Paris race celebrates waiters and waitresses
Usain Bolt’s sprint world records were never in danger.
Then again, even the world’s fastestever human likely wouldn’t have been so quick while balancing a tray with a croissant, a coffee cup and a glass of water through the streets of Paris, and without spilling it everywhere. France’s capital resurrected a 110-year-old race for its waiters and waitresses on Sunday. The dash through central Paris celebrated the dexterous and, yes, by their own admittance, sometimes famously moody men and women without whom France wouldn’t be France.
Why? Because they make France’s cafés and restaurants tick. Without them, where would the French gather to put the world to rights over drinks and food? Where would they quarrel and fall in (and out of) love? And where else could they simply sit and let their minds wander? They have penned songs and poems about their bistrots, so attached are they to their unpretentious watering holes that for generations have nourished their bodies and souls.
So drum roll, please, for Pauline Van Wymeersch and Samy Lamrous, Paris’ newly crowned fastest waitress and waiter and, as
such, ambassadors for an essential French profession. And one which has a big job ahead: Taking the food orders and quenching the thirsts of millions of visitors who will flock to the Paris Olympics this July.
The resurrection of the waitering race after a 13-year hiatus is part of Paris’ efforts to bask in the Olympic spotlight and put its best foot
forward for its first Summer Games in 100 years.
The first waiters’ race was run in 1914. This time, a couple of hundred waiters and waitresses dressed up in their uniforms — with the finest sporting bow ties — and loaded up their trays with the regulation pastry, small, but empty coffee cup and full glass of water for the two-kilometre (1 1/4-mile) loop, starting and finishing at City Hall.
Van Wymeersch, the runaway winner in the women’s category in 14 minutes, 12 seconds, started waitering at age 16, is now 34 and said she cannot envisage any other life for herself.
“I love it as much as I hate it. It’s in my skin. I cannot leave it,” she said of the profession. “It’s hard. It’s exhausting. It’s demanding. It’s 12 hours per day. It’s no weekends. It’s no Christmases.”
But “it’s part of my DNA. I grew up, in a way, with a tray in my hand,” she added. Van Wymeersch works at the Le Petit Pont café and restaurant facing Notre Dame cathedral.
Lamrous, who won the men’s race in a time of 13:30, waits at La Contrescarpe, in Paris’ 5th district. Their prizes were medals, two tickets each for the July 26 Olympic opening ceremony along the River Seine and a night out at a Paris hotel.
Paris’ Mayor Anne Hidalgo said cafés and restaurants are “really the soul of Paris”.
“The bistrot is where we go to meet people, where we go for our little coffee, our little drink, where we also go to argue, to love and embrace each other,” she said.