Daily Cycling Facts 25.06.2014

Stage 9, 1922

The Tour de France began on this day in 1922, 1947, 1952, 1959, 1961 and 1981. The 1922 edition consisted of 22 stages over a total distance of 5,372km and, for the first time, was won by a rider who didn't win a single stage. For the fouth year in a row as France attempted to rebuild itself following the First World War, the bike companies that had sponsored teams before the conflict were unable to bear the cost. Instead, they joined forces in an organisation called La Sportive and sponsored the first class riders; the rest of the peloton being made up on independent second class riders who paid for their own machines, equipment, food and lodging. Some were well off and rode bikes at least as good as the sponsored riders; others were merely hopeful aboard their heavy, out-dated bikes, sleeping where they could and eating whatever they could find. More than one rider spent a night in a hedge in those days; fortunately, many of them were farmhands who knew how to catch, skin and cook a rabbit on a fire.

Robert Jacquinot

Robert Jacquinot won the first stage, then Romain Bellenger the second. Stage 3 finished at the Brest velodrome, where the first 24 riders entered an elimination race on the track with the last man riding - which was Jacquinot - being declared stage winner and keeping the yellow jersey. However, the next day he lost significant time due to three punctures and Eugène Christophe, aged 37 and 154 days, became the oldest man to have ever worn yellow in the history of the Tour before or since. He kept the jersey until the end of Stage 6, the first in the mountains and the second consecutive stage win for Jean Alavoine - the stage was planned to include Tourmalet, but heavy snow on the mountain forced organisers to alter the route and Philippe Thys, who was hoping to become the first man to win the Tour four times, broke his wheel and lost three hours while trying to repair it, thus removing himself from contention (Tour director Henri Desgrange maintained that had the War not stopped the race for four years, Thys would have won five or six). Meanwhile, Emile Masson tried his hand at a spot of cheating after meeting a goatherd who told him about a shortcut - unfortunately, it never occurred to either man that Masson's bike couldn't be ridden on tracks that goats find unproblematic and he ended up carrying it for much of the way. He lost so much time that his chances came to an early end too.

Philippe Thys

When Alavoine won a third consecutive stage, he got his own turn in the maillot jaune. Thys then won three as well, but even that wasn't enough to make up his deficit and Alavoine stayed in the lead until Stage 11, which Masson won after taking advantage of his rivals' bad luck and attacking whilst they had mechanical problems - Alavoine's chain snapped three times and he had to stop and repair it, the wet and windy weather doing the cold he'd picked up no good at all. Meanwhile, poor Christophe was also in difficulty - for the third time in his career his fork broke; he had to walk right over the Col d'Izoard - which was making its first appearance in the Tour this year - carrying his bike until he could find somewhere to mend it (this wasn't the occasion when he was penalised for allowing a blacksmith's assistant to pump the bellows as he fixed it in a forge; that had been in 1913, on Galibier. The second occasion was 1919). He crossed the finish line three hours after Masson.

Firmin Lambot

Alavoine suffered another series of punctures, six this time, during Stage 12; which rather suggests that somebody was paying a member of the public to sabotage his efforts by throwing something sharp in his path. Hector Heusghem, who had finished the General Classification in second place for the last two years, saw his chance and attacked. He finished with a ten-minute lead over Fermin Lambot and 35 minutes over Alavoine, but the next day Fate rewarded him for his willingness to gain from another' misfortune by seeing to it that he rode into a pothole and snapped his frame. The rules stated that, if a rider wanted to continue, he was required to repair all damage himself and without any assistance unless a race deemed the bike irreparable and permitted a replacement - hence Christophe's penalty in 1913. Heusghem didn't have enough of a lead to mend it without losing the yellow jersey, so he sought out an official and was given the go ahead - but later, organisers decided to reinterpret the rules and he was penalised one hour anyway, putting him into fourth place with only three stages to go. Lambot took the lead, and kept it without challenge to the end.

Afterwards, many fans and the press said that he'd won through luck (or the bad luck of others) rather than through skill. He hotly contested this - he had been, he pointed out, just eight minutes behind when Heusghem was given his penalty, and he might very easily have made it up on the last 773km to Paris. Nevertheless, the French considered Alavoine (the only Frenchman in the top five, funnily enough) to be the moral winner and celebrated him as such.


1947 consisted of 21 stages covering 4,640km and was the first Tour since 1939, the Nazis having invaded France before the 1940 edition could take place. Just as before the War, the race was open to national teams rather than trade teams financed by commercial sponsors - Germany, however, was not invited; as much due to concerns that the safety of their riders could not be guaranteed should the French public decide to extract revenge down some lonely road as out of hatred for what had happened during the conflict. The Italians, meanwhile, were; but their team was composed of  Italians resident in France as the peace treaty between the two countries had not yet been formalised and so, legally, they were still at war. There had been plans to invite a British-Dutch team too, but after the Dutch riders complained to the organisers that the British riders were no good it became a Dutch-French team instead.

Jacques Goddet

It was also the first Tour organised by L'Equipe. L'Auto, the newspaper that had run the race from its inauguration in 1903, was thought by the public to have been a little too close throughout the war to Philippe Pétain, Chief of Staff of Vichy France and to all extents and purposes a puppet president put into power by the Nazis; this was seen as tantamount to collaboration (a charge not wholly deserved - Goddet, editor of the paper and director of the Tour since Desgrange returned, had acted in an extremely questionable manner in the past, such as when he hired out his Velodrome d'hiver to be used as a rally venue by French Fascists before the War and later handed over the keys in 1942 so that the Nazis could use it to imprison 13,152 Jews, who were kept there in shocking conditions for eight days before being transported to concentration camps. For reasons unknown, he preferred never to discuss this, not even to claim he'd been forced; while there is truth in the saying that we should not judge one era by the standards of another, we must be open to the possibility that Goddet was an antisemite and played a part in a terrible crime against humanity. Yet, antisemites come in many different varieties and it should not automatically be thought that either he or his newspaper were by any means pro-Nazi, or anti-free France - at great personal risk, he permitted the printing presses to be used for the production of Resistance literature). It seems that the government was convinced; as the public were not it would appear that an unofficial deal was brokered - L'Auto, which would have suffered a slump in sales anyway, was closed and the government looked as thought they were tough on collaborators. The owners and editors then moved right across the road into a building (which, conveniently, they already owned) where they were permitted to set up L'Equipe.

The race did not automatically cross the road with them, though: Sports and Miroir Sprint, two popular magazines, had joined forces and were bidding to take it over. Rather than giving it to whichever title could offer them the most money for the honour, like most governments would have done, the French government decided that a better way would be to let them both organise races on the same sort of scale as the Tour and then choose whichever one did the best job. L'Equipe enlisted the assistance of Le Parisien Libéré (owned by Émilion Amaury who, in 1962, would join Goddet as co-director of the Tour. Later, he would buy L'Equipe and began building the empire that became the Amaury Sport Organisation - which owns and runs the Tour to this day). L'Equipe's race, La Course du Tour de France, was judged most successful; the right to revive the Tour was theirs.

The 1947 Tour, Stage 2

Many races had carried on through the war, but they were one day events on the whole (the Nazis requested the Tour's organisers to continue, but were met with flat refusal), which combined with so many riders from before the War now being too old - and some, of course, no longer alive - meant that nobody really had any idea who might be in with a good chance. Ferdy Kübler (spelled that way, rather than "Ferdi" as is more common, because that's how Ferdy himself prefers it) won the first stage and was immediately earmarked for future success, but he wasn't yet the snorting, half-mad powerhouse that he became a few years later. Then René Vietto won Stage 2 and took the yellow jersey; since he'd come third in 1939 and was (undeservedly) beloved by the French public due to an artfully-cropped photograph taken at the 1934 Tour and had become symbolic for them of a generation of riders that had been robbed of their best years, he immediately became favourite despite being nearly 40.

