wins in the Tour and more. He stood on the Tour de France podium in Paris eight times. But the distribution of his results is remarkable, a series of podium places without a win. Here’s 1963:

Wins: Flèche Wallonne, GP des Nations, GP de Lugano, stage in Critérium National, stage in Paris-Luxembourg.

Placings: 2nd Tour du Sud-Est, 2nd Critérium national, 2nd Grand Prix de Cannes, 2nd Trophée Baracchi (with Jacques Anquetil), 2nd de Gênes-Nice, 2nd Prestige Pernod, 3rd Paris-Tours, 3rd Paris-Luxembourg, 5th World Championships, 5th Liège-Bastogne-Liège, 6th Paris-Roubaix, 9th Tour of Flanders

This was repeated throughout his career. He lost plenty yet built a list of results that almost anyone would take today. But the pattern is improbable, for example he holds the record for the most podium finishes in thethe making of him as a popular icon. He became the “moral victor” of many races, wildly popular with the crowds who found Jacques Anquetil’s winning ways too clinical, too cold, too economical. Writer Antoine Blondin once likened Anquetil to a diner who hurries out of a restaurant without leaving a tip. It was this rivalry with Jacques Anquetil that saw the two ride side by side up the Puy de Dome volcano, a moment caught on camera forever.

Raymond Poule aux Oeufs d’Or

Poulidor came from rural France, itself a mythical place in the French psyche. He often played on his bumpkin image but it seems he had a sharper side. Yes he grew up on a farm but for Poulidor swapped the soil for an angular concrete house