Raymond Poulidor (French pronunciation: [ʁɛmɔ̃ pulidɔʁ]; 15 April 1936 – 13 November 2019), nicknamed "Pou-Pou" (pronounced [pu pu]), was a French professional racing cyclist, who rode for Mercier his entire career.
His distinguished career coincided with two other outstanding riders – Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx. This underdog position may have been the reason Poulidor was a favourite of the public. He was known as "The Eternal Second", because he never won the Tour de France despite finishing in second place three times, and in third place five times (including his final Tour at the age of 40). Despite his consistency, he never wore the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification in 14 Tours (of which he completed 12). He did win one Grand Tour, the 1964 Vuelta a España. Of the eighteen Grand Tours that he entered in his career, he finished in the top 10 fifteen times.
Raymond Poulidor was the son of Martial and Maria Poulidor, small farmers outside the hamlet of Masbaraud-Mérignat, where the Creuse region east of Limoges meets the département of Haute-Vienne. Poulidor began working on the farm where, he remembered, "the soil was poor and we had to work hard; farming incomes were poor." The need for working hands on the farm meant he left school at 14 even though he wanted to continue his studies. Local entertainment went little further than village fairs, with coconut shies, sack-races, competitions for bottles of home-made jam... and inter-village cycle races. Poulidor continued to help out on his parents' farm even after he turned professional.
Poulidor was given his first bike by a local shop owner at the age of 14. He started racing bicycles at the age of 16, picking up the interest from the magazine Miroir-Sprint given to him by one of his school teachers. He initially hid his passion from his mother, who was afraid of the dangers the sport entailed.
It was only when Poulidor was taken into the army for compulsory national service in 1955 that he first travelled in a train. Pierre Chany, a French reporter who followed 49 Tours de France, drew the comparison with Poulidor's eventual rival, Jacques Anquetil: by the time Poulidor first stepped into a train, Anquetil had already been to Helsinki, ridden the Olympic Games, won a medal for France, turned professional and won the Grand Prix des Nations. Yet there was less than two years between them.
The army sent Poulidor to the war then going on in Algeria, where he worked as a driver and put on 12 kg through lack of exercise. In 1960 he dedicated himself to cycling again and lost the weight in a month. He won his first race after army service by six minutes. When he then came second in the GP de Peyrat-le-Château and won 80,000 old francs, he calculated that he had won more in one race than he would have earned in six years on the farm.
Poulidor turned professional in 1960 with the Mercier team, directed by former Tour winner Antonin Magne. Magne offered Poulidor 25,000 old francs a month. Poulidor asked for 30,000. Magne countered that that was more than he paid Gauthier and Louis Privat and refused. Later, aware that he had a rival for Anquetil, he conceded.
In just his second season, Poulidor won Milan–San Remo, one of cycling's "monument classics". 125 km (78 mi) from the finish, he was about to abandon after he suffered a puncture and was two minutes behind the leading riders. Magne convinced him to continue and Poulidor bridged the gap. On the climb of the Capo Berta, he attacked, joined by Albertus Geldermans and teammate Jean-Claude Annaert, who set the tempo until they reached the foot of the final climb, the Poggio. Here, Poulidor attacked again and opened a gap. Despite being guided in the wrong direction by a police man in the final corner, he was able to hold off the chasing field by three seconds to take the victory. Also in 1961, he became French road race champion.
Poulidor's rivalry with Anquetil is a legend in cycling. While a good climber, Poulidor had a hard time matching Anquetil in the individual time trial, often having victory snatched from him by losing time in time-trial stages of the Tour de France.
Poulidor's riding style was aggressive and attacking, whereas Anquetil preferred to control the race in the mountains and win time in the time-trials. Poulidor became the darling of the French public, to the ire of Anquetil. Poulidor's mid-France upbringing and his slow Limousin speech also contrasted with Anquetil's northern background and sharper accent. Poulidor's face was deeply tanned and furrowed; Anquetil had high cheekbones, a smoother face and brushed-up blond hair.
Poulidor's best chance of defeating Anquetil came in the 1964 Tour de France, in the finish on the Puy de Dôme. Anquetil rode beside Poulidor but both were so exhausted that only in the last few hundred metres could Poulidor take nearly enough time to threaten Anquetil's first place in the general classification. The Tour organiser, Jacques Goddet, was behind the pair as they turned off the main road and climbed through what police estimated as half a million spectators.
Anquetil rode on the inside by the mountain wall while Poulidor took the outer edge by the precipice. They could sometimes feel the other's hot gasps on their bare arms. At the end, Anquetil cracked, after a battle of wills and legs so intense that at times they banged elbows. Poulidor says he was so tired that he has no memory of the two touching, although a photograph shows that they did. Of Anquetil, the veteran French reporter Pierre Chany wrote: "His face, until then purple, lost all its colour; the sweat ran down in drops through the creases of his cheeks." Anquetil was only semiconscious, he said. Poulidor gained time but when they reached Paris, Anquetil still had a 55-second lead and won his last Tour de France thanks to the time-trial on the final day.
Anquetil-Poulidor: the social significance
Anquetil unfailingly beat Poulidor in the Tour de France and yet Poulidor remained the more popular. "The more unlucky I was, the more the public liked me and the more money I earned", he said. Divisions between fans became marked, which two sociologists studying the impact of the Tour on French society say became emblematic of France old and new. Research showed that more than 4,000 newspaper articles appeared about him in France in just 1974 and that no other rider "had ever incited so many sociological investigations, so many university theses, seeking to find the cause of his prodigious popularity."
Poulidor's original nickname was Pouli. It was Émile Besson of the daily newspaper L'Humanité who first wrote of Poupou. The name was taken up throughout France, leading to headlines such as "Poupoularité" in L'Équipe. A poupée is a doll and the nickname hints at that and follows the French tradition of repeating the first syllable of a word in childspeak. Poulidor never liked the name but accepted it.
The end of the Anquetil era presented opportunities for Poulidor to finally win the Tour de France. This was not to be due to injuries in 1967 and 1968, and the arrival of Eddy Merckx in 1969. Poulidor was no match for Merckx, although he offered much resistance.
In the 1973 Tour Poulidor almost lost his life on the descent from the Col de Portet d'Aspet when he plunged into a ravine, taking a serious blow to the head and crawling out with the help of the race director, Jacques Goddet.
Antonin Magne remained manager of Poulidor's Mercier team until 1970, when he was replaced by another former rider, Louis Caput. Caput brought with him as deputy directeur sportif a man who described himself as a homeopath, Bernard Sainz.