The Lejeune factory was situated in the town of Maisons -Alfort in the south-east suburbs of the Paris conurbation, quite close to another similar industrial town - Creteil.
Creteil was very well known for its outstanding sports club - U.S.Creteil - Union Sportif Creteil. Among the club's very strong disciplines was cycling, in all its forms. Lejeune sponsored the Club's amateur cycling team and used it as a nursery team for riders graduating through to the Pro ranks, much like ACBB - Athletic Club Boulogne BIllancourt, in a north western suburb functioned for the Helyett marque, for La Gazelle, for France-Loire and eventually for Peugeot.
There were several other such marque-related amateur teams all of which participated in a wide range of competitive cycling such as road racing, track racing, more recently triathlon, and cyclo-cross. Consequently the manufacturers would produce a full range of bikes for such disciplines.
Unlike the majority of today's Pros, the French pros over the decades would take part in a wide variety of competition, including cyclo-cross during the winter. Jean Robic the winner of the Tour de France in 1947 had already won the 1945 French CX championship before he became well-known on the road, Jean Stablinski raced CX regularly, 5-times Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault was a regular contestant as was Duclos-Lasalle, Roger deVlaeminck etc etc.
Lejeune made several ranges of track, road and cyclo-cross bikes, although not all figured in the firm's catalogues, being announced whenever necessary in the pages of magazines such as L'Officiel du Cycle'
Norris Lockley
Settle UK