Tour de France: Queen Phases and Circles of Loss of life

“Stage 17 – Wednesday 22 July [2009]: Bourg-Saint-Maurice–Le Grand Bornand, 169.5km
Immediately was what’s recognized in biking phrases because the ‘Queen Stage’ of the Tour de France. I don’t know the place the time period originated, but it surely’s often given to the toughest day of the race and, with one second-category climb and 4 first class mountains to be lined on the 170km by the Alps, at this time was by no means going to be straightforward.”
~ Nico Roche, Contained in the Tour de France

When did bike races get queen levels? And why are they queen levels in some international locations however king levels in others? What even is a queen stage?

The Queen and Me

The very first biking ebook I learn was The Nice Bike Race, a ebook concerning the 1976 Tour de France written by the Observer’s then sports activities editor, Geoffrey Nicholson. A buddy I rode with had discovered a replica in a second-hand bookshop in Dublin and we devoured it, despite the fact that it was already a technology old-fashioned by the point we got here to it. Different youngsters my age, they have been sharing copies of Goodbye to the Hill – that is Eire, we’re literary and even our porn is available in ebook kind – however there we have been, noses deep in The Nice Bike Race. What can I say, I had a wicked childhood.

Flicking by The Nice Bike Race once more – I’ve to flick fastidiously, half the pages are falling out and it’s in peril of turning right into a model of BS Johnson’s book-in-a-box, The Unfortunates – there’s a curious absence: there is no such thing as a queen stage in Nicholson’s account of the 1976 Tour.

Nicholson’s front-of-book glossary – the ebook was printed within the Seventies and the English then hadn’t a clue what even a maillot jaune was (“Yellow jersey worn by the race chief; the time period utilized to the chief himself. It was launched in 1919 in order that the crowds may determine their hero extra simply. It’s value £120 a day to the wearer on levels 1 to 14, £50 a day thereafter.”) – had entries for varied sorts of étapes (étape, demi-étape, tiers d’étape) however no étape reine.

fmk

That appeared odd, given the ubiquity of the phrase at this time. So I turned to Sam Abt, the dean of American biking journalism, just a few of whose books from the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties I’ve. And he or she wasn’t there both. I regarded in just a few different books. Jeff Connor’s Broad-Eyed and Legless and it’s up-dated model, Subject of Hearth: no queen stage. David Walsh’s Contained in the Tour de France: EPO, sure, queen stage, no. I even regarded within the fabulist Pierre Chany’s aptly titled Fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France and, even in that assortment of made-up nonsense she didn’t put in an look.

None of my older books seem to speak of the Tour having a queen stage. How odd is that?

Queen’s Biggest Hits

The earliest reference I can discover to the Tour having a queen stage comes from a Might 1920 version of L’Auto, during which Henri Desgrange dubbed the Bayonne-Luchon stage l’étape reine:

“What’s the hardest stage? It’s indeniable that that is the Bayonne–Luchon stage, and since we’re explaining the path to our readers, that is the second to justify this opinion. Bayonne–Luchon is the queen stage as a result of after 150 kilometres of terrain presenting hardly any difficulties aside from the Col d’Osquich, the stage locations earlier than the riders – in the meanwhile when the solar is already scorching – practically 200 kilometres with six formidable cols.”

L’Auto / BnF

Le Miroir des Sports activities / BnF

The cols to be conquered have been the mountains we at this time consider because the Circle of Loss of life: the Col d’Aubisque, the Col du Tourmalet, the Col d’Aspin and the Col de Peyresourde. That’s solely 4 however the Aubisque was a three-for-the-price-of-one bundle that additionally contained the now disused Col de Tortes together with the Col du Soulor. On this west-to-east passage these two have been – regardless of Desgrange’s hyperbole – simply minor rises on the descent off the Aubisque, not formidable in any vogue.

Whereas we at this time consider these climbs as being the Circle of Loss of life, within the Nineteen Twenties that was not the case. A decade earlier, whereas reconning the route of the 1910 Tour, the good directeur sportif Alphonse Baugé had described the descents within the Pyrénées – particularly these off the Col de Port and the Col de Portet d’Aspet – as being just like the acrobatic biking exhibits ‘Looping the Loop’ and the ‘Circle of Loss of life’. Baugé used the English names, by which these acts have been universally recognized, he didn’t Frenchify them.

