Daily Cycling Facts 13.07.2013

The Tour de France started on this date in 1908 and 1950 - the latest Tours in history.


Tour de France 1908

Le Grand Depart, 1908

14 stages, 4,488km.
Using an almost identical route to 1907, the 1908 edition had one notable difference to previous years: all cyclists were in the same classification and they all rode identical yellow frames issued to them by the race, though they were still permitted to choose some components for themselves - one popular option was clincher tyres which, while not as efficient as tubular tyres, made repairing punctures considerably easier; since riders were required to carry out all maintenance and repairs themselves this was an important consideration. 36 riders were using them, the majority of which were made by Wolber (who also co-sponsored the Peugeot team) - those riders became eligible for the secondary and unofficial "Prix Wolber pneus démontables" classification, which offered a prize of 3,500 francs to the first rider over the finish line on a bike fitted with them and brought a huge amount of public and media attention for both the product and the manufacturer. Organisers also promised that steps had been taken to prevent bad behaviour and sabotage by  spectators, who in the past had done everything from spread nails over the road to forming mobs and physically beating the riders; this year, the riders were reassured, there was a 90% chance that what was termed "the Apaches" would be apprehended by the police and go to prison.

Marie Marvingt

114 cyclists started the race from 162 who had applied for admittance and were then either unable to start or were refused - among those in the latter group was Marie Marvingt, whose application was declined because she was a woman. Born in 1875 and a qualified surgical nurse, Marvingt had been encouraged to take part in a wide selection of sports by her father and became an enormously successful athlete, winning competitions in equestrian sports, field athletics, tennis, soccer, golf, shooting, water polo, swimming, martial arts, boxing, skiing, bobsleigh, luge, ski jumping, skating, shooting, fencing and mountaineering. Cycling was one of the few sports in which she didn't win any competitions, but she was an avid long distance rider and had ridden from Nancy to Napoli to witness a volcanic eruption. Knowing that only rules prevented her from completing the Tour, she ride the entire route after the race - sadly, the time she took to do it doesn't seem to have been recorded and so we'll never know how she might have fared against the men. We do know, however, that only 36 riders finished the race, so she can be considered to have beaten 78 of them (for more on Marvingt and her remarkable life, click here).

No cyclist had ever won two Tours (with the exception of Maurice Garin, whose second victory was disqualified due to cheating), but Lucien Petit-Breton believed that he could and he planned to do so; being the first man to centre his entire season on this one race alone (that he would so is indication that, five years after it began, the Tour was already the most important bike race in the world). Using other events solely to train and caring little where he placed in them, he artfully ensured that he reached a peak of physical fitness for the Tour - something that had never before been done and which would not be used again until Miguel Indurain's five wins between 1991 and 1995 and Lance Armstrong's seven wins between 1999 and 2005. What's more, Petit-Breton (whose real surname was Mazan; he had become known as Lucien Breton at the start of his career when he lived in Argentina and began to use it so that his father - who wanted him to get a "proper" job - wouldn't recognise his name in the race results published in newspapers, the Petit being added because there was another rider named Lucien Breton) had the very strong Peugeot team backing him up and, crucially since riders had to carry out their own repairs, he was a skilled mechanic.

Passerieu and fans at the Tour, 1908

The enormously powerful Georges Passerieu won Stage 1 from Paris to Roubaix on the same cobbled roads since made famous by L'Enfer du Nord (in those days, the cobbles were not considered remarkable - that was just how many roads were), beating second-place Petit-Breton by exactly five minutes. Since numerous documents recording the details and history of the early Tours were lost in the Second World War, it's not possible to know for certain if, when Petit-Breton won and Passerieu was second on Stage 2, they were given joint leadership as both had three points or if Passerieu remained leader due to having equaled Petit-Breton's winning time; support for each answer is split reasonably evenly between the various sources. During the stage several riders punctured on nails - Desgrange could make all the promises he liked, but it was never going to be possible to keep tight control on what the public got up to in a race such as the Tour.

Stage 2 ended and Stage 3 began in Metz, which as part of the Lorraine region was then under German control. Desgrange, like many Frenchmen, saw the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine as an insult to his country it seems strange that he would steer his race through the region; however, one of the reasons he organised the race in the first place was to show off the strength and athleticism of France's young men, he probably welcomed it as an opportunity to demonstrate to Germany that should they ever get ideas about expanding their territory further onto French soil they'd be met by formidable resistance. He was probably pleased, therefore, that Stage 3 was started by none other than the Count von Zeppelin: while no longer a General in the German army (he'd been forced to retire after his command came under heavy criticism in 1890), he retained great power and influence. During the stage Jean Novo, riding for the Labor team, crashed and had to retire. The team's owner then sent a telegram to the manager ordering him to withdraw the team on account of its "mediocre results." Labor is notable in that the riders wore bright yellow jerseys, which stood out in the peloton and made them easy to recognise - this may very well have been where Desgrange got the idea for the maillot jaune which he would later reserve for the leader of the race (we know for certain that the race leader wore a yellow jersey in 1919, but late in his life Philippe Thys said that he'd been given one when he led in 1913 - nobody can prove that he was, but nobody can prove he wasn't either). With Labor gone and Alcyon unable to achieve the performances they would in the coming years, Peugeot dominated the race from that point onwards; beginning with François Faber's Stage 3 victory (while Faber considered himself to be French, he a Luxembourgian passport and was the first Luxembourgian - and only the second foreigner - to win a Tour stage). Petit-Breton finished with him and thus remained in the lead with five points.

Faber, who later died in No Man's Land when
he tried to rescue an injured comrade

Faber also won Stage 4 after the peloton battled through a blizzard, but as he was 49th on Stage 2 he was out of contention for an overall victory. Petit-Breton came third but remained in the lead with eight points - overall second place Gustave Garrigou had an 18 point disadvantage by this time, so already it seemed that Petit-Breton's decision to concentrate solely on the Tour was paying off. Passerieu won again on Stage 5, beating Faber by 19' after riding solo over the Col de Porte; Petit-Breton was third and now had an advantage of 21 points over new second place Luigi Ganna. Stage 6 climbed Bayard and the infamously steep Rampe de Laffrey; André Pottier - younger brother of 1906 winner René - was first to the top of both, but he was caught and passed on the descent by Jean-Baptiste Dortinacq. Petit-Breton was third again, increasing his advantage to 31 points, then he won Stage 7 and his lead grew to 33. Faber then won Stage 8 and jumped to third overall; although he was fifth behind Petit-Breton on Stage 9, he moved into second place overall with a one point advantage over Garrigou. Nevertheless, he was 39 points behind Petit-Breton who, unless he abandoned or received a penalty, now looked certain to win.

Stage 10 went to Georges Paulmier - Petit-Breton was tenth, by far his worst performance in the race as he finished top four on every other stage. His lead was too great to be threatened, falling to 32, but Faber was only one point ahead of Passerieu and would need to work hard to remain in contention for second place. Petit-Breton won Stage 11, adding two points to his advantage; Faber and Passerieu both had 63 points after the stage but Faber remained officially in second place (which suggests that Passerieu was probably declared sole leader following Stage 2), then secured his position in Stage 12 by opening a gap of five points. It took Passerieu 16h23' to win Stage 13, the longest in the race at 415km; Faber was second and Petit-Breton third, the three of them finishing together - the last rider to complete the stage, Louis di Maria, needed an extra 23h07' to arrive at the finish line.

Lucien Petit-Breton

Petit-Breton started Stage 14 with an advantage of 31 points over Faber and 35 over Passerieu. He had, therefore, no need whatsoever to win that last stage - but he did, consigning Faber once more to second place. Henri Cornet was fifth over the line, much to the delight of the crowd who adored him for his youth and sense of humour - when the race was over organisers announced that there would be a one-lap race of the 666m Pard des Princes velodrome, though the result would not be counted towards the Tour, and Cornet won.

