Bernard Th%C3%A9venet
Bernard Thvenet is a retired French bicycle racer. He is a twotime winner of the Tour de France and known for ending the reign of fivetime Tour champion Eddy Merckx, though both feats are tarnished by Thvenets later admission of steroids use during his career. He also won the Dauphin Libr in 1975 and 1976.
Thvenet was born to a farming family in SaneetLoire in Burgundy and lived in a hamlet called Le Guidon . It was there in 1961 that he saw the Tour de France for the first time, on, a 123160km stage from Nevers to Lyon. Thvenet was a choir boy in the village church. He said The priest brought forward the time for Mass so that we could watch the riders go by. The sun was shining on their toeclips and the chrome on their forks. They were modernday knights. I had already been dreaming of becoming a racing cyclist and that magical sight convinced me definitively. It was never that magical when I was actually in the peloton of the Tour!
Source: Wikipedia