STORY – Jean-Rémy Bergounhe started out alone in a small workshop forty years ago. His group, Finadorm, now employs 1,200 people throughout France.
On his phone screen, Jean-Rémy Bergounhe scrolls through faded photos, paper prints that have been digitized. On one, a car is balanced on two wheels. “I’m behind the wheel”he chuckles.
In another shot, he’s not driving, but standing, arms swinging, on the side of a vehicle that still defies the laws of gravity. In a third, here he is, long-haired, wearing a jacket cut from the star-spangled banner. He started acrobatic car racing with his brother and a cousin. That was in Millau, Aveyron.
One Sunday, at a competition near Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme), he met the Giant Auto Rodeo stunt troupe. “A member of the team had left, he recounts. They were looking for someone. I showed them what I could do and stayed on. They taught me everything: percussion, barrel rolls, accident reconstruction.”
“I never hurt myself”
at the beginning
80s.
Personal collection
He was 16 years old. “It was a circus life. During the week, we prepared the…
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