What could Socrates have thought on a bicycle?
The question may seem incongruous.
However, this is the kind of questions that run through Guillaume Martin's head.
The cyclist, third at the end of the first week of the Tour de France, combines sporting performance and love of philosophy, from which he is a graduate.
His essay "Socrates by bike: the Tour de France des philosophes" (Grasset Edition) was reissued at the end of June 2020. The professional runner has fun imagining what the "vélosophes" - neologism designating the "bicycle philosophers" , Sartre, Aristote, Nietzsche, Pascal - would think while running the most prestigious of cycling competitions.
This philosophical fable aims to overcome the clichés making sport and thought two contradictory notions.
"You have to think as a man of action and act as a man of thought", as Guillaume Martin likes to point out, quoting Bergson.
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- Grasset and Fasquelle (@EditionsGrasset) July 18, 2019
You only have to see the results of the Cofidis rider to prove him right.
The 27-year-old Norman climber has been in a sparkling state of form since the resumption of the cycling season: currently third in the Tour de France, he also finished third in the Criterium du Dauphiné, the Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge and the Classique de l 'Ardèche.
Theater, aikido and family farm
Born in Paris, little Guillaume Martin spent his youth in Normandy.
Son of an actress and director and of a typographer who had converted to aikido teacher, he grew up in La Boderie, in the countryside.
His parents built their little utopia there, by restoring an old abbey transformed into a living space, theater, dojo, farm and typography museum.
The cyclist's first loves are logically theater and aikido.
Then, his father, a former amateur runner, took him for his first walks in the Normandy countryside.
Guillaume Martin finally took a license at the age of 13, in the Etoile cycliste club in Condé-sur-Noireau, at the gates of Normandy Switzerland.
If the local highest point, Mont Pinçon (348 meters) has nothing to do with the high peaks on which the Tour de France riders compete, Guillaume Martin made his debut as a climber.
He quickly integrated the sports-studies sector and obtained a literary baccalaureate one year in advance.
Then head for the hypokhâgne and the khâgne [preparatory classes for the entrance exam to the École normale supérieure] at the Chateaubriand high school in Rennes, before taking a master's degree in philosophy by correspondence at Nanterre, which he obtained in June 2015.
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At the same time, he never stopped racing among amateurs and he ended up joining the professional pelotons in 2016 ... Less known than Romain Bardet, less expected than Thibaut Pinot, more discreet than Julian Alaphilippe, Guillaume Martin achieved his firsts performances in relative anonymity, which he explains in part by the fact that he runs for Circus-Wanty Gobert, the Belgian second division team.
If the rider multiplies the top 10 in the races, he still lacks a prestigious victory in a great race to confirm his talent.
Reconcile sport and spirit
"The intellectuals do not even imagine the constraints of professional sport. For them, it is not serious. Likewise, in the peloton, few are interested in my course," he explains in Ouest-France.
"In my smallest measure, I try to fight the clichés. But I don't want to be a standard bearer either."
He discovered the Tour de France in 2017. Le Monde then asked him to write a weekly column in its columns.
The opportunity for the runner to take up his pen and discuss the “gargantuan banquets” of runners after a stage or even on the “life of an acrobat” of convicts on the road.
For his first time, he is ranked 23. A ranking that he continues to improve: 21st in 2018 and 12th in 2019.
At the same time, he wrote a play "Plato versus Platoche", which partly explores the sport and spirit dichotomy: the comic and fictionalized story of the great ancient philosopher Plato, torn between a life of intellectual speculation and his desire. action.
Staged by the runner's mother, the play is performed at the Boderie family theater but also at the Avignon festival.
Already, to obtain his master's degree in philosophy, Guillaume Martin had written and defended a thesis, which united his two passions, sport and Friedrich Nietzsche.
"Modern Sport: An Application of Nietzschean Philosophy."
The Norman is the slayer of Pierre de Coubertin, the father of Olympism and fair play to which he opposes the German philosopher: "The important thing for me is not to participate. That's what 'writes Nietzsche in' Thus Spoke Zarathustra ':' I do not advise you peace but victory. '
Basically, Nietzsche allowed me to think better about sport and sport allowed me to think better about Nietzsche. "
Guillaume Martin has two weeks left to reverse the trend in the Tour de France against Primoz Roglic and Egan Bernal.
And to prove, as a good apostle of Nietzsche, that only victory is beautiful.
7th in this 2nd Pyrenean stage, @GuilmMartin retains his 3rd place overall with bravery.
Our Norman climber has a very nice 1st part of # TDF2020 🤩
Tomorrow, it's time for a deserved rest day 😌 # CofidisMyTeam pic.twitter.com/cvXsuoUHn9
- Team Cofidis (@TeamCOFIDIS) September 6, 2020
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