Daily Cycling Facts 28.06.2014

The Tour de France has begun on this day three times - 1914, 1969 and 1985. By 1914, eleven years since the first edition, the race had been increased to 15 stages and the total distance was 5,405km; making stages on average 360km in length. In fact, the longest was 470km - while this is as long as two long stages together in a modern Tour, riders had a rest day after ever stage. There were eight plain stages and seven mountain stages, time trials not being introduced until 1927. Today is also the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo: one month and once day later the First World War began, then six days after that Germany invaded Belgium and declared itself at war with France. There would not be another Tour for five years.

Le Tour, 1914

The assassination was the tipping point at which Europe descended into war rather than the cause, of course: her most powerful forces (Great Britain, Germany, Austro-Hungary and France) had been building up their armies for decades, peering nervously at one another and turning the entire continent into a powderkeg. The relationship between France and Germany had been especially frosty for a very long time due to the question of Alsace, the region that has changed hands between the two countries numerous times and where, until comparatively recently, the majority of the population spoke a German dialect (that row led in a roundabout way to the invention of the Tour, as it happens, but describing how with sufficient detail to make doing so worthwhile would take a lengthy article of its own); as a result the parcours went from Belfort, which sits between the Vosges and Jura and is just kilometres from Alsace to Longwy near the Luxembourgian border. That way, it stayed well clear of the German border for a fourth consecutive year.

Le Grand Départ, 1914

The number of starters had grown enormously since the first Tour, meaning that reporters and race officials were no longer able to recognise every rider; so for the first time each bike had a number displayed upon it. Don Kirkham and Ivan Munro became the first Australian riders to take part, racing for Phebus-Dunlop they would come 17th and 20th respectively.

Philippe Thys and his Peugeot-Wolber team mate Henri Pélissier were favourites, but also racing were six previous winners: Louis Trousselier (1905), Lucien Petit-Breton (1907, 1908), François Faber (1909), Octave Lapize (1910), Gustave Garrigou (1911) and Odile Defraye (1912). Three riders would win after the war - Firmin Lambot (1919, 1922), Léon Scieur (1921) and Lucien Buysse (and 1926). Thys also won in 1913 and in 1920 would become the first man to win three Tours; Pélissier won in 1923. Eleven Tour winners with fifteen victories between them in one edition remains a record, and one that's unlikely to be broken. When Thys won Stage 1, beating several of his main rivals in the sprint and the rest by at least 3'21", he looked set to dominate the race - though Jean Rossius, who second with the same time, came very close to taking the lead on Stage 2, which he won. However, on that occasion it was Thys who was second, also recording the same time, so they shared leadership. This situation remained until after Stage 5.

On the third stage, riders arrived at a checkpoint (in those days, they had to stop and sign their names to prove they hadn't taken shortcuts) an hour late and found that the official in charge had got bored and left a subordinate to wait for them. As a result, they were given incorrect instructions and ended up riding 30km in the wrong direction, completely unaware until organisers discovered the mistake and sent a car to find them so that they could be brought back and the race could be restarted. Emile Engel, who had won stages in the Independents class in 1909 and 1910, won his only stage as a professional, sponsored rider that day (later on he was in a collision with another rider named Maurice Brocco. The language he used when explaining to Brocco why it was his fault was so strong that he was disqualified); Thys, Rossius and several others finished joint fifth. Stage 4, the longest at 470km, went to the Swiss Oscar Egg with Pélissier second for the same time, Thys and Rossius were joint fourth. It was on Stage 5, when Egg won again, that Thys finally managed to get away from Rossius and gained upper the hand; he was third and Rossius was fifth.

Stage 6 brought the riders to the Pyrenees and the climbers took over. Lambot won the stage whilst Thys was second, 7'40" behind him. Rossius was eleventh, 1h02'09" behind the winner: overall victory slipped from his grasp. The Tunisian Ali Neffati was hit by an official race car on the Aubisque and couldn't finish the stage; fortunately for him the rules of the day allowed him to remain in the race after his likely time had been determined and he was given 42nd place and raced again. Jean Alavoine won the sixth stage of his career when he was first over the finish line for Stage 7, leading a group of five men that, in addition to himself, included Marcel Buysse (2nd), Thys (3rd), Pélissier (4th) and Rossius (5th). The mountains were left behind in Stage 8 for the 370km trip between Perpignan and Marseilles and the weather was so hot that the riders didn't want to race, riding at little more than walking pace. Henri Desgrange, trying to prevent a boring stage, stopped the race and rapidly organised an impromptu sprinting contest eventually won by Lapize (who got into an argument with Egg - Egg's language, like that of Engel earlier the same day, was found disagreeably coarse, but he escaped with a fine). Stage 9 took a mountainous 338km route from Marseilles to Nice: Rossius won with a 6'54" led over joint second Pélissier and Thys, but by now his overall disadvantage was so great that it no longer mattered. François Faber, who had become the first foreigner to win the Tour in 1909, was spotted taking a drink from a motorcycle and being pushed, for which he was awarded a 90' penalty - that didn't matter either, any chance he may have had at the start of the race were long gone now.

Pélissier's disadvantage was 44'30" at the start of Stage 10, but he was the only man in the race able to take on Thys and still thought he might be able to do so, fighting hard to win Stage 10 - he managed it and took back more than 10', starting Stage 11 34'27" behind. That day, the finished together so the gap remained untouched after Garrigou won; after Stage 12, which he won, he reduced it by another 2'37" whilst Thys was sixth - the only stage in which he didn't finish in the top five.

