Antoine Blondin sur les routes du Tour de France

One of the most famous stories about Antoine Blondin on this Tour? Surely this one: the editorial staff of Blondin’s newspaper, L’Équipe, stayed at the race management’s hotel and shared the same meals. The menu never varied. Starters, fish, meat, cheese and dessert. That year, the meat course was invariably partridge. On the fifth day, Blondin turned to Jacques Goddet, the head of the Tour, and said: “If the partridge is going to follow us all the way to Paris, we might as well give it a race number.” In fact, Claudy Levitan, daughter of Félix Levitan — Goddet’s deputy and, in his first year, director of the Société du Tour de France — had mistakenly sent the same menu to every hotelier on the Tour!

The 1962 Tour de France set off from the majestic place Stanislas in Nancy amid an unusual backdrop: “The national flags fluttering everywhere seemed out of place amid this clash of noodles and spirits, good plonk and household appliances, aperitifs and coffee machines.”

Indeed, in the great novelty of that year’s race, the organizers chose to abandon national teams in favor of a formula based on trade teams.