Jean Robic

The Italian Aldo Ronconi won Stage 3 before a rather funny-looking new rider named Jean Robic won Stage 4, but neither could take Vietto's jersey. Kübler won again on Stage 5 and 1944 Paris-Tours winner Lucien Teissure took Stage 6, then the race reached the Alps in Stage 7. Immediately, Robic - who would have stood out in the peloton even were it not for his extremely unusual habit of wearing a helmet while racing - showed himself to be a rider of considerable note: at only 1.61m tall and 60kg in weight (he was so light that he'd carry bidons filled with lead to keep his bike stable on the descents) he was wiry and the very archetype of a climber. He won the stage with an advantage of 4'36".

Another Franco-Italian, Fermo Camellini took Stage 8, then Vietto won Stage 9 and Camellini repeated his success by winning Stage 10 - these would be his only Tour stage wins. Édouard Fachleitner, Henri Massal, Lucien Teisseire and Albert Bourlon (who escaped right at the start and rode out on front for the full 235km, the longest breakaway of any post-war Tour) won the next four, but Vietto remained in yellow, It was on Stage 15 in the Pyrenees that little Robic really took flight and revealed that while he was built like a sparrow, he had the wings of an eagle; he simply rode away from the rest of the field and won the stage by 10'43". He was much more than a rider of considerable note now: he was a very real contender for the General Classification.

Still, Vietto wore yellow and he was expected to do well on Stage 19, at 139km the longest individual time trial in Tour history. In fact, he lost a significant amount of time - some people, presumably fans, said this was because he was mourning the death of a friend in a motorcycle accident; others swore that he had been seen swigging from a large bottle of cider as he tackled the parcours. Raymond Impanis won, Pierre Brambilla - who came fifth - earned enough time to come out with the race lead. Robic came second, and improved his overall time considerably; at the end of Stage 20 he was third overall with a disadvantage of 2'58" behind Brambilla.

Pierre Brambilla

The last stage featured a hilltop prime, which wasn't supposed to have any influence on the overall outcome and simply provided a bit of entertainment for the fans as the riders competed for a cash prize awarded to the first man to the summit. An early break led by Briek Schotte had already won it, but Robic did not realise this and spread his wings once more, sprinting up the hill and dropping Brambilla on the way. He couldn't win the money but, with 140km to the finish line, he suddenly found himself leading the race by three minutes in the General Classification. Realising that an opportunity had fallen into his lap but that he could not seize it without help, he turned to Fachleitner and told him: "You can not win the Tour, because I will not let you escape. If you ride with me, I will pay you 100,000 Francs." (According to some, he actually offered 50,000 and Fachleitner talked him up.)

Fachleitner knew that this was the case, and 100,000F was a very great deal more than he stood to win if he rode for himself; so he agreed. Schotte got to the finish line long before them but, once stage win time bonuses were awarded Fachleitner came second, 3'58" behind Robic - who had married a short time before the Tour and promised his wife the yellow jersey as a gift - whose overall time was148h11'25". According to legend Brambilla, who was third with +10'07, was so disgusted at what he saw as having been robbed of victory that he took his bike home to Annecy and buried it in the garden, fully intending to never ride again (he did, though, including four more Tours).


Fausto Coppi won the Tour in sensational style in 1949, the year he beat Gino Bartali, then stayed away in 1950 after breaking his pelvis at the Giro. In 1951, he was mourning the tragic death of his brother Serse. In 1952, therefore, he had a point to prove.

Raphael Geminiani

There would be 23 stages, and they would cover 4,807km in total. For the first time, some of the ended with summit finishes. 122 men set out from Brest, notable for their absence among them were Louison Bobet (who was staying away after a poor showing in 1951 but would win in 1953, 1954 and 1955); mad, bad and dangerous to know Ferdinand Kübler (winner in 1950) and le pédaleur de charme Hugo Koblet (who won in 1951), but Coppi wasn't going to have everything his own way - Jean Robic, Raphaël Géminiani and Bartali (now 37 years old) would see to that. They had new classifications to compete for - the overall Teams classification, first introduced in 1930, was now joined by a daily Teams classification with a prize for the top team each day. There was also a brand new prize, the Combativité, awarded daily to the rider judged to have ridden in the most aggressive or courageous manner (the Super Combativité award, given to the rider who has ridden most aggressively through the entire Tour, was added in 1953). The qualities that can earn a rider a Combativité award also make the race more entertaining from the fans' point of view - it is, perhaps, no coincidence that 1952 also marks the first year that the race was filmed for television broadcast. It wasn't live back then: the footage, filmed from motorcycles with the enormous heavy cameras of the day, was sped off to Paris by train to be edited and broadcast the following day.

Rik van Steenbergen (whom, some estimates claim, won almost a thousand races during his 23 seasons as a professional - though other, probably more accurate, estimates put the figure far lower) won Stage 1 and took the yellow jersey for two days. André Rosseel won the second stage, then Nello Lauredi won the third and wore the maillot jaune for four days. Stage 4 brought the only Tour stage win of Pierre Molinéris' career and there was controversy after Géminiani and Robic escaped together in a break. Robic refused to do any of the work, drafting behind Géminiani all the way, then told journalists afterwards that he'd ridden intelligently because by saving energy in this way he had increased his chances of winning overall. That night, in the hotel, the hot-headed Géminiani (whose first Tour was in 1947, when Robic won) went after him and pushed his head into a sink full of water - which probably earned him a few new friends because Robic, for all he was a beautiful climber, was not a pleasant character at all.

Luxembourgian Bim Diederich won Stage 5 and briefly got the fans wondering if he might turn out to be a GC contender as he'd worn yellow for three days in 1951, but then Fiorenzo Magni got away on the next stage and won with a sufficient advantage to take the overall lead. He only had the maillot jaune for one day before losing it in the Stage 7 time trial, which Coppi won, and the jersey went back to Lauredi again. Stage 8 was the first in the Alps and Géminiani won - Magni and Lauredi remained together all the way to finish line, marking one another's every move; Magni was second over the line 5'19" later, but the 20" bonus he received earned him another day in the yellow jersey.

Walter Diggelman

On Stage 9, a group got away from the peloton and Walter Diggelman, who rode six day races with Koblet in the late 1940s, won. Among them was a little-known 27-year-old named Andrea Carrea, by all accounts the humblest of domestiques ("The incarnation of personal disinterest... showing to perfection the notion of personal sacrifice. He refused the slightest bit of personal glory," said journalist Jean-Luc Gatellier). Having been seventh over the finish line he made his way to the hotel and set about doing whatever it is that domestiques do whilst waiting for their team leaders to finish with the masseurs. He hadn't been there long when the police showed up, looking for him. "What have I done wrong?" he asked, entirely mystified. They weren't there to arrest him; they were there for a reason that, as far as Carrea was concerned, was much worse than being accused of a crime he hadn't committed - he'd won enough time on the stage to be the new overall race leader.

Believing that team leader Coppi - of whom he was completely in awe, and to whom he had dedicated himself - would be furious, he burst into tears (some accounts say that Carrea was told he'd become race leader on the finish line and that he never went back to the hotel, nor were the police ever involved. Others say that he was told, then fled back to the hotel in panic. I like the version in which he didn't know until the police found him best, and since we'll never know for certain what happened - unless someone risks spoiling the story by delving too deeply into history, you can pick whichever version appeals most to you). On the podium, Carrea was distraught, eyes fixed firmly on the ground in shame except for frequent furtive glances about him for Coppi, whom he expected to appear at any moment to extract terrible revenge.

