Time is not always a very good doctor, but it sometimes has the effect of a medicine that reduces pain and hides small scars. “I had given up on it. I was convinced that it would never happen again. Like everyone else, I had moved on a bit to something else,” breathes Bernard Thévenet while talking about the Grenoble Six Days of Cycling, which became Four Days in 2012 and 2013 then Three Days for the last edition, in 2014. The former winner of the Tour de France (1975, 1977), track manager of the event from 1990 to 2014, had some dust in his eyes when it had its epilogue.
Miracle: nine years later, and somewhat to everyone’s surprise, the trackers and revelers made their return to the Palais des Sports. Since Thursday and until Saturday. The City of Grenoble, led by ecologist Éric Piolle, had nevertheless announced in 2014 the resumption of management of the place, and therefore the end of the event, before the desire to dismantle the legendary track set the local microcosm ablaze. and cyclist just a year ago.
Big boss of the organization since 1990, Guy Chanal saw a golden opportunity to step into the breach. “Since 2014, and even though I had other activities on the side, I had the impression that the story was not finished,” he confides. I had kept the idea in the back of my mind. I submitted a date for October 2023, without telling the municipality what I planned to do. Everything happened very quickly after that. This event is part of Grenoble’s heritage. And everyone has an interest in keeping this track. »
A multi-use Sports Palace
1.1 million euros were also to be invested at the same time as the removal of the track to improve reception conditions for the public, artists and technicians for concerts or shows. “Why keep a track that is hardly used when cultural events are hustling and would like to benefit from logistical improvements? », quips a local elected official.
“A study was carried out and actually showed that various uses were possible. We have therefore chosen to maintain the track for the moment. It is an aging facility but there is a lot of work to maintain or improve the place, Olivier Bertrand, deputy mayor of Grenoble in charge of events, explains to L’Équipe. The future is still uncertain, it also depends on the success of this meeting, the audience it will find. So much the better if it works…”
Until Saturday, the organizers, volunteers and athletes (Mathilde Gros, Thomas Boudat, or the Isérois Rayan Helal or Marion Borras) are therefore on a mission: to make the event exist, on the track and off, to once again stimulate a movement and remove the specter of removal from the track. “We are putting everything in place so that people come back, so that they talk about it. The runners will put on a show. It is also in their interest to save this track, to train, to have high-level meetings,” underlines Thévenet.
Like many others before him, he never tires of recounting the nights at the Palais des Sports, where the champions slept in the basements, rode during the day and then partied, all until the seventh early morning. The reduced format of this 45th edition should not prevent us from resurrecting all of this.