Faber may have been second, but he was declared winner of the Prix Wolber. When the 3,500 francs were added to the prize money he earned for second place in the General Classification, he ended up making more money from the race than Petit-Breton did; however, Petit-Breton later wrote a book, Comment je cours sur route (How I Race on the Road), which is half-memoir and half the earliest example of a cycling training manual.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lucien Petit-Breton (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 36
2 François Faber (LUX) Peugeot–Wolber 68
3 Georges Passerieu (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 75
4 Gustave Garrigou (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 91
5 Luigi Ganna (ITA) Alcyon–Dunlop 120
6 Georges Paulmier (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 125
7 Georges Fleury (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 134
8 Henri Cornet (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 142
9 Marcel Godivier (FRA) Alcyon–Dunlop 153
10 Giovanni Rossignoli (ITA) Bianchi 160
(Note: with Peugeot's domination of the race so complete, the identical bikes experiment - which had previously applied only to the second-class riders rather than to the entire field - was considered unsuccessful and dropped. However, in 1909 bikes still had to be fitted with a stamped lead seal by organisers to make sure riders didn't illegally change bikes during the race.)


Tour de France 1950
22 stages, 4,775km.
Aware that some riders broke the rules by receiving a helpful push from team staff as they collected  fresh bidons, organisers announced that course officials would be keeping a close eye on things and that there would be harsher penalties for any rider spotted breaking rules in this way. There had also been concerns that the bonification system gave climbers an unfair advantage over other riders, thus this was overhauled: being the first to a summit now earned a bonus of 40" rather than a minute and no new mountains were added to the parcours. Prizes increased - a stage winner would now receive 50,000 francs, an increase of 20,000f when compared to 1949, and the overall General Classification winner would receive 100,000. Since stages were now on average much shorter than they had been in the early days of the Tour, cut-off times were reduced dramatically and, for the first time, French TV broadcast live coverage of every stage. In addition to the national and French regional teams, the plan to include an international team gradually developed into one for a North African team consisting of riders from French-controlled Algeria and Morocco.

Gino Bartali

Fausto Coppi had broken his pelvis in a crash at the Giro d'Italia, leaving no clear favourite. Many people believed Gino Bartali stood a good chance although he was a month away from his 36th birthday, others looked to Raphaël Géminiani; while those who considered Louison Bobet to be a "cry baby" (a reputation with which he had been stuck ever since he abandoned the 1947 after finding the Alpine stages too difficult) there were also those who shared manager Maurice Archambaud's opinion that the rider had enormous potential (as would be proved a few years later when he became the first man to win three consecutive Tours), and they believed that he might now have matured sufficiently to win. Finally there was Ferdinand Kübler; a fiery, impetuous and apparently half-crazed Swiss rider with more than enough talent to win a Tour but an equal amount of impulsiveness, which had led him to throw away more than one race in the past with an ill-judged attack or merely on a whim.

Orson Welles was given the honour of starting the first stage, which was won by the Luxembourgian rider Jean Goldschmidt. He then retained the maillot jaune through Stage 2 before Bernard Gauthier finished sixth in a seven-strong break on Stage 3, ending up with 5" overall advantage. Gauthier wasn't considered able to keep it but then did, finishing in sixth place again on Stage 4 to increase it to 2' which remained intact despite his 21st place on Stage 5. Meanwhile, Kübler had finished top ten on the first two stages and ended Stage 5 4'30" down in 9th overall, but he knew he was going to do well in the Stage 6 individual time trial. In fact, he did very well and beat Fiorenzo Magni by 17" and all his rivals by at least 2'55", jumping to third overall with a disadvantage of only 49" - which would have been even greater had be not have decided to stop and change his jersey on the parcours, picking up a 25" penalty for doing so (some sources say that this is incorrect and he was penalised 15" and fined 1,000 francs for wearing a silk jersey rather than a regulation woolen one; while there are obvious advantages to a silk rather than woolen jersey in a time trial, the harshness of time and financial penalty seem so wildly at odds with one another that the first version appears more plausible). Gauthier got away in a successful break again the next day (when Kübler was fined, 100 francs for turning up late at the start line; later in the race he was fined again for getting a push from fans): while he was 11th over the line, the break had been made up of riders far down in the General Classification and he finished with the yellow jersey and an overall advantage of 9'20". Although there was still two weeks of racing to go, a good all-rounder might have been able to defend a lead such a that all the way to the end if he had luck on his side, but Gauthier was not a climber. The favourites didn't even bother trying to take back time over the next few stages, allowing him to keep the jersey and his advantage. Then the race arrived at the Pyrenees and he came 53rd behind Bartali; just like that his huge lead turned into a 9'49" disadvantage and he dropped to 12th overall - he would never wear the maillot jaune again.

Jean Robic

Stages 11 saw one of the great mysterious events in Tour history: Bartali, known as The Pious One on account of his deeply-held Catholic beliefs, escaped with little Jean Robic, who looked like an imp in a painting by Bosch and had the sort of personality that must have tested even Bartali's saintliness, and together they cruised away up the slopes of the Aubisque before being caught by a group of eight including Kléber Piot, who led over Galibier and the Aspin (Piot was primarily a cyclo cross rider and very little is known about him, his performance that day indicates that he had the makings of a superb grimpeur). Huge crowds had gathered to watch the riders tackle the mountains and, as tends to be the way, were not being especially mindful of keeping out of the way: Bartali could not avoid a collision with Robic after a photographer stepped into the road, causing the Frenchman to crash hard. Precisely what happened next remains a mystery: Bartali said that the French spectators accused him of deliberately causing the crash in an attempt to dispose of a rival and that they began punching and kicking him as tried to set off, then one man came at him with a knife; Louison Bobet, who was nearby at the time, said that the spectators were trying to give him a push to get him back on the way and the man with the knife had simply not set it down when he rushed over to help, prior to which he'd been slicing a sausage while having a picnic. Bartali may well have been stunned and confused following the crash and Bobet was an intelligent man who would later win the Tour with his brain as much as his legs, and for that reason many people choose to believe the Frenchman's story. However,it would have been hard for Bobet to see what was going on in a crowd, and why would he have noticed the man slicing a sausage? Also, in recent years it's become known that Bartali both smuggled forged documents around Fascist Italy between groups seeking to help Jewish people escape the country and personally transported numerous Jewish refugees to safety in Switzerland using a specially-designed trailer towed behind his bike. If stopped by police, he explained that it was deliberately constructed to be heavy and towing it up the Alps was part of his training regime - discovery would have resulted in summary execution or transportation to a concentration camp. He had, therefore, faced dangers far greater than a man with a picnic knife and had kept his head; it should also be remembered that like Kübler he'd been fined several times during the race so far, so he might just have been in a bad mood.

We will never know the truth but, whatever really happened Bartali was sufficiently shaken to announce that he wouldn't be continuing with the race and, as team leader, the majority of the Italians said that they would go with him. Some wanted to stay and help Magni defend the 2'31" advantage with which he finished the stage, but Magni - who, despite holding political beliefs so right-wing he was despised by most other riders, respected the elder statesman of Italian cycling - revealed he was going too, thus becoming the fourth man in history to abandon the Tour while wearing the yellow jersey. Race organisers tried to encourage them to continue by offering them plain grey jerseys so that they'd be less recognisable, but it was to no avail and both the Italian A and B teams abandoned.

Kübler now became overall leader with a 3'20" advantage over Bobet, but he refused to wear the maillot jaune in Stage 12 to acknowledge the fact that it was his by default. The stage was won by a Belgian, Maurice Blomme, and it would be the only Tour stage win of his career. Getting there took so much out of him that he mistook a shadow on the road for the finish line and got off his bike; fortunately a race official was on hand to get him back on his bike and explain he had a few more metres still to go.

