Tour de France...
Christian Lepelletier is a French guy in his late 40’s, he’s passionate about the Tour de France, really loving anything about cycling, he’s got one of the best collections of vintage cycling magazines, however he had never raced the Tour de France due to his health condition.
But on one rainy Tuesday in June, he received a phone call from a friend antique dealer in his neighborhood, he says all excitedly on phone: “Bonjour cher ami… désolé de vous déranger. Je voulais vous prévenir que je viens de recevoir à ma boutique tout un lot de vieux magasines sur le cyclisme ainsi que des affaires d’un ancien cycliste des années 1950/1960…” [Good morning my dear fellow… I’m sorry to bother you. I just wanted to tell you that I just received in my shop a whole lot of old magazines on cycling and the belongings of a cyclist from the 1950’s/1960’s…]
Hearing this Christian simply says that he’s coming right now to the shop. The shop is in the corner of Rue de Berri and Rue de Ponthieu in the 8th arrondissement of Paris in parallel of the Champs-Élysées. When Christian arrives inside the old shop, he’s welcomed by the same scents of old book, wood and grease. The man he was on the phone with smiles at him, shakes his hand and shows him what he received as he lets Christian looks inside all these wonderful gems. Among the stuff he finds the magazines, he has almost all of them except one, he looks inside and the pictures make him falling back in his childhood when he used to travel with his father to every race of the Tour de France, encouraging all the cyclists with particular admiration for Fausto Copi.
Then among other things, he finds an odd little cycling jersey folded inside the box, light lilac, impossibly soft, with short sleeves, a thin white stripe across the chest. Christian looks puzzled as he searches with his eyes the vendor but he is outside talking to another client, he holds the jersey up to the light until he sees a picture falling back in the box. He watches the girl on the picture, she doesn’t look older than 18 or 19 years old with a beautiful face, stunning blue eyes, and more he watches the picture, more he thinks he knows her… she looks like a girl he used to love back in his college years as he whispers:
Then unbeknownst to him the change begins as a tingle in his fingertips, it spread like warm champagne through his veins. His bones lighten, his skin tightens, years melt away in waves that leaves him gasping in the middle of his favorite shop until he falls unconscious.
When Christian finally takes back consciousness and stands up… something is wrong it’s no longer the shop… it’s a very high-tech space with lots of cycling stuff, bicycles and gear from every well-known marks. He sees a mirror but when he stares into it, the reflection image is someone who’s not Christian anymore. It’s a girl between 18 or 19 years old, she’s lithe, strong, with sun-kissed skin and a cascade of chestnut hair that fell just past her shoulders, stunning blue eyes stare back at her. The light lilac jersey is on her as it fits perfectly, underneath a blue Nike sport bra, grey Lycra shorts all hugging an athletic female body built for climbing.
At this moment, Christian still in shock finally sees a bag in the small changing room and inside that room some jeans and t-shirt and also a wallet with an ID saying:
Christian is shocked beyond measure, her name is now Amélie Lepelletier… at this moment she sees her old self and Amanda together smiling to her direction and singing her new name Amélie, then she sees Amanda crying telling her “Je suis désolée ma chérie… ton papa est mort dans un accident de voiture… mais ne t’inquiète pas… nous trouverons toujours un moyen ma chérie…” [I’m so sorry my darling… your dad has died in a car crash]
At this moment Christian disappears completely to be Amélie his daughter, she lives with her mom in Christian’s apartment with the same cycling collection that Amélie found one afternoon with her mom and she fell in love with cycling… since this moment she watches all the Tour de France and before her 18th Birthday, her mom just sponsored her on the Tour as an independent runner and Amélie is so happy, she trained for that moment all her life.
The race begins in Switzerland under grey skies all flat, windy, nervous. Amélie rides near the back, she’s remembering every lesson from watching grainy footage. When the first big crash happened on a roundabout, she slipped through the chaos like a ghost. She finished safely in the main group, already drawing whispers.
She attacks the mountains with calm, the camera motorcycles catch her face serene, focused, the faintest smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She takes the stage as journalists lose their minds.
Amélie gives her first interviews, all smiling with her mother not far behind. She talks about her father as her mentor and wants simply to ride her first Tour de France to honor him. After these first few days on the road, Amélie doesn’t wear the yellow jersey but she knows she’s going to wear it in the end, but for now she is on her hotel room bed, she is tired, still wearing her light lilac jersey, her sport bra underneath, her white bike helmet. She sucks on her energetic gel, listening to her favorite track lit, a large sweaty armpit. Her mom takes this last picture and sends it to Amélie who writes down the following post with this picture:
Later in the Tour Amélie wins the yellow jersey and the final race on the Champs-Élysées is a victory parade in yellow where Amélie sprints the last few miles for fun and crosses the line with both hands in the air, the Arc de Triomphe glowing behind her. She finally stands on the top step of the podium in Paris, yellow jersey gleaming under the summer sun, while the crowds chanted a name they barely knew a week earlier…
Months later Amélie goes to college in Paris and she’s going to study History in memory of her father…
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