"Chin up, mate!" Coppi attempts to reassure Carrea

Coppi was still riding when the news reached him, getting to the finish line as Carrea was on the podium. Hearing of his domestique's distress, he went straight to congratulate him and did all he could to reassure him that he was pleased rather than angry, but Carrea was not convinced and worried that his master would punish him later on where no journalists were around to see it or at a later date in the peloton, where the worst retribution of all is meted out. Coppi later wrote, "Carrea gave everything to me. In return I offered him only money. I know very well that if he was not my team-mate he would earn much less, and when all is said and done he is happy and many of his comrades envy him, but I personally think he deserves more than he has the right to: a little of intoxication of triumph. I had a way of settling the debt: it was to let him wear the jersey for a few days. Do you know what he said to the journalists the next evening after he had taken the jersey? That it was not right for a soldier to leave his captain."

The following morning, Carrea made a point of being photographed by journalists as he polished his leader's shoes. He died on the 13th of January this year, and his passing was not nearly as widely reported as it should have been.

Bartali knew his career was at an end. He handed over
his rear wheel - and the future - to Coppi

Stage 10 featured the first ever inclusion of a mountain that, with the possible exception of Ventoux, has become a symbol of the Tour: Alpe d'Huez. Robic had the face of a gargoyle and the personality of a turd, but he had the wings of an angel and when he unfurled them on the Alpe only Coppi could follow - with difficulty. Fate intervened; Robic punctured, Coppi rode away and won the stage. Carrea would have been happy to surrender the maillot jaune to anybody; he was, of course, delighted to give it to Coppi. On Stage 11, the French team led by Géminiani attacked him hard, but he easily overcame them all. On Stage 12, when Coppi punctured, Bartali stopped and handed him his own back wheel: a small event, really, but in reality a great deal more than a rim, a hub and some spokes changed hands - since Coppi's first victory three years earlier, the Tour had been in a transitional period; now a new era began. Coppi, for all he respected Bartali (though it would be hard to describe them as friends) might have liked it to have begun few years earlier - he was already 33. He wore the maillot jaune for the rest of the race and most of the other riders gave up hope. Goddet doubled the prize money for second place on Stage 16 in an attempt to keep things interesting, but nobody cared.

The following stages came and went; Robic won another and so did Géminiani, Magni and Rosseel. Géminiani's win was Stage 17 after he escaped the peloton in a desperate attempt to make up his 52' disadvantage, but Coppi didn't even bother to chase him. On Stage 18 in the Pyrenees, Coppi was the first rider to the summit of the last mountain. On the way down, he sat up, enjoyed the view, even stopped at a cafe for a sandwich and a cup of coffee and didn't look at all concerned when the main field caught up with him - then he won the final sprint to the finish line. After Stage 21, he led by 31' and so in the time trial the following day he rode around the parcours looking like a recreational cyclist on a Sunday jaunt, came fourteenth and yet still led by 28' overall. 150,000 spectators, a new record, turned out to see him start the final stage in Vichy, and when he finished he won the Tour by 28'17". Carrea was ninth, 50'20" down, by far the best result of his ten-year career.

In 1959 there were 22 stages, covering 4,391km in total. 120 riders started Stage 1 in Mulhouse, only 65 finished Stage 22 in Paris. In 1952, the race had been broadcast on television for the first time; this had been so successful (not only in France, but throughout Europe and beyond) that in 1959, for the first time, a helicopter was used to gather footage. The race also experienced one of its first doping scandals when official Tour doctor Pierre Dumas intercepted a parcel containing strychnine - which in the right doses acts as a stimulant - destined for one of the teams.

Just as had for the last three years, the Frenchman André Darrigade won Stage 1, then Vito Favero who had finished second overall the previous year won Stage 2. A large group escaped on Stage 3, but at such an early stage and long before the mountains nobody was particularly concerned, though the ten minute advantage they won was a little higher than the favourites had estimated they'd get and stage winner Robert Cazala would keep the yellow jersey until the end of Stage 8. On that stage, he was unable to respond to Belgian attacks. Louison Bobet, who was known to be Cazala's friend, could have stayed with him and in all likelihood kept him in the maillot jaune for another day; instead - concerned more with maintaining his own time so that he would still have a shot at victory later - he went after them. Desgrange, who always wanted his race to be a heroic battle in which every man rode only for himself, would have loved it had he have still been alive to see it; the fans were less impressed. So too was the Belgian Eddy Pauwels, who became new overall leader - after being awarded the jersey, he went straight to find Cazala's wife and gave her his winner's bouquet.

The French team, which consisted of Jacques Anquetil, Raphael Géminiani, Bobet and Roger Rivière, had started the race as favourite for the Teams classification and could have taken control by this point; but now it became evident that having so many potential winners was a problem - they all wanted to be team leader and refused point-blank to work together. Rivière won the Stage 6 time trial, but due to the rivalry in the team not one of them won a stage. Just how much of a problem this would be became apparent in Stage 15, a mountain time trial on the dormant volcano Puy-de-Dôme. The Spanish team manager's decision to install Federico Bahamontes as team leader had, initially, seemed rather odd - after all, a General Classification contender needs to be an excellent all-rounder and while Bahamontes was a superb climber (he'd won the King of the Mountains twice already) he didn't even try on the the other stages. The French saw this as a serious oversight. However, that day Bahamontes showed the world that he was not just a superb climber - he was phenomenal. Not even Charly Gaul - who had a Tour, three Giri d'Italia, four Grand Tour King of the Mountains and, for one glorious year in 1958 before the drugs and the madness began to take their toll (and the weather had suited him), had been the rider that many still insist was the greatest grimpeur to have ever lived - could get within 1'26" of him; though to be fair to Charly, who hated hot weather, the day was far too warm for him to be at his best. That was why Bahamontes was team leader - he was so good that he only needed the mountain stages, the rest didn't matter, and now the maillot jaune was his.

Many years later, after Gaul (left) had lived alone in the
forest and then been returned to the world, he and
Bahamontes (right) became friends. In this photograph,
they're at the memorial to Francois Faber and Nicolas Frantz

Gaul won Stage 17 in the Alps, where the weather was a little cooler, and Bahamontes was second; the two men had worked together but the Luxembourgian couldn't get enough of an advantage to take away the yellow jersey. Nor could he do so on the next two mountain stages, so with only flat stages his chance to win a second Tour was lost.

Louison Bobet, who had been the first rider to win three consecutive Tours with his victories in 1953, 1954 and 1955, ended his relationship with the great race during Stage 18. Since 1955, when he had undergone major surgery to remove decaying flesh caused by an infected saddle sort from his groin, Bobet had not been the rider he once was and many of his rivals were probably surprised he was still around - in 1958, going against advice from his doctor (a most unexpected act, for Bobet was obsessed with health and hygiene in a way that seemed utterly odd to most riders of the day), he had entered the Tour and suffered terribly, amazing everyone when he not only finished, but did so in seventh place.

What he had suffered up in the unearthly realm of the Casse Deserte that year, though, was nothing compared to the ordeal that came in 1959. He had been very visibly ill for much of the race, so much so over the course of the two days prior to Stage 18 that even those who hated him (and there were many of those) to worry about his well-being. His body was near to total breakdown, yet somehow he found the determination to the top of the 2,770m Col de l'Iseran, high enough that altitude sickness becomes a real concern. Then, just as the road began to drop and gravity would have afforded him an easier time, he brought his bike and his career as a Tour de France rider to an end.