Philippe Thys

Faber won Stages 13 and 14. Pélissier was still 31'50" at the beginning of Stage 14, but then an opportunity fell into his lap: on the way to Dunkirk, one of Thys' wheels collapsed. The rules stated that a rider had to either repair all faults himself (strictly without outside help) or wait for a race official to declare it irreparable, in which case a replacement part could be provided from the team car. Thys realised that following correct procedure was likely to cost him too much time, so he took a risk and went off in search of a bike shop to buy a new wheel (it was a big risk, because officials were being especially firm that year: earlier in the race, one of the sponsored riders threw away a half-eaten sandwich. Seconds later it was pounced upon by an independent, thanking his lucky stars for some free food - and the professional rider got a 30' penalty for assisting a rider who wasn't a member of his team). Officials spotted him and he was penalised 30', which sent Pélissier haring off towards Dunkirk in an attempt to make up the remaining 1'50" and take control of the race. Precisely what happened next is a mystery: Pélissier said that there were spectators in the road at Dunkirk and they wouldn't let him through. This happened, rather conveniently, at a time when there were no race officials nor police officers around to back him up, which has led many to wonder if he was simply unable to counter the heroic - and successful - attempts Thys made to preserve his lead. Pélissier would win the final stage, but took back no more time.

When the riders returned to the real world after the race, Europe was a very different place. The war began just two days later, and a few weeks after that Desgrange used his L'Auto newspaper to publish the following letter to his champions:

"For 14 years, Le Auto has appeared every day.  It has never let you down. So listen my dear fellows, my dear Frenchmen.  There can be no question that a Frenchman succumbs to a German.  GO! Go without Pity!"

Faber, Petit-Breton and Lapize would not return in 1919 when the Tour next took place: Faber was shot in the back while trying to rescue a fallen comrade from no man's land between the trenches, Petit-Breton died when he was hit by a car while serving as an Army message carrier and Lapize, who became a fighter pilot, was shot down over Flirey and died a few days later. They were not the only ones, but most of those who could only dream of Tour success are now forgotten.


In 1969 there were 22 stages and the race covered 4,110km - seven more stages than 1914, but 1,295 fewer kilometres. After a few decades in which the Tour was open only to national teams, commercially sponsored trade teams returned in 1962. However, after a riders' protest against ani-doping tests in 1966 (which organisers believed had been provoked by sponsors, who wanted the problem covered up rather than brought out into the open where they might become associated with it) they decided to return to national teams (or at least, that was the official reason: in his book Le Tour (ISBN 0-340-54268-3), Geoffrey Nicholson argues that the decision may have been prompted by accusations that the race caused too many road closures and that by reintroducing national teams teams they were trying to drum up patriotic support). Trade teams countered by refusing to allow their best riders to compete, which is why Eddy Merckx didn't take part in the Tour of 1968. Organisers relented and the trade teams returned on 1969 (with Eddy Merckx, once political intervention - and the hundreds of protesting fans who surrounded the Belgian Federation's headquarters - had seen to it that his highly questionable doping conviction from the Giro d'Italia earlier in the year had been quashed), initially on the understanding that the race would revert to national teams every few years. 43 years later, this has not happened.

Eddy Merckx

Merckx had not yet won a Tour, but he'd already been World Champion and won a Giro, three editions of Milan-San Remo, a Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and La Flèche Wallonne; the spectators that saw him on the start line were already realising that here was a rider whose talent was far greater than any of those who had come before him. He had made no secret of the fact that he was there to win, yet one thing stood in his way - for a period of eighteen days between the positive test at the Giro and the start of the Tour, he'd been suspended from competition. That was enough time without race practice to affect his form, and he was not at his best. Rudi Altig of Salvarani knew that and he put it to good use by beating the Belgian by 7" in the prologue. Stage 1a ended at Merckx's hometown Sint-Pieters-Woluwe and he was determined to win, but now Marino Basso took advantage of his reduced form and sprinted past him in the last 50m (Sint-Pieters-Woluwe is also home to the Palais Stoclet, a private home that must be seen if you ever happen to be in the area as it's the finest example of 20th Century architecture anywhere in the world); Altig finished outside of the top ten but was able to retain the yellow jersey when the first 96 finishers were awarded the same time.

Stage 1b was a team time trial, in which Faema beat Bic by 46" and Salvarani by 48". Merckx therefore started the next day in yellow, but he didn't chase when a group led by his team mate Julien Stevens escaped because none of his rivals went with them. He finished 16" after Stevens, which meant Stevens took the maillot jaune. "It was a great moment for him to take over the yellow jersey. I was quite happy to give it up - temporarily; it's much too conspicious," he said later. Only a year ago, the moment the break got away, Merckx would have been after them and kept going until he'd hunted down every single member regardless of whether they presented him with any sort of challenge or even if they were team mates - he was maturing, and that made him even more dangerous. Stage 3 went to Eric Leman of the Flandria team, this time the first 116 riders over the line were given the same time and so Stevens remained in yellow for another day. He'd have lost it on Stage 4 when Rik van Looy escaped, making good use of the terrain (described as flat stage officially, it's actually rather hilly and precisely the sort of parcours a Flanders Classics specialist such as van Looy can use to his advantage) - not because he thought he had any chance of winning the Tour, but in an attempt to get himself noticed by the selection panel for the World Championships; he managed to build up a considerable gap that, if he'd kept it to the end, would have got him into yellow. Stevens wasn't ready to give it up just yet, however, and went after him  accompanied by seven other riders. Among them was René Pijnen, who rode with van Looy on the Willem II-Gazelle team (ah, those heady days when a bicycle manufacturer and cycling team were happy to associate themselves with a cigar firm), who set about trying to disrupt the chase. The others turned on him and using the various means and ways by which an unwanted rider can be ejected from a group (including, but not limited too, verbal warnings that the unfavoured one is going to be kicked into a ditch or wall just as soon as there's a reasonable chance that the race officials are looking the other way) got rid of him. Stevens finished 42" after van Looy and kept the yellow jersey, the rest of the group were 2" behind and Pijnens arrived 53" later (van Looy got his ticket to the Worlds and came 24th; so did Stevens, but he won a silver medal).

