Imagine a cycling and music festival. Think of Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Paul Seixas, Jonathan Milan and Jonas Vingegaard and others coming to party and race in an event organised by DJ David Guetta and this attracts tens of thousands of people for the weekend? Something like this happened before.
KM99 KM69 and the race passes through Chaumeil, population 164. The Tour de France visited in 1987, and for a stage finish, a huge event for such a small place. Only Chaumeil had seem bigger.
For years it hosted the king of post-Tour criteriums: the Bol d’Or des Monédières, “the Golden Bowl of the Monédières”, named the local range of mountains.
First launched in 1952 it grew into a big deal. It was organised by Jean Ségurel, a son of Chaumeil and famous as an accordion player, his records sold big. If this sounds bucolic, it probably was. Only it was raucous too as the event would regularly attract the world’s best riders and vast crowds.
Chaumeil is a village far from anywhere with few transport links, yet the Bol d’Or reportedly drew 50,000 spectators for a weekend of sport with a circuit race, a criterium, a derny race and more, then dancing in the evening.
Raymond Poulidor, who could ride to the start from his home, finished 5th here in 1959 while in his last season as an amateur, taking on the pros and proving he could match them. The race’s start list over the years had all the giants, from Coppi to Merckx to Hinault and everyone in between. It ran for 50 years but latter editions had fizzled out becoming just another post-Tour crit.
In 1985 then mayor of Paris mayor – and future French president – Jacques Chirac and his wife Bernadette, locals from the region, rode in the lead car at the Bol d’Or with Ségurel They wondered if the Tour could visit to show off the scenery? Ségurel replied yes, but that it would cost money and required the approval of then organiser Jacques Goddet. It turned out that Mrs Chirac was a childhood friend of Goddet’s wife and the money was easily found. So the Tour visited two years later.
No exhibition event could draw the same crowds today but it’s not all entombed in the past. The Tour itself brings a festive crowd and some places, particularly in the mountains, can have booming music, BBQs and a party atmosphere, although this is more organic than organised. The Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix can do this too.
Another perpetuation is through audio cliché. Perhaps it’s the intro to a podcast, the audio for an Instagram reel or the theme tune for a nightly TV highlights show, plenty of Tour coverage produced outside of France still uses accordion music, a tribute to Ségurel, Yvette Horner and the past rather than any contemporary or 21st century French music . There could be a little bit of 1950’s Chaumeil on your phone.