Tour de France 2023 – For the new arrival cities, quest and notoriety and spotlight

Of course, there was Bordeaux for the 81st time, Pau for the 74th, Bayonne for the 33rd and Morzine for the 22nd, without counting Paris. But also places that the Tour de France had never visited: after Bilbao and Amorebieta-Etxano, there was Nogaro (Gers), Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne (Ain), Belleville-en-Beaujolais (Rhône), Moulins (yet prefecture of the Loire), as well as Combloux, Passy and Les Gets (Haute-Savoie), to which we can add Vulcania, dear to the late President Giscard d’Estaing. Friday and Saturday, Poligny (Jura), and Le Markstein, climbed in 2022 by the Women’s Tour, will conclude the gallery of new arrivals.

Sometimes a first is enough to enter the legend of the Tour. The strongest example is undoubtedly that of Orcières-Merlette, in the Hautes-Alpes. A little-known winter sports resort, it suddenly joined the big leagues on July 9, 1971. Think about it: Luis Ocana defeats the cannibal, Eddy Merckx, beating him by eight minutes. Merckx, of which this is the first failure, comments: “Ocana subdued us like El Cordobes in the arena subdues his bulls.” In The TeamJacques Goddet is definitive: “Things will never be the same again.“

This turn of events, which propelled Orcières-Merlette into the history of the Tour, was to be followed by two others: after the rest day, on the road to Marseille, Merckx and his teammates attacked and the Belgian resumed two minutes at Ocana. The breakaways drive so fast towards Marseille that the mayor, Gaston Defferre, arrives late on the finish line! But, on July 12, in the storm, Ocana fell in the descent of the Col de Menté and had to give up. Eddy Merckx wins his third Tour de France and tourists will flock to Orcières-Merlette the following winter.

Another example: the Futuroscope. The first time the Tour put its suitcases there, in 1986, the “baby” of René Monory, elected from the department of Vienne and president of the Senate, had barely come out of the ground. It will only open a year later. There are only cranes, construction sites and works everywhere. José Angel Sarrapio wins the stage and, in all the countries of the world, the future amusement park offers much better than an advertising campaign.

In 1990, it is the Holy Grail with the big departure. Three stages take place there: a prologue won by Thierry Marie, a stage in line and a team time trial where Panasonic imposes itself. It’s even a historic stage that takes place this Sunday July 1 in the morning over 138 kilometers. From the start, four escapees: Frans Maassen, Steve Bauer, Ronan Pensec and Claudio Chiappucci. They drive so fast that we hear Bernard Hinault, in a management car, yelling Caravan ahead, faster, faster !” We turn around, the four are almost on the bumper. The peloton will not see them again.

On the road, disgruntled farmers throw sheepskins at the following cars (the next day, in pouring rain, the race will even be diverted to avoid demonstrations). The breakaway will allow Maassen to win the stage and the three others to wear the yellow jersey: Steve Bauer then Ronan Pensec and finally Claudio Chiappucci, in yellow until the day before the finish, finally beaten in the time trial at Lac de Vassivière by Greg LeMond. The Tour will return to Futuroscope in 1994, 1999 and in 2000 for the big start. Lance Armstrong will win two stages but hush, we must not say.

Other places have skilfully used the Tour to promote themselves: Puy-du-Fou with two big starts and a stage finish; Lac de Madine, which was less fortunate with a time trial in 1993 contested in freezing rain and won by Miguel Indurain once again slaying the race; or Lake Vassivière, with three time trials.

And then there were the Merlin-Plage years, with two stage finishes in 1972 and 1975 and a big start in 1976 on this Vendée coast where a thousand homes had just been built. The entrepreneur Guy Merlin, inventor of leisure tourism with more or less elegant constructions on the coast, had found quite a sounding board for his low-cost apartments. One finish, four finishes and five starts, including a prologue won in 1976 by Freddy Maertens against the clock. The “Merlin-Plage circuits” took place on the territory of the municipalities of Saint-Jean-de-Monts and Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, but we sometimes forgot to mention them, which infuriated the mayors. But it didn’t cost them anything either, the Merlin company taking care of everything…

Accused of disfiguring France with what some called its “rabbit cages”, Guy Merlin was generous with the runners, offering 100,000 francs at the time (about 76,000 euros)… and a villa, notably to Bernard Thévenet. The winner of the 1975 Tour has often said that he never went to get the keys…