Julien Stevens

The following day, the Tour reached the mountains of Alsace and everything changed. Stevens had used up too much energy the day before; he couldn't stay with the break led by Désiré Letort, who had been in the Stage 4 chase group, and lost the jersey. Joaquim Agostinho won the stage by 18" against Altig; Letort was tenth he'd won enough time to put himself into the overall lead the only time he wore the maillot jaune in his nine years as a professional - but Merckx was now in second place overall with a disadvantage of only 9". It was no surprise the next day, when the race climbed its first serious mountains (including the Grand Ballon, Alsace's highest point, and the Ballon d'Alsace which, on the 11th of July 1905, had been the first mountain the Tour ever climbed) when he converted that disadvantage into a 2'03" advantage. He was 28th on Stage 7 but none of the riders that came before him were close enough to cause much concern and Altig remained 2'03" behind, so Merckx was confident going into the Stage 8a individual time trial. It didn't go quite as well as he might have liked with only 2" being added to his lead, but it was still early days and while he was 29th behind stage winner Michele Dancelli in 8b that afternoon, Altig recorded the same time so again nothing changed.

In Stage 9, Merckx and Roger Pingeon escaped together. Merckx had the strength to win mountain stages even though he was built like a sprinter, but Pingeon's lighter build left him less tired at the end of the stage and he was able to win the sprint. For Altig, a sprint specialist, the stage was an unmitigated disaster: he finished in 76th place, 7'59" behind Pingeon and Merckx, which cost him. Now trailing Merckx by 10'04" overall, his chance to win was lost.

Pingeon was now in second place overall, but trailed Merckx by 5'21" in the General Classification. Herman van Springel won with a 2'01" lead the next day but was much to far down the leadership to make any difference at all, and the 5'21" stayed intact. Then Merckx won Stage 11, adding another 22", then 1'28" when he was third behind Felice Gimondi on Stage 12. He maintained it at 7'11" for the next two stages (which went to Guido Reybrouck and Agostinho) and had no reason at all to win the time trial in Stage 15 - but he did, and finished with 8'03" advantage overall. Raymond Delisle beat him by 2'45" on Stage 16 after a small group away up Portet d'Aspet; since he too was no rival there was even less reason for Merckx to bother himself with winning Stage 17. But Merckx had a greater competitive drive than anyone else, as well as the legs to go with it - he went solo for 140km over Tourmalet and the Aubisque; and when the stage finished and he'd beaten Dancelli by 7'56", he was 16'18" ahead overall. Pingeon may have technically been in second place, but it was irrelevant now: Merckx had reduced the entire field to the level of also-rans. Barry Hoban won Stages 18 and 19, thus becoming the first British rider to win two consecutive days at the Tour (it would be 29 years before Cavendish repeated his feat, then did it again - twice - a year later).

Pierre Matignon's unexpected victory in Stage 20 is worthy of note. He was the lowliest of domestiques, in the race purely to act as a servant for Frimatic's leader Agostinho; and he started the stage in 86th place. Three hours behind Merckx, he'd given up all hope of a good result so long ago that he'd spent much of the intervening time locked in a private competition with Sonolor's André Wilhem to become lanterne rouge, because being last in the Tour gains a rider far more media attention and race contracts than finishing anywhere else outside the top ten does. Wilhelm decided he was unable to ride as slowly as Matignon and gave up the battle early in the stage, sprinting away from him.

Puy-de-Dôme

Up at the front of the peloton, the leaders (or those that were left; around 45 riders had abandoned by this point) were biding their time, waiting for the final decisive climb up the corkscrew road to the summit of the Puy-de-Dôme. When Wilhelm rode away, Matignon punctured and, being a domestique, was left to fend for himself because he wasn't important enough for the team to try to help him back into the race. They wouldn't expect to see him the next day, and at that point Matignon would have been certain he'd been on his way home later that evening. Ah, what the hell - he decided he may as well hurry up a bit, perhaps he'd at least get a chance to see the stage being won. Then he caught the peloton, so when it slowed to pass through the feeding station with 66km to go he grabbed a musette and attacked. The leaders watched him go and remained steadfastly unconcerned. Over the following 20km, he built up a 3' lead. The leaders still weren't especially concerned, but when he had 5"with 30km to go they decided it would be better to be safe than sorry - a chase group, made up of domestiques who'd pleased their masters sufficiently to be permitted a chance to get themselves on television, was sent off to catch him and return him to his rightful position. They couldn't catch him; he had a lead of seven and a half minutes when he got to within 20km of the finish line. Now Peugeot began to worry - at this rate, there was a chance that a complete unknown was going to rob Pingeon of his second place in the General Classification, so they sent a serious chase group of strong climbers off to do the job. They got within 2km of him by 10km to go, at which point Merckx decided he'd better sort things out. When he launched, Matignon's fun could last only seconds longer.

