may-care efforts always have a certain amount of style.

Early in the 2014 Tour, Frenchman Thomas Voeckler and Spanish rider Luis Angel Maté Mardone jumped off the front early, killing themselves but never getting much more than three minutes ahead of the peloton. Eventually Maté fell victim to a flat tire and ended up back in the pack, leaving Voeckler to either take on the heavy load that is a solo breakaway, an undoubtedly doomed attempt, or return to the peloton.

Voeckler is no rookie—his recklessness isn't tied to inexperience. In 2011 he picked up the yellow jersey with an inspired breakaway ride and held on to it for ten days, through nearly all of the mountain stages. He killed himself to hold off stronger, more accomplished riders and when they passed him he killed himself trying to chase them down. Going into the 2011 race, nobody thought Voeckler had it in him to win the thing, and when he had the lead nobody thought he could hold on to it. But he rode as hard as he could, because that's the spirit of the thing. (He wound up finishing fourth, missing France's first podium spot since 1997 by 50 seconds.) So earlier this month, as Maté stood on the side of the road with a flat tire, Voeckler set his jaw and took off, tripling the gap between himself and the peloton. He kept at it when that lead started falling, and he was still driving when it was down to just seven seconds, when he could hear the peloton behind him. And then, after more than 90 miles and with only ten left to go, the peloton swallowed Thomas Voeckler up. He finished 178th on the day, tired, slow, and very, very French.

Pete Holby lives in Los Angeles and rides a bicycle every day. He can be found on Twitter.