Cycling Domestiques - Part 2
Every team has its own policy about the cash earned from the event but mostly it is divided amongst the whole team and the staff members.
The word domestique was first used in the sport as an insult for Maurice Brocco who was also called as Coco who has raced in six Tour de France races but was unfortunate to finish any of them. He was famous for offering his services to other cyclists as
he waited for Francois Faber and helped him towards the finish after he realised that he had no chances to win the Tour de France, 1911 as he lost precious time to Chamonix.
The organiser of the race Henri Desgrange who was also the chief judge of the event decided to disqualify Brocco for breaking the rules but had no proof against him and his anger was seen later when he came up with a controversial statement in the newspaper
about Maurice saying, “He is unworthy, He is no more than a domestique.”
Brocco was furious by the comment made by Henri as he started his next day by saying, “Today, we are going to settle our accounts.” as he shouted on the Tourmalet, "So, am I forbidden to ride with him? Do I have a right to stay with him” while Desgrange
was watching as Maurice crossed the finish line and won.
Maurice proved his point to Desgrange that he was a very skilful rider and was not a servant to which the organiser replied by saying that any rider with such a talent in the sport shall not sell his skills or in other words sell the sport and shall be punished
if found guilty and the punishment for such an act as suggested by Desgrange was “immediate disqualification.”
Desgrange believed that Tour de France should always be a unique contest fought by individuals unlike other events in which domestiques were already accepted and he fought with the sponsors who had a different point of view.
Some of the famous domestiques in the sports have been Andrea Carrea who was a domestique for Fausto Coppi while Jose Luis Arrieta was a domestique for Miguel Indurain as the famous news paper L’Equipe wrote, “He no longer counts the hours, the years, spent
with his nose in the wind trying to protect his leader for as long as possible.”
Arrieta commented, “When you have the chance to start your career in so big a team and at the side of a champion as great as Indurain, you grow in the service of sacrifice. I don’t complain.”
Jean Dargassies and Henri Gauban are known to be the first domestiques in the sport as they rode for Henri Pepin in Tour de France, 1907 and were promised to receive an equal share of first prize if they help him win the tour.
Managers now a day’s assign tasks to domestiques during the race since 1990s as the introduction of radio in the cycling has shown a totally different ways in which they can help the team as now they can be assigned a task no matter where they are.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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