It’s Sunday and time to continue the Waffles & Steel weekly series that deconstructs the great cycling documentary “A Sunday in Hell.” The 1976 edition of the Paris-Roubaix classic is well under way. A protest delayed the start briefly and there has already been a crash. One of the riders caught up in the carnage is one of our favorites: Bernard Thevenet. We see him weaving through the team cars as he works his way back to the peloton. The narrator says, “It’s Bernarad Thevenet once more, still France’s greatest hero after his triumph in the 1975 Tour de France. He doesn’t have much of a chance in Paris-Roubaix because he’s not good enough on le Pave.”
Today’s segment got me thinking about how there’s something for everybody in “A Sunday in Hell.” It’s a great “Bike racing for dummies” movie, and at the same time there’s much for cycling geeks to chew on. The documentary explains the importance of the service cars, which zoom dangerously close to the riders. The guy driving Brooklyn’s team car holds a clinic in multitasking. He’s steering the vehicle, fishing out arm warmers to hand off to the racers and keeping an eye out for cyclists who are stripping off their long-sleeve jerseys and handing them off to him.
“Each team has its own service car,” the narrator says. “The rider who has a mechanical difficulty or for some reason wants to contact his team director calls the car by raising his arm. The car is immediately summoned by radio. The 15 service cars are placed in a definite order, for which they’ve drawn lots. Of course, it’s an advantage to be as far forward as possible because you reach your rider faster.”
Then there’s a wonderful scene that says so much about our beautiful sport. The narrator doesn’t comment as the movie kicks into “show, don’t tell” mode. A rider in a red (I can’t make out the team’s name) holding a jersey he wants to get rid off gets isolated. He’s looking around for his team car but it’s not around, and he seems to be on the verge of panic. But then the service car for the rival Gan-Mercier team cruises up behind him and the driver sticks out his arm and motions to him to give him the jersey. The racer gives it to him, then starts mashing the pedals as he tries to rejoin the peloton.
Cycling can be a brutally cruel dog-eat-dog sport, and we’ll see this later in the film. But the sport also has an elaborate code that requires teams to help each other in various situations and not take advantage of certain misfortunes. If the rider in red had to carry a heavy wool jersey for a couple more kilometers, that would have been good for the Gan-Mercier team. But you just don’t do that.
Every Sunday, Waffles & Steel revisits the finest film ever made about cycling: “A Sunday in Hell.” I’ve been deconstructing the movie – almost frame by frame – and this week I’ll take a look at one of my favorite parts.
The riders have just started rolling, but the sounds of men chanting can be heard down the road. The narrator says, “But something is holding up the start, something unforeseen and probably something highly irregular. Something is blocking the road and delaying the departure, an obstacle that is not included in the race program. It’s a demonstration.”
(Let’s back up for a second. A labor protest is “highly irregular?” In France? Has the British narrator never been there before? )
Some of the riders are shown off their bikes, staring down the road at a large crowd of chanting workers tossing newspapers into the air.
The narrator explains, “They are demonstrating against one of the sponsors of the race, the newspaper Le Parisien Libere. They are protesting the redundancies of the operators of Linotype as the result of automation. It’s a longstanding labor conflict. The race organizers are not entirely unprepared.”
The camera shifts to a bunch of police carrying riot clubs and rifles, which looked scuffed-up, as if they’ve been dropped before by retreating troops preparing to surrender.
Eddy Merckx cranes his neck to survey the scene for a few seconds. Then he does a U-turn and rides to the Brooklyn team car to borrow a wrench. The narrator says, “But the delay can be used to adjust one’s saddle.” Eddy hits the back of the saddle a few times, then starts using the wrench to turn his seat post bolt. Did he finally get it right this time? Probably not.
As the demonstrators allow the riders to go by, they start sticking orange protest decals on the racers’ backs, and the narrator says, “A professional bike rider is of course a moving advertisement, so why not a little space for the workers? The riders are allowed through in single file, the chain gang run the gauntlet of epithets about the capitalists who organize the race. A political lecture for the road.”
The narrator adds, “But since the race is going to be run anyway, and it is, even the demonstrators have their favorites to cheer, such as the idolized Bernard Thevenet.”
A craggy-faced worker, who looks like a French gnome in a pointy white stocking cap, pats Thevenet’s back, waves to him as he rides on and gives him a vigorous thumbs-up sign.
I’ve always thought this scene would make a great Monty Python skit. After the riders go through, the protesters would jump on their own bikes, haul ass down the road, pass the racers and set up a new protest gauntlet ahead of the peloton. They would keep doing this until they beat the professional racers to the finish line in Roubaix’s legendary velodrome. They eventually get offered new jobs as cyclists, making the racers jobless!
Every Sunday, Waffles & Steel revisits the finest film ever made about cycling: “A Sunday in Hell.” I’ve been deconstructing the movie – almost frame by frame – and this week I’ll take a look at one of my favorite parts.
The riders have just started rolling, but the sounds of men chanting can be heard down the road. The narrator says, “But something is holding up the start, something unforeseen and probably something highly irregular. Something is blocking the road and delaying the departure, an obstacle that is not included in the race program. It’s a demonstration.”
(Let’s back up for a second. A labor protest is “highly irregular?” In France? Has the British narrator never been there before? )
Some of the riders are shown off their bikes, staring down the road at a large crowd of chanting workers tossing newspapers into the air.
The narrator explains, “They are demonstrating against one of the sponsors of the race, the newspaper Le Parisien Libere. They are protesting the redundancies of the operators of Linotype as the result of automation. It’s a longstanding labor conflict. The race organizers are not entirely unprepared.”
The camera shifts to a bunch of police carrying riot clubs and rifles, which looked scuffed-up, as if they’ve been dropped before by retreating troops preparing to surrender.
Eddy Merckx cranes his neck to survey the scene for a few seconds. Then he does a U-turn and rides to the Brooklyn team car to borrow a wrench. The narrator says, “But the delay can be used to adjust one’s saddle.” Eddy hits the back of the saddle a few times, then starts using the wrench to turn his seat post bolt. Did he finally get it right this time? Probably not.
As the demonstrators allow the riders to go by, they start sticking orange protest decals on the racers’ backs, and the narrator says, “A professional bike rider is of course a moving advertisement, so why not a little space for the workers? The riders are allowed through in single file, the chain gang run the gauntlet of epithets about the capitalists who organize the race. A political lecture for the road.”
The narrator adds, “But since the race is going to be run anyway, and it is, even the demonstrators have their favorites to cheer, such as the idolized Bernard Thevenet.”
A craggy-faced worker, who looks like a French gnome in a pointy white stocking cap, pats Thevenet’s back, waves to him as he rides on and gives him a vigorous thumbs-up sign.
I’ve always thought this scene would make a great Monty Python skit. After the riders go through, the protesters would jump on their own bikes, haul ass down the road, pass the racers and set up a new protest gauntlet ahead of the peloton. They would keep doing this until they beat the professional racers to the finish line in Roubaix’s legendary velodrome. They eventually get offered new jobs as cyclists, making the racers jobless!
our favorites: Bernard Thevenet. We see him weaving through the team cars as he works his way back to the peloton. The narrator says, “It’s Bernarad Thevenet once more, still France’s greatest hero after his triumph in the 1975 Tour de France. He doesn’t have much of a chance in Paris-Roubaix because he’s not good enough on le Pave.”
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