The OTHER Tour de France

The square from which Monet painted Rouen's Cathedral

Today the 2012 Tour de France bike race rolls into Rouen.  I'll be watching because I've visited Rouen.  It was the town where Joan of Arc was  burned at the stake after a kangaroo court Inquisition trial, got up by the Brits, in the Hundred Years' War.  The Rouen Cathedral was famously painted by Monet in his series of impressionist light studies.  Rouen les Essarts, a few miles south of town, was the site of some French Grands Prix in the 1950's and 1960's.  It was fast and dangerous.  It's still there.  But the public roads which comprise it run through a forest preserve.  You almost have to know where it is to find it.  It deserves a better fate: maybe a couple of historical markers.  It was the site of Porsche's only Grand Prix victory and Dan Gurney's first (driving for them).

The other Tour de France was a road rally/race, patterned after the bike race.  It was run from the mid-1950's to the early 1960's.  Most of the distance was covered at quasi-legal speeds.  But "go as fast as you can" hill-climbs and timed stages were included.  Olivier Gendebien ("Jelly Bean") of Belgium was the most consistent winner.  And it made the Ferrari 250 GT's he usually drove famous enough to be called "Tour de Frances," although Enzo never cataloged them as such: