Route of a legend of the Tour de France

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the report above. Click on the video to watch it in full.

There is hardly only its reputation which has the right to precede it. Bernard Hinault is a champion. As often, it is a story of character. His has always been well soaked. The champion is not the type to drag on. But at 70, he is still riding, for the purposes of an association and to the delight of his companions. “It is a living legend of the bicycle. Frankly, it is quite impressive. Besides, we dare not speak too much, in fact, because he scares us too much”admits Dorian Louvet, sports coach, in the saddle alongside the Tour star.

Like every year, he never misses his appointment with July France. “We made a nice little game, it was 33 km. Throughout the road it was 'Go Bernard, go Bernard!' I can't go faster than I could”tells us Bernard Hinault. The runner entered the life of the French by leaving the road, one day in June 1977. At that time, he has not yet won the Tour, but he won the hearts of the public.

Combative, not to say fighter, Breton is gaining in the blood, and sometimes hot blood. This is evidenced by his scenic punch to a protester who bars the road to a Paris-Nice stage. When you look for it, you find it: Hinault leaves its burrow to bite like a badger, a big word, a nickname that sticks to him in the jersey. Hinault won everywhere, he drove, French champion, world champion, and especially Quintuple, winner of the Tour between 1978 and 1985.

Like Alain Prost or Yannick Noah, he has embodied for a certain nostalgia, and has been blowing every year on the candles of his last victory. With a question as a poisoned gift: who to succeed him? “Every day, I am asked the question: when he will have it? I don't know. Maybe he was born, maybe he was not born, we don't know”he replies.

Forty years later, bicycle France is frozen in the past. “It's my youth, here it is. Since a very young age, I have been the Tour de France with my father. But hey, in particular, Bernard Hinault, there, it's my idol”comments a spectator. Friday, the Tour will pass where he was born, in Yffiniac, in the Côtes-d'Armor.