Or could it? Merckx got within sight of his quarry just as Matignon turned onto the final section towards the summit, a private track that rises for 5km at 12.5%, but with 500m to go he still hadn't caught up. Angry now, he stomped on the pedals and lurched forward after a man who was clearly suffering and weaving about all over the road in a desperate attempt to deal with the gradient. He didn't look back again. From then onwards, he saw nothing - there was nothing to see, the universe was him, his bike, a gradient and the pain. Then there was also the summit, and 1'25" there was Merckx. The most unimportant man in the Tour had won one of its most prestigious stages, and in doing so he had beaten the greatest cyclist that ever lived. He died in 1987, aged only 44.

Van Springel and Spruyt won Stages 21 and 22a, but it was far too late for anything to change now. Merckx increased his advantage to 17'54" in the Stage 22b time trial. He'd won six stages and worn the maillot jaune for seventeen days, as well as winning the General Classification, the King of the Mountains and the Points competition, all after turning up to the race after missing two valuable weeks of preparation. What was he going to do to his rivals next year?


In 1985, cycling had left the Era of Merckx behind and now another one, the Age of Hinault, was coming to an end as the Breton aimed for a fifth and final Tour; which would make him Merckx and Anquetil's equal. He had been beaten by Laurent Fignon the year before and the American Greg Lemond came close several times - now Fignon was away recovering from surgery on his knee, so the La Vie Claire team dealt with the Lemond problem by signing him up. A deal was reached - if Lemond looked the better bet for overall victory, Hinault would ride for him. If Hinault was better, Lemond would ride for him.

There were 22 stages and a prologue that year, covering 4,109km in total. For the first time, the multi-coloured Combination jersey was inflicted upon the eyes of spectators (it had been white when the classification was introduced in 1968, then the classification vanished in 1975 and the white jersey was given to the leader of the new Youth classification instead. In 1980 it reappeared as the TF1 GP but lasted only three years. After reintroduction in 1985, it vanished again in 1989 and has never returned), but otherwise there were no major changes to the way the race was run in 1984. Hinault won the prologue - he had to, really, because it was in Brittany and he was a Breton folk hero. He beat Lemond by 21", but a 6km time trial gives no indication of what will happen later in a three-week Grand Tour.

As is usually the case, the General Classification contenders didn't worry too much about the first week and Hinault didn't mind when Eric Vanderaerden took the yellow jersey in Stage 1 thanks to time bonuses. Rudy Matthijs won Stages 1 and 2, then La Vie Claire beat Kwantum by a minute in the Stage 3 team time trial, which sounds an even better result when one bears in mind that they did so on their standard road race bikes rather than using specialised time trial machines like the other teams did; which may be why a huge mob of fans climbed over the barriers to get to them. Hinault, who felt uncomfortable in crowds and had felled a well-built shipyard worker during an angry protest at Paris-Nice in 1982, flew into a panic and landed the sort of punch that would make a boxer proud on the chin of a press photographer. Police bundled him into a car and sped him away to his hotel before he set his sights on another target.

Eric Vanderaerden

Vanderaeden stayed in yellow, but Hinault was 32" behind him in second place and La Vie Claire riders occupied the next seven places in the overall top ten too. Kim Andersen (who now works with Frank and Andy Schleck), who was with the team, escaped in a breakaway during Stage 4; Kwantum's Gerrit Sollevend won the stage but Andersen ended up in the maillot jaune with an advantage of 19" over Vanderaerden and 1'01" over Hinault. Little changed during Stage 5 which was won by another Kwantum rider, Henri Manders; then, once initial winners Vanderaerden and Sean Kelly had been penalised for irregular sprinting, Lemond came second behind Francis Castaing (Peugeot) the next day, picking up sufficient time bonuses to place himself third overall with a 2" advantage over Hinault. Ludwig Wijnants won Stage 7, the gap between Lemond and Hinault stayed the same.

It all changed with the Stage 8 time trial. All great Tour riders can perform well on any type of parcours, like many of the very best Hinault was especially good in a time trial - and he won this one by 2'20", taking back the maillot jaune with a 2'30" advantage over second place Lemond. This time, police were ready and he was protected from the crowd - or the crowd was protected from him - by a police escort. Dietrich Thurau (Hitachi) was judged to have drafted behind another rider and penalised, though he made it quite clear he disagreed with the decision. He was still furious at the start of Stage 9 the next morning when he spotted the chief of the race judges, a man named Raymond Trine, and then it was his turn for trouble: he had his hands clenched around Trine's throat when the race started, at which point he dropped him and ran to his bike, jumped on and started pedaling. After the stage had finished, he was apparently quite surprised when informed that he'd been thrown out. That stage, and the next, were hilly, so some of the less well-known riders used them to gain time on rivals while the General Classification contenders conserved energy for the upcoming mountains where bigger gains could be found: Maarten Ducrot and Jørgen V. Pedersen shared them. On Stage 10, the British rider Paul Sherwen (who is now the "Voice of the Tour" for people who watch it on TV in Britain, Australia and the USA) crashed in the first kilometre of Stage 10; two team mates stayed with him to help get back to the peloton, but he told them to go on without him rather than risk their own chances. He tried desperately to catch up, riding solo for more than six hours over six tough climbs, but could not; when he reached the finish line (he'd met the aravan coming back the other way some kilometres down the road - everyone had assumed he'd abandoned and the finish line infrastructure was being packed away) he was more than an hour behind Pedersen and a full 23 minutes beyond the maximum time. He should therefore have been eliminated, but judges were so impressed by his efforts that just as had been the case following a similar incident in 1979, the rule was waived and he stayed to ride again the following day. In the General Classification, Lemond won back a few seconds and, when they arrived at the Alps for Stage 11, he was 2'16" behind Hinault.