BnF

The French nationwide library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), makes obtainable on-line numerous out-of-copyright materials, which for newspapers and magazines – together with the likes of L’Auto and L’Équipe – takes us as much as the early Fifties. Aside from that one utilization in L’Auto in 1910, nowhere within the BnF’s corpus can I discover the Circle of Loss of life – or its French translation – once more being utilized in reference to the Tour. Nobody in L’Auto picked up on Baugé’s coinage and ran with the concept of the these Pyrenean climbs being a Circle of Loss of life. Nor did anybody wherever else choose it up and run with it. It was a one-and-done reference till some level in newer years – how current is a query but to be answered – when it grew to become commonplace. The Circle of Loss of life, it’s part of our sport’s previous, however not in the way in which we’d wish to assume it’s.

Queen’s Gambit

Desgrange is obvious in what he wrote that the queen stage is the toughest stage, a king-sized day of ache and altitude acquire. There are, although, individuals who argue that the queen stage derives from a chess reference. The queen being essentially the most cellular piece on a chessboard, she exerts essentially the most affect on the sport, subsequently the queen stage is the stage that’s anticipated to exert essentially the most affect on the result of the Tour. Whereas undoubtedly cerebral and chic, that is – to make use of the educational time period – full bollocks. It’s us making an attempt to fill within the blanks and give you a reasonably clarification however nothing greater than that, a reasonably clarification. That it befits the Tour greater than the way in which Desgrange used l’étape reine – hardest is simply brutish, and biking is meant to be chess on wheels – is neither right here nor there. It’s improper.

Now we have performed the identical factor with crafting explanations for the origins of the Circle of Loss of life. Graeme Fife, in Tour de France: The Historical past, the Legend, the Riders, says this of its origins:

“In what locals referred to as the ‘Circle of Loss of life’ within the Pyrenees, bears roamed and a few riders, discovering themselves alone within the distant excessive locations, stopped, fearing assault from the wild creatures.”

In line with Rosalie Maggio’s biography Marie Marvingt, Fiancee of Hazard (2019) the title arises because of “the vicious brown bears that roamed the world. (After riders had been threatened and even harm by the bears, bikers and followers used to shout “Murderer!” at Desgrange when he appeared in public.)”

Maggio’s shouts of murderer, that’s her being an ass and rewriting the historical past of the Aubisque and making an attempt to make it related to the story of Marie Marvingt (who we fantasise rode the route of the 1908 Tour (regardless of there being zero proof supporting this), which was two years earlier than the Tour even added the Aubisque).

Fife and Maggio’s bears, they arrive from a single reference by Alphonse Steinès in his account of his night on the Tourmalet in June 1910, a single reference from which some have generated imaginary editorials written by Desgrange warning riders to be looking out for ursine predators. The one animals the riders of the 1910 and subsequent Excursions have been truly warned to be cautious of have been the cows and the horses that crossed the roads at will, a hazard to themselves in addition to to individuals travelling on these roads.

Serge de Sazo/Gamma-Rapho / Getty

If Fife is to be believed and locals did use the title the Circle of Loss of life, how was that phrased in French? There’s a Cirque de Gavarnie, 40 kilometres south of Argelès-Gazost, down close to the Spanish border. And there’s a Cirque du Litor, close to the Col du Soulor. Cirque right here means not a circus however a pure amphitheatre, a bowl-shaped geographical function, often shaped by retreating glaciers. So the Circle of Loss of life, if it actually was an area title, may it initially have been the cirque de la mort? Would that it have been, for as an alternative of riders scared by bears then we may inform tall tales of riders traumatised by circus clowns. Which might be much more vibrant, creative and downright funnier than something the fabulist Pierre Chany has ever lied to us about.

Sadly, Giles Belbin in A 12 months within the Saddle (2015) and once more in A Experience By the Biggest Biking Tales (2017), bursts that bubble by telling us that locals merely referred to as the Circle of Loss of life le Cercle de la Mort. Oddly, the Pyrénées has fewer cercles than it does cirques. 100 per cent fewer, by my calculations.