Abdel-Kaader Zaaf asleep under the tree

As if to achieve balance with the drama of Stage 11, Stage 13 brought one of the Tour's most amusing events. It was one of those horrendously hot days that sometimes happen around Perpignan and north of the Pyrenees when temperatures rise to more than 40C, the breeze stops blowing off the Mediterranean and the mountains prevent the stale air circulating. The European  riders were unwilling - or unable - to exert themselves and the peloton settled into a slow rhythm, aiming to complete the stage with as little effort as possible. However, Abdel-Kaader Zaaf and Marcel Molinès of the North Africa team were accustomed to the heat of Algeria and found the conditions far less hard-going, so they broke away from the pack early on in the race. Continuing on their way at a high pace, the pair built a lead which reached as much as 20 minutes - sufficient to make Zaaf officially the race leader for a short while. However, by the time they neared the end of the 217km stage, even they were beginning to feel the effects of the weather and stopped to accept drinks offered to them by spectators. Unfortunately for Zaaf, the drink he took was a bottle of wine and, as a Muslim, he'd never consumed alcohol before (Molinès either took a bottle of water or was more used to wine), so it rather went to his head. Before long, he found himself feeling somewhat the worse for wear and wobbling dangerously all over the road so he decided that perhaps he'd better stop for a while in the shade under a tree and see if he started feeling any better (Molines continued and won the stage). Some time later - nobody knows how much later - a group of spectators found him and woke him up. He grabbed his bike, leapt aboard and set off. Unfortunately, he was either so keen to make up for lost time or still drunk, so he failed to realise that he was going back the way they'd come. When organisers caught up with him, unaware that his confusion was down to alcohol, they assumed his brain had been scrambled by the heat and had him taken to hospital. The next day, he escaped and hurried to the start line where he begged to be allowed to retake the section of the previous stage that he'd missed and continue the race, but judges wouldn't allow it and upheld his disqualification. (For more information on Zaaf and the good fortune that came his way, click here.)

The weather remained the same for the next few days and nobody could really be bothered to starting working on Kübler's 1'06", considering it small enough to easily be dealt with later in the race. During Stage 15, the peloton as one came to the decision that it was much too hot for cycling, so they stopped, got off and went for a cooling swim in the Mediterranean. Director Jacques Goddet was furious and ordered them to get on with the race immediately or be disqualified - unfortunately, reporters found the incident hilarious and he was unfavourably portrayed in the newspapers the next day; he got his revenge by fining all the riders. Stage 16 brought more drama: Kübler won with the Belgian Stan Ockers and Bobet taking second and third right behind him, but the judges declared Bobet to be second despite even the French fans insisting he was third, and the Belgian team threatened to leave the race if things were not put right. The judges ignored the threat and refused to change the result, and the Belgians eventually backed down and continued.

By the end of Stage 18, during which Bobet tried to win back time on Izoard, the mountain where he would win the Tour in the future, Kübler's lead had increased to 2'56" and he added another 30" the next day when he finished second, 34" behind Geminiani. It was now beginning to look very much as though he might win, especially with the Stage 20 mountain time trial still to go. He more than lived up to expectations that day, beating Ockers by 5'34" and Bobet by 8'45"; his overall lead going into the final two plain stages was 9'30" on the Belgian and 22'19" on the Frenchman. It wasn't really worth their while trying to claw it back from that point onwards, and so 9'30" was the winning margin for the first Swiss rider to win the Tour de France.

There were many, of course, who said that had Coppi been there or the Italian teams have stayed in the race, Kübler would not have won. Coppi may indeed have won if he wasn't at home with a broken pelvis; but he was and that's how cycling works, so that point is irrelevant. Bartali, as already described, was past his best and coming to the end of his career - he had been one of the greatest Tour riders ever seen and was still capable of beating far younger men in the mountains, but in this edition the time trials counted for a great deal and he wasn't as fast as he once was. Magni, meanwhile, was a superb rider in the flat time trials, as can be seen by his second place finish in Stage 6 when he was only 17" behind Kübler; but he wasn't much of a climber. However, Kübler could climb and time trial, so it seems that his insistence that he'd have won regardless is probably correct.

At the time of writing, summer 2012, Kübler is 92 years old and the oldest living Tour de France winner.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Ferdi Kübler (SUI) Switzerland 145h 36' 56"
2 Stan Ockers (BEL) Belgium +9' 30"
3 Louison Bobet (FRA) France +22' 19"
4 Raphaël Géminiani (FRA) France +31' 14"
5 Jean Kirchen (LUX) Luxembourg +34' 21"
6 Kléber Piot (FRA) Ile de France–North East +41' 35"
7 Pierre Cogan (FRA) Center–South West +52' 22"
8 Raymond Impanis (BEL) Belgium +53' 34"
9 Georges Meunier (FRA) Center–South West +54' 29"
10 Jean Goldschmit (LUX) Luxembourg +55' 21"

The Death of Tom Simpson

Tom Simpson
30.11.1937 - 13.07.67

It was on this day in 1967 that Tom Simpson - considered at that time and for some years afterwards to have been Britain's best ever hope for a Tour de France overall General Classification winner and still one of only two male British World Champions - died on Mont Ventoux during Stage 13 of the Tour. Tom's death, caused by sheer exhaustion, alcohol, amphetamines and the uniquely challenging conditions found on the mountain has become one of professional cycling's greatest and most-told stories, while the memorial at the spot where he died is a place of pilgrimage for cyclists from around the world.

Simpson did not die in vain: his death was the wake-up call that alerted the world to the prevalence and dangers of doping and forced organisers to begin to consider ways to control it.


La Flèche Wallonne was not held in the wake of the 1940 Nazi invasion and occupation of Belgium, and so the edition held on this day in 1941 - the fifth - was the first time the race had taken place for two years. Running for 205km from Mons to Rocourt, it was notably shorter than in previous years and was won by Sylvain Grysolle, one of the first Classics specialists who after the War would go on to win the Ronde van Vlaanderen and the Omloop Het Volk.

Cyclists born on this day: Tara Whitten (Canada, 1980); Jack Bobridge (Australia, 1989); Dimitri de Fauw (Belgium, 1981, died 2009); Mirco Lorenzetto (Italy, 1981); Richard Groenendaal (Netherlands, 1971); Des Fretwell (Great Britain, 1955); Pascal Hervé (France, 1964); Benno Wiss (Switzerland, 1962); Michael Schiffner (East Germany, 1949); Vinko Polončič (Yugoslavia, 1957); Walter Tardáguila (Uruguay, 1943); Thomas Hochstrasser (Switzerland, 1976).

Daily Cycling Facts 12.07.2013

Dave Bruylandts, born in Lier, Belgium on this day in 1976, turned professional with Palmans-Ideal in 1999 and remained with them for a year and five months. He then went to Farm Frites and stayed with them for two years before swapping to Marlux-Wincor-Nixdorf, the team he was riding for in 2004 when he tested positive for EPO and was given an 18-month ban. When he returned he rode for Unibet for six months, but the team let him go during a period when it had problems getting invited to races due to laws banning teams sponsored by betting companies. He moved then to Klaipeda-Splendid and retired in 2008. He is married to Femke Melis, who was herself a professional cyclist for a short while.

Rudolf Lewis

Rudolf Ludewyk Lewis, born in Pretoria, South Africa on this day in 1887, won a gold medal in the Individual Time Trial at the 1912 Olympics. A year later, he came second at the Rund um Köln.


Other cyclists born on this day: Glen Thomson (New Zealand, 1973); Peter Mitchell (Great Britain, 1990); Ralph Mecredy (Great Britain, 1888, died 1968); Dominique Damiani (France, 1953); Alla Yakovleva (USSR, 1963); Muhammad Naqi Mallick (India, later Pakistan, 1928); Zbyněk Fiala (Czechoslovakia, 1964); Norm Alvis (USA, 1963); Clyde Wilson (Bermuda, 1959); Fiona Ramage (New Zealand, 1978); David Muntaner (Spain, 1983); Plamen Timchev (Bulgaria, 1951); Rafael Montero (Chile, 1913); Michael Horgan (Ireland, 1934); Edy Baumann (Switzerland, 1914, died 1993); Diederik Foubert (Belgium, 1961).

Daily Cycling Facts 11.07.2013

Tour de France 1998
21 stages + prologue, 3,877.1km.

