La vie bohemme??

Was checking the results of today’s running of Gent – Wevelgem to see how George Hincapie fared. As I scrolled down to the bottom I noticed something rather interesting in the Nations points listings: France is second to last for the season to date! They’re ranked lower than such traditional cycling powerhouses as Estonia (14th), Norway (7th), and Kazakhstan (13). I scrolled back up to the G-W results and sure enough in the top 30 there were only two Frenchmen. In the ProTour standings the highest ranked Frenchman is Sylvain Chavanal way down in 46th place. These are just the latest embarrassments in the 2 decade decline in French cycling that began with the retirement of Bernard Hinault.

It’s easy to point the finger at outside causes such as the demise of the Soviet Union and subsequent lifting of the Iron Curtain that as allowed a steady stream of Eastern European riders into the professional peloton. The French would like to pretend it’s all the cause of foreign teams who rely on doping to win – never mind the whole Cofidis and Festina scandals which both involved numerous high profile French riders.

In reality, I suspect the cause is more a malaise on the domestic front. I recently read an article in The Economist that cited a pole in which three quarters of French youth aspired to be civil servants! Can you imagine what would happen in the USA if the majority of our young people aspired to be postmen, DMV workers, or employed by the Social Security Administration? Don’t get me wrong, civil servants fill much needed roles in our society but it’s not exactly the sort of work that taxes ones ambitions. When the youth of a nation have become so risk-averse is it really any great surprise that they can’t turn out world class athletes? The drive and ambition required to be a contender in the Tour de France are completely at odds with quest for cradle–to–grave job security currently being demanded by French youth. The troubling news is that the French youth are protesting to keep this system in place ensuring future generations will be able to earn a comfortable living through minimal effort and without risk.

All of this is quite sad both for the youth of France and for cycling fans around the world. It is unlikely that we will see anytime in the next decade another rider with the aggression of Bernard Hinault or the style of Laurent Fignon. There’s something sad when a country that helped make a sport great struggles to compete in it. We Americans recently witnessed this in the World Baseball Classic in which the final two teams were Cuba and Japan and also in the last Summer Olympics when the US baseball squad didn’t even qualify. As happy as I am to see so many Americans riding at the front of the peloton I’m also a little sad to see so many Frenchman dropping off the back.