Crossing the streams, you possibly can even discover one supply claiming that the Circle of Loss of life shouldn’t be a spot in any respect however is the title given to “the toughest Tour de France stage within the Pyrenees”. In different phrases, the Circle of Loss of life is commonly the queen stage. I actually shouldn’t inform you the place that’s taking my creativeness but it surely entails enamel and is certainly NSFW.

Queen of the Slipstream

Whether or not Desgrange coined the phrase himself, or got here throughout it elsewhere and borrowed it, we can not say. What issues right here is how shortly and the way extensively the phrase was taken up by others. The quick reply? Not shortly and never extensively.

Gallicagram / fmk

L’Auto didn’t return to the properly till 1924 – the 12 months Albert Londres didn’t use the phrase forçats de la route to explain the Tour’s riders however L’Auto did con individuals into believing that he had – when it was mentioned that it was an in depth name between Good–Briançon (which included the Col d’Izoard and its lunar-like Casse-Déserte) and Bayonne–Luchon as to which stage was the hardest of the race. The presence of the Tourmalet tipped the hand in favour of the latter being the queen stage.

On the finish of that Tour, La Gironde’s Gaston Bénac – who went to take over the sports activities pages at Paris Soir and create the GP des Nations – joined the fray in a syndicated report that additionally appeared in Le Réforme des Charents during which he famous that it was within the queen stage – Bayonne–Luchon – that Ottavio Bottecchia proved himself an excellent rider and successfully received the Tour.

The next 12 months, 1925, I can discover solely a single reference to the queen stage – once more, Bayonne–Luchon with, once more, Good–Briançon described as an in depth second – showing in an uncredited report in L’Évenement.

Two years later, 1927, L’Auto was for less than the third time in eight years declaring Bayonne–Luchon l’étape reine. They have been once more joined on this endeavour by Gaston Bénac, in each La Petite Gironde and Le Peitit Marseillais.

The phrase was now additionally being picked up by others, and could be discovered showing in La Presse, Le Courier de Saône-et-Loire, La Croix du Nord, and L’Categorical de Mulhouse. In La Presse, the queen stage was in a single report described because the one during which first place within the Tour was at stake and in one other was the toughest stage of the race. In La Croix du Nord it was the stage with the popularity of being the toughest and the place the massive struggle for victory commences.

A 12 months on, 1928, there was as soon as extra no point out of l’étape reine in L’Auto however Gaston Bénac was nonetheless championing its utilization in Le Petite Gironde, the place he had Victor Fontan as le Roi de la Montagne, in l’étape reine – King of the Mountains, within the queen stage. Echoing the notion of the Queen getting her King, a report in L’Indépendant des Basse-Pyrénées had Fontan as le Roi des Grimpeurs in l’étape reine – the King of Climbers.

The phrase additionally appeared within the weekly biking journal La Pédale, the place the queen stage was the one which “provides us essentially the most lovely feelings.”

The Nineteen Twenties ended with Gaston Bénac nonetheless the principal champion of the phrase, deploying it in studies in Paris-Midi (the place once more Fontan was le roi de la montagne) and in Le Petite Gironde.

It was additionally in use once more in L’Indépendant des Basse-Pyrénées and was additionally picked up in Le Soir, and appeared in a syndicated report that was reproduced in La Gazette de Biarritz-Bayonne et Saint-Jean-de-Luz and the Gazette de Bayonne. The Bordeaux-based weekly sports activities journal L’Athlète additionally ran with it, each in its report and in an advert for Victor Fontan’s bicycles.

L’Athléte / BnF

A decade after its first look in L’Auto, then, it was Gaston Bénac who had performed essentially the most to champion the utilization of l’étape reine whereas L’Auto itself wasn’t actually getting behind it. A handful of regional papers had picked up on it however its utilization wasn’t actually widespread.

Ballad of a Teenage Queen

Throughout the Nineteen Thirties, use of the phrase waxed and waned: it appeared in some vital locations, magazines like Le Miroir des Sports activities, but it surely was nonetheless Bénac and the regional papers who have been most getting behind its utilization, with L’Auto displaying little or no curiosity.

