Poussettes and hanging on the pants: in the cycling world, these are concepts that everyone is familiar with, but a layman will wonder what the hell is meant by that?
Poussettes
Poussettes in the mountain stages are a real ailment for honest riders who go as deep as they can to get in on time. Sprinters in particular often abuse these poussettes to reduce their efforts in order to save as much energy as possible for the later sprint stages.
It is therefore mainly the riders from the grupetto or from the back of the peloton who make good use of these nudges they receive from spectators or supporters. The users play it cleverly and with all the nudging they get during the climb they can quickly win a few minutes on 1 single climb. So cheaters!
Fortunately, the abuse is mainly limited to non-climbers and the live broadcasts have mainly ensured that. Everything is now visualized and there is no escape from it. The numerous race commissioners also keep an eye on things and the high fines scare off riders and teams.
The last rider to be caught live with a poussette and then by someone from his own team was Julian Alaphilippe in the 2019 Tour de France. Alaphilippe then rode in the yellow jersey and it immediately resulted in a fine of 500 Swiss Swiss francs for Deceunick Quick Step Frank.
Pousser and spingere
In the past it was different. Especially in the 1970s, it happened more than once that a sprinter saw his competitor sprinter still reasonably fresh at the finish at the end of a mountain stage and wondered how this was possible. He's not a better climber than me, is he????
I experienced it myself in my childhood years when I went to see a mountain stage over the Col de Tourmalet with my brother and father and some riders constantly shouted pousser to which the supporters were only too happy to offer themselves. If you know that there are some thousands of people along the road, you can imagine that the cyclist in question can get a lot of poussettes and thus save a lot of energy.
There used to be 3 types of poussettes in the Tour regulations: among teammates, the applied and the non-applied of the spectators. There were penalties according to the type, the applicants where the rider begs for poussettes were punished the hardest.
The poussettes among teammates had a variant that was also called hanging on the pants. Leaders sometimes allowed their servants to pull them up a slope or mountain by hanging on their trousers. Dutch television showed that things sometimes went so badly in the World Championship of 1978. The organization had no choice but to threaten heavy penalties, so that things calmed down a bit from then on.
In the current regulations of the Tour de France under article 7 we find the words la poussette, la retropoussette and la tirette, but the meaning has been changed to the meaning of being sucked in or carried away by a motorized vehicle, so that it could be concluded that no some riders let themselves be pushed during a mountain stage. Nothing is less true.
Grande Fausto Coppi
One of the first riders to be bothered by this behavior was Il Campionissimo Fausto Coppi. Just as in France the French supporters were all too eager to push their compatriots, the Italian tifosi helped their compatriots in the Giro. Soon the non-Italian riders also knew the Italian word for pushing: spingere.
The performance of some Italian spectators was sometimes really crazy with not only a falsification of the classification but it also became dangerous for the riders who braved the mountain in a fair way.
At Coppi's insistence, banners were even placed on police motorcycles with the words “no spingere” written on them.
We no longer have situations like the 1970s, but the fact that the poussettes have disappeared from the cycling peloton is only an illusion, except for the classification riders who really cannot afford it because the risk is too great.