Parra at the Vuelta, 1989

Luis Alberto Herrera and Fabio Enrique Parra climbed the Alps like a short flight of stairs because they were both Colombian and had grown up training on Andean roads that started at far higher altitudes than those at which Alpine roads stopped. Herrera rode for Cafe de Colombia, but his team were only interested in the King of the Mountains and so he had no reason not to agree when Hinault suggested they work together. La Vie Claire management forbade Lemond from following them - they'd decided now who the boss was. The Breton crossed the finish line 7" after the Colombian and his overall lead rose to four minutes - the next day he took things much easier and finished 16th, making sure he recorded the same time as 10th place Lemond.

Hinault was apparently still feeling the effects of the mountains in the Stage 13 time trial because Vanderaerden beat him by 1'07". This, however, was not enough to break into the overall Top Ten; meanwhile, Lemond finished 19th, 1'23" slower than Hinault. The Breton's advantage rose to 5'23". Stage 14 was hilly - no problem at all for Herrera, who attacked early to pick up some more King of the Mountains points. This time, Lemond was given the go-ahead to chase, accompanied by Robert Millar, Pedro Delgado and six others while Hinault stayed where he was. They couldn't catch him, but did well to finish 47" later. Hinault was with Panasonic's Phil Anderson around 1'30" down the road, but in the final kilometre they were in a crash with three others. Race rules state that, if a rider crashes within the final 3km, his or her overall time will not be reduced for the time that passes until he or she is back on the bike but that the rider must get to the finish line unaided. This was fortunate for Hinault because he was on the ground for some time while doctors attended to him but lost only 1'50" overall, though his face and the maillot jaune were covered in blood when he got back on his bike. What was less fortunate was that he'd broken his nose.

Lemond in yellow, 1990

Few people expected him to show up at the start of Stage 15, but Hinault was tougher than that - he had two black eyes, his nose was bandaged and he was having difficulty breathing, but he was there. Incredibly, he lost no time that day, then added 6" the next by first matching and then beating the American as Eduardo Chozas and Frédéric Vichot won the stages. Stage 17 nearly proved to be his undoing - featuring Tourmalet and Luz-Ardiden, two of the toughest climbs in the Pyrenees, it was simply too much for a man in his condition and he was unable to respond when Lemond escaped with Delgado and Stephen Roche. Further on, Delgado attacked. Roche went after him, which forced Lemond to respond because Roche was close enough to potentially become a General Classifiation rival. Lemond believed that he had a better chance of chasing down Delgado and could even win the stage, which in turn he might be able to upgrade into overall leadership over the next few stages; but when he asked team manager Paul Koechli for position he was refused. Instead, they ordered him to wait for Hinault and help him limit time losses, claiming that the Breton was only 40" back down the road. Koechli may have been mistaken, but Lemond maintains that it was a lie told because they were afraid he might pretend not to have received the order and go for glory if he knew the truth, which was than Hinault was actually some minutes away (later, the team claimed that Lemond had in fact been given permission and had made it all up rather than admit he wasn't strong enough). Lemond slowed, waited, then slowed some more. Various other riders sailed past him, but still Hinault hadn't caught up. Eventually, the finish line came within sight and he had no choice but to cross it at a gentle pace 2'52" behind Delgado, the man he still says he knew he could have beaten. Hinault 1'11" later, though with an overall lead still standing at 2'25". Lemond was, understandably, furious; especially when he realised he'd been lied to. Hinault was grateful that he'd proved himself faithful, and promised that next year he - Le Patron - would ride as Lemond's domestique.

Roche won Stage 18a and Régis Simon won Stage 18b before the race left the mountains behind, then Vanderaerden and Johan Lammerts won the two plain stages that followed. None of them posed any sort of challenge to Hinault who still led by 1'59" after Stage 20. Stage 21 was the last time trial and turned out to be Lemond's ever Tour stage win, but the 5" by which he beat Hinault made no difference now when there was only Stage 22 left. Matthijs finished the Tour as he had started by winning that last stage, while Hinault's final overall advantage was 1'42". He had equalled Anquetil and Merckx, but next year would be different: another era had ended and, while Lemond won three Tours and is one of the greats by any standards and although Miguel Indurain won five and Lance Armstrong won seven, it's been a long time since fans saw a rider in the same vein as Merckx, Hinault and their like. At the time of writing, it was also the last time a Frenchman won the Tour - they need another, soon.

Hinault, his face battered after Stage 14

The 1985 race had two major effects. The first came as a result that there had been too many time trials in the last few years, which gave some riders what was perceived to be an unfair advantage - it took a while to happen, but in the early 1990s race organisers found themselves in agreement and times trial kilometres started to decrease. Nowadays there'll usually be one or two individual time trials, one team time trial and sometimes a prologue, though any one of them can be omitted (interestingly, if time trial results hadn't counted towards General Classification results in 1985, the overall outcome would have been very different: Herrera would have won with an advantage of 16", Delgado would have been second and Lemond would have been third at +2'28. Hinault would have been eighth at +4'47". The second was that Hinault was the first rider to win using clipless pedals, having worked closely with LOOK during their development. It was largely as a result of his victory that they replaced the older type, with toe cages and straps, as rapidly as they did.