L’Auto used it a few instances in November 1931 when looking forward to the 1932 biking 12 months. On the different finish of the last decade, 1939, it was utilized in passing in a report from the Tour. And in 1935 and 1939 it was utilized in reference to different races, the Tour of Belgium and the Tour of Morocco. Paris-Soir had truly been first to make use of the phrase in reference to different races, in studies from the Giro d’Italia in 1932 filed by Valdo Cottarelli.

All through the ‘30s it was once more Gaston Bénac who did essentially the most to champion using the phrase: in Paris-Midi (1930, 1931, 1933, 1938), Paris-Soir (1931, 1932, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1939) and La Petite Gironde (1934). Bénac was additionally joined on this endeavour by Albert Baker d’Isy, his shut affiliate at Paris-Soir and his accomplice within the creation of the GP des Nations.

Bénac had additionally filed studies for L’Indépendant des Basses-Pyrénées within the early Nineteen Thirties (1930, 1932) and utilization of the phrase continued there in later years (1935, 1936, 1937, 1939). Le Patriote des Pyrénées additionally constantly celebrated the Tour on its doorstep (1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1939).

BnF

Some titles adopted sporadic utilization.

L’Athlète (1930, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1939). La Dépêche (1931, 1932, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939). Le Miroir des Sports activities (1931, 1933, 1937). Le Grand Écho du Nord de la France (1930, 1931). L’Intransigeant (1930, 1934, 1935). Match L’Intran (1931, 1932). France Olympique (1932, 1933).

Elsewhere, it could discovered getting used simply as soon as throughout the entire decade.

Les Sports activities du Nord (1930). Excelsior (1930), Le Journal (1932). Journal de Confolens (1933). La France de Bordeaux et du Sud-Ouest (1934). L’Avenir du Bassin d’Arcachon (1935). Le Populaire (1935). Le Petit Journal (1935). Le Petit Méridional (1936). L’Ouest-Éclair (1936). L’Categorical de l’Est (1936). Le Bigourdan (1937). Le Bon Sens Pyrénéen (1937). Le Radical de Marseille (1938). La Voix du Bearn (1938). La Dépêche de Brest (1938). Ce Soir (1939).

It was even used as soon as in a youngsters’ journal, Benjamin (1938).

Whereas the style of its utilization all through the last decade suggests readers will need to have been anticipated to grasp what was meant by l’étape reine, by the tip of the last decade – 20 years after Desgrange used it in 1920 – l’étape reine hadn’t actually gained the kind of widespread forex it has lately.

Le Petite Gironde / BnF

Dreaming of the Queen

In the course of the years of the Occupation, Cyclo Journal indulged in nostalgia and l’étape reine could be present in points from 1940, 1941, and 1943. Come the assorted ersatz Excursions de France, Le Cri des Travaileurs used it in reference to the Critérium de La Rébublique in 1946 and Liberté-Soir used it for the Course du Tour the identical 12 months. In 1947 L’Instransigeant needed the world to imagine that the Tour of Belgium may have une étape reine.

The Return of the Queen

When the Tour returned in 1947 L’Auto’s successor truly remembered the Tour’s queen stage. The next 12 months, L’Équipe gave each the Tour and the Giro queen levels. Over the following three years – 1949, 1950, 1951 – L’Équipe constantly used the phrase. In 1951 they even had Jacques Augendre giving the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré an étape reine. However the next 12 months, 1952, they dropped it.

L’Équipe / BnF

The newly launched However et Membership discovered Gaston Bénac as soon as once more championing its utilization in 1946 and 1952. In the identical journal, Félix Lévitain adopted swimsuit in 1947 and Jean Antoine in 1948.

The Tour had been reborn in 1947 and was discovering new audiences, and even within the pages Femme Françaises a reference to the queen stage could possibly be discovered, in a profile of Réne Vietto. Different papers and magazines to make use of the phrase embody:

Alger Républicain (1949, 1950, 1951, 1952), L’Avenir Normand (1947), Le Bourgogne Réublicaine (1952), Ce Soir (1948, 1949, 1950), Cyclo Journal (1947, 1949), L’Echo d’Alger (1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952), Écho du Centre (1949, 1950, 1951), L’Est Républican (1948), France Tier (1948), L’Humanité (1949, 1952), Paris-Dakar (1947), Le Paysan de Cochinchine (1949), Le Petit Morocain (1949, 1950), Le Populaire du Centre (1948, 1949, 1952), Tunise-France (1952), La Virgie Marocain (1950).

