Lyons-la-Forêt pays tribute to Antoine Blondin, author and genius sports columnist

100 years !

This is the age Antoine Blondin would have.

Born in Paris, the famous journalist and novelist, revealed in 1949 with "l'Europe buissonnière" which received the Prix des Deux-Magots, spent part of his childhood in Lyons-la-Forêt (Eure), where he also met under the famous halls his wife Sylviane Dollfus.

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Under the impetus of his niece, the journalist Ariane Dollfus, and his grandson, Symbad de Lassus, still residents of Europe, in partnership with the Friends of Lyons association and the municipal library, the village pays him a tribute until to November 19 through exhibitions and screenings.

A genius sports columnist, Antoine Blondin was best known to the general public as the man who participated in twenty-seven Tours de France and five Olympic Games.

He will write thousands of tickets in an epic style which will make champions of the heroes of novels or rather of Greek tragedy and will assimilate the pages of the daily newspaper L'Équipe to great literature for twenty-eight years.

In 1972, he thus obtained the Henri Desgrange Prize from the Sports Academy.

Two free exhibitions to discover this summer

However, the man was an "anxious author, with an easy style, but a difficult pen" whose friendship was the support of his existence.

Thus, he will write “if I look for something solid, around me, I see neither walls nor furniture, nothing but beings.

Friendship or the love of others will have been my coat and my home”.

It is in the form of a retrospective that the organizers wanted to celebrate the author of "A monkey in winter", from which Henri Verneuil on the dialogues of Michel Audiard will draw a cinematographic masterpiece with Jean Gabin and Jean - Paul Belmondo.

This summer, visitors will be able to discover two exhibitions free of charge.

One on the esplanade opposite the Maison Ravel on “the sports chronicler at

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We discover him in photographs in the company of the Normand Jacques Anquetil, in the mythical car 101 or with one of his last confidants, the rugby player Jean-Pierre Rives, nicknamed Golden Helmet.

The other, from a literary angle, is in the municipal library

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Thus, "on his work and his life", panels approach Antoine Blondin through his friendships, the cinema, his sports chronicles, his novels, his youth and a few quotations including the tasty one, "one writes with a dictionary and a trash can. paper.

All the rest is only liters and erasures”.

An exceptional evening in the presence of Costa Gavras

Programming will continue from the start of the school year.

Two screenings are planned in an open-air cinema.

On Friday September 2 at 7:30 p.m., with an adaptation and dialogues by Antoine Blondin, “La Lettre dans un taxi” by François Chatel will be screened, with Micheline Presle and Jean Rochefort, in the presence of Thibault Chatel, son of the director.

The next day at the same time, the immense "A monkey in winter", with the immortals Quentin and Fouquet, will again embark the spectators in "the scenes of intoxication with great spectacle" at the Hotel Stella somewhere in Normandy.

For this exceptional evening, the director of "Z", "L'Aveu" or "Missing", Costa Gavras, will share his memories and anecdotes when in 1962, he was assistant director on the set of Henri Verneuil.

He will be accompanied by Mathias Moncorgé, the son of Jean Gabin.

On Monday September 5 at 4.30 p.m., Le Petit Lyons will organize a literary café on “Readings and exchanges around its sports chronicles”.

Finally, in the village hall, on Saturday November 19 at 5.30 p.m., the documentary "Antoine Blondin, the legend of the Tour" by Christophe Duchiron will be broadcast and at 7.30 p.m., "The Tour according to Blondin" by Jacques Maigne and Serge Garcin.

More beautiful flights!

Information: www.lyons-la-forêt.fr/www.lesamisdelyons.com