Cyclists born today: Vasil Kiryienka (USSR, 1981); Leslie Rawlins (Trinidad and Tobago, 1954); Pietro Guerra (Italy, 1943); Simone Cadamuro (Italy, 1976); Filiberto Mercado (Mexico, 1938); Rafael Montiel (Colombia, 1981); Lucien Victor (Belgium, 1931, died 1995); Ernst Fuhrimann (Switzerland, 1913); Julio Cesar Rodríguez (Colombia, 1966).

Daily Cycling Facts 12.04.2014

Crupelandt in 1912

Paris-Roubaix was held on this date in 1914, 1925, 1936, 1953, 1959, 1970, 1981, 1987, 1992, 1998 and 2009. Charles Crupelandt won for the second time in 1914, having previously done so two years earlier, and thus became the last man to win before the race was suspended during the First World War, and the start was moved to Suresnes where it would remain until 1928. Crupelandt  was injured in the war but survived and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, one of France's greatest honours and a medal reserved for those who have demonstrated heroic courage in combat.

However, at some point after being demobilised - there is a lack of clarity concerning the dates which vary from 1914 to 1917 to three years after the war ended - he was charged with a crime and sentenced to two years in prison. In response, the Union Vélocipédique handed him a lifetime ban, almost certainly after being pressured into doing so by Crupelandt's rivals. He was able to continue racing under the aegis of another organisation and won the unofficial National Championships in 1922 and 1923, but it spelled the end of what had been a very promising career - one that Henri Desgrange once predicted would lead to victory in the Tour de France - and which led to the eventual destruction of his life and health. When he died in 1955 - at Roubaix - both his legs had been amputated and he was blind. To mark the centenary of the race  in 1996, the commune of Roubaix laid a 300m stretch of cobbles along the centre of the Avenue Alfred Motte on the final approach to the velodrome that hosts the finish line. Set among the cobbles are inscribed stones commemorating all of the winners int he first 100 years of the race, which has led to the section's unofficial name Chemin des Géants, Road of Giants. The official name is Espace Charles Crupelandt.

1925 winner Félix Sellier had won Stage 13 at the 1921 Tour de France after Henri Desgrange, who was angry that riders had refused to attack the eventual overall winner Léon Scieur and even more angry that as a first class cyclist he'd been assisted earlier in the race by riders in the second class, decided he'd punish the peloton by splitting two groups up and allowing the second class to set out two hours ahead of the first class. The first class, not wanting to be beaten by a bunch of amateurs, rode hard and fast to catch them up. They did catch most of them, but a few - including Sellier - stayed out in front and beat them to the finish line (the next year, Sellier was back as fully-sponsored professional. That time, he won Stage 14 and 3rd place in the General Classification entirely in his own merit, this proving that he didn't need a head start in order to win).

For a while in 1936, nobody was quite sure who had won. The Belgian rider Romain Maes was very clearly seen to be first over the finish line (which was located for the second and final time at the Flandres horse racing track), but the judges then declared Georges Speicher - who, completely coincidentally, happened to be French - the winner. The crowd were not impressed, with many of the French fans seemingly every bit as angry at the injustice as the Belgians. Things began to look ugly but, suddenly and for no obvious  reason, they settled down and accepted the result. The Belgians may have been cheated out of a win, but they were apparently content in the knowledge that their men had taken 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th place.

Germain Derycke turned professional in 1950 and, just a year later, took 2nd place at Liège–Bastogne–Liège - a sure sign of a Classics specialist if ever there was one. He won Paris-Roubaix in 1953 and would have taken 1st place at the World Championships that year too had it not been for Fausto Coppi, then at the height of his powers and near unbeatable. One year later he won La Flèche Wallonne and the Dwars door Vlaanderen, then added Milan-San Remo in 1955, 1st place at Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 1957 and the Ronde van Vlaandered in 1958. The Giro di Lombardia was the only Monument that remained out of his grasp.

Noël Foré won Paris-Roubaix in 1959, a year his victory in the Tour of Belgium and two years after he won the Dwars door Vlaanderen. Four years later, he added Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne and the Ronde van Vlaanderen to  palmares that totalled 53 professional wins. 1970 brought the second of Eddy Merckx's three Paris-Roubaix victories and his winning margin over Roger De Vlaeminck - 5'21" - remains the largest in the history of the race. De Vlaeminck got his revenge, however: seven years later he topped Eddy's three wins when he became the first and to date the only man to have won the race four times.

Even The Badger suffered at Paris-Roubaix
(public domain image)

1981 was the year that Bernard Hinault won his one and only Paris-Roubaix after an epic battle with De Vlaeminck's team mate Hennie Kuiper, who had defeated Hinault's attempted attack 8km from the finish. Kuiper was first into the velodrome, but when Hinault attacked one last time on the track he simply couldn't keep up and the Breton became the first French winner for a quarter of a century. After the race, Hinault told reporters: "Paris-Roubaix est une connerie!" - "Paris-Roubaix is bullshit!" He had crashed seven times, including once when a little black dog named Gruson ran out from the crowd and got between the Breton's wheels. Hinault, despite winning, was in a characteristically foul mood and, after returning the next year as defending champion when he came ninth, refused to have anything to do with the race from that point onwards. Gruson, by all accounts, was fine. That year also saw the first use of two cobbled sections, the 0.7km Mérignies to Pont à Marcq and the initial 1.1km of Cysoing to Bourghelles, an extra 0.3km being added to the latter section in 2006.

