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  • I guess since it was the commisaire's decision, berating Froome for 'missing the opportunity' to charm the French seems unfair. He didn't make the decision, and ultimately I doubt it would have endeared him to the French, who at the end of the day seem to rarely like the winner of the race anyway. At the end of the day who do you want to be, Poulidor or Anquetil?

    Actually Anquetil is a really bad example considering the sort of person he was (all that business with his wife's daughter, just not cricket), but you'll take the point: be a winner, or be popular?

  • I hadn't heard of that before, it sounds like the most bizarre Jerry Springer plot ever.

    Anquetil married Janine Boeda on 22 December 1958. She had been married to Anquetil's doctor. The doctor, seeing a rival, sent his wife to live with friends. Anquetil went to see her, disguised as a plumber, and took her off to Paris to buy clothes in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
    Their marriage produced no children. Janine had two children, Alain and Annie, from her previous marriage. Janine had two failed pregnancies and Anquetil grew upset in 1970 that he wasn't a father. The couple considered a surrogate mother before Janine thought of her daughter, Annie. Janine said: "We didn't use the parental authority that we could have had over her. It was a request that I addressed to her. Gently. Annie always had the choice of refusing." Annie confirmed her mother's recollection. She said:
    “ When my mother asked that [I should become impregnated by my step-father, Anquetil].... I was totally breathtaken by the proposition.... But, mind, I accepted willingly. I have to admit that at the time, despite being 18 years old, I was in love with Jacques. And I knew that I pleased him. What do you expect? That's life. And that's how I found myself in his bed in the sacred mission of procreation.”
    Anquetil, his wife and his wife's daughter began a ménage à trois[27] Annie said:
    “ "Nobody thought it strange that Jacques Anquetil joined me in my bed each evening before returning to the marital bed beside my mother. Everybody was comfortable with it [Tout le monde était à l'aise]."

    Annie said she should have left the house after her daughter, Sophie, was born (in 2004, Sophie Anquetil published the book Pour l'amour de Jacques in which she confirmed what had been rumoured but what Anquetil had always tried to hide: that she was Anquetil's daughter). Instead, she grew jealous of her own mother and demanded that she leave instead. When Janine refused, Annie left instead.
    To fill the gap in the house, Janine invited her son, Alain, and his wife, Dominique, to return to live there. Anquetil began an affair with Dominique, to make Annie jealous. Dominique had Anquetil's child but Annie still refused to return. Dominique still lives in the house, Les Elfes, where she organises conferences. Janine and Anquetil divorced. Sophie moved in with Janine, although she lives now in Calenzana, near Calvi. Both Janine and Dominique wrote their life story: neither mentioned the link between Sophie and Anquetil.

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