At the least 1 / 4 of these appearances got here courtesy of 1 man: Gaston Bénac’s former affiliate at Paris-Soir, Albert Baker d’Isy. Baker d’Isy was a person who preferred flip of phrase: in 1949 he was the primary particular person to seek advice from Paris-Roubaix as a Monument, an idea that was discovering its toes and, between its first look in 1903 and the tip of Gallica’s corpus within the early Fifties, will also be discovered being utilized in affiliation with the Tour itself, Bordeaux-Paris and, er, the Tour d’Algérie.

L’Athléte / BnF

Ce Soir / Le Miroir des Sports activities / BnF

The Queen is Lifeless

As a lot as Baker d’Isy – together with Bénac – could be credited with doing essentially the most to advertise the concept of an étape reine on the Tour and different stage races, by 1951 he was questioning whether or not the Tour nonetheless had a queen stage. That was Koblet’s 12 months, the 12 months of Brive–Agen. In Le Populaire du Centre Baker d’Isy famous that the Hole–Briançon stage – that 12 months’s queen stage – had eradicated simply two riders and brought on few modifications within the GC. Carcassonne–Montpellier alternatively had seen the failure of Fausto Coppi and Briançon–Aix-les-Bains had performed for Louison Bobet. “It might be enjoyable,” Baker d’Isy urged, “to carry a referendum among the many riders and the followers to search out out which is the actual queen stage of the Tour.”

The identical query may profitably be requested at this time. Mountains are nonetheless a vital a part of the Tour, however goals get dashed in echelons simply as simply as they do on summits. There are not any straightforward days (apart from the rolling relaxation days when a truce is asserted). In Netflix’s Experience to Survive sequence (Tour de France : Au cœur du peloton / Tour de France: Unchained) Thibaut Pinot, when requested what’s the Tour’s hardest stage, replied ‘all of them’.

Queen of the Savages

Why is it the queen stage, why is it l’étape reine? One widespread – fairly widespread, even – reply is that it’s right down to grammar. Étape is a female noun and subsequently, in French, takes solely female modifiers. It may possibly’t be l’étape roi, it must be létape reine.

Whereas pedantically on level, that clarification is greater than slightly deceptive, suggesting because it does that it needs to be king stage however the grammar pedants received’t enable that. Which may work if we have been coping with English, the place king has develop into linked with measurement and means large (see: mattresses). However whereas king measurement has been round because the 1820s – it was first utilized in the world of artwork, to indicate a measurement of canvas – it wasn’t actually till the Nineteen Forties that the world of promoting, within the US, picked up on it and started making use of it to every thing from cigarettes to vehicles, sweets to delicate drinks. That’s 20 years after l’étape reine’s look in L’Auto in 1920.

The Centre Nationwide de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales affords as one definition of reine ‘that which dominates, prevails over others inside a bunch, by its personal qualities.’ Which is kind of completely different to the English utilization of king measurement. Add in connotations of magnificence and majesty and, maybe, you possibly can justify Desgrange pondering of a mountain stage in such phrases.

However he was additionally maybe pondering of one other, related phrase: l’épreuve reine, the queen occasion. That is used throughout a spread of sports activities, from horse racing to crusing, motor racing to snowboarding. Immediately, the French use it as shorthand for the 100 metres within the Olympics, an occasion which in English is often thought of the Blue Riband occasion. L’Épreuve reine had been used earlier than l’étape reine and, when each phrases discovered champions within the Nineteen Twenties, its utilization took off sooner, partly right down to it having extra makes use of. The Tour de France was itself l’épreuve reine within the biking calendar.