Eric Vanderaerden won in 1987, but sadly his victory did him few favours as, when taken into consideration alongside his earlier success in the other Classics and the Grand Tours, it served to confirm the belief among Belgian fans that he was destined to be the successor to their hero Eddy Merckx. Unfortunately, though an enormously talented cyclist, Vanderaerden was only a man; Merckx had seemed something greater. Knowing that he could never live up to their expectations, his career went into a decline in the following years and although his subsequent results were impressive (three editions of the Three Days of De Panne, a Tour of Ireland, the Dwars van Vlaanderen and Stage 17 at the 1992 Vuelta a Espana are pretty good by anyone's standards) it' generally agreed that he could have achieved much more. That year saw the first appearance of the 2.2km cobbled section from Troisvilles to Inchy, often one of the hardest sections as the road is frequently covered in mud that runs off the surrounding fields, despite the planting of a hedge in an attempt to keep it back. After the race, 1984 and 1986 winner Sean Kelly told the press: "A Paris–Roubaix without rain is not a true Paris–Roubaix. Throw in a little snow as well, it's not serious."

1992 brought the first of Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle's two wins - almost ten years after he'd formed a part of a breakaway that included Hennie Kuiper and Francesco Moser and which led to Kuiper's 1983 victory. Templeuve - Le Moulin de Vertain Pt 1 "Templeuve L", a 0.2km cobbled section was used for the first time and a 1.1km section from Bourghelles to Wannehain was added to the Cysoing to Bourghelles section that had first been used when Hinault won eleven years earlier, thus creating the Cysoing to Bourghelles to Wannehain stretch that, since the addition of an extra 0.km of cobbled leading to Bourghelles in 2006, is now cobbled for the full 2.5km length. Bourghelles to Wannehain had been discovered previously, but was not used in the race due to poor condition - however, it had been repaired using serviceable pavé taken from the old Péronne-en-Mélantois section that had featured in the race during the 1950s before falling into a state of irretrievable disrepair.

Franco Ballerini
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0)

Franco Ballerini won for the second time in 1998. The race was marked by a horrific crash on the Trouée d'Arenberg in which Johan Museeuw shattered his knee. The injury later became gangrenous and he very nearly had to have his leg amputated, yet in time he made a full recovery and won the race two years later. Before retiring in 2004, Museeuw acted as mentor to Tom Boonen, who would go on to win Paris-Roubaix three times - his third win being on this date in 2009. That year, the 1.2km Auchy-lez-Orchies to Bersee cobbles were returned to use for the first time since 2006 following repair work. Chris Boardman, commentating for the Eurosport television channel, was asked live on air why he'd always refused to take part in Paris-Roubaix. "It's a circus," he replied, "and I don't want to be one of the clowns."

La Flèche Wallonne fell on this day in 1984, 1989, 1995 and 2000. 1984 was the 48th edition and it began at Charleroi and ended at Huy, as all editions have done 1998, covering 246km in between. The winner, Kim Andersen, was the first Dane to achieve victory in this event. 1989 was the 53rd edition, covering a 253km between Spa and Huy - the longest since 1947. It was won for a second time by Claude Criquielion, who had also won four years earlier. 1995 brought the 59th edition, which covered 205.5km between Spa and Huy - there has not been a longer parcours since. Laurent Jalabert won the first of his two victories, in the same year that he would win Paris-Nice and Milan-San Remo. The 64th edition, which took place in 2000, started in Charleroi and ended in Huy and covered 198km. The winner was the Italian Francesco Casagrande.

2000 also brought the third edition of La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, won that year by the Canadian rider Genevieve Jeanson. Jeanson's victory is probably undeserved - on the 25th of July 2005, she failed a test for EPO. Initially, she denied having ever doped and retired early in 2006 before being served a back-dated two-year suspension from the date of her failed test. In 2007, she admitted to a journalist that she had used the notorious blood-boosting drug "more or less continuously" since she was 16. As she was 19 when he won La Flèche, it seems likely that she did so with illegal chemical assistance.

Arsène Alancourt

English mountain biker Liam Killeen was born in Malvern on this day in 1982. His first major success was the Under-23 National Championship of 2002, which he repeated in 2004 before adding the Elite Championship in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. He won the Cross Country race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and continues to win races at home, in Europe and in North America. In 2004, Killeen was Under-23 National Cyclo Cross Champion.

Arsène Alancourt, born in Clichy on this day in 1904, was a French professional cyclist who rode in the Tour de France in 1922, 1923 and 1924. He won Stage 13 in 1924, with help from a dog that ran under the wheels of Ottavia Bottechia who led the General Classification throughout the entirety of the race and caused him to crash, and finished in 7th place overall. He'd done better the previous year when he was 5th.

Christophe Moreau
Christophe Moreau, who was born in Vervins on this day in 1971, was a rider who spent much of his career with a very great weight upon his shoulders - he was France's greatest hope for a Tour de France win, which they had not had since Bernard Hinault's final victory in 1985.

