Racing for the Hell of It (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine July 2002

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Racing for the Hell of It (Cont.)


	At the finish line of stage 3 in Koudougou(Roger Lemoyne)

AFRICAN CYCLING IS A LITTLE like Australian ice hockey. Few people know it exists, and nobody expects very much from it. But just as the Brits brought cricket to India and the Caribbean, so the French introduced cyclisme to their African colonies. Liberation was just over the horizon when, in 1959, the French staged an exhibition race in Ouagadougou, the dusty, sweltering capital of a colony that was then called Upper Volta.

That race, a short criterium (multilap event) featuring top European riders, went down in cycling history, but only because of its aftermath. The second-place finisher—the

Burkina Faso's love of bike racing originated in the harsh days of French colonialism-now the race is kept alive with cash infusions from the Société Du Tour De France

great Italian Fausto Coppi, a two-time Tour de France champion and the dominant rider of his era—went on a hunting safari after the race and fell ill. His doctors back home thought he had contracted influenza, but it was really malaria, and it proved fatal. Coppi died in January 1960, just 40 years old.

The seed of cycling had been planted, and the Ouagadougou race became an annual event that eventually grew into the Tour du Faso, under the stewardship of the late Thomas Sankara, a charismatic military officer who seized power in "La Revolution" of 1983. Sankara instituted a wave of reforms, and renamed the new country Burkina Faso (a phrase meaning "Land of the Incorruptible" in the two major native languages, Moré and Dioula). In 1987, he started the Tour du Faso, inviting a Soviet junior team to compete. Soon afterward, he was ousted, executed, and dumped in a pauper's grave by his longtime friend and fellow revolutionary, Blaise Campaoré.

As of last August, it looked like the Tour du Faso might also come to grief. Burkina Faso's national cycling federation had run out of money. There were no funds to sponsor races, to buy new bikes, or even to stage a national championship. But in late summer, the French—motivated largely by lingering affection for the event—came to the rescue.

"I wanted to be involved in that African race, because I'd seen it and I knew how amazing and human it was," says Jean-Marie Leblanc, 58, the director general of the Tour de France and a guest of honor at the 2000 Tour du Faso. But the fuzzy feelings were severely challenged when Société staffers went to Ouagadougou in August and found that their money had mysteriously evaporated. This, with the Tour scheduled to start in just two months.

At least the course was set. Burkina Faso has only a few paved highways, all radiating from the capital like spokes. By necessity, a 1,302-kilometer stage event has to use most of the nation's rather bumpy pavement, so the tour traditionally starts in Banfora, a small market town in the southwest, near the Ivory Coast border, and makes its way toward Ouagadougou, smack in the center of the Colorado-size country. From there it traces a series of out-and-back journeys, traveling deep into the bush one day, returning the next.

A few weeks and a few hundred grand of the Société's funds later, all the other logistical problems were solved. The teams had been invited, the international press had been alerted, and a French-owned catering company had been hired to serve meals, complete with tiny wedges of Camembert. The Tour du Faso was ready to roll.

Or so it seemed. A few days before the scheduled October 31 start, the whole thing almost fell apart again. An Air Afrique strike stranded half the riders in various airports around Europe and North Africa. As participants straggled in, bleary-eyed and jetlagged, the Syrians and the Egyptians wound up canceling, as did the Togolese.

And then there was the problem with the cars, which the Burkina Faso Ministry of Sports and Youth was supposed to provide. Actually, the cars were fine—a fleet of gleaming-white Renault taxis that were to serve as team vehicles, plus another squadron of minivans from National Car Rental. Two days before the start, race officials ordered the cars and the chauffeurs to assemble at the Stadium of August Fourth, a state-built concrete monstrosity on the outskirts of town. There, in its moldy bowels, the French were informed by representatives of the Ministry of Sports and Youth that the price for the vehicles was going to be substantially higher than previously agreed. Or else there would be no Tour du Faso.

It was not a happy meeting. In the end, the Société ponied up, the Tour went on as planned, and the French shrugged their shoulders and muttered, "C'est l'Afrique."

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