Peugeot (cycling team)

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Peugeot
Team data
nationality FranceFrance France
First season 1904
Last season 1986
discipline Street
Wheel manufacturer Peugeot
Name story
Years Surname
1904
1905–1924
1925–1955
1956–1962
1963–1964
1965–1975
1976–1981
1982–1985
1986 		Peugeot
Peugeot-Wolber
Peugeot-Dunlop
Peugeot-BP-Dunlop
Peugeot-BP-Englebert
Peugeot-BP-Michelin
Peugeot-Esso-Michelin
Peugeot-Shell-Michelin
Peugeot-Shell
shirt
Peugeot jersey

Peugeot is a former French cycling team . It was founded in 1904 and dissolved in 1986.

history

Even before the turn of the 20th century, the Peugeot company sponsored cyclists , initially they were track cyclists like the world champion of 1896 , the French Paul Bourillon , the multiple Danish world champion Thorvald Ellegaard and the US champion Major Taylor . In the years before the First World War , it also supported the Swiss Oscar Egg , who set hourly world records on Peugeot wheels .

In the first year of its existence, in 1904, the team consisted of only one driver, the French Hippolyte Aucouturier , who won Paris-Roubaix in 1903 and 1904 . In 1905, his compatriot Louis Trousselier achieved his first Tour de France victory on a Peugeot bike, which was followed by others, such as that of Belgian Philippe Thys in 1920 . In 1925, the Peugeot team turned away from the tour and focused on regional competitions, an interlude that lasted five years. However, company teams were banned from the tour in 1930 and only national teams were allowed to start instead . Camille Danguillaume achieved the first prestigious victory for Peugeot after the Second World War in 1949 at Liège – Bastogne – Liège .

In the further years of its existence, Peugeot was the main sponsor, other sponsors were mostly tire manufacturers such as Michelin or Dunlop .

In 1939 a sports director was appointed for the first time , the French Camille Narcy , who himself had been a professional cyclist from 1913 to 1925, albeit with little success. He remained in this office until 1952.

From 1955 to 1957 the team was named Elvé or Elvé-Peugeot , after the initials of the Peugeot general distributor for Belgium, Léon Vanderhulst. He not only financed the team, which in those years consisted exclusively of Belgian drivers including Stan Ockers and Rik Van Steenbergen , but was also involved as the sporting director.

Eddy Merckx (1967)

In October 1957, Bertrand gave Peugeot a press conference in which he stated that from 1958 the Peugeot team would again be primarily a French team in order to strengthen the brand. The former Peugeot driver Gaston Plaud , who held this post until 1974 , became the sporting director . A Belgian driver was Pino Cerami , who won Paris – Roubaix in 1960 . From 1962 company teams were again allowed in the Tour de France , and Peugeot started with a team of nine. From this year on, other prominent drivers such as Ferdi Bracke (who stayed with Peugeot for eleven years), Charly Gaul and Tom Simpson as well as the Germans Rudi Altig and Karl-Heinz Kunde joined the team.

In 1966 and 1967 Eddy Merckx started for the Peugeot team and became world champion in 1967 . In the same year, the Peugeot driver Bracke set a new hour record in Rome with 48.093 kilometers .

Also in 1967, Peugeot driver Roger Pingeon won the Tour after his teammate Tom Simpson fell off his bike and died after taking amphetamines on Mont Ventoux . At that time, the team's doctor was called François Bellocq . He was known "that he has prescribed various doping drugs, one of his most famous patients was probably Bernard Thévenet, who later admitted that he had taken cortisone for three years with negative health consequences". His other clients were Alain Prost , Christophe Tiozzo , Greg LeMond and Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle . He was considered the best-known French proponent of the “hormonal balance” thesis, the thesis that the body of an athlete gets into a hormonal imbalance due to the heavy physical stress that must be compensated with medication. In 1975 Thévenet won the Tour de France in 1975 and again two years later.

Plaud's successor as sporting director was Maurice De Muer in 1975 , who himself drove for Peugeot from 1943 to 1951. From 1983 until its dissolution in 1989, Roger Legeay was the strong man in the lead, also a former Peugeot driver who himself had contested the Tour de France seven times . 1983 was the last time a driver of the Peugeot team, Pascal Simon , wore the yellow jersey of the tour. In 1986 Peugeot discontinued financial support for the team as the main sponsor for economic reasons, and the team was dissolved after more than 80 years of existence. During these years, the team's drivers have won the Tour de France ten times, the Vuelta a España three times and Paris – Roubaix five times .

The successors of the Peugeot team were the teams Z-Peugeot, Z, GAN and Crédit Agricole , led by Roger Legay .

Important victories

Bernard Thévenet in the Peugeot jersey at the 1976 Tour de France.

literature

  • Lucien Hilger / Thierry Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme . Editions Saint Paul, Luxembourg 2004.

Web links

Commons : Peugeot (cycling team)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • Peugeot. Histoire des maillots, accessed June 1, 2016 .
  • Peugeot in the ProCyclingStats.com database

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hilger / Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme , p. 74.
  2. ↑ Hilger / Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme , p. 76 ff.
  3. ↑ Hilger / Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme , p. 86.
  4. ↑ Hilger / Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme , p. 88.
  5. ↑ Hilger / Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme , p. 90
  6. ↑ Hilger / Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme , p. 141.
  7. ↑ Hilger / Labro: Peugeot et le cyclisme , p. 94 ff.
  8. ^ A b Doping: Foreign Doctors. In: cycling4fans.de. Retrieved June 2, 2016 .