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ROLAND
BARTHES
ON THE TOUR
Perspective is everything. And when
it comes to cycling’s grandest of the
grand tours, the Tour de France,
perspective shifts to a very particular
angle and focus. Yes, on the surface,
the Tour has all the customary
elements of the other grand tours:
the best riders in the world, the
varying contours and challenges of
the natural terrain, vast numbers of
fans lining the road, shifts in weather,
inevitable crashes and mechanical
mishaps, podium ceremonies, jersey
classifications, swarming media, and
an array of motorcycles and support
cars. But here, during the most
important three weeks of professional
road cycling during the year, the sport
not only takes on the color, shape and
size of France itself, but the sensibility
of it’s people—and for that reason,
there’s nothing quite like the Le Tour.
Journalists from around the globe
descend on France to comment on
the race, but their reporting usually
emphasizes the more measureable,
tangible elements: general
classification, category point leaders,
stage profile, and finishing times—
it’s the nature of popular, fact-based
reporting we are all accustomed to.
However, in general, the French view
of the Tour may be informed by a
more philosophical influence, even
in popular reporting, which searches
for meaning beyond the surface
of things, thereby elevating the
significance of the race to something
far greater than an extreme physical
undertaking. An excellent example
of such a view is Roland Barthes’s
short essay, “The Tour de France As
Epic,” published in The Eiffel Tower
and Other Mythologies (1957). To get
a sense of this French philosophical
perspective I am referring to, all one
needs to do is read Barthes’s first
sentence: “There is an onomastics
of the Tour de France which in itself
tells us that these races are a great
epic. The racers’ names seem for
the most part to come from a very
old ethnic period, from an age when
the “race,” indeed, was audible in a
little group of phonemes (Brankart le
Franc, Bobet le Francien, Robic le Celte,
Ruiz l’Ibère, Derrigade le Gascon).”
