What's an audax ?

[Veloman]

The FFCT delegates BRM homologation to the ACP: every BRM I've ever finished bears their stamp.  They also set rules and register organizers in other clubs.  I could imagine them getting snippy if I live & ride in France yet want to qualify for PBP using DIY AUK brevets.

I believe DIY will not be BRM and hence you are unable to qualify for PBP using DIY (or perms).

I believe BRM are calendar events only.

[Somnolent]

You won't be able to qualify for PBP with DIYs (wherever they are ridden).
AFAIK they require PBP qualifiers to be all BRM.
____________
Edit:   Veloman beat me to it.

[T42]

Just had a gander at the ACP rules (the French is rather poor ).  You're right.  Irritating.

Even not as PBP qualif. it'd be nice if they simply catered for DIYs: they're what the revered St. Velocio did, after all.  I'm not at all sure the FFCT understands GPS.

[frankly frankie]

This thread is the 1st time I've seen a link made between FFCT and ACP in this way - I think ACP would assert their independence from FFCT, in just the same way that AUK would from CTC (who do sometimes list some AUK events).

[LittleWheelsandBig]

The ACP was a founding member of the FFCT and remains a member to this day. Many other French clubs are FFCT members, taking advantage of favourable insurance rates.

[Andrew]

Many other French clubs are FFCT members, taking advantage of favourable insurance rates.

As indeed are my old club. I believe the CTC has club membership too, or is it affiliated membership? And one can be an individual member of the FFCT, I am one such. Though it must be said that (I'd guess) in France the majority of members of the FFCT are via a club and not as individuals, whereas as I suspect it's t'other way around in the UK with the CTC.

An FFCT licence is perhaps the cheapest way to insurance. The FFC licence (for sportier quicker racing types) is more expensive and an UFOLEP licence more so again largely because, I suspect, of it's multi-sport coverage.

[Exit Stage Left]

You can join ACP itself, the medical is an interesting idea. Especially the Ruffier Test.
http://www.aos.sk/struktura/katedry/utv/ruffierang.html

http://www.audax-club-parisien.com/EN/index.php?showpage=24

[T42]

The ACP was a founding member of the FFCT and remains a member to this day. Many other French clubs are FFCT members, taking advantage of favourable insurance rates.

Everything in France being run by the govt, some years ago the FFCT received total responsibility for all things cyclotouriste from the Ministry of the Interior.  It was that or see the whole shebang handed to the FFC.

As far as the history goes, like every other French organization there's a history of quarrels and schisms that's hard to get your head round at the best of times. The history pages of the ACP, UAF and FFCT are worth a gander but need to be shuffled together to make sense.

[Exit Stage Left]

The FFCT has a slight problem in telling its history, as it came into being as the FFCT under Vichy rule in 1942.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=60cLdzhquB0C&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=Vichy+France+cycling+policy&source=bl&ots=BBPFDMYEXH&sig=J6oxQ335VzXBVQkfnjS3R9OEb8A&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kPD1U_OMCanH0QX5tYCwCQ&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Vichy%20France%20cycling%20policy&f=false

The recent Semaine Federale held near Vichy made no mention of this of course. The official date for the founding of the FFCT is 7th May 1945. An interesting book extract by the way.

[T42]

Better not tell the Daily Mail.

[Exit Stage Left]

I fancy doing some structured research into the various strands of cyclo-tourism at some point. I contacted the author of that history of French cycling. It turns out he's a member of the Anfield Bicycle Club. The history of that club is interesting.
http://www.anfieldbc.co.uk/history.html

[T42]

Interesting paragraph in Bernard Déon's whacking great UACP/UAF history:

An autonomous cycle touring federation was created on the 20th November 1942: the Fédération Française de Cyclotourisme with Charles Antonin as president. The UACP immediately sent in its affiliation, abandoning the control of the UVF, lately become the FFC.
...
Rules are published mentioning that, by decision of the FFCT committee, UACP brevets are to be placed under FFCT supervision as of 1st June 1943, under the patronage of L'Auto.


I like the discreet "was created".  Interesting that UACP brevets were still under newspaper patronage despite Vichy's push to restructure sports. I suppose L'Auto had adapted to circumstances.