For the first time, the Tour visited Ireland - the prologue was in Dublin, Stage 1 started and ended in Dublin and Stage 2 ran from Enniscorthy to Cork; then the teams sailed to Roscoff in Brittany for the start of the rest of the race. The number of teams was reduced from 22 to 21 in order to also reduce the number of riders, this having been declared the reason for a large number of crashes in 1997.

British rider Chris Boardman, a time trial specialist, won the prologue and started the race in the maillot jaune for the third time in his career. Erik Zabel took it in Stage 2, then lost it to Bo Hamburger the next day; next it went to the Australian Stuart O'Grady who kept it for three stages until 1997 winner Jan Ullrich got it in Stage 7. Ullrich handed it over to Laurent Desbians the following day but won in back in Stage 9 and, a few days later, looked very much as though he was going to keep it.

Then the race reached the Alps and Marco Pantani blew it apart. 48km from the end of Stage 15, he attacked so hard on Galibier that Ullrich was left reeling, completely and utterly unable to respond to the Italian's power. Pantani even stopped on the way to put on a rain jacket, but still took 8'57" from the man who was no longer his rival and finished the stage as overall leader with an advantage of 3'53" over new second place Bobby Julich (and 5'56" on Ullrich). The following day, Ullrich had to win simply to remain in contention and he did a very impressive job of doing so, leading the peloton over the stage's fifth and final climb; but Pantani stayed with him, and the gap between them remained the same. The German made up time with more superb performances, including his excellent ride in the Stage 20 time trial when he took back 2'35"; but what Pantani had done on Galibier was insurmountable and he won by 3'21" overall.

Pantani was one of the finest grimpeurs in cycling history; had it not have been for the problems he would later face, leading to his tragic death on Valentine's Day in 2004, he might even have topped the achievements of Federico Bahamontes and Charly Gaul. It is, therefore, a great shame that his only Tour victory was overshadowed by the scandals that hit the 1998 race. The first the world knew about a massive investigation into doping was when the Festina team's Belgian soigneur Willy Voet was stopped at the French border in a car packed with enough drugs to open a small but well-stocked pharmacy (he tells his story in his book, Breaking the Chain; a must-read despite suffering a little from Voet being a soigneur rather than a writer). Next came police raids on the teams' hotels, with another huge stash of doping products being seized from the TVM team, then a riders' protest in Stage 17 and the nullification of the stage. It didn't end there and, before long, what became known as the Festina Affair mushroomed into the biggest and most damaging scandal to have ever hit cycling and its effects are still being felt to this day.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Marco Pantani (ITA) Mercatone Uno 92h 49' 46"
2 Jan Ullrich (GER) Telekom +3' 21"
3 Bobby Julich (USA) Cofidis +4' 08"
4 Christophe Rinero (FRA) Cofidis +9' 16"
5 Michael Boogerd (NED) Rabobank +11' 26"
6 Jean-Cyril Robin (FRA) US Postal Service +14' 57"
7 Roland Meier (SUI) Cofidis +15' 13"
8 Daniele Nardello (ITA) Mapei +16' 07"
9 Giuseppe Di Grande (ITA) Mapei +17' 35"
10 Axel Merckx (BEL) Polti +17' 39"


Gérard Saint, born on this day in 1935, was a French cyclist who won the overall Combativity award and came ninth in the General Classification at the 1959 Tour de France. e became known as a good all-rounder, despite being unusually large at 1.91m tall for a rider who did as well in the mountains as he did, and was popular among fans because he worked as an unskilled farm labourer before becoming a professional cyclist. He died on the 16th of March 1960 after crashing his Citroen ID into a tree. A stadium in Argentan, the town of his birth, is named in his honour.

Ingrid Haringa, born in Velsen, Netherlands on this day in 1964, began her athletic career as a speed skater. She made her debut in international track cycling at the World Championships of 1991, where she won the Sprint and the Points race; then successfully defended the Points title for the subsequent three years.

Other cyclists born on this day: Davide Malacarne (France, 1987); Artem Ovechkin (USSR, 1986); Jacques Michaud (France, 1951); Gérard Saint (France, 1935); Adolf Heeb (Liechtenstein, 1940); Miloslav Kejval (Czechoslovakia, 1973); Julio Sobrera (Uruguay, 1927); Ingrid Haringa (Netherlands, 1964); Edgardo Pagarigan (Philippines, 1958); Roland Lacombe (France, 1938, died 2011); Cossi Houegban (Benin, 1964); Johan Kankkonen (Finland, 1886, died 1955); Franz Lemnitz (Germany, 1890, died 1942); Ion Cosma (Romania, 1937).

Daily Cycling Facts 10.07.2013

Tour de France 1939

Tour de France 1939

18 stages (Stages 2,  6, 8, 12, 17 and 18 split into parts A and B, Stages 10 and 16 split into parts A, B and C), 4,224km.

There were three big differences in 1939 compared to earlier races - one with the race, one with the parcours and one with the riders themselves. The difference in the race was that a mountain time trial had been added for the first time: in Stage 16, riders faced a very tough 64km route between Bonneval and Bourg-Saint-Maurice high in the Rhône-Alpes. The parcours differed because for many years it had closely followed the borders - now, with Europe on the brink of war and worrying news from Germany, the race turned north-west at Annecy and headed through France via Dôle, Dijon and Troyes to Paris, remaining well away from the German frontier. Finally, the riders had at long last realised that Henri Pélissier had been right 20 years earlier - it made sense for an athlete to follow a controlled diet designed to enhance their performance. As a result, they began to take vitamin supplements.

"I'm so glad that now that summer is approaching we have an event that makes us forget the dark political events that are taking place. The Tour de France is something of an armistice of the heart." - Henri Troyat

Neither Germany nor Italy sent teams, nor did Spain as it was torn apart by civil war. This posed a problem for organisers, so for the first time four French regional teams were selected. The Belgians were also permitted to send an A and B team. The main French team wasn't considered the best to ever contested the Tour - André Leducq had retired a year earlier; his most obvious replacements were Georges Speicher, Antonin Magne and Roger Lapébie, but none of them were taking part. Therefore, the Belgians were favourite.

Amédée Fournier won the first Tour stage of his career in Stage 1 after crossing the line first among a group of nine (he won the last of his career in Stage 5 too), but with Romain Maes finishing in second place and recording the same time nobody expected the maillot jaune to stay put for long. In fact, it changed hands the very next day during the Stage 2a individual time trial, when Maes won by 1'24" - and as he was a previous Tour winner, fans assumed he'd hang onto it for a few stages. He did not: that same afternoon he finished Stage 2b 9'36" and in 37th place behind an escape group led by Eloi Tassin (who would become the first post-war French road race champion). Jean Fontenay became overall leader, and with René Vietto 2'10" behind him it was only because of the plain parcours that he kept it for two days.

Vietto became leader after escaping with a group of eight during Stage 4; seemingly an unusual move for a climber as he'd have a hard job defending it on the plain stages to come - his overall advantage remained 6" all the way to the Stage 8b time trial. In that stage he beat the majority of his rivals, increasing his advantage to 58". However, the next day Edward Vissers attacked and got away from the peloton. A chase group - including Vietto - went after him, but he crossed the line 4'04" ahead of them; meanwhile Sylvère Maes (who wasn't related to Romain and presumably had no interest in catching Vissers, who was a member of the Belgian B team he captained) had tagged along with the chase group as a good way of getting himself to the finish faster than the majority of the pack. As the line approached he sprinted past and took second place, thus jumping into second place overall with a 2'57" disadvantage to Vietto. This situation remained the same after Stage 10a, but the gap then increased to 3'19" after the Stage 10b individual time trial; this time it remained the same until Stage 12b when Maes came second, recording an equal time to stage winner Maurice Archambaud, while Vietto was sixth and 1'30" down - Maes' disadvantage was slashed to 1'49". Once again, nothing changed for a couple of stages.