Bobet was so ill by this point that, swaddled in the thick overcoat that someone had placed around him and propped upright on the back seat of one of the cars that had followed him up the mountain, some onlookers thought he had died. Then the car was driven away, Bobet's bike left by the road in the care of Gino Bartali who had ridden up the Iseran when it first featured in the Tour in 1938, and who had turned out to support the Frenchman in what they both knew was his final Tour. Later, when he had been nursed back to health, Bobet was asked why he'd pushed himself so far, risking his life. "I had never climbed the Iseran," he replied. "It's Europe's highest road, and I wanted to ride up there."

Brian Robinson took Stage 20 with a lead of 20'06", the second time a Tour stage had been won by a British rider - he had also been responsible for the first, one year earlier. Stage 21 posed one final challenge for Bahamontes as it was a time trial. As it happened, he wasn't a bad time trial rider, in fact he'd been National Champion in 1958; but he knew he was very much outclassed by several others, especially on the French team. In the end, he didn't even get into the top ten and the Frenchmen Rivière, Anquetil and Saint took the top three spots. However, none of them won back enough time to take away the overall lead and, with one flat stage left, he had won the Tour de France.

Gaul and Bahamontes are rightly regarded as the greatest climbers in the history of professional cycling, but in 1959 they faced competition from an entirely unexpected source - Victor Sutton, who was British; British riders being considered in those days to be among the lower ranks of cyclists, despite Brian Robinson's Stage 7 victory a year earlier, and certainly not great climbers (indeed, to this day Britain has produced only two world-class grimpeurs, the Scotsman Robert Millar and Emma Pooley from England). Sutton has been so entirely forgotten today that Cycling Archives doesn't list a palmares for him and he has no page on Wikipedia, but his natural talent in the mountains, where he could keep turning a low gear at high revolutions per minute just like Gaul did, enabled him to climb from 109th place at the end of the first week of the Tour to 37th by the finish; on the Puy de Dôme time trial he recorded a time that remained the fastest for an hour and might have finished in the top ten in Paris had he not have shared Bahamontes' terror of descending - once over the summit, he seized up and lost large chunks of the time he'd gained on the way up. He returned to the Tour in 1960, another year older and wiser and believed by some to now be in a position to beat the Eagle and the Angel, but his season up to the race had been too hard and he suffered a minor heart attack in Stage 18, the Tour's last day in the Alps.

Sutton died on the 29th of July in 1999; alongside Robinson, he was one of the first riders to show the world that British cyclists could compete at the highest level of the sport, and he should be far better known than he is today.


In 1961, there were 21 stages and they covered 4,397km. Many of the names from 1959 were riding again, though much had changed during the intervening two years - Gaul was already burning out, since no personality as intense as his can last long; André Darrigade, Eddy Pauwels, Robert Cazala and others had developed into strong riders. Two notable absences were Roger Rivière and Federico Bahamontes - Rivière's career had come to an end at the Tour one year before when he tried to follow Gastone Nencini down a mountain (something that other riders said only a man with "a death wish" would ever dare attempt), plunged over the side and broke his back, while Bahamontes had decided to stay away after abandoning in Stage 2 last year. He'd be back in 1963 and 1964, and Anquetil extracted terrible revenge for 1959. Anquetil had won the Tour in 1957, but since then been unable to repeat it. When he won the Giro in 1960, he confirmed himself as one of the best riders in the world rather than an also-ran who once got lucky; but as of yet nobody knew just how good he was going to be. He had also learned in 1959 that a superstong team made of General Classification contenders was more likely to dissolve into internal rivalry and bickering than guarantee success, so this year he made sure that the squad was made up of men who would accept his command then ride for him - any only him.

Darrigade won the first stage for the fifth time in his career and thus became the Tour's first holder of the yellow jersey after getting away in a small break. Crucially, Anquetil was also in the break; by the end of the stage Gaul and Anquetil's few rivals were already at a five-minute disadvantage. That afternoon the race moved into Stage 1a, an individual time trial; Anquetil was fully expected to win that, and he did - with an advantage of 2'32", sufficient to begin the next day in yellow. Stage 2 took in some of the harsh roads that some of the riders already knew from Paris-Roubaix and, as happens so often in that race, they laboured their way over the parcours in atrocious weather with seven men (none of the favourites) abandoning. Darrigade won that one, too, but Anquetil still had the maillot jaune. Nobody had taken it from him by Stage 6 when disaster struck the Dutch team: a German rider, Horst Oldenberg, crashed during a descent of the Col de la Schlucht in Alsace and collided with Ab Geldemans, the Dutch team leader who then had to be helicoptered to hospital. On the Ballon d'Alsace (which had been the very first mountain in the Tour back in 1905), Gaul had a little bit of fun - apparently without effort, he dropped Anquetil during the last 500m of the climb and rode to a 10" lead, then he sat up and allowed the Frenchman to catch him. The message was plain: "I'm just amusing myself, toying with you. Later, I'm going to kick you to death."

Jacques Anquetil

On Stage 9, the second in the Alps, there were no fewer than four tough climbs. Gaul rode away on the second, then crashed on the third but managed to keep going and won. Anquetil had not been able to keep up with him, but he wasn't far behind; finishing in second place 1'40" later meant that the maillot jaune was still his. Gaul was favourite for Stage 16, but he'd crashed again on Stage 15 and was hurting more than was initially thought and could only manage sixth place behind Imerio Messignan. Stage 17, the last in the mountains, was his final chance; however, Anquetil rode intelligently and allowed only low-ranking riders to escape the pack. Gaul wasn't a bad time trial rider and looked set to win back a little time in Stage 19 but crashed badly - he was able to continue, but Anquetil gained another three minutes and began the penultimate stage with a lead of more than ten minutes. Fans and press didn't like how he rode the last two stages, complaining that he should have been more aggressive in order to gain an even larger advantage; but the truth was he didn't need to and was better off keeping out of trouble - all the same, when he crossed the finish line at the end of the final stage, he was 12'14" ahead overall. He'd also worn the yellow jersey in all but the first stage, the most decisive victory in years and proof that he was one of the greatest riders to have ever lived. Gaul, meanwhile, lost more time and conceded second place to Guido Carlesi. He went back to the Tour in 1962 but didn't finish, then never entered again.

Anquetil won on the 16th of July. as he did so, a race he'd probably never heard of was ending 315km away at Laeken in Belgium. Among the riders from the Evere Kerkhoek Sportif club was a stocky sixteen-year-old, making his race debut. He didn't win but, had Anquetil have been there to see it, he might have felt a sense of dread about the future: the boy was destined to take away his greatest cyclist crown in less than a decade's time. His name was Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx

The biggest threats to Hinault in 1981 - Joop Zoetemelk
(centre left) and Phil Anderson (centre right)
(far left: Adri van der Poel; far right: Jan Raas)

When the race next began on this day, twenty years later in 1981, cycling had changed dramatically. There were 24 stages, but the Tour had continued to follow the trend towards shorter races with higher average speeds and was 3,753km long. A slight thawing in the relationship between the West and the Eastern Bloc had led to a plan to open up the race to amateur teams so that riders from the USSR and Eastern Europe could enter, but it came to nothing. Anquetil, in his day the greatest Tour rider of all time and the first man to win five times, had been eclipsed by Eddy Merckx who had been even better, magnitudes better; Merckx's reign had come to an end and a new king had emerged, this one in the pugnacious, distinctly un-regal shape Bernard Hinault.