He also mentions that, during the July 1943 200k brevet, participants were astounded that fresh bread, saucisson, crème aux oeufs and fresh milk were served at lunch as opposed to the stark fare they'd got used to in Paris.

[T42]

I fancy doing some structured research into the various strands of cyclo-tourism at some point. I contacted the author of that history of French cycling. It turns out he's a member of the Anfield Bicycle Club. The history of that club is interesting.
http://www.anfieldbc.co.uk/history.html

Great article, that.  5 days for LEJOG on a penny-farthing is incredible.

[Exit Stage Left]

Vichy France was occupied in mid November 1942 by Germany, so there was less of a distinction between the various zones in France in 1943.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Anton

L'Auto had political origins and collaborated during WW2.

It turns out that the world’s most famous bicycle race, the Tour de France , has an unlikely origin: It was a direct result of the notorious Dreyfus Affair.
The slightly condensed, rather confusing story goes something like this: When pro-Dreyfus Émile Loubet became president of the French Republic in 1899, he was attacked (and beaten on the head with a walking stick) by the passionately anti-Dreyfus Count de Dion, one of France’s major bicycle and auto manufacturers. De Dion was jailed for the attack, and the resulting scandal was featured prominently in the then-major daily sports paper Le Vélo (The Bike), whose editor, Pierre Giffard, was just as passionately pro-Dreyfus.
De Dion, who happened to be the biggest advertiser in Le Vélo, was so infuriated, he pulled his ads and persuaded fellow advertisers Adolphe Clément and Edouard Michelin to found a rival sports paper, L’Auto-Vélo. After Giffard sued, the name became simply L’Auto.
L’Auto was failing, and so, in desperation, a meeting was held regarding what could be done to save it. The solution, creating the biggest, longest bicycle race, ironically was the suggestion of a reporter poached from Le Vélo. The race’s anti-Semitic purpose was explicit in the announcement that sending “strong, uncomplicated men” all over France would be done with the same force with which Émile Zola defended “the plowman” (a derisive reference to Zola’s brave, historic defense of Dreyfus, “J’accuse…!”). Outside of that reference, L’Auto made a policy of no politics in its pages. The 1903 Tour de France was such a sensation that it put Le Vélo out of business and L’Auto became France’s major sports daily.
Ironically, after the liberation of France in 1944, L’Auto itself was charged with treasonous collusion with the enemy. The government seized the rights to both the paper and the Tour de France. The editor, however, was permitted to publish a new paper, L’Équipe (The Team). Charles de Gaulle allowed L’Équipe to regain the rights to the Tour de France, reportedly because the only alternatives had communist ties, and because right-winger Philippe Amaury, a member of the Résistance, defended the editor against charges of Nazi collaboration. His reward? L’Équipe — still France’s major sports paper — became part of his media empire, Éditions Philippe Amaury, and EPA’s subsidiary Amaury Sport Organization currently runs the Tour de France, as well as other sports events.
If there were any doubts about the continuing divisiveness over “L’Affaire Dreyfus,” when President François Mitterrand commissioned a statue of Alfred Dreyfus in 1985, the defense minister refused to install it in the intended location, the École Militaire.

[T42]

Interesting excerpt.  This is probably the wrong place to discuss this, but one of the origins of French antisemitism in the period leading up to the Dreyfus affair was a banking scandal some years before, in which a number of Jews were implicated and a great many people lost large sums of money.

That 200k in July 1943 went into Normandy, which explains the good food.  To get into Paris it had to go through a lot of middlemen. Incidentally (and again out of place but interesting), we have a pre-war cookbook with a 1944 bullet-hole through it and a bunch of wartime recipe clippings on how to simulate olive oil, how to handle meatless days etc. Illuminating.

[CrazyEnglishTriathlete]

Commonsense and a modicum of ingenuity solves most problems.

+1  Selfie Photograph of the day's newspaper next to town sign made me smile.

[HK]

The link with FFCT is seriously strong and that's what they mean when they refer to the federation.  It's alway why you will find the FFCT logo on things PBP both randonneur and audax.  UAF is also within the federation, it makes things very simple.  ACP very proudly introduced the president of FFCT at the start of PBP - he was on a tandem with his brother, I think they were on their 11th PBP!  The brothers also have PBP addaxes to their credit as well.