On a chilly February morning in Avignon’s Place d’Horloge, Nicolas Garcera, race director of the Mont Ventoux Denivele Challenge (or MVDC) is biding his time outside the Cofidis team bus, waiting to speak to Jesus Herrada, winner in 2019 of Garcera’s one-day race on the Giant of Provence.
Garcera’s inaugural race on the Ventoux in June 2019 was considered a success, even if the race climaxed with a head to head between Herrada and Romain Bardet, that only ever looked likely to go one way. But Garcera had sunshine, live TV coverage, a smattering of World Tour teams and most of all he had Bardet, who despite suffering from a touch of bronchitis, gave it his best shot.
This is a something of a golden age for lesser races in the south of France, with a programme of one-day and stage races that punctuate the season and compares favourably with the Belgian calendar. Among them is Garcera’s one-day race, which although facing an uncertain future, will be held again this summer and will feature a double ascent of the mountain.
Then there is the new Tour de la Provence, backed by regional newspaper, La Provence, and underwritten by the deep pockets of legendary entrepreneur, Bernard Tapie, the paper’s proprietor, who has a long-standing love of cycling.
Long before James Murdoch or James Ratcliffe funded first Team Sky and latterly Team Ineos, Tapie was throwing money at the sport’s leading riders. It was Tapie of course who funded the first cycling super team of the modern era, La Vie Claire, and it was the same Tapie whose penchant for doing things ‘his way’ led to a conviction for match-fixing as owner of Olympique Marseille football club. Tapie, who once owned 80% of Adidas, subsequently spent eight months in prison.
Yet he remains a compelling figurehead in French sport. Shortly before the Tour de la Provence began, Tapie met with a clique of like-minded French cycling stalwarts, including Thibaut Pinot’s mentor and manager, Marc Madiot, and enthused about the recent revival in French fortunes. Thirty five years on from the last French Tour win and although diminished by failing health, Tapie’s passion for cycling apparently remains undimmed.
Now 77 and fighting what is believed to be a losing battle with cancer, it is Tapie’s investment — estimated this year to be well over a million euros worth — that has opened a path for the Tour de la Provence, first run in 2016, to gain a foothold. Fittingly, the overall leader’s jersey reprises the Piet Mondrian design of Tapie’s classic La Vie Claire jersey, so beloved of ’80’s cycling fans.
Garcera, meanwhile, has no such legacy to tap into, beyond the infamy of the Ventoux. He is reliant on the support and goodwill of the Vaucluse region but with 750,000 visitors a year already making their way to the summit of the Ventoux, between March and October, the mountain — recently designated a national park — hardly needs more tourists.
Garcera says it will take 300K euros to keep the MVDC alive. Buoyed by the GFNY Ventoux granfondo, held the day before, he remains optimistic but the calendar is increasingly busy across south east France with the GP Marseillaise, Etoile des Besseges, the rebranding of the Tour du Haut Var, and the Boucles Drome Ardeche. That’s a lot of racing in one region in a very short time, all vying for sponsorship.
Looming over both Garcera and Tapie, is the shadow of ASO, promoters of the Tour de France and of the Criterium du Dauphine, which finishes the afternoon before Garcera’s race. Rumours abound that, if Tapie’s health does finally fail him, then the Tour de la Provence, drawing star names and decent crowds, will be scooped up by ASO, already a media partner of the four-day event.
But for Garcera, it’s all about survival, about keeping the flame alive. He doesn’t aspire to being part of a bigger machine, churning out identikit races with identikit branding. He and his wife Lucie have built their race from their kitchen table in Vaison, planning their parcours through the winter as the flurries of snow fall outside. That’s why he’s waiting patiently outside the Cofidis bus, on a grey Sunday morning, seeking a guarantee from Herrada, that this June he will be back on the Ventoux, racing to defend his title.