Rugby passion
In 2015, politicians could have chosen "Ovalie" to baptize the large South-West region uniting Midi-Pyrénées and Languedoc-Roussillon. Here, rugby is more than a sport, it's a way of life. By playing, children bring their parents into the life of the club, and family and friends into the stands on match days. Much more than the simple transmission of a slippery oval ball, rugby is a sport imbued with essential values. Jean-Pierre Rives sums it up as follows: "Rugby is the story of a ball with friends around it, and when there's no more ball, there are still friends". The game arrived in Le Havre in 1872. English workers imported a new practice, combination, a sporting syncretism inspired by today's soccer and rugby. Five years later, British businessmen founded the first rugby club in Paris, Rugby Taylors RFC. The capital quickly took to the game, and between 1882 and 1888 three clubs were formed. In 1889, the oval ball made its debut in Bordeaux. It took just ten years for the club to become French champions. The overwhelming domination of the Stade Bordelais allowed the game to spread like wildfire across the South-West. Auch founded its own club in 1897, one of the oldest in the region. Today, the Gers is one of the regions with the most members per inhabitant. With its 24 clubs and more than 4,800 players, rugby in the Gers brings life to small villages. You have to visit the department's cafés to gauge the pride and support of the inhabitants for their local team. Gers clubs may struggle to make it to the top, but they are an excellent breeding ground for the "big clubs" in neighboring départements. The Gers air also seems to suit coaches just fine. The huge and tiny Jacques Fouroux - only 1.63 m tall - led Les Bleus to victory in the Five Nations Tournament six times between 1981 and 1990, including two Grand Slams. He is remembered as the greatest coach the French national team has ever known, and his home town of Auch paid tribute by renaming its stadium after him. Jacques Brunel's fate, unfortunately for him, was very different. Called in to head the Coq squad at the end of 2017, he was sacked in 2019 after a pitiful World Cup quarter-final defeat. Those disappointed by Gers rugby performances can always fall back on more traditional games, such as rampeau d'Astarac or palet gascon, with much less stiff competition.
Traditional games
The Gascon shuffleboard also has its own World Championship which is held every August 15 in the hamlet of Lialores. With its hundred or so amateurs, this traditional game is only played in a few remote villages in the Gers or Lot-et-Garonne. Each player has two steel pucks that he throws six meters to reach a pin topped by three coins. He has two attempts to knock down the pin and make the coins fall. To score points, the coins must be closer to the iron than to the wood. Thus, for each coin that is closer to the puck than to the pin, the player scores a point. The origin of the game is unknown, but there are references to it in engravings and paintings dating back to the 16th century. It almost disappeared completely in 1956, when the prefect of the Gers prohibited it. The Gascon puck had become the object of inconsiderate bets of money. It is still whispered that some players went so far as to pawn their oxen. It is necessary to wait until 1985 so that the palet knows its arrebiscolada, its rebirth. Alain Lasserre, the teacher of Lialores, discovered the game and fixed its rules to distinguish it from other games of shuffleboard or skittles, such as the Vendée shuffleboard, the Portuguese malha or the Spanish tuta. The municipality includes the Gascon shuffleboard in its "Tourist Development Plan of Lialorais" and founds the World Championship of Gascon shuffleboard in 1990, in order to boost its interest. The rampeau d'Astarac, on the other hand, is sinking into oblivion. This bowling game has only about thirty regular players and it takes all the energy of the Fédération départementale des foyers ruraux to keep it going. The players take possession of a field that is at least 10 meters long, most often the village square. At one end, the shooting line and at the other end six pins positioned in a "T". The three smallest form a line parallel to the firing line, the three largest are arranged perpendicularly. The player throws his 900-gram wooden mallet at the pins, the object of the game being to knock down as many as possible. If the player knocks down all the pins in one throw, the spectators shout " break!" not " strike! " The player who wins the game is the one who has the most points and therefore has knocked down the most pins in ten throws. Rampeau d'Astarac is similar to a game that is still very popular in Gascony: quilles au maillet. Here too, the game consists of six pins, a mallet and a 10 meter shooting zone. The rules, however, are somewhat different. The player has three throws to knock down five pins and score a point. If you knock down six, the throw is void, and if you knock down less than five, you don't get a point. The pins are lined up in two rows of three on a pity, a cement square, the small ones in front, the large ones behind. The pity is preceded by a metal bar that the mallet must cross, otherwise the shot is void. Object of money bets, the game underwent the same prefectural ban as the Gascon palet in 1956. It was brought back to life by the Fédération départementale des foyers ruraux du Gers in 1982 with great success. Practiced in all Gascony, its national committee is rallied to the French Federation of Bowling and Bowling Sports. Auch has its own bowling school and individual or team championships are organized throughout the South-West. The excellent website of the National Mallet Bowling Committee(www.quillesmaillets.com) allows you to discover the physical as well as the psychological aptitudes necessary to practice this sport.