Hinault had won the Tour on his first attempt in 1978, then won another in 1979. In 1980 he'd injured his knees and abandoned. This year he was World Champion and he'd started the season in spectacular style and won Paris–Roubaix, the Amstel Gold Race, the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Critérium International; then he showed up at the Tour in better form that ever before and won the prologue, which immediately made him the favourite. Freddy Maertens won Stage 1a, then Ti-Raleigh won the Stage 1b team time trial. Johan van de Velde won Stage 2, Maertens won Stage 3 and Ti-Raleigh won the second team time trial in Stage 4.

In Stage 5, the race made its only visit to the Pyrenees that year. Hinault, Phil Anderson and Lucien van Impe rode in a break out in front of the main field, but van Impe got ahead in the last few kilometres and won by 27". Hinault was just ahead of Anderson as they crossed the line, but Anderson's total lapsed time was smaller and so he became the first Australian - the first non-European, in fact - to have ever led the Tour de France. He wouldn't keep the maillot jaune for long: Hinault was a superb time trial rider and took it from him in Stage 6.

Bernard Hinault

Hinault keep adding a few seconds here, a few more there, but Anderson followed him all the way. Finally, his dreams ended; Stage 14 was another individual time trial and Hinault used it to destroy him, beating him by 2'01"; then he lost seventeen minutes on the Alpe d'Huez in Stage 17. The Irishman Sean Kelly won Stage 15, then as the Tour left the Alps three days later Hinault sealed his victory with another stage win. After that, he had no real need to win the last time trial in Stage 20, but he did anyway.

In 1981, Hinault was enjoying his best years and was destined to win two more Tours, two more Giri d'Italia (for a total of three) and another Vuelta a Espana (his second); but already new stars were shining.

Other cyclists born on this day: Egor Silin (USSR, 1988); Danny Stam (Netherlands, 1972); Sébastien Joly (France, 1979); Karen Darke (UK, 1971); Martinus Vlietman (Netherlands, 1900, died 1970); Rory O'Reilly (USA, 1955); Ardito Bresciani (Italy, 1899, died 1948); Jimmy Swift (South Africa, 1931, died 2009); Guillermo Mendoza (Mexico, 1945); Oswaldo Frossasco (Argentina, 1952); Clemilda Silva (Brazil, 1979); Anriette Schoeman (South Africa, 1977); Thierry Marie (France, 1963); Antonio Giménez (Argentina, 1931).

Daily Cycling Facts 21.06.2014

The Tour de France has started on this date twice, first in 1925 and then again in 1966. The 1925 edition consisted of 18 stages, at that time the most ever, but the overall distance was increased by only 5km to 5,430km - still much longer than today's Tours, but a significant decrease in the average stage length which would lead to a much longer race and a reduction to 17 stages the following year. It also marked the return of sponsored trade teams with respectable budgets for the first time since the First World War. Rules were changed, too - there was no longer a time bonus for the winner of each stage and any rider deemed to have said or done anything likely to damage the Tour's image was to be banned the following the year, this having been inspired by comments Henri Pélissier made to the journalist Albert Londres after a row with organisers. 130 men started, split between two groups - 39 rode with trade teams, the rest were independent touriste-routiers who paid their own way during the race (some slept in hotels and ate in restaurants, others slept in hedges and ate anything they could catch, beg or steal). There was a great deal of variation in team size with the largest, J.B. Louvet-Pouchois, consisting of eight riders including Eugène Christophe, Albert Dejonghe and Hector Heusghem; the J.Alavoine-Dunlop "team" began the race with just one rider, Jean Alavoine.

Bottecchia was, shall we say, not the finest example of
Italian manhood to have ever swung a leg over a bike.
However, the maillot jaune has magical powers over the
female tifosi and they swarmed across the border to throw
roses in his path - extra police had to be drafted in to Evian
to keep them under control. Frantz too received massive
support after three special trains were organised to bring his
fans from Luxembourg to the race

Ottavio Bottecchia had won with comparative ease in 1924, despite being knocked off his bike by a dog, once Pélissier stormed off home in the wake of an argument involving jerseys - only Nicolas Frantz presented any sort of challenge, but too late in the race to deprive him of victory. He was a favourite this year too but he knew that he was in for a tougher race because of Adelin Benoit, a 25-year-old Belgian who had won the National Championship for independent riders two years previously and had been adding good results ever since. Pélissier was back too, but he was 36 and would abandon with knee problems, never to return to the Tour. The Italian got off to a good start by winning the first stage and had the maillot jaune for two days, but then Benoit's second place 5'38" behind Louis Mottiat on Stage 3 allowed him to take it away. Frantz won the next two stages but was unable to take the lead, then Benoit had a puncture in Stage 6, Automoto-Hutchinson attacked and got Bottecchia to the line first. He won Stage 7 too, briefly winning the jersey back, but when the race reached the mountains Benoit won Stage 8 and once again took the lead. However, he had been lucky; mountains were not his speciality and when Frantz won Stage 9 the jersey was returned to Bottecchia who, with the assistance of Lucien Buysse, kept it.

Buysse was rewarded by being allowed to win Stages 11 and 12 (he'd also been promised half the money Bottecchia earned in the race), though in the latter both men missed a control post (riders were required to sign a log, proving they'd stuck to the parcours and not taken any shortcuts) and were penalised ten minutes. Nevertheless, at the end of the stage Bottecchia had a 27' advantage over nearest rival Frantz, and when the Luxembourger lost a further 37' due to a puncture on Stage 14 his race was over. Bottecchia won in 219h10'18", Buysse was 54'20" slower for second place. Bottechia also won the meilleur grimpeur, an award given by L'Auto to the rider judged to have performed best in the mountains before the introduction of the King of the Mountains competition in 1933, but it would be his last Tour victory - he returned in 1926 but abandoned in the Pyrenees; then in 1927 he was found lying unconscious by the side of a road not far from his home in Peonis and died eleven days later.

In 1966, the Tour covered 4,303km over 22 stages - much longer than modern editions, but considerably shorter than 1925 (in 1925, the average stage length was 301.6km, in 1966 195.6km. Many people make the mistake of believing that this is an indication that the riders in the early 20th Century were a much tougher breed than post-Second World War, but they forget that average speeds - 24.775kph in 1925, 36.76kph in 1966 - have risen dramatically. Also, in 1925 the riders had a rest day almost every other day; in 1966 they had only two).

Poulidor, the man who saw the future

The riders, well-used to bad weather, harsh mountains and the occasional corrupt official and/or belligerent fan, faced a new ordeal - for the very first time in 1966, they had to submit to drugs tests. Rumours spread before the first test was carried out and, unhappy about it, all the riders except for one made themselves scarce after Stage 8 when the testers were supposed to arrive. The one rider who remained was Raymond Poulidor, who despite connections to Bernard Sainz (the notorious "Dr. Mabuse") never tested positive during his career. Perhaps a little wiser than most, Poulidor knew that this was the future of cycling the future and that even if he escaped the testers' clutches this time they'd be back, many times. As a result, he holds the honour of becoming their first subject, and his memory of the occasion reveals how amateurish the procedure was at the time:

"I was strolling down the corridor in ordinary clothes when I came across two guys in plain clothes. They showed me their cards and said to me ...
"You're riding the Tour?" - "I said: 'Yes'."
"You're a rider?" - "I said: 'Yes'."
"OK, come with us."
I swear it happened just like that. They made me go into a room, I pissed into some bottles and they closed them without sealing them. Then they took my name, my date of birth, without asking for anything to check my identity. I could have been anyone, and they could have done anything they liked with the bottles."

