It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
Feel free to submit!
L’essai du bout du monde, 1994
The early 1990s had seen France in the shadow of England. Eight consecutive defeats to Will Carling’s teams, starting in 1989, underlined the indiscipline of French rugby. An isolated Five Nations title came in 1993, as England slipped to defeats in Cardiff and Dublin. In 1992, Argentina stunned France 24–20 in Nantes, the Pumas’ first ever win on French soil. On their 1994 tour of New Zealand, the French, under captain Philippe Saint-André, recorded a 2–0 series win over the All Blacks. The series win was sealed by the famous “try from the end of the world”, which saw Saint-André begin a counterattack from deep in France’s end in the final minutes that ended with Jean-Luc Sadourny scoring the winning try. France were desperately unlucky to lose in the semi-finals to the hosts and eventual champions South Africa in 1995.
Tireurs de savate boxe française - 1900
Savate, also known as boxe française, French boxing, French kickboxing or French footfighting, is a traditional French martial art which uses the hands and feet as weapons combining elements of western boxing with graceful kicking techniques. ”Savate” is a French word for “oldshoe”. Savate is perhaps the only style of kickboxing in which the fighters habitually wear shoes.
The modern formalized form is mainly an amalgam of French street fighting techniques from the beginning of the 19th century.
Boules de pétanque et cochonet
Pétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (literally “piglet”) or jack. It is also sometimes called a bouchon (literally “cork”) or le petit (“the small one”). The game is normally played on hard dirt or gravel, but can also be played on grass, sand or other surfaces. Similar games are bocce and bowls.
The current form of the game originated in 1907 in La Ciotat, in Provence, in southern France. The English and French name pétanquecomes from petanca in the Provençal dialect of the Occitan language, deriving from the expression pès tancats, meaning “feet together” or more exactly “feet anchored”.
Laura Flessel-Colovic
Laura Flessel-Colovic (born 6 November 1971 in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe) is a French épée fencer. She is currently number one on the all-time list of French female Olympic medal winners, with five. Before 2007, she was a member of the Levallois Sporting Club Escrime. Nowadays she works with the Lagardère Paris Racing. She is married and has one daughter.
She was France’s flag-bearer at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London. It was her fifth and last Olympics.
The history of fencing in France begins in the 16th century, with the adoption of Italian styles of rapier fencing.
There are medieval predecessors, such as the Burgundian Le jeu de la hache (“The Play of the Axe”) of ca. 1400, but the history of the classical French school begins with the foundation of the Académie des Maistres en faits d’armes de l’Académie du Roy (also known as the Ecole Française d’Escrime) by Charles IX of France in December 1567.
Henry de Sainct Didier was a 16th century French fencing master, author of a 1573 treatise, titled
Traicté contenant les secrets du premier livre sur l’espée seule, mère de toutes armes, qui sont espée dague, cappe, targue, bouclier, rondelle, l’espée deux mains & deux espées, avec ses pourtraictures, ayans les armes au poing por se deffendre & offencer à un mesme temps des coups qu’on peut tirer, tant en assillant qu’en deffendent, fort utile & profitable por adextrer la noblesse, & suposts de Mars: redigé par art, ordre & practique
(Treatise containing the secrets of the first book on the single sword, mother of all weapons, which are the sword-dagger, cappe, targe, buckler, shield, two-handed sword & dual-sword, with pictures, including handweapons for defence and attack, and thrusts that can be made both attacking and defending, very useful & profitable for the increased dexterity of the nobility and the adherents of Mars: refined by art, order and practice.)
Sainct Didier was from a Provençal noble family. His treatise is dedicated to Charles IX.
I just discovered someone actually created a one hour documentary about the “love-hate” relationship we have with England in rugby, the rivalry and the respect we have with each other.
It is in French, but if you’re interested you can find it here.
“En cette année 1427, vint à Paris une femme nommée Margot, assez jeune, comme de 28 à 30 ans, qui était du pays de Hainaut, laquelle jouait le mieux à la paume qu’oncques homme eût vu, et avec ce jouait devant main derrière main très puissamment, très malicieusement, très habilement, comme pouvait faire un homme, et peu venait d’hommes à qui elle ne gagnât, si ce n’était les plus puissants joueurs.”
“In this year 1427 came to Paris a woman named Margot, quite young, around 28 or 30 years old, from the country of Hainaut, and she played the jeu de paume quite strongly, quite maliciously, quite skilfully, as a men, and there were few men she didn’t beat, outside of the best players”
Paragraphe 472 du Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, rééd. 1990, Paris, Le livre de poche
Battling Siki training
Battling Siki (September 16, 1897 – December 15, 1925), aka Louis Mbarick Fall, was a French light heavyweight boxer born in Senegal who fought from 1912–1925, and briefly reigned as the lineal light heavyweight champion after knocking out Georges Carpentier. Siki was one of the more colorful figures in boxing history.
Le bouclier de Brennus
The Bouclier de Brennus, or Brennus Shield in English, is a trophy awarded to the winners of the French rugby union domestic league.
The shield was not named, as it is often believed, after the famous Gallic warrior Brennus but rather artist Charles Brennus, co-founder of the USFSA, the original governing body of rugby union in France. Charles Brennus sculpted the shield himself in 1892, based on an original design from his friend and fellow USFSA co-founder Pierre de Coubertin, the man who founded the modern Olympic Games. The trophy consists of a brass shield and plaque both fixed on a wooden support made of ash. The wooden frame gave the shield its nickname of Planchot, which means “plank” in Occitan (planchòt). The Brennus shield is one of the most recognisable trophies in France and is an integral part of French sporting folklore.
Hawaiki nui va’a
@credits
Hawaiki nui va’a is a three-day, open-water traditional outrigger canoe race. More than 2,000 racers in more than 100 canoes battle for 78 miles, traveling from Huahine to Raiatea to Tahaa to Bora Bora. Va’a is the Tahitian word for canoe.
The outrigger canoe (Filipino and Indonesian: bangka; New Zealand Māori: waka ama; Cook Islands Maori: vaka; Hawaiian: waʻa; Tahitian and Samoan:vaʻa) is a type of canoe featuring one or more lateral support floats known as outriggers, which are fastened to one or both sides of the main hull. Smaller canoes often employ a single outrigger on the port side, while larger canoes may employ a single-outrigger, double-outrigger, or double-hull configuration (see also catamaran). The sailing canoes are an important part of the Polynesian heritage and are raced and sailed in Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa and by the Māori of New Zealand.