Landes race and bullfighting
It takes physical and psychological skill to find yourself up against a cow or bull that's up like a cuckoo. A Gascon heritage, course landaise is practised with fervour in the Landes and Gers regions. The 23 arenas in Gers are all located in Armagnac, on the western flank of the region. Less controversial than bullfighting, since the animal is not killed, it attracts a large audience of enthusiasts, the coursayres. They come to admire the "coursières" (the cows themselves), the "écarteurs" and the "sauteurs", high-level sportsmen and women who engage in a game of skill rather than combat. Coursières, the females of bullfighting toros bravos, weigh between 300 kg and 400 kg. Breeders select the most combative ones to bring them to the ring at around 3 years of age. A good runner can look forward to a 10-year career, before returning to the pasture for a well-deserved retirement. Each cow has a name and a rating, and the most famous become "godmothers". Fédérale, queen of the arenas in the 2000s, even has a statue of herself in the streets of Dax. The frankness of her attacks, described as "noblesse" in Coursayre, earned her the greatest respect among bullfighters. There are two types of bullfighter in the course landaise: the écarteur and the sauteur. The former wears a hand-embroidered bolero, while the latter sports a white blouse and pants. The écarteur waits for the cow in the ring, dodging it at the last second. The jumper wipes out the oncoming cow with an acrobatic jump: angel jump, somersault or feet-in-the-béret. The season runs from March to October, with around a hundred races organized to decide between the best spreader and the best jumper. The Nogaro arena celebrates cows every July 14, awarding a "Corne d'Or" to the best steed. If you'd like to attend a Landes race, the calendar is posted on the federation's website www.courselandaise.fr and tickets can be booked at tourist offices.
Larger arenas, known as plazas, can also host bullfights. There are six in the Gers: Vic-Fezensac, Aignan, Plaisance, Cazaubon, Eauze and Riscle. Despite its many detractors, the tradition of Spanish bullfighting endures. Aficionados see the bull's death as the outcome of an aesthetic combat in which courage reigns on both sides. That of the bullfighter and that of the toro. The race is divided into three parts. The tercio de pique, led by two picadores equipped with long spears, enables the bull's reactions to be appreciated when he is pricked. During the tercio de banderilles, banderilleros plant three pairs of banderillas into the animal's spine. This weakens the animal. The final tercio is led by the matador, who performs a faena, or series of passes with his muleta, and delivers the estocade. The kill is crucial in a bullfight. The matador must place his sword precisely between the bull's shoulder blade and spine. If spectators want to see the bullfighter rewarded, they wave white handkerchiefs. The bullfighter can take one ear, two ears and/or the tail. If he comes out on the shoulders of the aficionados at the end of the bullfight, it's because he's particularly deserved it. Sometimes, however, the bull wins the matador's grace. In this case, the president of the race waves an orange handkerchief before the kill. This is the indulto, and the bull returns to the fields to live out his days happily.
