‘Opération Retrouvailles’ was quite a militaristic name for the relaxed and convivial gathering of former French Algerians (pieds-noirs) in the small town of Frontvieille in southern France. On the morning of Sunday, 19 June 1977, a group of cyclists and their families gathered at the parking lot near ‘moulin de Daudet’. It was a special moment, because many of those present had lost sight of one another after the Independence of Algeria and their arrival in France in the summer of 1962. Fifteen years after their dramatic flight from the city of Oran dozens of cyclists mounted their bicycles and rode seven laps of seven kilometres around the famous windmill. This sports’ reunion was the birth of L’Amicale de l’Oranie Cycliste. For 40 years these bicycle fanatics organized similar ‘retrouvailles’. In the spring of 2016 the Oranais gathered for the last time.

This contribution analyses the ways in which the l’Oranie Cycliste shaped their remembrance culture and identity. Amongst the pieds-noirs memory culture (one could even speak of a memory cult) is highly developed. There is even a term for it: nostalgérie, a contraction of the words ‘nostalgie’ and ‘Algéríe’. The central question in this contribution is which place bicycle racing, and more specifically the racing bike as a material and symbolic artefact, took in the processes of remembrance, community building and identity formation. The point of departure for this exploration is Benedict Anderson's widely praised concept of imagined communities.