Gallicagram / fmk

God Save the Queen

When the French use l’étape reine, they imply l’étape reine, not l’étape roi. However ought to we translate that as queen stage in English? Ought to we’ve adopted the straightforward, literal translation or ought to we’ve discovered a phrase that truly means one thing, as has been performed with the 100 metres within the Olympics? In different international locations l’étape reine has develop into the king stage, comparable to Slovenia and Germany. However not in English. Or, for that matter, Dutch.

In Italy they don’t even hassle going with royalty, the Giro’s queen stage is the tappone, the massive tappa (stage). Which, for some motive, at all times jogs my memory of ‘Rapper’s Delight’ or one thing like that and I think about the Sugar Hill Gang rapping “Tappa, tappa, tappa, tappone, if you wish to get on you then obtained to get goin’”, as if operating by the Giro’s itinerary and providing recommendation to would-be champions. Queen stage simply doesn’t set any music stepping into my thoughts.

Absolutely we may have performed higher?

The Queen of Hearts

We all know when l’étape reine first appeared within the data obtainable to us at this time. We will see the way it was used over the following three many years. However with the data obtainable to us reducing off within the early Fifties, we can not say for sure the way it was used after that.

Now we have proof of it persevering with for use sporadically in French biking books earlier than gaining wider utilization within the Nineteen Nineties and widespread utilization within the 2000s. Ask individuals who have been in and across the Tour 20 or 30 years in the past and the reply is usually the identical, it’s not one thing they bear in mind getting used, it’s one thing they’ve solely seen getting used lately.

Even with out the identical stage of proof we’ve obtainable for the primary half of the 20th century, it’s clear that at this time’s widespread utilization of l’étape reine solely took off lately.

Gallicagram / fmk

Google / fmk

Varied causes could be supplied for why this is perhaps so. None of those could be mentioned categorically to be why the utilization of l’étape reine took off, however they’re doable elements that needs to be taken into consideration when contemplating what has occurred right here.

First, there’s l’Étape du Tour, which typically follows the route of the queen stage. It could be that individuals driving l’Étape, and folks selling l’Étape (ASO), like marking that stage of the Tour out from the herd.

Then there’s the age of the Tour: the race celebrated its centenary in 2003 and that led to new ‘historians’ studying outdated books and writing histories of the race that combined up issues historic and trendy. A number of nonsense obtained popularised on the again of that centenary.

There’s additionally the rise within the Tour’s reputation, a complete new viewers coming to the race off the again of latest heroes within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s: Danes with Riis, Germans with Ullrich and, in fact, Individuals with Armstrong.

After which there’s the web. Earlier than, a reference to the Tour having a queen stage in, say, L’Indépendant des Basses-Pyrénées or Le Patriote des Pyrénées, that had a small, native viewers. When the web got here alongside, a reference in a paper like that could possibly be picked up and unfold all through the nascent on-line biking neighborhood, the place it may then unfold into offline publications.

The Purple Queen

These are channels by which l’étape reine could have been championed for a contemporary viewers. However, to attain the widespread take-up it has achieved, one thing else is required. And that’s our need to imagine that biking’s previous continues to be alive in its current, that biking at this time and biking then are unified.

Bikes are lighter and sooner, riders are higher ready, the roads are higher surfaced, however at coronary heart the Tour at this time and the Tour yesterday are one and the identical. We’re hooked up to the legends of the géants de la route as a result of they assist us to bind the previous to the current, we’re hooked up to the Tour’s historical past as a result of that helps us to bind the current to the previous.

However in binding the current to the previous we do generally tend to misrepresent biking’s historical past. We wish to imagine that the Circle of Loss of life has historic heritage despite the fact that it’s a trendy misunderstanding. We wish to imagine that the massive 5 Classics have been celebrated as Monuments lengthy earlier than we began advertising them that means lately. And we wish to imagine that the queen stage has lengthy been part of the Tour’s lexicon, despite the fact that it took greater than 80 years for it to be actually adopted by greater than a small handful of writers.

L’Étape reine, it’s a part of biking’s previous, a really small half. However in the way in which we at this time use it, and different historic coinages just like the Circle of Loss of life, we’ve gone past imitating the previous. We aren’t simply utilizing the previous to form the current, we reshape the previous itself.

In biking historical past, we rewrite the previous to mimic the current.

Dario Belingheri / Getty