Podium girls with their noses at Armpit Level

I thought this article was a bit amusing, in particular the comment about
the podium girls standing with their noses at armpit level of man who just
raced 100 miles. Here's a link, but you might have to register to see it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jul21.html

The Tour Buss
Cycling's Podium Girls Seal Each Victory With a Kiss, or Three
By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page C01


VILLARD-DE-LANS, France

The winner of the Tour de France gets the yellow jersey. He gets money,
endorsements and the praise of cycling's worldwide fans. And, as millions of
male viewers look on and envy the charisma of that skinny little guy, he
gets a kiss from the podium girls.

Actually, he gets anywhere from two to four kisses from each of the two
beauties who stand next to him on the podium. They also zip him into his
jersey and hand him flowers and a stuffed animal, like he's a kid in a
hospital. And they clap and smile beatifically, noses level with his
armpits, as the man who has just finished racing more than 100 miles of hot
road throws up his arms in a victory salute.

Cycling's podium girls are part of the cheerleading tradition in sports, a
connection between combat and sex that goes back to Helen of Troy. NASCAR
has its babes, boxing has its navel-baring round-card girls and the Tour de
France has its hotesses. (The term means "hostess" in French, not "hotty,"
despite the resemblance.) Girls, contests, winning -- it all blends into
basic urges. You win the trophy, you win the girl, you win it all.

But this being France, the podium girls are not the pneumatic
hot-pants-wearing mascots that you see at car races. They are tastefully
attired in navy-blue tunics, daffodil-yellow miniskirts and pumps. Their
most important asset is a brilliant smile and classy, somewhat untouchable
allure. France, after all, has a reputation to maintain. This nation's
leggy, high-cheekboned angels have been bewitching men for centuries.
Beautiful women are formally endowed with an elite status he Professional
models have been among the select cadre of professions entitled to a sizable
tax rebate.

The hallmarks of the Tour hostesses are glamour and sophistication, and
Nessrine Mousli has both to spare. Tall, with large dark eyes under a fringe
of bangs, she looks something like a dewy, brunet Brigitte Bardot.

Before one recent race she was passing out newspapers and wide, warm smiles
at the Credit Lyonnais kiosk. The bank, one of France's largest, is a
principal sponsor of the Tour and a primary funder of the yellow jersey
(meaning its logo has pride of place on the coveted shirt). Asked if she had
a moment to talk, Mousli immediately moved over to the adjacent coffee bar
and poured a cup of espresso for her interviewer. The podium routine that
follows each day's stage race is simple: "First of all, we have to agree
about how many kisses," Mousli said with a laugh. Thomas Voeckler, the tough
French cyclist on the team Brioches la Boulangeres who wore the yellow
jersey for more than a week, chose four. The Italians, she said, always
choose four. But Thor Hushovd, the Norwegian sprinter who wore the yellow
jersey at the start of the Tour, chose three.

Asked to confirm this bewildering news, Hushovd set the record straight. "I
think I had two," he said, pushing his bike toward the starting line at
Carcassonne last Saturday. "Two is enough, isn't it?" Kissing Voeckler has
been so much fun, Mousli said. He's funny, relaxed. He likes to joke with
the girls. The first time she zipped him into the yellow jersey, "his eyes
were glittering and he was very excited," she said. "But then one day he was
bitter, you know? Sour. He said to us, 'Maybe this is the last day I'll have
it.' "

Mousli and her co-hostess tried to comfort him. "We said, 'Oh, no, I'm sure
you'll get it again tomorrow.' "

Wouldn't you know, he did. He didn't lose it until Tuesday, when Lance
Armstrong buried the field in the race up this alpine summit.

Just how does Mousli hold onto her sweet smiles as the winning cyclist
raises his arms to acknowledge the cheers, after biking all day and,
perhaps, peeing in his shorts?

"They have five minutes to prepare themselves, so they are very clean,"
Mousli said. "Thomas especially. I said to him, 'I don't understand how you
can have bicycled hundreds of kilometers and you don't seem to be tired.' He
was very fresh."

Is there anyone she hopes to be able to kiss this Tour? "Lance," Mousli
said, flashing an especially gleaming smile. "He is a legend for everybody."

Hostess Emilie Moreau is a veteran Armstrong kisser, having accessorized the
American's victories at the Tour finish on Paris's Champs-Elysees for three
years running. It's a magical experience, she said. "You're on the most
beautiful avenue in the world, which is closed just because of us, with the
Arc de Triomphe behind, and all the honor. And then, Lance is a great
champion." Did he smell fresh?

She thought about this. "Not really," she said, pursing her lips. "But he
didn't smell so bad, either."

The hostesses are strictly forbidden to get any closer to the riders than
those officially sanctioned pecks on the cheek. Fraternizing is strictly
forbidden. However, love doesn't listen to rules, and romance has been known
to arise from those calculated kisses. Emilie Moreau caught the eye of
French cyclist Christophe Moreau in 2000. Adhering to policy, they waited
until after the Tour was over to start dating, and married in 2002.

Hostess Melanie Simonneau and U.S. Postal Service cyclist George Hincapie
were not so discreet, however. Speaking with Armstrong's veteran lieutenant
while the race was still in progress cost the 23-year-old hostess her job.

"When I first saw her I thought, 'Wow, she's beautiful! And I wanted to ask
her out on a date to have this beautiful girl with me," Hincapie told the
Associated Press recently. "But that was it; I didn't think it would go
anywhere." It went somewhere. The two are now engaged and expecting their
first child in November.

