Robert Chapatte

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Robert Chapatte Road cycling
To person
Date of birth October 14, 1921
date of death January 19, 1997
nation France
discipline Road cycling , track
Team (s)
1945–1946
1947–1949
1950
1951
1952
1953–1954 		Genial-Lucifer
Mercier-Magné
Olympia-Dunlop / Benotto
Helyett-Hutchinson
Vanoli
Rochet-Dunlop
Most important successes

National championships
1944 : French champion in the amateur team pursuit ,
with Roger Rioland , Jean Guégen and André Chassang .

Robert Chapatte (born October 14, 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , † January 19, 1997 in Paris ) was a French cyclist and television commentator. He is the inventor of the chapatte theory .

Athletic career

Before the Second World War , Robert Chapatte was active in several sports, including basketball , soccer, and especially athletics . As a student, he became the French champion in 10,000 meters and won a popular cyclo-cross race organized by the newspaper L'Auto . He got into cycling through his friend Louis Caput , a cyclist.

1944 Chapatte became French champion in the team pursuit of amateurs , together with Roger Rioland , Jean Guégen and André Chassang . He then became a professional and initially drove as such mainly two-man team races on the track . As a “local hero” he was very popular in Paris and won the Prix ​​Dupré-Lapize in 1944 and the Prix ​​Goullet-Fogler in 1945 , both together with Émile Ignat . Between 1948 and 1952 he started five times in the Tour de France ; his best finish was a 16th place on the 1949 Tour . On this occasion, in 1949, he became the first cyclist to give a live interview on television.

Otherwise, Robert Chapatte only won smaller races in France, he also started in five six-day races . He was known for immediately contracting a Gauloise after a race .

Journalistic career

After retiring from cycling in late 1954, Robert Chapatte became a sports journalist. He wrote for various cycling newspapers and could be heard on the radio until he started working for state television from 1959. In 1955, due to a technical error, Chapatte could be heard on the competing station RTF , while Georges Briquet was mistakenly broadcast by RTF on Radio Monte Carlo , for which Chapatte actually worked as a commentator. This made the two men friends, and Briquet got Chapatte to switch to RTF. Thanks to these radio reports, Chapatte is considered a pioneer of modern reporting from the Tour of France.

In 1968, as a result of the student protests in France , Chapatte left state television, but returned to television in 1975 as head of the sports department at Antenne 2 and was active as a journalist until 1994. From 1975 to 1985 he presented the program Stade 2 , which he developed and which still exists today. During the 1994 Tour de France, Chapatte, whose alcohol abuse was well known, became seriously ill; His subsequent saying: Je me suis endormi à Lourdes et je me suis réveillé à la Pitié. (Eng .: I went to sleep in Lourdes and woke up in the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière . ) Three years later he died after a long illness.

Robert Chapatte's son, Dominique Chapatte, is also a sports journalist.

The "chapatte theory"

From his experiences as a driver and commentator, Chapatte developed the theory that a group of cyclists chasing a runaway over ten kilometers made up a minute ( Théorème de Chapatte ). This “law” is still quoted by journalists today, even if it is no longer necessarily applicable in recent times, since teams have been deliberately promoting their sprinters.

Honors

In 1966 Robert Chapatte was awarded the Medal of the Legion of Honor and in 1978 the Prix ​​Henri Desgrange de l'Académie des sports for journalists .

Publications

  • With Jacques Augendre: Cyclisme. Technique, entraînement, compétition . Amphora. Paris 1964
  • Robert Chapatte: Mes tours de France: Le cyclisme, la télé et moi . 1967
  • With Jean-Marie Pinçon: Quand claquent les portes. Robert Laffont. Paris 1987. ISBN 978-2-221-05343-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robert Chapatte avec André Leducq médaillé de la légion d'honneur à l'Elysée on photo.ina.fr ( Memento of July 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Chapatte, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French cyclist and television commentator
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuilly-sur-Seine
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1997
Place of death Paris