The testers managed to catch a few other riders, some of whom refused to provide samples; next day, riders staged a protest by getting off their bikes and shouting abuse - mostly general abuse directed at anybody who would listen, but much of it directed at Tour doctor Pierre Dumas (whom, they claimed, should be tested for wine and aspirin in case he was using those drugs to cope with the demands of his job) and some directly targeting Poulidor for submitting himself to the test. "After that, they did me no favours in the peloton," he later remembered.

Rudi Altig won the first stage in much the same way that he won so many of his track victories,  getting his head down and hammering away at the pedals until it was time to stop and get back off the bike again, and the small lead he gained proved unexpectedly sufficient to keep him in the maillot jaune for ten stages; at which point the race reached the Pyrenees. Meanwhile, Jacques Anquetil was steadily improving his time, hotly pursued as ever by Poulidor who was even more furious than usual with his great rival in the wake of a Stage 2 crash, which Anquetil - who looked like a gentleman, but wasn't one - used as an opportunity to attack. Poulidor made it back to the main group but was understandably not at all happy, Anquetil called him a cry-baby and said he needed to "learn how to stay upright on his bike."

Jan Janssen, Lucien Aimar and a small group they'd recruited to help took a serious bite out of Anquetil's time during Stage 10 from Bayonne to Pau, while Tommaso de Pratook the stage win and earned his one and only day in yellow. Guido Marcello Mugnaini, who had come fourth overall the year before, won the next day but without taking the leadership, allowing Jean-Claude Lebaube his own single day in yellow; then Altig took Stage 12. By this time, the small lead he had in the first few stages had long been eroded away and so as the race left the mountains for two stages and a time trial on the flatlands, the lead passed into the hands of his countryman Karl-Heinz Kunde who kept it for five stages.

In Stage 16, Julio Jiménez (who had won the King of the Mountains at the Tour and Vuelta in 1965) got away from the peloton, forcing Janssen, Poulidor, Anquetil, Aimar and others to chase. They couldn't catch him and he won the stage but without enough time to get the maillot jaune, which went to Janssen. The next day, a group of riders tried the same trick and managed to build up a sizable lead on the two early descents so that Janssen, Anquetil and Aimar once again had to expend energy by chasing them down. Then Poulidor escaped too, and Anquetil - used to always beating the Eternal Second but weakened by bronchitis brought on by bad weather in earlier stages - was having none of that, so he chased. Poulidor was never as good as his rival he retained his form for far longer, despite only being two years younger; Anquetil exhausted himself and abandoned the next day, never to return to the Tour. The break was caught but Aimer discovered he had the strength to keep going, taking Janssen by surprise and finishing with the lead - Janssen tried to get it back in Stage 18, but Aimar and matched him move-for-move; he won back some time, but to no avail and Aimar won the race (and some years later, he became an excellent example of why a retired professional cyclist has to stop eating like a pre-retirement professional cyclist). Janssen's time was good enough for second place, however, an he became the first Dutch rider to achieve a podium place in the General Classification. Two years later, he won outright.


Jacques Goddet

The memorial to Jacques Goddet, high up on
Tourmalet

Jacques Goddet, the second director of the Tour de France after a prostate operation and illness left Henri Desgrange too sick to continue (he would die four years after Goddet took over), died on this day in 2000. Goddet is credited with modernising and developing the race from its quaint beginnings to the world's largest sporting event (one of his first changes was to permit the use of derailleur gears which became standard on all bikes two years later after the Tour was won for the first time on a bike fitted with one), but even a brief history of the man cannot be complete without a look at his wartime activities. While he permitted the L'Auto presses to be used to produce pro-Resistance materal and pamphlets, his anti-Nazi credentials come under serious doubt: firstly, he seems to have personally supported Philippe Pétain who would become Chief Marshall of Vichy France (and who was sentenced to death after the war for treason and collaborating with the Nazis, though the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment on account of age) and produced some 1,200 articles in support of him.

Of course, Goddet may have been effectively signing his own death warrant had he have refused permission for this to happen; it has also been argued that a controlling interest in L'Auto's shares was owned by a consortium of German businessmen, in which case Goddet would have had very little say in the paper's editorial direction and might not in fact have personally supported Pétain at all. Far more damning meanwhile is the fact that before the war he had hired out his Vélodrome d'Hiver to be used for fascist meetings and then, when France was occupied, permitted it to be used by the Nazis for the temporary imprisonment of 13,000 French Jews who remained there in horrible conditions before being transferred to concentration camps - only 300 of them survived the war. It is possible that his hand was forced by those German businessmen, of course. It's also possible that he was not a Nazi sympathiser but was an antisemite; the two do not necessarily go hand-in-hand (there have been many left-wing antisemites in history and it works both ways - Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jewish lives, but he was a supporter of other Nazi policies and joined the party of his own free will).  After the war, L'Auto (which, incidentally, had been established as an anti-Drefus paper after the Army captain - who was Jewish - had been falsely convicted of trumped-up charges fueled at least partly by the rampant antisemitism of the times) was forced to close for continuing to publish during the Occupation, as were many other newspapers and magazines. Goddet responded by creating L'Equipe, the paper that is still printed today and is one of the first points of call for Tour-related news, but due to his association with L'Auto could not be listed as being a part of it even though he had an office at the paper's headquarters until the final years of his life.


Mark Bell

Mark Bell, 1960-2009

Mark Bell was born in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, on this day in 1960. His talent was plain to see from a very young age - when he was just ten years old he finished a 10 mile (16.1km) cyclo cross race in 33 minutes, wearing his football strip and school shoes. By 14, he was representing the North of England in the English Schools Cycling Association three-day event, competing against an international field.

Bell's amateur career was nothing short of spectacular, with some 200 victories. In 1979, he joined the Athletic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt and rode alongside Robert Millar, Scotland's greatest ever cyclist. He began to show talent on the road at about the same time and in 1981 became National Road Champion and won two stages in the Milk Race, as the Tour of Britain was then known. He became the first foreign winner in the history of the Étoile de Sud in 1983 and then a year later rode in the Olympics - that race, however, proved to be a disaster. He had been told that the course was flat, whereas in reality in included one very challenging hill and for all his talents, Bell was most definitely not a climber. He abandoned the race.

Having turned professional in 1985 to join the Falcon team, he came third in the National Road Race competition. He joined Team Raleigh the following season and won it; his superb sprinting ability showing itself when, as race official and future British Cycling president Brian Cookson remembers, "he simply rode away from some of the greatest names in the sport." He also came second in the Tom Simpson memorial that year, then joined Emmelle-MBK before retiring at the end of the 1988 season.

Life after retirement was not at all kind to Bell. He suffered from poor health and became an alcoholic, which made some of his medical issues worse. In 2008, he said that he "was on top of" his alcoholism, meaning that he had made an effort to bring it under control and, at the time, was managing to do so, like all alcoholics never knowing whether this the end of the war or just another battle. He also revealed that he was suffering from damage caused by deep vein thrombosis in his left leg and required a shoulder joint replacement due to osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone marrow. Sadly, his body gave out before he did and he died on the 30th of January 2009, aged 48.

Toni Merkens
Toni Merkens, born in Cologne in this day in 1912, began his career in cycling as an apprentice to Fritz Köthke who, at that time, was one of Germany's top frame builders. By his early 20s he had begun to make an impact on racing, especially on the track, and became National Amateur Sprint Champion in 1933, 1934 and 1935. He won a gold medal for the 1,000m Sprint at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in extremely dubious circumstances - he had clearly been seen to grab the Dutch rider Arie van Vliet's clothing, pulling him back and forcing him into second place; but the German judges ignored it. It was only when the Dutch team launched an official complaint' leaving them no choice but to act, that they penalised him 100 Reichmarks.

