Pogacar has discovered Tour de France fans love heroic defeat more than crushing victory | William Fotheringham

This year’s dominant leader shouldn’t take the boos personally – even Eddy Merckx didn’t always get red carpet treatment

Enduring the ire of French cycling fans is a rite of passage for a majority of the select group of prolific Tour de France winners, as Tadej Pogacar seems be finding out. The first catcalls came on Tuesday’s stage to Le Lioran in the Cantal, and unfortunately, although we can hope for a little courtesy, there is no reason to assume we won’t see more of the same in the Alps next week, because there are zero grounds for assuming the Slovene and his UAE team’s dominance of the race will slip. In fact, given the mountains that await, Pogi and co will probably up the ante.

Chris Froome has been there and Eddy Merckx went there. The American We Do Not Name spent two Julys hoping no one would bung urine at him, while Bernard Hinault and Jacques Anquetil had their moments too. To understand why the big winners don’t always get red carpet treatment, let’s fly back to the 60s, to the rivalry between Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor. Master Jacques and PouPou, a simple – simplistically pantomimic – duality: cold, clinical Jacques, who based his Tours on the time-trial stages, and warm-hearted PouPou, the noble peasant who tried his utmost but couldn’t quite land the big one, although he became the most popular athlete in France and the hallmark for valiant failure in every walk of French life. Let’s call it the MJPP principle.

That set the tone, and it’s still there if you look at one popular Instagram feed, the Federation Francaise de la Lose (motto: la defaite est en nous), which has 350,000 followers and is affectionately dedicated to those who don’t win, and yes, they struggled like all of France must have on Tuesday evening. The FFL helped organise Thibaut Pinot’s massive farewell party on a stage through the Vosges in 2023, and that day witnessed a perfect illustration of the MJPP principle: Pinot making a heroic solo attack through his adoring fans (hooray) only to be chased down by the clinical UAE steamroller who gave Pogacar his umpteenth mountain stage win (boo, he’s behind you).

This view of cycling says that the Tour stars are either boring and unpopular because they win too much, or exciting and adored because they find interesting ways to not win. That background made Anquetil and Merckx unreadable for the French press and public and explains why at times Hinault was derided as boring and unlikeable – this for the guy who produced a bunch sprint win on the Champs Elysées, because he just fancied it – while in 1986 the Badger earned much love when he lost a sixth Tour by being quixotically aggressive. See also Laurent Fignon, never truly popular until after his heroic defeat in 1989.

The one multiple Tour champion of recent years who didn’t fit into this scheme of things was Miguel Induráin. I don’t recall pushback against Big Mig in the five years when his victories in the Tour transitioned from surprising to predictable, but this is because the he was exceptional. He was lucky to win the Tour before doping suspicions became a given, and he and his Banesto team managers achieved those victories almost apologetically, with the unreadable smile on that handsome Navarran fizzog never slipping once.

Banesto were considerate: in his pomp, Big Mig won time trials, and although he ripped the field to shreds on at least one mountain stage per year, someone else always won – an earlier break, a more explosive climber – so he was never accused of hogging the sweeties. He rode like Anquetil with the demeanour of PouPou, lulling public and press into a catatonic state. There were yawns, but no boos.

Suddenly, pPost-Indurain, it got more complicated, in a decade in which doping took centre stage, 1998 to 2008. The years of “two-speed cycling” added an ethical twist to the MJPP tendency: Tour stars had to be clean, and they had to be perceived to be clean, and there was the implication that the underdogs finding interesting ways not to win were occupying the moral high ground.

The brickbats and urine were directed at Lance Armstrong once it was obvious he was doping but while it was uncertain he would ever be caught. It was the perfect storm: a prolific Tour winner, cold and clinical, and ethically very, very questionable. It wasn’t just the Texan: in 2011 when Alberto Contador turned up while his clenbuterol positive was subject to inquiry he was roundly booed in the amphitheatre at Le Puy du Fou during the team presentation.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen, but if at times in the next seven days, Pogacar seems to be riding through a sea of catcalls, here’s why: the French want their heroes to win as much as Anquetil but compete and smile like Poulidor, while post-Armstrong they don’t want even the remotest doubts about the winner’s probity. It makes no matter if, like Pogacar, a rider wins with charisma, with ethics that have rarely if ever been questioned. For some, it is an impossible triangle to square.