Note of introduction by N. Philibert
A few lines presenting the project, drawn up in December 1987. I had met Roger Lapébie a few weeks earlier, during the opening evening of a "Sports Video" Festival held in Arcachon. Sitting at the same table, we started chatting… Two hours later, we were already talking about making a film. Unfortunately, the project's limited budget did not allow me to follow the Paris-Nice race as initially planned. I had to be content with filming only the start of it in the streets of Paris.
At 77, Roger Lapébie is the oldest winner of the Tour de France still alive today. His win in 1937 - half a century ago now - sends us back to that illustrious pre-war period that seems like another age now when we consider that the main passes in both the Alps and the Pyrenees were crossed on dirt tracks at the time
In actual fact, in June 1937, no one would have staked a single penny on Lapébie, even though he had won the Paris-Nice and the Critérium National earlier that year. Suffering from a lumbar hernia, he had hesitated for a long time before deciding to participate in the race. Several specialists had tried to talk him out of it, feeling that surgery was called for. Even the press had taken a stand, asking the following question: "Is it reasonable to offer a place on the French team to a rider who may not make it over the mountains?"
2,800 miles later, after a thousand incidents - Bartali's tragic fall, the mass withdrawal of the Belgian team, not to mention the attempted sabotage of his bicycle on the morning of the 17th stage ("someone" had sawn through his handlebars) - he nonetheless triumphed and, with a tyre over his shoulder, took his place in the legendary history of the Tour.
One year earlier, at the Berlin games, Guy Lapébie, his younger brother, had become the Olympic track race champion.
Fifty years have passed. The "last of the Mohicans" now lives in the Bordeaux suburbs. His lifestyle resembles that of an active racing cyclist: strict diet, almost daily training sessions. Each week, he covers more than 180 miles on his bicycle and, on Sundays, takes part in cycling meets with his friends. Loyal to his old passion, he continues to play a role in the Tour de France each year as… a driver! A discreet presence that keeps him in close contact with the world of professional cycling.
Vas-y Lapébie !, a 26-minute film for French and foreign TV stations, does not aim to relate the career of this former champion in a scholarly and exhaustive manner. Adopting a cinematic rather than a journalistic approach, the film will offer a present-day portrait of the man. The archive material will be used for the value of its images - our hero's memories and fragmented mental reminiscences - rather than for its encyclopaedic dimension.
But let's get to the point: next March, Roger Lapébie will set of on the Paris-Nice, the first stage race of the season, as its Technical Director: a key post that places the man who holds it at the heart of the logistics of the race, forcing him to settle a thousand details each day and to cover twice as many miles - by car - than in the race itself.
This event, that brings together the top names in international cycling each year, attracting hundreds of thousands of spectators to the roads it covers, will be one of the main threads of the film. And so, over a week, we shall film the race and its sidelines, following Lapébie like his shadow: a portrait in perpetual motion, as if to underline the great vivacity of its hero.
But we shall also reveal a more secretive Lapébie, at home, in Talence, alone or within the family clan; an opportunity to film him with his "young" brother (Guy is 73) and his old friends. Together, on their bikes, they will introduce us to their favourite routes.