Maes on Izoard, 1939

This led to an interesting situation. Vietto was purely a clumber, Maes was thought to be better on the flat - and there were three mountain stages, three plain stages, one mountain time trial and one plain time trial left. In general, it's easier for a climber to win time in the mountains than it is for a rider who prefers flat terrain in the plain stages, however, and so it was widely believed that Vietto would win the Tour on the Alps. Things did not go according to plan: Vissers led over the Allos and Vars, then - as has happened so many times in Tour history - Izoard changed everything. Maes attacked and easily outclassed Vietto, who found himself completely unable to respond and, by the end of the stage, in second place overall with with 1'49" advantage transformed into a 17'12" disadvantage. Then, in the Stage 16b mountain time trial on Iseran, Maes beat him by 9'48" to increase his lead to 27' - and the only way Vietto could have won after that would be if Maes abandoned. He did not, and even added more time over the remainder of the race; at the end of the final stage the Belgian's advantage was 30'38", the largest winning margin for ten years.

The race ended on the 30th of July. 33 days later, on the 1st of September, Nazi Germany invaded Poland; two days after that France and Britain declared war on Germany. There wouldn't be another Tour for eight years.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Sylvère Maes (BEL) Belgium 132h 03' 17"
2 René Vietto (FRA) South-East +30' 38"
3 Lucien Vlaemynck (BEL) Belgium B +32' 08"
4 Mathias Clemens (LUX) Luxembourg +36' 09"
5 Edward Vissers (BEL) Belgium +38' 05"
6 Sylvain Marcaillou (FRA) France +45' 16"
7 Albertin Disseaux (BEL) Belgium B +46' 54"
8 Jan Lambrichs (NED) Netherlands +48' 01"
9 Albert Ritserveldt (BEL) Belgium B +48' 27"
10 Cyriel Vanoverberghe (BEL) Belgium B +49' 44"


Hélène Dutrieu

Hélène Dutrieu

Born in Tournai, Belgium on this day in 1877, Hélène Dutrieu became arguably the world's first female cycling superstar. Her father, an officer in the Belgian Army, seems to have been of the unusually enlightened opinion that girls and young women should be permitted to have ambitions other than marriage and children; having been raised in such a healthy and nurturing environment she decided after leaving school at the age of 14 to make her way in the world of work. We don't know when she began riding a bike, but there's a good chance that like many of the male cyclists who turned professional in those days she used a bike to get to work and discovered she was good at riding it - and at the age of sixteen she turned professional with the Simpson Lever team.

In 1895, Dutrieu set a women's hour record and she won the World Speed Track Championships in Ostend in both 1897 and 1898, becoming a household name and earning the nickname La Flèche Humaine. In August 1898 she also won the Grand Prix d'Europe, then a few months later the Course de 12 Jours in London - for which she was awarded the Cross of St André by the king of Belgium. In those days, it was impossible for even a woman as talented as Dutrieu to make a living from racing (even now, more than a century later, the vast majority of "professional" female cyclists are forced to find work between races); so she began appearing at variety shows and public events as a stunt rider, one of her most famous stunts being to ride a vertical loop. She also performed stunts on a motorbike and in cars, later becoming a racing driver.

In 1910, Dutrieu became the first woman to pilot a plane with a passenger; later that year she became the fourth woman in the world (and the first from Belgium) to earn a full pilot's licence, after which she became a stunt aviator with a new nickname - The Girl Hawk - and won numerous competitions and set new records (and caused a minor scandal when she revealed that she didn't wear a corset when flying). In the First World War she drove an ambulance between the trenches and was later installed as director of a military hospital, then after the conflict ended she became a journalist. When she married in 1922 she took French nationality, later becoming vice-president of the women's Aero Club of France and established the Coupe Hélène Dutrieu-Mortier, an award of 200,000 francs for the female Belgian or French pilot to have completed the longest flight in any one year. She died on the 26th of June 1961, aged 83. (For a similar character, see Marie Marvingt - the woman who applied to ride the Tour.)


Víctor Hugo Peña, born in Bogota on this day in 1974, was recruited to the US Postal team in 2001 as a domestique serving Lance Armstrong. He rode the Tour in that capacity that year, again in 2002 and then again in 2003 - when, following the team's successful time trial in Stage 4, he became the first Colombian to have ever worn the maillot jaune. He kept it for three stages, then Richard Virenque took it for a single stage in the Alps before it went to Armstrong for the rest of the race.

Davis Phinney, born in Boulder, Colorado on this day in 1959, became the second American rider in the history of the Tour de France to win a stage in 1986. A devastatingly fast sprinter when at his best, he claims (with some justification) to have won more races than any other American cyclist. In 1999, aged 40, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease; together with wife Connie Carpenter-Phinney (also a professional cyclist and three-time National Road Race Champion) he created the Davis Phinney Foundation, a charitable organisation that seeks to improve the lives of others with the disease. Their son, Taylor, is also a famous professional cyclist.

Wilfried Cretskens, born in Herk-de-Stad, Belgium on this day in 1976, won the Juniors Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1993 and 2007 Tour of Qatar. He has ridden in three Grand Tours (the Vuelta a Espana in 2001, the Tour de France in 2005 and 2006) but failed to finish.

Other cyclists born on this day: Wilfried Peeters (Belgium, 1964); Sarah Walker (New Zealand, 1988); Tsutomu Okabori (Japan, 1957); Roberto Amadio (Italy, 1963); Oliver Martin (USA, 1946); Rıfat Çalışkan (Turkey, 1940); Aubrey Bryce (Guyana, 1949); Oliver McQuaid (Ireland, 1954); Héctor Páez (Colombia, 1982); Eom Yeong-Seop (South Korea, 1964); Dante Benvenuti (Argentina, 1925, died 2002); Sonny Cullen (Ireland, 1934, died 1999); Tilahun Alemayehu (Ethiopia, 1962); Jens Glücklich (West Germany, 1966).

Daily Cycling Facts 09.07.2013

Tour de France 1905
11 stages, 2,994km.

In 1905, the Tour had seen so much cheating that several riders were banned for life and director Henri Desgrange swore that the race would never be held again. However, by now the race had grown to be far bigger than anyone could have hoped - and was bringing in a lot of money too, so it didn't take too much persuasion to convince him that it should go ahead again in 1905. There would be big changes: the overall winner would now be decided on points rather than according to accumulated time, with the winner of each stage receiving one point, second place two points and third three points and so on plus an extra point for every five minutes between them and the next rider up to a maximum of elevem (the idea was, obviously, to end with as few points as possible, rather like observed trials mountain biking); the intention being that the finishing order became more important rather than winning in as short a finishing time counted, so that riders wouldn't be tempted to cheat by completing parts of a stage by car or train. Another change was that the stages were much shorter (the shortest in 1905 was more than 200km shorter than the shortest in 1904) and would start in the morning rather than the afternoon to ensure they finished during daylight, when officials could better keep an eye on what riders were up to - one method of cheating apparently used widely in 1904 (though with little evidence, it seems) had riders gripping a cork attached by wire to a team car, things such as this could now be far more easily noticed. It worked: none of the top ten in the General Classification nor any stage winner had to be disqualified (that may have been very different had doping controls existed - in those days before reliable tests, riders swallowed, sniffed and injected all sorts of things). Another change permitted riders to be paced by another cyclist, a tandem or a motor vehicle - this had not previously been allowed in the Tour, which was one of the first major cycle races to prevent riders from making use of pacing.

Ballon d'Alsace - the Tour's first mountain (well, sort of...)

In both of the previous editions, the race had been over the Col de la République; Desgrange had preferred to keep this quiet because he felt it would discourage riders from entering. A few route organisers had suggested adding more mountains, perhaps with points for the riders who got to the top fastest, but Desgrange was reluctant. Before the 1905 route was chosen, a L'Auto staff member named Alphonse Steinès took him for a car trip over the Col Bayard and Ballon d'Alsace and, showing him how spectacular a mountain stage could be, finally convinced him - though he made Steinès agree that, should the mountains prove too hard and ruin the race (or, as he had worried before, the riders were robbed by bandits or eaten by bears), the blame would be entirely his and not Desgrange's. Thus, Ballon d'Alsace was included in Stage 2 and the Rampe de Laffrey and Bayard in Stage 4; the first official climbs in the Tour de France.

