Harvest of Shame: What Price Beauty?
The Tour's dirty little secret rears it ugly head
By Charles François Pelletier
Special to VeloNews
This report filed April 1, 2004
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by AFP
(file photo)
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By now, the
image is standard on posters in dorm rooms, bike shops and offices all
over the western world: The peloton of the Tour de France zooming across
the sunlit country roads of France, weaving its way through fields of
golden sunflowers; bright, beautiful and precisely the tone of the
legendary maillot jaune.
The
image is a classic, emoting visions of idyllic country life, families
peacefully enjoying France's spectacular summer, interrupted only by the
momentary passing of the world's greatest bicycle race.
Sadly, a
Thursday news conference in Paris underscored just how much of a price
France's rural population has paid to deliver the Tour's most beloved
image to an unsuspecting worldwide audience.
A
seemingly innocent offer
Pierre Varineau's hands shook with anger as he stood at the podium in
front a group of reporters at the La Plaisanterie hotel in downtown
Paris.
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by AFP
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Varineau in Paris
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"The
promises made have never borne fruit," Varineau. "We have mortgaged our
futures - the futures of our children - and all for what has turned into
a painful lie!"
Unfortunately, Varineau's story is all too common, a tale that dates
back some 20 years and exemplifies the tragic collision of French
pastoral life with the demands of modern global marketing.
Varineau,
now president of Syndicat National des Fermiers , is a
tenth-generation farmer from Rieumes, a small village outside of
Toulouse.
"Throughout the history of this region, my family has been a known and
respected presence," Varineau said. "My ancestors lived rich and
fulfilling lives... that is until ‘The Englishman,' arrived."
Varineau
said he "still remembers the day like it was yesterday," a quiet
afternoon in the early spring of 1985, when a soft-spoken Englishman,
carrying cameras and light meters, arrived on the back of a motorcycle.
"My
father and I were preparing the fields for planting," he recalled. "It
was to be a simple crop that year, wheat, some barley and we had plans
to flood one field to raise frogs. It was as we had done for centuries."
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by
Courtesy Pierre Varineau
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An all-too-common sight in France every July.
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But that
day, the still unidentified British photographer made an offer Pierre's
father, Jacque, could simply not refuse.
"He
offered good money to plant the fields with these flowers - these
sunflowers," Varineau explained. "He said he had an idea for a
photograph that would ‘establish a new aesthetic standard' for sports
photography. He gave us the seeds! He paid in cash! He wanted acres and
acres of them and they had to be ready and mature by a given day in
July."
"We
didn't see him again until late June," Varineau said. "He and his driver
arrived; he looked at his watch, walked around with a light meter and
was gone. In July, we saw him in the fields again on the day the Tour
passed right by our front door... and then he was gone."
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by
courtesy Pierre Varineau
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Varineau's fields just one year later
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It seemed
innocent enough until a few weeks later when the Varineau family went
out to harvest their "crop."
"At
first we tried to do it by machine," he said. "The empty film canisters
jammed up the gears of the harvester. We had then to do the work by
hand. That, too, was a waste."
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