The Tour de France is one of the sporting events held every year. Along with the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España, the competitions on French soil are a treat for both fans of the sport and those who take the opportunity to take a nap. Those who can’t rest (apart from the athletes and their teams) are the brains behind the logistics of organizing a competition that takes place on thousands of kilometers of road.

And within all this logistics, there’s a small group with a very specific mission: to remove penises from the asphalt. They’re called ‘Team A’, ‘Eraser Men’.

Fighting virality. Paris is striving to leave the city spotless ahead of the Olympic Games. It’s a beast of a spectacle, but the Tour is something that shows the country from top to bottom; from left to right. It is even symbolic, so the image must be perfect. This is something penises can make ugly, as millions of viewers will see huge penises painted on the roads. The Romans didn’t think they were that bad, but every civilization has its own traditions.

In 2016, the detachment passed by one of these giant phalluses and the cleaning crew got to work. Since then, we have seen people trying to erase the penis, scribble on it, or scribble on it.

Eraser Men. None of these reasons matter to the Eraser Men, whose mission for several years has been to go through every stage, top to bottom, to ensure that this representation of male genitalia does not appear on television. Specifically, they are a two-man team employed by Doublet, a billboard cleaning and installation company hired by the Tour organizers.

Patrick Dancoisne and Joël Gautriand are tasked with carrying out this task, and after the announcement in 2016, they used their imagination to turn giant penises into works of street art? For this purpose, the duo will use more than 350 liters of paint throughout the competition.

Departure. This year the Tour is longer. We are increasing from 3,404 kilometers to 3,498 kilometers last year. There are stages over 200 kilometers long, and don’t think that Patrick and Joël have been cruising the roads for months trying to eliminate penises: they do this shortly before the peloton passes through the area. The reason for this is obvious: if they had wiped the limbs beforehand, someone would have repainted them, and the job would have been an extremely useless waste of time and money.

In the article in Pèdale! magazine, they detail that they do the route of each stage twice, leaving the venue at least 90 minutes before the advertising caravan vehicles arrive. They do this in one way, by wiping down any penises they find and wiping down any they might have painted over during that time on their way back. This is something they demonstrate very well in a video broadcast on Dutch television NOS:

With a huge penis…

A shiny spaceship. Or something like that.

Owls or butterflies. And the truth is that they are really good at their job. Although the couple claims that they come in all shapes and sizes, there is not much imagination in the original drawing. However, they use their creativity to hide these and transform the different elements of the genitals into butterflies, bears, owls and even spaceships. As long as you don’t waste too much time and take advantage of the original silhouette, anything is possible.

There are times when they are in a big hurry, so they limit themselves to doing a series of drawings on top of the original drawings or something like that and that’s it. In such cases the couple cannot be creative because the erasure of the phallus is a race against time.

Apolitical. Of course, they don’t just delete penises, they also delete other kinds of messages, political or whatever. Painted with ‘EPO’ (a hormone used in doping), it is hidden by changing the letter ‘O’ to ‘Q’. The abbreviation ‘SOS’ becomes ‘888’ (which is still a reference to a betting house, but oh well) and drawings of syringes (which also relate to doping) can become stairs. Any other political messages found will be deleted without discussion.

On the pedal! The team that accompanied Eraser Men on the 120-kilometer stage in 2021 found 30 messages of support for refugees in the Mediterranean crisis, 18 penises, 12 political messages and just eight syringes. Cheer up Patrick and Joël, they’ll need it.

Image | Capture of the USA

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