Cycling Tour de FranceThe desperate battle to uphold French honour on the fête national has become a standing joke among neutral observers in recent Tours, as the home men have rarely seemed able to cope with the pressure on Bastille Day.
This Tour has, however, smiled on the French, and yesterday the cockles of the national heart were not so much warmed as roasted. Thomas Voeckler defended his yellow jersey with panache and Richard Virenque staged a carbon copy of his long-distance stage win last year in Morzine to take a serious option on the best-climber award.
In truth, Virenque has no need of the French national day to motivate him. "For me, every day on the Tour is July 14th," he said. "There are always huge crowds, extraordinary public fervour, and today the sun arrived, something we have lacked since the start."
He bounced out of the peloton with some 15 miles ridden, head bobbing in a style reminiscent of a child's nodding dog. According to his breakaway partner, Axel Merckx, however, Virenque was so motivated that he broke their gentlemen's agreement that they would stay together, with the Frenchman taking the mountain points and Merckx retaining a chance of the stage win.
"He did not keep his word," said the Belgian. "I respect what he has done, but I have less respect for him as a person."
France will no doubt forgive its favourite son, as it has before. It is 12 years since Virenque first made his mark on the Tour, taking the yellow, green and polka-dot jerseys in Pau after a similar long-distance escape, and 10 since he captured French hearts by bursting into tears on taking his first stage win in Luz Ardiden.
But Virenque then self-destructed in a different way, through banned drugs.
He has rebuilt himself pretty robustly but remains as sensible as before, and yesterday several million Frenchwomen's hearts must have gone all aflutter again as his face crumpled when he explained that the victory was dedicated to his late grandmother and to the Festina team's PR man, Joel Chabiron, who died on Monday.
Chabiron was one of Virenque's fellow accused at cycling's "trial of the century" in October 2000 after the police inquiry that came close to ending the 1998 Tour, and he was suffering with cancer even as he was charged with transporting EPO and growth hormone for the team.
If Virenque's starring role in the Tour de Farce and two years of defiant denial that he had used drugs cannot be ignored, his spirit has to be admired. Each year he returns to the Tour with the same aim, the mountains prize, and he has now taken seven mountain stage wins.
Other than elevating the Frenchman to fourth place, there was no eruption in the overall picture. It was noticeable, however, that Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich stayed close together on the Peyrol, and that the Texan watched Voeckler like a hawk as he tried to sneak a time bonus on the finish line.
Yesterday's finish in this attractive medieval fortress town was all uphill. At finishes such as this riders are given their actual time over the line if the peloton splits in the final kilometre, and Armstrong's watchfulness proved worthwhile. Iban Mayo and Ullrich were close behind in the same time; Tyler Hamilton dropped seven seconds.
Virenque is now ideally placed to take a seventh mountains prize, one more than the record-holders Federico Bahamontes and Lucien van Impe. However, his awards between 1994 and 1997 were won when, as he admitted at the Festina trial, he was systematically using illegal substances. He would argue that doping was widespread at the time so he was competing on equal terms, but others might contend that those prizes should not be his and his name should have been erased from the records.