Aucouturier

Maurice Garin had initially won in 1904 but then been banned for two years; several other top riders were banned for varying periods of time. There was, therefore, no obvious favourite - Henri Cornet was eventually declared winner the previous year, but since he'd originally been fifth and more than three hours slower that Garin he wasn't considered a contender; Louis Trousselier, Hippolyte Aucouturier, Antony Wattelier and René Pottier looked likely to do well, but really nobody knew.

The organisers thought they'd found a way to rein in badly-behaving riders, but the French public were another matter entirely and in the very first stage all the riders (except, rather suspiciously, Jean-Baptiste Dortinacq) had to stop and repair punctures after persons unknown spread 125kg  spread across the road. However, Trousselier was able to catch him up and win the stage - he had to: he was in the Army at the time and had requested permission to enter the race but was only allowed 24 hours leave. He believed, correctly, that if he won the stage his commanding officer would extend his leave - but it was a huge risk to take because he could very easily have ended up facing a court martial (which have since been abolished in France); and he was so determined to escape that prospect that he set a pace so high only fifteen riders finished within the time limit. Fifteen others finished after the limit and the remainder eventually showed up on a train. Desgrange was understandably furious and announced that the race was being abandoned immediately, but the riders managed to talk him round after accepting a 75 point penalty.

Pottier

Aucouturier, Trousselier, Cornet and Pottier got away on the Ballon d'Alsace on Stage 2 after avoiding more nails spread over the road; the heavily-built Aucouturier and Trousselier rapidly finding that they were at a disadvantage when the terrain headed upward. Cornet, still only 20 years old (his 1904 victory makes him the youngest Tour winner ever), found that he wasn't able to keep up with Pottier and was the next to be dropped, thus Pottier became the first man up the first mountain in the Tour de France. On the way down, he discovered the flip-side to the lighter-man-has-the-advantage-when-climbing rule - a heavier rider usually has the advantage when descending because his weight prevents the bike skipping around: Aucouturier caught hom and won the stage. Unfortunately, Pottier wouldn't be able to get his revenge when the race reached Bayard, because in Stage 3 he developed tendinitis and abandoned (some sources say he hurt his ankle when he collided with a spectator). Trousselier won again; not far behind him in second place was Lucien Petit-Breton, who would become the first man to win the Tour twice a few years later.

Stage 4, with the Rampe de Laffrey, was where Desgrange must have been convinced once and for all that the riders could cope with the mountains - as one of France's steepest roads (in places, it reaches a gradient of 18%; this has also made it one of the country's most dangerous roads - four accidents to have taken place there are considered the worst motoring accidents in French history  and there used to be a warning sign depicting a skull with flashing lights for eyes until someone decided it was in bad taste), if the riders got up it they could cope with anything else. Julien Maitron, who won Stage 6 in 1910, was first to the top of both climbs but once again Aucouturier was fastest on the way down; Trousselier was second.

Louis Trousselier

Trousselier won Stage 5 and second on Stage 6, by which time it was impossible for the majority of riders to catch up in the General Classification and most of those that - through a miracle - could had given up and were competing for second. On Stage 7 he had a puncture shortly after the start line, at which point the entire peloton seized its chance and attacked - when, after 200km of chasing, he caught them and then won the stage, they all gave up.

Pottier, despite abandoning, was declared the Tour's very first meilleur grimpeur ("best climber"). Many years later, the meilleur grimpeur would evolve into the King of the Mountains classification. Trousselier earned 6,950 francs for winning the General Classification. The night after doing so he gambled it all away. Meanwhile, Desgrange's gamble paid dividends - rather than the disaster he'd feared, the riders had got up all the mountains and the spectators had been more impressed than ever, even though quite a few of them probably would have liked to have seen a rider being eaten by a bear though). Therefore, he was able to report to L'Auto's owners that "his" race (which had actually been thought up by Géo Lefèvre, one of the paper's more junior reporters) had increased the paper's daily circulation to 100,000 copies. The next year, the Massif Central was added and, a few years later, the Pyrenees and then the Alps.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Louis Trousselier (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber 35
2 Hippolyte Aucouturier (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber 61
3 Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq (FRA) Saving 64
4 Emile Georget (FRA) JC Cycles 123
5 Lucien Petit-Breton (FRA) JC Cycles 155
6 Augustin Ringeval (FRA) JC Cycles 202
7 Paul Chauvet (FRA) Griffon 231
8 Philippe Pautrat (FRA) JC Cycles 248
9 Julien Maitron (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber/Griffon 255
10 Julien Gabory (FRA) JC Cycles 304


Federico Bahamontes

Bahamontes, The Eagle of Toledo

When he was 13, Federico Bahamontes and his father Julián became refugees of the Spanish Civil War and went to Madrid in search of food and shelter. Julián found work breaking rocks and earned enough money to start a fresh produce market stall; Federico, like so many boys that became great cyclists, helped support the family by delivering groceries on a heavy utility bike. In 1942 he saw Julián Berrendero win the Vuelta a Espana and became smitten with cycling, which later persuaded him to start racing - and on the 18th of July in 1947, he won the first event he'd ever entered.

Born in Santo-Domingo-Caudilla on this day in 1928, Bahamontes was still an amateur when he won a stage and the King of the Mountains in the 1954 Vuelta a Asturias. That race that brought him to the attention of the Spanish Federation, which wasted no time in recruiting him for the national team that would compete in the 1954 Tour de France - the team coach recognised that there was little he could do to improve on the raw natural talent Bahamontes displayed and sent him off with only one instruction: "Try to win it." He didn't, but he did lead the King of the Mountains from the first stage it was awarded (Stage 11) all the way through to the end of the race. He won the Mountains classification at the Giro d'Italia the next year too, then at the Vuelta a Espana the year after that.

Enough climbing talent to make a thousand mortal grimpeurs:
Gaul and Bahamontes

In 1958, he went back to the Tour and was widely considered a favourite. He won the King of the Mountains, but this year he faced one obstacle even he couldn't defeat - Charly Gaul. Bahamontes was arguably a better climber than Gaul on account of his consistency and ability to perform well in all condition but for three weeks that year Gaul found the form of his life and, when the weather at the Tour was as cold and as miserable as he liked it to be, he could climb like no rider seen before nor since, taking the General Classification after making no less a mountain than Ventoux look easy; Bahamontes settled for King of the Mountains again. However, Gaul could only perform well in the sort of weather that had his rivals wishing they'd taken jobs in heated offices; while he could still beat Bahamontes when they escaped together during Stage 17 a year later, the weather was warmer throughout the race and he was simply unable to achieve the consistency he'd have needed to beat the Spaniard and finished out of the top ten overall. Bahamontes took the General Classification and the King of the Mountains that year, twelve years to the day since he won his first race. Some say that he did so only because the rider's agent Daniel Dousset ordered his riders on the French team to let Bahamontes win because he knew that was the only way Henri Anglade, who was handled by rival agent Roger Piel and would be a far greater threat to Dousset's rider Jacques Anquetil in the lucrative post-Tour "round the houses" races than pure climber Bahamontes, could be prevented from winning. Most people who were there to see Bahamontes ride say he would have won anyway.

All in all, Bahamontes won a total of nine King of the Mountains (one at the Giro, two at the Vuelta, six at the Tour - when Lucien van Impe looked like winning his seventh in 1975, he decided to hold back and let the competition go to another rider rather than beat the record set by the man he considered the master). Like Gaul, he had the looks of a grimpeur but didn't ride like one: he was stiff on the bike and rode sitting upright; unlike Gaul, who looked as though he'd been born with the bike attacked to his body, he never seemed quite comfortable and would change his hand positions on the handlebars almost constantly.

