EYEWITNESS: ÉTOILE DE BESSÈGES
Despite having flirted with extinction two years ago and lost its organiser of 50 years over the winter, the Étoile de Bessèges not only survived but enjoyed its best edition ever. Procycling was there to watch the race reborn
After years of struggle, the early-season French race saw its most successful and competitive edition ever
Bessèges is a town that would hardly stand out at all if it weren’t for the bike race it hosts in February every year. Sat on the banks of the River Cèze in the foothills of the rugged and notoriously stormy Cévennes mountain range on the southeast flank of the Massif Central, it has the air of a little Liège. Like the Walloon city, also the host of an eponymous bike race, it was once an important industrial centre, but the loss of that heritage has scarred it visibly, eroding its vitality.
The crumbling skeletons of huge factories and warehouses remain as testament to that industrial dynamism, which saw the town’s population grow fivefold during the 19th century to reach more than 11,000. It has steadily dwindled over the subsequent century or so, the outward flow exacerbated by the closure of its coal mine in 1964 and its steel works, the last of which shut down in 1996. Despite the municipality’s recent expansion, which resulted in the absorption of surrounding villages, Bessèges is now home to fewer than 3,000 people. Wood mills and tourism are the employment mainstays, although after an afternoon wandering its streets in between the start of the third stage of the Étoile de Bessèges on one bank of the Cèze and the finish on the other, it’s hard to imagine what its attraction to tourists might be.
The Étoile has helped keep the town on the map. The race was founded in 1971 by Roland Fangille, who came to Gard from the Moselle region in France’s north-east in the 1960s to establish a carpentry business. A good amateur racer and president of the local cycling club, the Union Cycliste Bességeoise, Fangille chose a February date for the new event in order to attract the many pros who began their yearly campaigns at training camps and a well-established run of races held across the south of France.
Just two dozen riders signed on for the inaugural edition of what was initially known as the Grand Prix de Bessèges, most of them seasoned performers such as Barry Hoban, who placed third, Cyrille Guimard and Jean-Luc Molinéris, the first winner. The most significant attendee, though, was Raymond Poulidor, with whom Fangille established what would be a lifelong friendship. He always insisted that Poulidor was the race’s saviour. “There were only about 20 riders on the start line, but Raymond had promised me he would be there and it was down to his presence that the race made a big impact in the media. I don’t know if the race would have survived without him,” Fangille told L’Équipe, prior to the 50th edition of the race in 2020.
Over the first half-century of its existence, the fortunes of Fangille’s race mirrored those of Bessèges itself over the last 200 years. From that fledgling edition, the race’s stature and popularity grew steadily. Expanded to five consecutive one-day races and renamed the Étoile in 1974, its winners that year included Guimard and Joop Zoetemelk. Five years on, it switched from being a one-day series where the ‘overall’ prize was decided on points to becoming a stage race, sometimes three days long but usually four, and almost always attracting a strong field. Dutch classics legend Jan Raas won it in 1981, Eddy Planckaert emulated his brother Willy, winner in 1977, by taking the title in 1984, when Tour de France champion Laurent Fignon, Brits Paul Sherwen and Robert Millar and Australia’s Allan Peiper also featured, the latter winning a stage.
The relatively flat stages and comparative shortness of any time trial made it a particular favourite among sprinters. Etienne De Wilde, Ján Svorada, Jean-Paul van Poppel, Robbie McEwen and Jo Planckaert, son of Willy, all claimed the GC, the latter doing so twice, his success resulting in it being dubbed the ‘Étoile de Planckaert’.
Yet from those heights the race slowly declined in status, like many in Europe affected by the sport’s drive towards mondialisation, its attractiveness undermined by the emergence of warm-weather races in Australia and the Middle East. By 2010, Astana, Sky and the Cervélo Test Team were the only major names that featured beyond the ever-presents from France and Belgium. By 2018, there were no big international teams from the rest of the world left, and French outfits Groupama-FDJ and Ag2r La Mondiale were the only two WorldTour teams on the start line.
The situation worsened when, the following year, the municipality of Laudun withdrew the €36,000 backing it provided to the organisation for one of the stages. For a short period in the wake of that, it seemed that the race might follow the coal mines and steel works by disappearing from Bessèges altogether. Fangille admitted that it was not only difficult to find replacement sponsors but even to persuade his other backers not to pull their
“There were moments when we thought that it might not happen. We didn’t know what President Macron might announce"
Claudine Allègre- Fangille
support. Ultimately, though, a new, Poulidor-like saviour emerged in the shape of L’ÉquipeTV, ASO’s sports channel, which committed to live broadcasts of the race for a second year in a row, a move that, in turn, convinced the local government and tourism organisations in the Gard to remain on board.
