By serge.velain
Published on
May 9, 24 at 10:00
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Of Jesse Owens has Teddy Riner, passing through Emil Zátopek, Cassius Clay, Colette Besson, Carl Lewis, Marie-José Pérec, Usain Bolt (listed in order of appearance, in the chronology of the Games and in the book)… there are 35 athletes to appear in the book The gold Rush. For each of them Pierre-Louis Basse wrote a text and Ernest Pignon-Ernest made one, two, three, four, five… drawings (130 in total).
Pierre-Louis Basse tells stories, joys, sorrows of which Ernest Pignon-Ernest created the movement. You can peck or devour this book as you wish, wandering between texts and drawings without stopping to indulge in daydreaming.
About Ernest’s drawings, Pierre-Louis says that each of them “est a story that we are going to tell to the child who refuses to sleep ; quite an adventure. ” He is right.
Alice Coachman, Cassius Clay, Wilma Rudolph… a good part of racist America hates them.
These adventures are those of hero of Olympuswhich Pierre-Louis Basse recalls that they fought, during the creation of the Games in Greece 25 centuries ago, “naked and stripped of everything that was not their body”, for an olive branch. And that’s all. They ran, threw and fought in ways other than war. Free and equal, fraternal, they nevertheless had the ambition to finish first.
The tradition has continued with the Games of the modern era (the first of which took place in 1896 in Athens), all participants in the Olympic Games representing their nation. Heavy responsibility, in the 20th century, in the era of fascism, Nazism, the Cold War and racial segregation. This is also discussed in the book by Pierre-Louis Basse and Ernest Pignon-Ernest.
Pierre-Louis Basse is from the land of books and radio
Journalist, Pierre-Louis Basse worked for 25 years for Europe 1, a radio station for which he commented on several football World Cups and Olympic Games. Writer, he has published around thirty books. From 2014 to 2017 at the Elysée, he was the “major events” advisor to the President of the Republic François Hollande. Pierre-Louis Basse has lived and worked in Bernay since 2017. He is behind the arrival, this summer of 2022, of the visual artist Ernest-Pignon Ernest. Next book to be published: Yesterday Again.
The gold Rush is indeed the story of great champions having registered their names on the Olympic honor rolls… but not only that. For example, a chapter is devoted to Gretel Bergmann, world high jump champion banned from the Olympics in 1936, because she was Jewish. Merlene Ottey has the distinction of having competed in 7 Olympic Games (yes!) from 20 to 44 years old, of having won 9 medals, but none gold.
Among them having won gold, cited in the book by Pierre-Louis Basse and Ernest Pignon-Ernest, there was Alice Coachman, first black woman Olympic championwho were banned from sports facilities in Georgia (United States of America); Cassius Clay, the grandson of slaves ; Wilma Rudolph, black athlete, gold medalist in the 100, 200 and 4 x 100 meters in 1960 in Rome, the same year as Cassius Clay. “A good part of racist America hates them,” notes Pierre-Louis Basse.
By raising their fist in 1968, black people are signaling that they will never again be content to run around like circus animals.
A little later (in 1968, the year of the assassination of Martin Luther King), other black champions would raise their fists on the podium, thus making a gesture to signify “that blacks will never again be content to run like circus animals. »
Evoking the Cold War, this period which saw the opposing blocs of the West (the United States and its allies) and the East (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its satellite states), Pierre-Louis Basse and Ernest Pignon-Ernest tell us aboutEmil Zátopek, this Czechoslovakian athlete considered the ideal son-in-law by the leaders of the communist camp, before being considered a traitor.
They also remind us that on September 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists assassinated 11 Israeli champions inside the Olympic Village in Munich. It was thereThe moment chosen by swimming champion Mark Spitz to end his careere. Mark Spitz, an American Jew, won 7 gold medals during these games and broke as many world records. He was 22 years old.
There are no games if you don’t have fun.
Victims of segregation for their skin color/or religion, other great champions were also segregated by class racism. Many were in fact of modest origin, even poor or very poor. They forced the doors of a world for which they did not have the codes, and imposed themselves there. Yet nowhere is it written that they had revenge to take. As if they too, like their distant ancestors, were only looking for an olive branch, as if they were only there to have fun. “ There are no games if you don’t have fun.”says Teddy Riner on this subject, the last athlete to have been “crunched” by Pierre-Louis Basse and Ernest Pignon-Ernest.
“To draw sport is to rediscover this pride, this courage, this elegance which accompanies all performance,” wrote Pierre-Louis Basse in The gold Rush. Pride, courage, elegancee, three qualifiers that go well with the beautiful work that is The gold Rush.
The gold RushHighlighted editions, 240 pages, 35 portraits and 130 drawings, published on April 26, 2024, is on sale for €39.90. Ernest Pignon-Ernest and Pierre-Louis Basse will dedicate this book on Saturday May 11, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., at the Alexandre gallery, 25, rue Gaston-Folloppe in Bernay.
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