The link between the rooster and France is so strong that we sometimes forget that it is not one of the official emblems of the French Republic. Yet the union of these two entities goes back to etymology, since in Latin, "Gallus" means "Gaul" as well as "rooster". The rooster represents the power of the sun, driving out darkness to make way for the victory of light. It awakens the peasants in the early hours of the morning, a beautiful and curious animal that inspires respect through its bravery.

It has lived throughout French history. Vercingetorix is said to have used it to taunt Cesar, and Henri IV suggested the chicken in the pot. During the reign of the Valois and Bourbons, the effigy of the kings was often accompanied by this animal in engravings. It replaced the dynastic lily during the Revolution and appeared on coins from 1830. It tops church towers and the garden gate of the Elysee Palace. In short, it was no doubt for all these reasons that the first rooster appeared on a French rugby team jersey in 1905.

Football made it its official emblem in 1907. However, it was not until after the First World War that the rooster really came into its own. In 1920, the rooster was even more vigorous and dazzling, and was even ready to take to the skies! In fact, it appeared with its wings spread on the jersey of the French rugby team, embodying the beginning of the French Flair so beloved by its supporters... In any case, it was from this "art deco" period onwards that it was worn on the hearts of French sportsmen and women.

Napoleon Bonaparte preferred the eagle: "The rooster has no strength, it cannot be the image of an empire such as France's", and our national Pierre de Coubertin saw it as "humiliating and grotesque", which is why the first emblem of French sportsmen and women was not the rooster but two interlaced rings.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Pierre de Coubertin is often quoted as saying:
"The important thing is not to win but to participate".

Not only was he not the inventor of this quote, but he never said it in these terms. His own words were actually:
"The important thing in life is not the triumph but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well".

WHAT WAS THE SYMBOL BEFORE THE ROOSTER?

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, France's athletics, football, rugby, tennis, fencing and many other sports teams were recognised outside our borders for wearing two interlaced rings. They were the symbol of France's most influential multi-sport organisation at the time.

These rings also inspired the creator of the symbol of the world's largest and most renowned sporting body. Founded in 1887, the U.S.F.S.A "Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques" disappeared with its rings in the early 1920s. They were gradually combined with the rooster, which replaced them once and for all to become the undisputed emblem of French sportsmen and women.