In common with most climbers (but not Gaul, who feared nothing but himself) Bahamontes had a great dislike of descending because he was too light to be able to prevent the bike skipping around at high speed. During his amateur career Bahamontes once came off the road and fell into a cactus, and he never liked to take risks after that, often unclipping himself from the toe-straps so he could dab a foot on the ground. According to legend, he was so afraid to descend the Galibier alone having ridden up it solo in the Tour that he stopped, sat down on a wall and had an ice-cream while waiting for the rest of the riders to catch up. Rather than risk disqualification or a fine, the Spanish managers ordered the team mechanic to pretend he was fixing a fault with the bike; but the rider has suggested that this wasn't the case and he was simply afraid to descend alone.

 Bahamontes with Gaul (left) 

At the time of writing, Bahamontes is 85 years old and still very much with us. Mentally, he appears to be still as sharp as he was when he won his Tour; but long gone is the impulsive, sometimes rather infuriating rider who threw his bike over a cliff at the 1956 Tour so that his team mates wouldn't be able to change his mind about abandoning, replaced by a likable, charming and exquisitely mannered gentleman. During the last two decades of Gaul's life, when he had been found living alone in a forest hut with little memory of who had once been and was then returned to the world by the woman who would become his wife, Bahamontes befriended him; he also became a close friend of his childhood hero Berrendero.


Other riders born on this day: Stephen Gallagher (Northern Ireland, 1980); Richard England (Australia, 1981); Dale Stetina (USA, 1956); Eric Thompson (Great Britain, 1927); Armen Arslanian (Lebanon, 1960); Saber Mohamed Hasan (Bahrain, 1967); Jens Juul Eriksen (Denmark, 1926); Obed Ngaite (Central African Republic, 1967).

Daily Cycling Facts 08.07.2013

The Tour de France has started on the date twice, in 1907 and 1954.

1907

Stage 3, 1907

14 stages, 4,488km.
In any Tour, the winner of the last edition is usually considered the favourite; in 1907 René Pottier could not be due to tragic circumstances - some time around Christmas and the New Year, he'd discovered that while he was away winning the 1906 Tour his wife had been having an affair and, on the 7th of July, he hanged himself. Louis Trousselier, Emile Georget and François Faber were considered most likely to replace him and, for the first time, favourites achieved something like modern celebrity status with newspapers and magazines publishing biographies, back stories and gossip. For the second time, the race ventured outside France - in 1906 it had gone into German-controlled Alsace-Lorraine, it did so again when it visited Metz but under notably different conditions: with relations between Europe's great powers deteriorating fast, the French flag was strictly banned once the race passed the border and the official cars were not permitted to go with the riders. Curiously, one of the biggest problems was caused on the way back into France - French customs held the riders up for so long that the race had to be halted and restarted once they'd finished. During Stage 4 from Belfort to Lyon, the race passed through Romandy - the first time it had ever been to Switzerland. It was also the first time that the Alps were specifically included for the challenge they presented, rather than simply because they happened to be between stage towns, Henri Desgrange having been persuaded by the popularity of the Vosges and Massif Central stages in the previous two years that his fears the riders would be attacked by bandits or eaten by bears was worth the risk. Because of this added hardship, the coureurs de vitesse (riders sponsored by trade teams, but expected to ride for themselves alone) were permitted to receive help from mechanics following the race in cars and could even continue on a replacement bike if their machine was declared beyond repair by a course official. Coureurs sur machines poinçonnées (later known as touriste-routiers and then independents before being barred from entry) received either limited sponsorship, perhaps being supplied with a bike, or none at all and were expected to carry out all repairs themselves and to complete the race with only one bike.

Georget's crash, 1907

Trousselier won the first stage by 3'30; Georget beat him by a tiny margin and moved into third overall on Stage 2 in Metz but judges decided for unclear reasons that they should be awarded joint first place. Trousselier nevertheless remained in first place overall with a four point advantage (Cadolle, in second place, was three points down). When Georget won Stage 3 he moved into first, leading Trousselier by a point. Cadolle was now third with a three point disadvantage and thus remained in second place after Stage 4, despite beating Georget by a second. On Stage 5 Georget and Faber led the race together over the 500m Les Eschelles, but when they arrived at 1,326, Col du Porte Faber, who was much bigger and heavier, found himself outclassed; Georget left him behind and won the stage by 7', increasing his lead to seven points. He then came second behind Georges Passerieu on Stage 6, but Passerieu was too far down in the General Classification for a stage victory to make any meaningful difference - Cadolle was fifth, crossing the line 27' later and Georget's advantage rose to ten points. On the next stage, Cadolle crashed and fell onto his bike, ending up with a piece of flesh ripped from his knee by the handlebars. With his biggest rival gone, Georget won that stage and the next - by the end of Stage 8, his advantage was 16 points.

During Stage 9, Georget arrived at a checkpoint where riders had to stop and sign their names to prove they'd followed the route and not taken shortcuts (or, as was quite common in the early Tours, a train), and just as he arrived his frame snapped. What happened next is slightly mysterious: despite the race officials around the checkpoint meaning that any sort of rule-breaking would be spotted and punished, he decided that rather than losing time by waiting while his damaged bike was declared irreparable he'd just take one from his Peugeot-Wolver team mate Pierre Gonzague-Privat, who was so far behind overall that waiting for a decision and a replacement made little difference - was he completely ignorant of the rule, did he think that it would be overlooked (and anyone who knew anything about Tour officials and their legendary officiousness would surely be well aware that it would most definitely not) or was he told by an unknown person, perhaps an official bribed by another rider or team manager, that he could take his team mate's bike? More than a century later, we will probably never know. He was fined 500 francs, but ended with a 19.5 point advantage over Lucien Petit-Breton who moved into second place by winning the stage.

At Ville d'Avray, 1907

After Stage 9, Trousselier declared his belief that Georget's punishment was too light and left the race in protest, taking the entire Alcyon team with him. Organisers apparently felt the same because they then decided to relegate him from first place to last for that stage which, once his points for coming third on Stage 10 had been taken in account, gave him a 25.5 point overall disadvantage to new leader Petit-Breton who led stage winner and new General Classification second place Gustave Garrigou by 15 points. With four stages left, Georget's chances of winning were completely lost, and when Petit-Breton won Stage 11 and increased his lead to 17 points it began to look very much as though he was the most likely winner - he could only lose now if he abandoned.

Lucien Petit-Breton

Garrigou won Stage 12 but Petit-Breton was second, so his lead only dropped to 16 points. Georget had given up hope of overall victory but still crossed the finish line first in Stage 13, Petit-Breton was second again and so his advantage rose once more to 17 points; then he was third on the final stage and finished the race 19 points ahead. He was the first coureur sur machines poinçonnée to win a Tour, and the next year he became the first man to win a second Tour.

The majority of coureurs sur machines poinçonnée were poor and would sleep anywhere they could during the race, often spending the night in a barn or, sometimes, in a hedge; they would also eat whatever they could find along the way - in those days, when many of them would have been used to living as peasants, they'd have been adept at catching rabbits and birds and foraging for edible plants but they also sometimes lived on what the sponsored riders discarded (as happened in 1914, when a hungry poinçonnée eagerly pounced upon and devoured a half-eaten sandwich thrown away by a sponsored rider - who was promptly penalised by officials for providing assistance to a rider that wasn't part of his own team). Some, meanwhile, were wealthy men who entered the Tour for the adventure - and the most famous of them all was Henri Pépin. Pépin had no intention of winning the Tour and treated it all as a jolly jaunt around the countryside, taking with him a pair of men named Henri Gauban and Jean Dargassies (actually Dargaties, but Tour organisers misheard him and it stuck) whom he had hired to support him and act as manservants (and who, as a result, are the first riders to have ridden a Tour purely to support another rider rather than to attempt a win for themselves - the first domestiques, no less). Each night, at his expense, they slept in the finest hotel the stage town had to offer and every day they would select a restaurant along the route and dine in style. They were, therefore, far from the first riders over the line every day; in fact, they finished Stage 2 twelve hours and twenty minutes after winner Emile Georget, the more serious riders having set off at 5.30am while Pépin was engaged in what journalist Pierre Chany delicately termed "conversation with a lady" - they were not, however, last; four men finished after them. By all accounts, Desgrange was not impressed, but as the race was decided on points rather than times (hence no time limits) there was nothing he could do.