Before the war, Merkens was a popular rider in England.
He's seen here at Herne Hill in 1936, in third place behind
Dennis Horne (1) and Jack Sibbit (2). The identity of the
German in fourth place is unnown

As soon as the Games came to an end, Merkens turned professional; then won the Track Stayers National Championship in 1940 and the Sprint title a year later. The Nazis had originally kept German athletes out of the war, especially successful blond ones such as Merkens who were valuable as the posterboys of master race propaganda, but by 1942 they were facing a shortage of new recruits; Merkens was drafter into the Army and sent to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front. On the 20th of June 1944 - two years after his draft, one day before his 32nd birthday - he was struck by a piece of shrapnel from an exploding shell and died shortly afterwards.

Merkens' own political beliefs seem to be unknown and we can no more condemn him for being a Nazi than we can say for certain that he wasn't one - his apparent willingness to assist in the great Fascist propaganda exercise that the 1936 Games became suggests he may have had leanings that way, but at that time the German public had yet to discover just how evil the regime was. Secondly, many cyclists with no political leanings at all opposed the Nazis because they banned the six-day races that provided much of a track rider's income; and we should also ask why someone with such obvious symbolic value as Merkens was sent to the dreaded Eastern Front which saw some of the worst fighting and conditions of the war. Nevertheless, we can be glad that he was one of only a very few cyclists to have competed in a jersey emblazoned with a swastika.

Hein Verbruggen

Hein Verbruggen, looking - as he quite often
did - rather like a schoolboy who can't quite
believe he's got away with his latest mischief

Born in Helmond, Netherlands on this day in 1941, Hein Verbruggen's rise through the cycling world was a sign of the times - never an athlete himself, his career had been in business management before an interest in cycling led to the presidency of the Dutch Federation, then to the UCI.

In 2008, investigative journalists from the BBC uncovered documents apparently showing that under Verbruggen, the UCI had received payments equal to approximately US$5 million from Japanese race organisers, which the broadcaster claimed was a bribe or reward for backing the inclusion of keirin in the Olympics. Verbruggen continues to deny the claims, and the UCI ignored the BBC's requests for an explanation. In 2010, Floyd Landis - then undergoing a doping investigation - claimed that Verbruggen had  accepted a bribe worth US$100,000 from Lance Armstrong to submerge a failed anti-doping test said to have occurred in 2002, also saying that there would be no documentary evidence of the payment. However, the UCI - now under Verbruggen's successor Pat McQuaid - was able to produce documents showing that they had in fact received two payments, one to the tune of US$25,000 from Armstrong personally which was used to develop new anti-doping controls for junior races and one of US$100,000 paid by Armstrong's management company that had been used to purchase a Sysmex blood testing machine. That the UCI was so open in admitting that it had in fact received the payment Landis alleged, provided evidence proving it had and then also proved a second payment that had not been previously been mentioned was seen by some to be indication that nothing dishonest had taken place, even though McQuaid is on record as stating that in his opinion Verbruggen's decision to accept the payments was a mistake, but others wondered if it might have been a risky double-bluff. Verbruggen, the mysterious payments and the UCI in general are once again under the spotlight now that the lid has been lifted on the increasingly murky goings-on that took place during the era of Lance - with McQuaid's tenure drawing to a close and candidates for the presidency promising a new era of openness, we may finally be about to find out the full details of what really took place.


Simon Richardson, born in Bristol on this day in 1983, came second at the National Under-23 Cyclo Cross Championship in 2004 and won the 2005 National Cross-Country Mountain Bike Championship before switching to road racing. In 2009 he won Rás Tailteann and in 2012 he was fourth at the tough Lincoln International GP.

José Maria Yermo, who would become famous simply as Yermo, was born in Guecho, Spain on this day in 1903. He originally competed in athletics and set new National records for the long jump and triple jump, then turned to soccer and played for the national team five times. After that, he became a cyclist and represented Spain at the World Championships and the 1928 Olympics.

John Kenneth Middleton, born in Coventry on this day in 1906, competed in the same Olympics as Yermo and won a silver medal as part of the second-placed team in the Team Road Race. He died on the 24th of January, 1991.

Other cyclists born on this day: Per Christiansson (Sweden, 1961); Rolf Morgan Hansen (Norway, 1961); Yermo (Spain, 1903, died 1960); Valdemar Nielsen (Denmark, 1879, died 1954); Zbigniew Woźnicki (Poland, 1958, died 2008); Tadashi Ogasawara (Japan, 1955); Bruno Götze (Germany, 1882, died 1913); Ilmari Voudelin (Finland, 1896, died 1946); John Middleton (Great Britain, 1906, died 1991); Luigi Consonni (Italy, 1905, died 1992); Fernand Gandaho (Benin, 1968); Juan Sánchez (Spain, 1938).

Daily Cycling Facts 15.12.2013

John Murphy (image credit: Jejecam CC BY-SA 3.0)

John Murphy, US National Criterium Champion in 2009, was born in Jacksonville, Florida on this day in 1984. in 2011, when he rode for BMC, he achieved sixth place finishes in the Skoda Velothon Berlin and Omloop van het Houtland; in 2012 with Kenda-5 Hour Energy he won the Tour of America's Dairyland.

On this day in 1928, Canterbury Velodrome in Sydney opened for training. It was the only board track in Australia and, with a pitch of 40 degrees, the steepest track in the country. Financial problems caused the track to close down in 1937 and it has been long since demolished.

Charles Holland
Charles Holland, who died on this day in 1989 at the age of 81, was, alongside Bill Burl, the first British rider to ride in a Tour de France, competing in 1937.

The French organisers and fans often displayed hostility towards riders from other European nations, reserving an especial ire for the Belgians who had a habit of winning a little too often, but due to some peculiarity shared with the English they tend to appreciate an underdog and riders from outside Europe (such as Abdel-Kader Zaaf, an Algerian, and the African-American Marshall Taylor, who were both enormously popular in France) so Holland and Burl were welcomed with open arms - in an interview towards the end of his life, Holland still remembered how he had received a polite and warm response to his application to ride and that the organisers offered to pay all of their costs. But then, it almost didn't happen: in June, he caught his foot in a rabbit hole and fell, snapping a collar bone that had only recently healed following a crash at a track in Wembley earlier in the year. News of his accident reached France and was misunderstood, the two riders being somewhat to surprised to read in L'Auto just a fortnight before the race was to begin that neither of them would now be riding. They contacted Henri Desgrange for clarification and must have been very relieved the next day when he sent a telegram informing them that he was very happy to confirm their places.

Charles Holland

When they arrived in France, things immediately took a turn for the worse. Neither man had ever met Pierre Gachon, a French-Canadian who would be riding with them to form a British Empire team, before that day and neither man thought much of him when they did, finding him amateurish and, in Holland's opinion, unlikely to do well in "a second-class British event," never mind an undertaking such as the Tour. As a result, it might not have seemed particularly disastrous to them when he abandoned during the first day. On Stage 2, however, the team suffered a far greater disaster: Burl crashed and broke his own collarbone, forcing him to also abandon. Holland decided to continue alone.

He probably wouldn't have made it much further were it not for his considerable will and determination and, perhaps most of all, more French support. The French team (this was during the days of national teams rather than trade teams) understood that road racing had been banned by the British cycling federation and that Holland was inexperienced as a result, so they adopted him as a sort of mascot and let him stay with them in their hotels, fed him and even managed to provide him with mechanical assistance from their support van. It seems that the organisers no longer viewed him as favourably as they had, however - he revealed later that he had been left with the impression that they wanted him out of the race.

