{"id":692402,"date":"2026-07-15T04:46:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T04:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/692402\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T04:46:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T04:46:28","slug":"long-live-henri-iv-king-of-the-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/692402\/","title":{"rendered":"Long live Henri IV, King of the Tour de France"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Long<\/p>\n

Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n

For a decade, Bernard Monforte held court as Henri IV. This year, for the first time, he’s not there. We miss him.\n<\/p>\n

\"Iain<\/p>\n

Every year for as long as I\u2019ve been coming to the Tour de France, there has been a character I find myself drawn to. There are a lot of characters, actually: the Tour is a big rolling circus with a surprisingly high retention of people around the bike race, which means that the security guards in the press room are usually the same from one year to the next, as are the people on the Bad Coffee Stand<\/a>, as are the various performers in the village at each stage start. But the King? He\u2019s a particular favourite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the early days, I knew him mostly as \u2018The Smelly King\u2019 (although in Tour Daily folklore<\/a> we are split on nomenclature, some preferring \u2018Stinky\u2019 instead of \u2018Smelly\u2019). In hindsight, the fact that we once caught him on an especially hot and aromatic day makes the nickname feel a bit unfair, especially seeing as he was many hours into a long shift wearing a velvet suit and neck ruff. Anyway: for the first couple of years, I\u2019d speak to him, and he would always stay in character as Henri IV. It was both funny and infuriating.\u00a0At the very least, you had to admire his commitment to the bit. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Tour Daily Cinematic Universe<\/p>\n

A crib sheet to catch new listeners back up to the bunch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the years went by, and as I got to know him a bit better with my annual interviews, he was less smelly, and more of a human being rather than a character. It became an important part of my Tour de France experience, a soft and early chat to get my head in the game before going to talk to the less charismatic riders. And besides, I just really liked talking to him. I stopped thinking about him as \u2018The Stinky King\u2019, and pivoted to \u2018Henri IV\u2019 or \u2018Your Majesty\u2019. And from there, to Bernard \u2013 his real name.<\/p>\n

This year, Bernard is not at the Tour de France. I was a bit sad about that, because I can\u2019t have a little dance of a chat with him, but after my sadness subsided, I had the ghost of a memory that he\u2019d told me that 2025 would be his last appearance in character. He is now the creator and director of a play called “Il est une fois le Tour de France” (Once upon a time\u2026 the Tour de France), which portrays the story of the race\u2019s creation by Henri Desgrange, and had an opening run of shows at a theatre in Tarbes this April.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wish him well, and miss him, and in honour of his ten years of brave service to the Tour de France in uncomfortable and hot clothing, would like to share this interview from stage 19 of last year\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo: Patrick Redford of Defector, 2025. \"\"<\/p>\n

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Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

\n \ud83d\udc4dYep
\n \ud83d\udc4eNope\n <\/p>\n

\n Tour de France<\/a>
\n Culture<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tour de France For a decade, Bernard Monforte held court as Henri IV. This year, for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-692402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}