The man who fired Simonneau says he is now very happy for her and Hincapie.
As the "responsable du sponsoring" for Credit Lyonnais, Daniel Isaacs is in
charge of the hostesses. And no hostess under his watch is going to fool
around with the talent.

"They're not paid for that," he said. "What I want is that they represent
Credit Lyonnais -- period. To be agreeable to the public. They're not there
to flirt. To have a love affair -- I can't allow that." Isaacs is a stickler
for rules. His hostesses must be no older than 30, and tall enough to stand
nearly even with the cyclists, who are one step above them on the podium.
Most important, he said, they have to be gorgeous.

He selects them from a cattle call in Paris every year, to which modeling
agencies across the country send their top candidates. Only four are chosen
by Isaacs to present the yellow jersey. The race does have other categories
of winners, for example, the polka-dot jersey, which goes to the best
climber, and the green jersey, for the best sprinter. These, too, are
presented by hostesses, sponsored and chosen by other corporations. Isaacs,
however, insists that his hostesses are the prettiest.

The corporate hostesses have been used only for the past 15 years. Before
then, the race winners were saluted by selected sweet lasses of whatever
village hosted the finish line. This made the podium ceremony more charming
and spontaneous, said Gilbert Costes, an innkeeper in the tiny town of
Montsegur, nestled into the Pyrenees Mountains.

Now, he says, the hostesses are "more stereotypical . . . they have no
passion." Costes sees the corporate podium girls as further evidence of the
increasing commercialization of the sport.

"It's the sponsoring that keeps cycling alive now," he said. With the
investment of corporate money in the sport, the bikers' salaries have
soared, and they have become too pampered, he said. "That's why they're less
biting, less aggressive. They don't want to hurt themselves." Indeed, much
of the Tour de France is a huge advertisement for the event's corporate
sponsors. Bike racing, many observers complain, is secondary. The teams
themselves are corporate, not national, named for sponsors such as the U.S.
Postal Service, T-Mobile, Gerolsteiner bottled water, the above-mentioned
bakery chain Brioches la Boulangeres, even a hearing aid manufacturer
(Phonak Hearing Systems). Each team uniform is a billboard for half a dozen
corporate logos, with prime real estate being those places the TV cameras
are likely to linger. Watch closely as a cyclist comes across the finish for
a stage win. Even if he had opened his jersey to cool himself during the
race, the well-schooled rider will zip up just before pumping his fists in
triumph, ensuring that his sponsors get their logos -- neat and unrumpled --
in the photo.

Winning the mountain climb of Plateau de Beille under a broiling sun Friday,
Armstrong was zipped up for the money shot. Coming in just behind him, the
French rider Voeckler completed the grueling course fast enough to hold onto
the overall lead. He finished with an ecstatically happy smile -- and his
shirt unzipped to his waist. The next day, as his photo graced the covers of
half a dozen French newspapers, opinions varied on whether he had simply
forgotten corporate protocol or if he was deliberately showing off his chest
hair. In the Tour de France, the marketing doesn't stop with the team
uniforms.

"The ads, the ads, the ads!" Jacqueline Montazaud said as she waited for the
start of the ninth stage last week in St.-Leonard-de-Noblat. The Parisian,
passing through on vacation, was exasperated by the stream of floats in the
publicity caravan that slogs through each town on the tour route ahead of
the cyclists.

"I had imagined a lot more sport," said Montazaud, "but this is nothing but
publicity." In fact, it's like a mini Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: There
are the Disneyland Resort cars crowned with huge Goofys and Minnies,
enormous plastic loaves of bread bursting out of bakery trucks, candy
company trucks bearing huge plastic figurines of beaming children,
minivan-size bottles of Aquarelle water on wheels, even a truck publicizing
the "Spider-Man" film sequel.

There are also a slew of bright yellow Credit Lyonnais cars, one of them
towing a mammoth stuffed lion, the bank's mascot, as well as that of the
Tour.

But nothing gets that bank name into the public's living rooms like the
podium ritual, with its svelte, coolly sexy hostesses.

And of course it's a heck of a motivation for the cyclists to know that if
they win the race, they'll also win the embrace of two of the prettiest
women in France.

Right?

"Yeah, for sure it's good; they are beautiful girls," said Hushovd, the
Nordic sprinter, recalling his quickie kisses on the podium. "But I was just
happy to be there to get my jersey."

"M. Barbee" wrote...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jul21.html

...."Is there anyone she hopes to be able to kiss this Tour? "Lance," Mousli
said, flashing an especially gleaming smile. "He is a legend for everybody."

"M. Barbee" wrote...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jul21.html

...."Is there anyone she hopes to be able to kiss this Tour? "Lance," Mousli
said, flashing an especially gleaming smile. "He is a legend for everybody."

It's not distribute an entire article like this without permission of
the copyright holder.

JT

It's not distribute an entire article like this without permission of
the copyright holder.

JT

It's not right to distribute an entire article like this without
permission of the copyright holder.

JT

It's not right to distribute an entire article like this without
permission of the copyright holder.

JT

"M. Barbee" wrote ...
I thought this article was a bit amusing, in particular the comment about
the podium girls standing with their noses at armpit level of man who just
raced 100 miles.

They do put fresh pants and shirt on, and also towel off before they
go up to the podium.

-Ken

"M. Barbee" wrote ...
I thought this article was a bit amusing, in particular the comment about
the podium girls standing with their noses at armpit level of man who just
raced 100 miles.

They do put fresh pants and shirt on, and also towel off before they
go up to the podium.

-Ken

It's not right to distribute an entire article like this without
permission of the copyright holder.

Calm down.. half the internet is copy and pasted from the other half.

Mike
http://mikebeauchamp.com