On Stage 14c (the last of three stages on that one day), he punctured and, when he'd fitted his replacement tubular tyre, discovered that the seal in his pump had perished in the hot sun and left him unable to pressurise the tyre more than halfway, so he had to keep his speed low. Soon, he had two more punctures. He remembered that a crowd of spectators - he believed them to be local peasant farmers - crowded around him and tried to cheer him on but none could help further than that. The local priest brought him a bottle of cold beer which he gladly accepted and drank, assuming that his Tour was over. Then, a miracle - somebody showed up with a  tyre for him, but when he fitted it he was in such a hurry to inflate it that he bent the piston rod of his pump, rendering it useless. The peasants managed to find another one and the tyre was eventually inflated, but turned out to be such a loose fit on the wheel that the bike could not be ridden. Once again the peasants brought salvation, finding another tyre which turned out to be a better fit and he could finally set off - but he knew that he was now so far behind that he stood little chance of doing well. He recalled flagging down a press vehicle and asking for a lift to the finish, but they tried to persuade him not to give up and grabbed his jersey to pull him along. "I did not wish to finish this great race unless it was by my own efforts," he later said and finally, having ridden more than 3,200km, he called it a day and abandoned the race. No other British riders would enter for almost two decades.

The Second World War brought the Tour and most European events to a temporary close and, by the time it was over, Holland was both too old to continue as a professional and prevented by the arcane rules of the day to return to amateur competition. He used the money he had won as a rider to set himself up as a newsagent, started playing golf (at which he became quite successful) and rarely, if ever, mentioned his previous career. His two daughters, Nina and Frances, had seen some of his trophies but had no idea who their father had once been until 1962 when they joined him at a function at the Royal Albert Hall, where he was recognised and invited up onto the stage to stand alongside Louison Bobet, Jacques Goddet and Brian Robinson, the man who had become the first British rider to win a Tour stage in 1958. In 2007, 18 years after he had died, they discovered a suitcase in the loft. Inside it were letters from fans, photographs and articles clipped from newspapers and magazines, medals and the jerseys from the Olympic Games in 1932 (when he won a bronze) and in 1936 (when he once saw Hitler pass underneath in an open-topped Mercedes as he rode over, musing in later life that had he only have had a brick he could have altered the course of history) and, most poignant of all, the jersey he wore in his Tour de France.


Jacques Goddet

The memorial to Jacques Goddet, high up on
Tourmalet

Jacques Goddet, the second director of the Tour de France after a prostate operation and illness left Henri Desgrange too sick to continue (he would die four years after Goddet took over), died on this day in 2000. Goddet is credited with modernising and developing the race from its quaint beginnings to the world's largest sporting event (one of his first changes was to permit the use of derailleur gears which became standard on all bikes two years later after the Tour was won for the first time on a bike fitted with one), but even a brief history of the man cannot be complete without a look at his wartime activities. While he permitted the L'Auto presses to be used to produce pro-Resistance materal and pamphlets, his anti-Nazi credentials come under serious doubt: firstly, he seems to have personally supported Philippe Pétain who would become Chief Marshall of Vichy France (and who was sentenced to death after the war for treason and collaborating with the Nazis, though the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment on account of age) and produced some 1,200 articles in support of him.

Of course, Goddet may have been worried his paper would be shut down had he have refused permission for this to happen; it has also been argued that a controlling interest in L'Auto's shares was owned by a consortium of German businessmen, in which case Goddet would have had very little say in the paper's editorial direction and might not in fact have personally supported Pétain at all. Far more damning meanwhile is the fact that before the war he had hired out his Vélodrome d'Hiver to be used for fascist meetings and then, when France was occupied, permitted it to be used by the Nazis for the temporary imprisonment of 13,000 French Jews who remained there in horrible conditions before being transferred to concentration camps - only 300 of them survived the war. It is possible that his hand was forced by those German businessmen, of course. It's also possible that he was not a Nazi sympathiser (after all, he permitted L'Auto's presses to be put to secret use printing Resistance pamphlets) but was an antisemite; the two do not necessarily go hand-in-hand (there have been many left-wing antisemites in history and it works both ways - Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jewish lives, but he was a supporter of other Nazi policies and joined the party of his own free will).  After the war, L'Auto (which, incidentally, had been established as an anti-Dreyfus paper after the Army captain - who was Jewish - had been falsely convicted of trumped-up charges fueled at least partly by the rampant antisemitism of the times) was forced to close for continuing to publish during the Occupation, as were many other newspapers and magazines. Goddet responded by creating L'Equipe, the paper that is still printed today and is one of the first points of call for Tour-related news, but due to his association with L'Auto could not be listed as being a part of it even though he had an office at the paper's headquarters until the final years of his life.


Jacques Marinelli
Jacques Marinelli was born on this day in 1925 in Blanc-Mesnil. In adulthood, he stood just 1.62m tall and as a child, he had been so thin that his mother tried to persuade him to take up the accordion rather than cycling. Luckily, like good teenagers everywhere, he took no heed of parental advice and got a bike.

Marinelli was once decribed as "...a pygmy. His body is no thicker than a propelling pencil, his legs no thicker than runner beans. And his head is like a fist." The general population would feel sorry for a man with such an appearance, but cyclists think, "Hmm - good form. Climber?"

He rode in six Tours de France but failed to finish four, his greatest moment coming during his second in 1949 when he mounted near-constant attacks during the first few days, wearing down the opposition so that by Stage 4 he was leading a peloton that included riders such as Coppi. Seeing him in the yellow jersey inspired Jacques Goddet to write "Our budgerigar has become a canary" in reference to his size, and while Marinelli would probably have far rather he'd become known as "The Canary," the nickname "Budgie" was the one that stayed with him. Competing against a field that included Coppi, Bartali and Magni would of course mean that Marinelli would be forced to give up the leadership sooner or later, as proved to be the case  when Magni took over in Stage 10, but he wore yellow for six days in a row - the longest any rider held it during that year's race. He also managed to come 3rd overall - an extremely impressive result, given the inevitability of the top places going to Coppi and Bartali.

In 1952, he completed another Tour; this time coming 31st overall. Realising that his best days were gone, he gracefully bowed out of the sport and went to run a bike shop in 1954, later taking on an electronics shop. Unlike many retired cyclists, he demonstrated a canny ability to make something of himself outside the world of racing, becoming a director of a chain of furniture stores and then setting up his own company named Marinelli Connexion with a fleet of delivery vehicles painted the same shade of yellow as the maillot jaune, his success being recognised when he received an award given to retired sportspeople who manage to make a good life for themselves in retirement. In 1989, he was elected mayor of Melun, a commune in Seine-et-Marne, serving two terms and ensuring his popularity by bringing the Tour to the town in 1991 and 1998. Now in his mid-80s, he still has his yellow jersey but says moths have left it looking a little worse for wear.

Other cyclists born on this day: Hayden Godfrey (New Zealand, 1978); Raul Hellberg (Finland, 1900) died 1985); Colin Sturgess (Great Britain, 1968); Silvia Rovira (Spain, 1967); Michele Orecchia (Italy, 1903, died 1981); Jock Stewart (Great Britain, 1883, died 1950); Guremu Demboba (Ethiopia, 1934); Stefaan Martens (Belgium, 1931); Helge Törn (Finland, 1928); Samuel Kibamba (Congo, 1949).