Icons of cycling: Tour de l’avenir
For more than 50 years the ‘tour of the future’ has been a testing ground for the stars of tomorrow
In the hours before stage eight of the 1961 Tour de France started a peloton of 128 riders assembled in Saint-etienne for the opening stage of a new race. Open to amateurs, the Tour de l’avenir would use many of the same roads as the Tour, crossing the same finish line a few hours ahead of the main event. Jean-claude Lebaube broke away on the return to Saint-etienne to win that first stage. Two weeks later Italy’s Guido de Rosso entered Paris as the first overall winner.
In stark contrast to the Tour, which had descended into an uninspiring procession for Jacques Anquetil that provoked jeers and boos from roadside spectators, the Tour de l’avenir had been a triumph, competitive and full of action. Fifty thousand fans crowded into the Parc des Princes hours before Anquetil was due so that they could applaud De Rosso, who reportedly completed 11 laps of honour.
Shadowing the Tour
The race was the idea of Jacques Marchand who had joined L’equipe in 1955 to head their cycling coverage. Marchand wanted a race that would put the best of the amateur Eastern bloc riders against the top amateurs of Western Europe. But there were other motivations. For years L’equipe had been resisting pressure for the Tour to move from national teams to trade teams but the writing was on the wall. Organising a new race open to amateurs riding in national teams that shadowed the final two weeks of the Tour over shortened stages was a way of preserving some sort of national team identity with their race.
It quickly gained a reputation as a proving ground for future stars. In 1964 Felice Gimondi added his name to the list of winners and just 12 months later he was wearing yellow in Paris again, this time as the winner of the Tour de France. Not that you needed to land on the final podium for the race to have a significant impact on your career. Barry Hoban finished 16th in 1963 but caught the eye of a journalist who told Antonin Magne about the Briton. A few phone calls later and Hoban had signed his first professional contract for Magne’s Mercier team.
The race lost its identity in the 1980s when it was opened to fully fledged professional riders and for a few years changed its name to the Tour de la Communauté Européenne. That’s why Laurent Fignon appears on the official list of winners four years after he’d won his second Tour de France.
Today the race has regained its position as an indicator of future Grand Tour talent with Nairo Quintana, Esteban Chaves and Adam Yates all appearing on the Tour de l’avenir’s podium in recent years.