Henri  Pépin

The crowd didn't declare Pépin nothing but a useless, spoiled playboy as he was already well known to them and had proved himself an able cyclist many years earlier - he had been featured on the cover of Le Cycle magazine, when he was a member of Veloce Club de Marmande, and in 1897 he was vice-consul of the French cycling federation. Their good nature towards him, however, was deserved, even though he seems to have been rather keen to pass himself off as an aristocrat when he was not one: one day, he and his two comrades came across a rider named Jean-Marie Teychenne who had hit la fringale, then fallen into a ditch and was too hungry to pull himself out and continue. The man explained that he was finished and could be left until the broom wagon came for him.

"Nonsense!" Pépin told him, instructing Gauban and Dargassies to pull the man out of the ditch. "We are but three but we live well and we shall finish this race. We may not win, but we shall see France!" The three were now four, with Pépin happily paying for Teychenne to get a taste of the  highlife with them.

In Stage 5, Pépin decided he'd had enough of the game and paid his assistants a sum equal to the prize awarded to the race winner, then caught a train home. Dargassies - who, it appears, knew Pépin from the 1905 Tour which they had both ridden - went with him while Gauban elected to continue and did rather well for a while, narrowing the enormous gap between himself and the race leader to just 36 minutes, but was then beset by misfortune and abandoned during Stage 11. He had entered every Tour since it began, but this was his last. Dargassies also never entered again, but Pépin returned at the age of 49 and raced again in 1914, the year that he died of what was then termed "athleticism" - probably a coronary caused by an undetected heart defect.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lucien Petit-Breton (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber 47 Poinçonnées
2 Gustave Garrigou (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber 66 Vitesse
3 Emile Georget (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber 74 Vitesse
4 Georges Passerieu (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber 85 Vitesse
5 François Beaugendre (FRA) Peugeot-Wolber 123 Poinçonnées
6 Eberardo Pavesi (ITA) Otav 150 Poinçonnées
7 François Faber (LUX) Labor-Dunlop 156 Poinçonnées
8 Augustin Ringeval (FRA) Labor-Dunlop 184 Vitesse
9 Aloïs Catteau (BEL) – 196 Poinçonnées
10 Ferdinand Payan (FRA) – 227 Poinçonnées


1954
23 stages (Stages 4 and 21 split into parts A and B), 4,656km.

Wagtmans, 1954

Two new features made their first appearance this year: split stages and team time trials - a few stages in the past had started with teams being sent off separately, but this was the first time that the time they recorded counted towards the General Classification. It was also the first time that the Tour started outside France, the Grand Départ being hosted by Amsterdam and the Stage 1 finish line by Brasschaat, also in the Netherlands - the Dutch national team were therefore determined to do well, and got their wish when Wout Wagtmans won on the first day and then remained in the yellow jersey until Stage 4a, the team time trial - which Switzerland won but saw the French team take back enough time to get Louison Bobet into the overall lead.

Bobet had won Stage 2, but the Swiss riders Ferdy Kübler and Hugo Koblet were right behind him: Koblet, who had won in 1951, was only a minute down in the General Classification at the end of the stage and Gilbert Bauvin just 30". However, it was early days yet and Bobet was a wise rider; he had, therefore, no intention of taking the lead just yet as defending it would require energy best saved for later on - and was probably quite surprised that the maillot jaune remained his when he finished outside the top ten for Stages 4b (during which the strange little climber Jean Robic collided with a photographer and abandoned the race) and 5, then ninth on Stages 6 and 7. In fact, it took until Stage 8 before Wagtmans managed to get into a breakaway and made up enough time to win it back.

Bahamontes on Tourmalet, 1954

Bauvin won Stage 10, the last plain parcours before the Pyrenees, and jumped from ninth to second overall. The next day, Wagtmans crashed - he finished the stage, but had noticeably lost all enthusiasm from that point and it was only by luck that he retained a 9" lead by the end. It didn't last long the next day, because Bauvin, Jean Malléjac and Federico Bahamontes were on him like a pride of lions with a wounded zebra, breaking away and heading off up the infamous Tourmalet/Aspin/Peyresourde Circle of Death like rocketships: by the end of Stage 12 Wagtmans  was 19'20" behind new leader Bauvin. That stage didn't go well for Koblet, either - he'd been a phenomenally talented rider at his best, but he was destined to be one of those riders that gets only a year or two at the top: he crashed, lost 27' and abandoned the following day. Ten years later, when he was 39, he was killed in a car crash that may have been suicide.

Ferdinand Kübler

Despite the loss of their leader, the Swiss team remained highly competitive and set a high pace in Stage 13 with the fiery Kübler driving the peloton at breakneck speed. Bauvin soon discovered that he'd used up far too much energy keeping up with Bahamontes (one of the greatest climbers of all time) the day before and found himself unable to keep up, losing significant time. Bobet could, and when the stage came to an end he'd moved back into first place overall with a 4'33" advantage. Over the coming days it became apparent that Kübler, who had won in 1950, meant to do so again and Bobet faced frequent, savage attacks when the Swiss team went to work on him, not even bothering to chase down the breakaway of also-rans that won the stage. With the average speed pushed high for the second consecutive day, Bauvin lost another 20' and was no longer a contender; meanwhile, Bobet responded to each and every attack - his advantage over Fritz Schär, who had been third after stage 15, remained 10'18" after Stage 16. Kübler and Schär both won back time during Stage 17, but then Bobet repeated his stunning 1953 ride over Izoard, dropping the entire peloton and upping his overall advantage to 12'49" - enough to have won the Tour, especially now that the Swiss were tiring after all that Kübler had asked of them (Kübler was a wonderfully impulsive rider who would throw everything away on a whim; riders like him have long since vanished). He didn't need to win the Stage 21b individual time trial, but when he did he beat Kübler by 2'30"; when the race came to an end two stages later his overall lead was 15'49".

Bobet on Izoard

Bahamontes won the King of the Mountains, the first of six (and he won overall in 1959 too); Kübler won the Points competition. Bobet was the fifth rider to have won two consecutive Tours and, later in the year, became the second man to have won both a Tour and the World Championships in a single season (the first was Georges Speicher in 1933). In a year's time, he would be the first to win three Tours consecutively.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Louison Bobet (FRA) France 140h 06' 05"
2 Ferdi Kübler (SUI) Switzerland +15' 49"
3 Fritz Schär (SUI) Switzerland +21' 46"
4 Jean Dotto (FRA) South East +28' 21"
5 Jean Malléjac (FRA) West +31' 38"
6 Stan Ockers (BEL) Belgium +36' 02"
7 Louis Bergaud (FRA) South West +37' 55"
8 Vincent Vitetta (FRA) South East +41' 14"
9 Jean Brankart (BEL) Belgium +42' 08"
10 Gilbert Bauvin (FRA) Center-North East +42' 21"


Cyclists born on this day: Jesse Sergent (New Zealand, 1988); Smaisuk Krisansuwan (Thailand, 1943); Christel Ferrier Bruneau (France, 1979); Mark Bristow (Great Britain, 1962); Jenny McCauley (Ireland, 1974); Otto Luedeke (USA, 1916, died 2005); James Jackson (Canada, 1908); Roberto Pagnin (Italy, 1962); Werner Karlsson (Sweden, 1887, died 1946); Paolo Tiralongo (Italy, 1977); Ivonne Kraft (West Germany, 1970); Bärbel Jungmeier (Austria, 1975); Bernard van de Kerckhove (Belgium, 1941); Stefano Colage (Italy, 1962); Jean-René Bernaudeau (France, 1956); Sven Johansson (Sweden, 1914, died 1982); Bill Messer (Great Britain, 1915); Serge Proulx (Canada, 1953).