Run over four stages in 2019 but restored to five last year for the 50th edition, when no fewer than seven WorldTour teams competed and the GC was won by Benoît Cosnefroy, Bessèges appeared to have stepped away from the brink until the coronavirus pandemic again put its future in doubt. In November 2020, 82-year-old Roland Fangille was hospitalised after contracting covid19. As his health deteriorated, he called his daughter, Claudine Allègre-Fangille, and asked her to express his gratitude to everyone who worked on the race. His final wish before his death that month was that the race not go ahead.
“He was afraid that, due to the health situation, the race wouldn’t take place in the normal fashion. He would have preferred to cancel the race rather than ask the volunteers to return home right after the stages, to be forced to sacrifice those traditional moments of conviviality each evening in the race HQ, of not being able to enjoy those moments that he relished so much,” she told L’Équipe. “Together with the organising committee, we still tried to persuade him to organise the race. But then he was taken into hospital. I decided that we had to respect his decision and I had resigned myself to the fact that the Étoile de Bessèges wouldn’t take place this year. I didn’t want to go on without him,” added 47-yearold Allègre-Fangille, whose life has always centred around the race.
Yet, her children encouraged her to take over as race organiser and for it to continue in memory of their grandfather. Persuaded by them, Allègre-Fangille spent the next two months overseeing plans for a race that was not guaranteed to go ahead. As the Tour Down Under, Vuelta a San Juan, Volta ao Algarve and more were either cancelled or postponed as a result of the coronavirus, the same threat also hung over France’s early-season events. Ultimately, though, the French government opted against imposing a third confinement, and just days before the race was due to start, the Bessèges organisers received authorisation from the Gard prefecture for it to go ahead.
The peloton of the 2021 edition featured riders who had won every major race on the calendar. It included three Tour de France victors and three world champions
“There were moments when we thought that it might not happen. We didn’t know what President Macron might announce last week. We got an email in our inbox a week before the start date saying that it was likely that the president would announce a new lockdown and that the race wouldn’t be able to take place, but that didn’t happen. But we were uncertain about what might happen right to the last moment,” Allègre-Fangille told Procycling prior to the start of the second stage in Saint-Génies-de-Malgoirès.
Over that same period, she was also receiving requests from teams wanting to race. After checking that the parking areas at all starts and finishes were large enough to accommodate two additional teams, Allègre-Fangille was able to add Bora-Hansgrohe and Ineos Grenadiers to the 20-team startlist, while applications from Astana, Movistar, UAE Emirates and Deceuninck-Quick Step, which had all come later, had to be turned down. When it became clear that the race would be going ahead and that the field would be stellar, requests from TV companies around the world for broadcast rights also began to appear in her inbox. As a consequence of taking on overall responsibility for television production of the event, this provided the organisation with a significant financial boon and the race with its biggest audience ever.
At the start of the opening stage in Bellegarde, just south of the Gardois administrative centre of Nîmes, a peloton of 21 teams gathered, a late positive test for covid forcing Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise into a last-moment withdrawal. That peloton featured riders who had won every major race on the calendar. It included three Tour de France victors and three world champions. In the end, the 2021 edition had one of the race’s deepest ever fields. “I think my father would be proud of what we’ve achieved this year. He loved the riders and this race was his life. I think if he could be here he’d be so impressed with the teams and riders we’ve got, it’s turned out to be a great homage,” said Allègre-Fangille.
The five days of racing that followed also provided a fitting tribute. They began with Christophe Laporte outstomping Nacer Bouhanni up the finishing ramp on day one in Bellegarde, then Bingoal-Wallonie’s Timothy Dupont getting the better of the WorldTeam sprinters in La Calmette. Stages 3 and 4 offered a reprise of the no-holds-barred action that characterised last year’s covidcompressed season, both of them also highlighting Ineos Grenadiers’ commitment to a new racing style. Rather than controlling the race for four days with the aim of serving the GC up on a plate for Filippo Ganna to seize in the time trial, the British team gave their riders the chance to be proactive and to race. This resulted in the wholly unexpected but thrilling sight of Michał Kwiatkowski and Egan Bernal duking it out with Lotto Soudal’s Tim Wellens, Philippe Gilbert and Stefano Oldani on stage 3, where Wellens prevailed in an attack from the break. Ganna struck back for Ineos the next day with an astonishing display of power riding. Just 30 seconds up on the bunch with 20km to the line, the Italian crossed it with 17 in hand, and had just enough vim left to win the raceconcluding time trial in Alès, while Wellens defended the GC lead.
As Claudine Allègre-Fangille watched the Italian phenomenon receive his bouquet for his latest time trial victory and Wellens presented with the coral jersey as the race winner, she could reflect not only on a wonderful tribute to her father, but on the fact that the race he cherished for 50 years has a brighter future. In return for being allowed late entry this year, Ineos and Bora have both committed to return to the Étoile de Bessèges in 2022. The quality and intensity of the racing will likely encourage other elite squads to rediscover the event too, drawn as well by the revitalisation of France’s earlyseason races. Hopefully, fans will be able to return and perhaps there’ll be more of them, for this is a race that’s laid back and easy to follow in a region that’s well worth discovering. Happily, Roland Fangille’s vision lives on.