After 33 years of interruption, the new Tour de France Women started on Sunday.
If we still don't know what the popular enthusiasm for this event will be, the fact that 144 women cyclists compete on the hexagonal asphalt is not shocking – fortunately!
- nobody.
Unfortunately, this has not always been the case!
The primary machismo of the 1980s and 1990s
In 1987, super champion Jeannie Longo – she won 34 national titles, 10 world champion titles and an Olympic title between 1978 and 2021 – was indeed “assaulted” by cyclist Marc Madiot.
“Seeing a woman on a bicycle is ugly,” he protested.
Before showing the most primitive machismo by asserting that “cycling is an extremely difficult sport and I love women too much to see them suffer”.
The late Laurent Fignon, double winner of the Tour de France, had himself declared the previous year that cycling was “not an aesthetic, feminine sport;
I am not interested in seeing women riding bicycles”.
What the most titled of the French female cyclists had the good sense to answer: “I also find that when you do 300 kilometers and that for 100 terminals, nothing happens, it's not interesting!
»
Discover their exchanges (now revolting) in this video from our partner Brut.
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Video
Raw
Cycling
Bike
Tour de France 2022
Male chauvinism
Jeannie Longo
Misogyny