French prisoners get on bikes to go straight

A PACK of French convicts are taking to the road to cycle the inaugural Prison Tour de France a two-week, 2,204 kilometres trek across the country.

Around 200 prisoners will be accompanied by jailers, police escorts and support vehicles in their journey through the vineyards of Provence, the Mediterranean coast, and the Alps. “It is a beautiful gift they’re giving me,” said one inmate at a prison in Montmedy, near Luxembourg.

“It’s the icing on the cake,” he said. He is scheduled for release two months from now.

“It brings a close to my situation perfectly, spot-on.”

Officials chose participants from across France, prisoners with terms as short as two years and as long as 25, petty crooks and hardened criminals, men and women, young and old.

The goal of the journey is to challenge them, spark their ambition, inspire a sense of self-respect and pride.

“Why a Tour de France?” asked Francois Grosvalet, director of athletic programmes for French prisons. “Because in the history of French sporting events, the Tour de France is something that finds itself very close to the summit.”

The event is no small undertaking: its 15 stages averages 144 kilometres (90 miles) and starts and finishes were selected for their proximity to prisons so the tour could pick up additional riders.

“It’s a huge first,” he added. “It’s an absolute innovation to take the risk – but which is a calculated risk – of sending out so many prisoners at the same time and for so long, and to expose them in such a wilful and even deliberate way to the eyes of French society,” said Mr Grosvalet.

The prisoners set off four days ago and have rolled through country villages and hamlets to applause. Cheering crowds have massed under the arches at each stage’s finish line.

It helps, perhaps, that the riders are unidentifiable as prisoners or guards, save the words Tour de France Cycliste Penitentiaire across the backs of their jerseys.