The Bastille Day I Bought Breakfast for a Millionaire

7/13/2015

It was my first day around the Tour de France, a rainy morning, July 14, 1982.

There was a time trial that holiday, around Valence d’Agen in the south, but it was too early to go out in the rain.

I was with Roby Oubron, former cyclo-cross champion and then a mentor to Jonathan Boyer, the first American to ride in the Tour.

Roby was a true son of France, a resister during the war who loved America. He met me for breakfast in the hotel and brought along a friend, but I did not catch his name.

I tried to follow the shop talk in French, and they slowed it down enough for me to be included. We dawdled over breakfast, more than the basic croissant and café au lait. Then I asked the waiter for the check.

“Ah, non!” Roby blurted. His friend, a polite older man in nondescript foul-weather gear, was also asking for the check, but I had gotten there first.

Trying to overcome the language gap, Roby explained that his friend was wealthy, loved cycling, and always paid, always. I politely told the man that the New York Times would insist, journalistic ethics and all.

The man seemed bemused by the concept of journalists grabbing the check, but he nodded his head gravely and thanked me.

Later, in the car, racing around behind Boyer on the time trial, Roby explained to me, as best we could work out, that his friend was Guy Merlin, the founder and proprietor of Merlin leisure homes and camps all over France. Guy Merlin sponsored cycling teams, and his $20,000 condominium in the south of France was the largest prize for cyclists on that 1982 Tour, I found out later.

We barreled around southwest France the next few days -- Rob Ingraham, Boyer’s agent, called Roby “Mario Andretti," for his heavy foot – and my short visit ended up in the Pyrenees, with the goats. Roby knew everybody. He would drive alongside Bernard Hinault on some narrow mountain pass and ask why he was making a breakaway. It was like sitting in a baseball dugout during a game with a wise elder like Ted Williams or Roy Campanella.

I adopted Roby as my alternate father-figure and think of him every Quatorze. As long as Roby lived, he told the story of how I grabbed the check from Guy Merlin.

* * *

Bonus: a short video of Roby winning a cyclo-cross stage, July 12, 1945, apres la paix.

http://boutique.ina.fr/video/AFE86003353/robert-oubron-remporte-le-cyclo-cross-delavigne.fr.html

Oh, That Guy Merlin

Jen

7/13/2015 04:42:02 am

Probably a virtually unique experience for GM.
I note you are Hofstra's Alum of the Month. Tres impressionnant! xx

George Vecsey

7/13/2015 05:08:33 am

Unique à partir journalistes de cyclisme, c'est sur..xxG

Alan Rubin link

7/13/2015 04:10:20 pm

Usually, I am satisfied with things and do not envy others.

However, George's description of his 1982 Tour, and his ability to relate to people, merits an exception. It may have been for only five days, but it encompassed more than many people do in considerably longer periods of time.

What a gift!

Sam Toperoff

7/14/2015 12:16:09 am

So, here I am sitting in this Alpine village in the too-warm sun (we're in the beginnings of a drought that makes my small garden a major challenge) waiting for the Tour to come by next week. This year Gap--the nearest town and its mountains and dangerous roads--is pivotal to determining the winner of the Tour.in the very final stages and the riders will actually be here for three full days, coming to town in a long, grueling stage (mountains just so-so), then having a day of rest, then a day in the surrounding mountains, then finally they take off for Alpes d'Huez, the killer climb where so often the 2,000 mile race is decided. They'll come by our house on the 23rd, good thing because the police close all roads when the Tour's in town.
So here I sit on Bastille Day--not a millionaire in sight, unless you count the peasant with the money in the mattresses--with a good pate on a crisp baguette and a glass of chilled rose contemplating the fact that the French killed their king and the English didn't and yet there's more down-on-the-street democracy in England than you'll ever find in French society. Funny how it's all worked out.--1066 and all that!
When I got here all those decades ago, I saw the world and especially sports through American eyes, so bike racing, soccer, rugby, what the hell was that all about! Now I love two out of the three. Especially the bikers. What a demand on body and mind...nothing quite like it, I think. I watch most days, and the genius of blending the country itself--the landscapes, the monuments--into the event, just brilliant. Everyone is giving it to Froome, but as a guy who has covered this even for years, you have seen, George, everything turn around on a loss of balance, or a little bump, on one hairpin turn on the descent.
When I looked at a list of past winners, a great many recent years simply said "VACATED." Yes, Sean Kelly, I'm with you, nothing but a pissant, who almost ruined something wonderful.

George Vecsey

7/14/2015 01:55:22 am

Thanks Alan. They were epic days and nights. I'll tell you both more Roby stories when we get together.
Sam, Enjoy that baguette. Remember the time we ran into each other outside the Pompidou?
The Tour goes by in a flash but the publicite takes an hour. I always loved the giant dead bug, legs in the air, on top of a van.
The worst part of what Lance did was not the doping. Almost all dope, or did, thanks to the UCI. The worst thing he did was threaten and bully people who were telling the truth.
Bonne Quatorze:a la famille.
GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

The Bastille Day I Bought Breakfast for a Millionaire

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