On Saturday I did a roadside interview about cycling. In French.

Um, yeah.  Le Maison du velo.

I’m not going to lie. It wasn’t pretty. I’ve already established that there are some core competencies en Francais that I’m missing. As well as swearing, you can probably add ‘grammar’ and ‘vocabulary’ to the list of things that I need to work on. So the concept of me doing a radio interview in French should shock most right-thinking folk.

 

My accent isn’t too bad, so sometimes if the stars align I can order the right thing off a menu. But that’s as far as it goes.  I think to most native French speakers, listening to me trying to speak French must be a like listening to a Ferrari being driven around town stuck in first gear.  It might sound OK for a short while, but something isn’t quite right.  It’s not crashing into anything or going too far off the road, but FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE WOULD YOU CHANGE GEAR ALREADY?!

First, a bit of back-story about how this happened.

Paris is one of two candidate cities to host the 2024 Olympics. It last hosted in 1924, and has had a rough run in its recent bids – unsuccessful in 1992, 2008, and 2012. The 2012 came down to the wire, and Paris – which had been considered front-runner throughout – lost to London in a final, hotly contested vote.  It all got a bit nasty, and depending on your perspective the final vote swung either on Sebastian Coe’s inspirational speech, some dodgy tactics from the Brits, or some off-colour comments about British and Finnish cuisine by then-President Jacque Chirac.

This time, it all seems above board and Paris is going all out for the win. All power to their elbow, I reckon.

The final effort was last weekend, when the Mairie de Paris (the Paris city council) led by Mayor Anne Hidalgo closed o bunch of central Paris streets to create something like an open air Olympic stadium, with demonstrations of a bunch of Olympic sports for you to try. Highlight would have to be the floating running track they built in the Seine:

The rumour is they might actually use this in the Olympics

 

 

And the high-dive platform from Pont Alexandre 3^rd.

Geronimo!

 

Not sure what impressed us the most; the diving, or the fact that people were actually swimming in the river. Voluntarily. I wouldn’t want to imply that the water quality in the Seine is unsafe, but “swimming” and “in the Seine” are not normally in the same sentence. Unless there’s a “don’t go” somewhere in there.

Anyway; it was all fantastic. The road closures around the city meant traffic was impressively diabolical, but everyone seemed to cope OK in a great demonstration of civic pride and togetherness. Paris deserves the win for that alone.

As part of this, the city briefly closed off the roads around the Arc de Triomphe to create a temporary ‘velodrome’ at the Etoile Charles de Gaul. Anyone could turn up, and take their bike for a spin around it.  Including me.  Of course.  The Arc de Triomphe is just up the road from our house, so it was no trouble to nip out for a quick ride before taking the boys to cricket.

It was all a bit surreal. Security in Paris these days is intense. Each of the 12 roads that normally feed traffic into the roundabout was blocked by a couple of big trucks, and there were barriers and armed guards all over the show.  With no cars on the road, and the eagle-eyed gaze of the machine gun-toting soldiers, it was easily the safest bike ride I’ve ever done.

It was like a fortified play-pen for cyclists.  Which, on reflection could make for the perfect trap; lure us in with the promise of free shiny bike stuff (Wheels! Water bottles! Whatever!) and, like moths to a flame, we’d all be drawn in.  Shut the gate behind us, and it would be months before we realised what was happening. The perfect trap.

In the end though, you are just going round and round in circles, and even I get bored of that, so after a half dozen or ten circuits I pulled over to take a photo or two.

And that’s when they pounced.

I was fumbling with my phone, and a journalist from French national radio station RTL France came over to me, and asked if I wouldn’t mind doing an interview. Stupidly, I said “Oui”. I did point out the failings of my French (actually, that would have been pretty self evident), so I take no responsibility for what happened next.

It was all a bit of a blur, and as soon as she whipped out the microphone a bunch of other journos flocked around, like seagulls on Petone beach. I guess they all had mid-morning deadlines to meet, because there’s no other explanation for their interest. Once we’d run the course of what my French would allow, I tottered off for another couple of laps.  I had the sudden thought to ask the main instigator to take a photo, and once we’d done that blow me down if a local TV crew didn’t come over and make me repeat the whole sorry affair.

I have no idea what I said. I do remember forgetting the name of quite possibly the most famous bit of cycling-related roadway In The World. You know. That one over there. Where the Tour de France finishes. Comment d’it on…? Oh yeah.  Le Champs-Élysées. Not my finest moment.

There’s possibly a copy of that out there on the internet somewhere, but sure as heck I’m not searching for it. But Isabelle Langé and the good folk at RTL were kind enough to send me an audio file of the radio segment.  It’s had some hearty post-production to make my stammering seem less jarring. And it is a LOT faster than I could possibly talk.   Here it is in all its glory:

 

You’re welcome. Maison du vélo  Could be a good name for a blog…