the essential Le Fleurantin André Garros died at the age of 98. He was an insurer, clerk, bailiff… and had two passions: bullfighting and football.
He had a mischievous eye, humor and joy of life: André Garros, almost 98 years old, disappeared on Saturday January 6. Born in 1926 in Fleurance, almost a century ago, it was in 1947 that he did his first apprenticeship with his father’s horses. First in breeding, then in sales and finally as a jockey with his first race at the Réchou de Fleurance racecourse with “Anisette”, where he won. He was an insurer, a clerk in a court in Gironde and then a bailiff in Gironde, in Saint-Macaire, then in Bazas, before acquiring a study in Lectoure in 1979.
“Dédé” Garros (because it was by this nickname that he was known) nourished, apart from his profession, two passions. One was bullfighting. He rarely missed a bullfighting event in the South-West and even in Andalusia. He knew and rubbed shoulders with the biggest names in bullfighting. El Cordobes, Ordoñez, Paco Ojeda, all these greats of bullfighting were familiar to him. Bullfighting writers, like Jean Cau, were also his friends.
He was a prince of the planet of bulls. He had cut his “coleta” at the Captieux feria for his 80th birthday. And he is the author of a work, “Corridas et ferias – 50 years of aficion”, with this sentence highlighted and which sums up his passion well: “There can be no bullfights without ferias, nor ferias without bullfights.”
And football
His second passion was football. He took his first license the year the Fleurance club was created, in 1936, at the age of 10, and when he left for professional reasons in Gironde, he relaunched, with a few friends, the club of Castets-en-Dorthe, training club of international player Mathieu Valbuena, which he was very proud of.
Later, he would become manager of the Fleurance club, of which he was one of the most fervent supporters, as lenient with the players when they had a bad match as he was with the recalcitrant debtors when he was a bailiff. . But from now on, we will no longer hear the very special and familiar voice of “Dédé” who animated, always with joy and good humor, the stands of the Marius-Lacoste stadium. He will leave an indelible mark on the hearts of all those who knew him.
2024-01-12 16:11:02
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