I had Hugo Houle as a student in 2006, so quiet that I had to be reminded of him. It was in fourth secondary, on the South Shore, where there are plenty of saints: Sainte-Eulalie, Saint-Wenceslas, Sainte-Brigitte, Saint-Célestin, Sainte-Gertrude, Sainte-Perpétue! Over there, the ears of corn are gold, the potatoes, precious stones; the cows are as sacred as in India, their milk is a nectar that we cannot do without and the stars serve as streetlights. My students took an hour and more of a banging trip in yellow Chiquita buses every morning, often after riding the barn at dawn.
They placed the key to the fields on my desk, an essential prerequisite for me to be able to teach them anything: moreover, they were the ones who showed me how to teach them. And no way am I giving them the moon, just the ladder so they can go get it. And then, I had to be exotic like them, we took each other somewhere else. They were field rats. The earth, they smoothed it, kneaded it, cleared it, cherished it. It is smoothly that they made it turn!
Among them, phenomena, excessive athletes, ascetics of endurance! I had one who, with his legs in braces, had won a cross-country on one hop, one sneaker less: a trotter who could leave his village to go to school running in big strides. And a few years ago, I discovered this lost little one from Sainte-Perpétue who, on his bicycle, the engine well installed on the left behind the sternum, the valves red, rode until he passed his shadow and let’s propel him to the Tour de France.
The Tour de France is the fourth dimension of professional sports, a discipline of God that stands in the invisible, being little or not covered by the media, finally here in Quebec, unless there is doping. Hugo Houle can wander anonymously through any crowd.
And yet, workhorse and general of his team, Hugo Houle has worked 40 or 50 kilometers, his legs square, his heart racing, his back like a rainbow, and sweating like a pig to climb Mont Ventoux, a real Jacob’s ladder. At the top, God was waiting for him. From there, Hugo could hold his head high in front of “formula 1” which, nauseated, always turn in circles and crawl down.
A third place, which he made, Hugo Houle, in the 13e stage, the quintessence of cycling, the intoxication of heights, a disproportionate feat, at the height of Olympus. And at the time these lines were written, he was doing it again, until he won the 16e stage ! In doing so, he signed the second Canadian success in the history of the Grande Boucle (the first dating back to Steve Bauer, in 1988) and, above all, the first Quebec success!
If he returns to his alma mater, the little guy from Sainte-Perpétue deserves a welcome with fanfare and trumpets. Intoxicated by the mountains, he will not need to get drunk and he will be able to brandish his jersey as a banner at the end of his arms, humble and discreet panache, but how much more brilliant than the Stanley Cup.