NOT all heroes wear capes.
Patrick Dancoisne and Joel Gautriand do one of the most important, and underappreciated, jobs at the Tour de France.
It is their job to ensure nothing offensive is seen by viewers on the track.
This year’s Tour gets underway in Florence on Saturday, with Italy hosting the first four stages.
Meanwhile, the event will conclude with an individual time trial in Nice instead of the traditional Paris procession.
The change is due to the Olympics starting in Paris on July 26, just five days after the Tour ends.
Meanwhile, Patrick and Joel will travel hundreds of miles transforming penises into jolly butterflies or bears before the race.
In fact, as Joel turned up to work for last year’s Tour, an official said: “Boys, you’re going to see a lot of c**ks.”
Journalist Jean-Baptiste Mouttet, who interviewed the two men for Pedale! magazine in 2023 via Rouleur, reported that this premonition turned out to be correct.
His article read: “As the van begins its descent, the penis in all its myriad forms springs up as far as the eye can see.
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“Every hundred metres or so, sometimes flying in formation, there are male genitalia.”
Footage of the duo in action showed them spotting genitals on the ground during one shift.
Explaining their process, they said: “Here we are trying to make some kind of an owl. We’re adding feet to hide the genitals. So we’ve made an owl.”
Moments later, they were called into action again as they detailed: “We are trying not to make them visible.”
Although they later admitted “it’s annoying” after adding wings to transform the graffiti into a butterfly.
For every single sensitive piece of the human anatomy, the Eraser Men must stop the van, get out and grab a brush.
Sometimes, penis graffiti is spotted at such short notice that all Patrick and Joel can do is get out of the van and paint scribbled lines over it in order to make the image unrecognisable before the peloton races by.
For the rest of the year, Patrick juggles jobs as an undertaker and a barman.
He said: “I am a pallbearer, a master of ceremonies, and I pull pints.”
But it was with a tinge of regret that he would remove one piece of graffiti.
The bright green message over ten metres long read: “OUR POLITICIANS ARE GANGSTERS”
Patrick said of it: “Now this is real art!”
However, penises were not the most common form of graffiti along the wrote.
In this particular day of work, Patrick and Joel found 18 penises, nine syringes and 30 messages supporting refugees.
