"[4] The need for working hands on the farm meant he left school at 14 even though he wanted to continue his studies.

Local entertainment went little further than village fairs, with coconut shies, sack-races, competitions for bottles of home-made jam... and inter-village cycle races.

[6] He started racing bicycles at the age of 16, picking up the interest from the magazine Miroir-Sprint given to him by one of his school teachers.

Pierre Chany, a French reporter who followed 49 Tours de France, drew the comparison with Poulidor's eventual rival, Jacques Anquetil: by the time Poulidor first stepped into a train, Anquetil had already been to Helsinki, ridden the Olympic Games, won a medal for France, turned professional and won the Grand Prix des Nations.

[7] The army sent Poulidor to the war then going on in Algeria, where he worked as a driver and put on 12 kg through lack of exercise.

Despite being guided in the wrong direction by a police man in the final corner, he was able to hold off the chasing field by three seconds to take the victory.

Poulidor's riding style was aggressive and attacking, whereas Anquetil preferred to control the race in the mountains and win time in the time-trials.

Poulidor's mid-France upbringing and his slow Limousin speech also contrasted with Anquetil's northern background and sharper accent.

[11] The Tour organiser, Jacques Goddet, was behind the pair as they turned off the main road and climbed through what police estimated as half a million spectators.

At the end, Anquetil cracked, after a battle of wills and legs so intense that at times they banged elbows.

[11] Of Anquetil, the veteran French reporter Pierre Chany wrote: "His face, until then purple, lost all its colour; the sweat ran down in drops through the creases of his cheeks."

Poulidor gained time but when they reached Paris, Anquetil still had a 55-second lead and won his last Tour de France thanks to the time-trial on the final day.

[11] Divisions between fans became marked, which two sociologists studying the impact of the Tour on French society say became emblematic of France old and new.

Research showed that more than 4,000 newspaper articles appeared about him in France in just 1974 and that no other rider "had ever incited so many sociological investigations, so many university theses, seeking to find the cause of his prodigious popularity.

A poupée is a doll and the nickname hints at that and follows the French tradition of repeating the first syllable of a word in childspeak.

The end of the Anquetil era presented opportunities for Poulidor to finally win the Tour de France.

In the 1973 Tour Poulidor almost lost his life on the descent from the Col de Portet d'Aspet when he plunged into a ravine, taking a serious blow to the head and crawling out with the help of the race director, Jacques Goddet.

Antonin Magne remained manager of Poulidor's Mercier team until 1970, when he was replaced by another former rider, Louis Caput.

Poulidor attacked from the start, setting a speed record on the Col de la Turbie that stood for more than 10 years and won Paris–Nice by two seconds.

Next morning, the race left the city on the way to the Pyrenees and stopped in the suburb of Gradignan, in the university area of La House.

[11] Poulidor has several times accepted that his career was handicapped by a lack of ambition and by the psychological domination of Jacques Anquetil.

He lived with his wife Gisèle in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, east of Limoges, where he made short trips on his mountain bike.

Their daughter, Corinne, is married to the former world cyclo-cross champion and Tour of Flanders winner Adri van der Poel.

[20] He had bicycles made under his name by the France-Loire company, and has appeared in television commercials aimed at older people.