Pastoralists and environmentalists play out a little game on what has become one of the Tour de France’s favorite Pyrenean climbs. At the very top of the Mur de Péguère, 3.2 kilometers of gravity-defying grind for even the Pogačars and Vingegaards of the cycling world, a message is daubed right across the tarmac. Most of the time the huge capital letters declare: NON A L’OURS (“No to the bear”). Every once in a while, though, a mischievous and apparently ursine-supportive local tweaks it so that it reads: NON A LA BOURSE (“No to the stock exchange”).
In a way, this tit-for-tat emphasizes the primary non-sporting function of the Tour. Ever since its founding in 1903, the bike race has been a tool for marketing. The first product in its shop window was the race organizer’s daily newspaper L’Auto-Vélo (later L’Auto and later still L’Équipe), the sales of which went through the roof when the Tour rapidly became a popular sensation. A multitude of other product placements have followed, from bikes and equipment, to supermarkets, banks, coffee and, above all, France itself, for the Tour is essentially the grandest of advertisements for the most world’s most visited tourist destination.
Inevitably, that visibility has also been harnessed by other organizations, groups and individuals who want to put a message across. The letters CGT that are often seen stenciled on roads amid the rider names painted by fans promote the Confédération Générale du Travail, France’s second-biggest trade union. And the yellow GJ that’s been very apparent in recent years shows support for the Gilets Jaunes, a grassroots movement that emerged in 2018 out of rising fuel prices. In the Pyrénées, farmers and pastoralists have their own gripe—the reintroduction into the mountains of brown bears—and the Tour’s roads are a way to highlight this grievance.
In pre-Roman times, bears were worshipped as deities by the pagan tribes that lived in these mountains. Over the centuries, however, man’s outlook changed on this rival apex predator. Bears were hunted both for sport and to protect livestock. They were trained as street and circus performers, too, their handlers, most of them from the department of Ariège that has Foix has its administrative center, traveling across the world to perform with their animals. By the end of the 1980s, just five Pyrenean brown bears remained, only one of them a female. The complete extinction of the species was completed when the last one, a female called Cannelle, was shot by a hunter on November 1, 2004.
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