Christophe Moreau
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Beginning his career as a time trial specialist with Festina, Moreau was 2nd at the 1995 Tour de l'Avenir and won the prologue the following year before beginning to add stage wins in races such as the Route du Sud and 1st place overall at the 1999 Tour Poitou-Charentes. He rode his first Tour de France in 1995 and didn't finish, then managed a couple of finishes just outside the top ten in 1996 but was 75th overall. In 1997, he was 6th in Stage 20 and 66th overall, then 5th in the 1998 prologue but again didn't finish. In 1999 he was 4th in the prologue and 10th in Stage 2, this time finishing in 27th place overall,

In 2000, he managed 4th place overall and fans began to wonder if he was the man who would bring them the glory they hadn't felt for fifteen years. He won the prologue a year later and was in the top ten for Stages 10 and 11 but abandoned soon afterwards, then abandoned again in 2002 after disappointing results. 2003 saw a return to form and he was 8th overall, then 12th in 2004 and 11th in 2005. In 2006, he finished the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2nd place and won the Mountains Classification - a sure sign that a rider has the potential to win the Tour, as was confirmed that same year with 7th place.

Unfortunately, he was now 35 - beyond the age at which most cycling careers begin to trail off. He rode again in 2007 and was 37th, then again in 2008 and once more abandoned, again in 2009 and was 29th (in fact, a respectable result all things considered) and for a final time in 2010. That last year, when he was 39 years old, he was 22nd overall and 2nd in the King of the Mountains; leaving no doubt that, a decade before, he could  have won a Tour had it not have been for one unfortunate factor: his date of birth. He'd simply had the misfortune to have been born at a time that meant his best years coincided with those of Lance Armstrong. If they had come five years earlier or five years later, when Armstrong wasn't around and the other riders were not driving themselves beyond the limits in order to keep up, the French would in all likelihood have had the winner they've wanted for so long.

Moreau tested positive for anabolic steroids at the Critérium International. However, team manager Bruno Roussel supported him, telling the team's lawyers that the rider had been tricked into taking the drugs by a member of the support staff (a not-unknown occurrence, support staff having sometimes been paid by rival teams to "nobble" riders over the years). The court found in favor, and Moreau was not suspended - which would almost certainly have been the end of that story had in not have been 1998, the year that Festina soigneur was caught as he tried to cross the French-Belgian border in a car filled with enough drugs to open a small pharmacy. Investigators discovered a massive, organised doping regime in the team and began looking again at the history of Festina riders during the Tour; which led Moreau, Armin Meier and Laurent Brouchard to confess they had used EPO and, in response, they were disqualified from continuing the race. He received a six-month suspension.

Other cyclists born on this day: Mauricio Mata (Mexico, 1939); Eric Vermeulen (France, 1954); Peter Jonsson (Sweden, 1958); Pavel Soukup (Czechoslovakia, 1965); Henning L. Larsen (Denmark, 1955); András Mészáros (Hungary, 1941); Jim Rossi (USA, 1936, died 2005); Michael Lynch (Australia, 1963).

Daily Cycling Facts 14.11.2013

Bernard Hinault
Today is a hallowed day in the history of cycling - it's Bernard Hinault's birthday. Born in the Breton town of Yffiniac, Hinault went on to win five Tours de France, three Giri d'Italia and two Vueltas a Espana - making him the only man to have won all three Grand Tours more than once and a contender, as far as many fans during the time that he was active and today are concerned, for the unofficial title of Greatest Cyclist Ever.

Hinault was born on his grandparents' farm, but his parents encouraged him to go into banking rather than farming or finding work on the railways like his father, but when he was 13 and he began performing well in cross country running it became obvious that their son was destined for life as a sportsman instead. Then on the 2nd of May in 1971, aged 16 and riding a bike borrowed from his older brother Gilbert, Hinault entered his first cycling race and literally crushed his more experienced opponents - most couldn't even stay with him during the event, then he obliterated those few that had managed to hang on when he launched his winning sprint with 700m to go to the finish line. Within a year, he was Junior National Champion; though French cyclists were playing second fiddle to the Belgians and their mighty champion Merckx, it looked as though his successor had been found.

Late in 1974, Hinault turned professional with Sonolor-Gitane after winning the Amateur National Pursuit Championship and coming second in the Under-23 Route de France earlier in the season. The team became Gitane-Campagnolo for 1975 and Hinault won the Circuit Cycliste Sarthe and the Elite National Pursuit Championship, then in 1976 he won 18 times - including the prestigious Tours du Limousin and de l'Aude. The year after that he won Gent-Wevelgem, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Limousin for a second time, the Critérium du Dauphiné and, proving himself as great a time trial rider as he was a stage racer, the GP des Nations.

Most riders do not complete their first Grand Tour, usually finding the level of competition, the distances and the difficulty of the parcours to be far greater than they'd expected. Hinault's first was the Vuelta a Espana in 1978 - he won the General Classification and was third in both the Points and King of the Mountains competitions. Afterwards, he won the Criterium International and the National Championships, then rode his first Tour de France and won that too, coming third on Points and second in the King of the Mountains. In 1979 he won it again, this time also winning the Points competition and again taking second in the King of the Mountains - by the final stage that year, his advantage was sufficiently large that only a crash could have prevented him winning and he could have coasted through the parcours, but that was not Hinault's way - instead, he got into a tooth-and-nails battle with Joop Zoetemelk to be first over the line and win on the Champs-Elysées. He beat the Dutchman, who days later would be disqualified from second place when it was revealed he'd failed an anti-doping test.

Hinault won Liège-Bastogne-Liège again in 1980, but the victory cost him dearly: refusing to give up in treacherous wintry conditions that forced other riders to abandon in droves, he became so cold that it took several weeks for him to regain full use of his arms. That race was probably also the beginning of the tendinitis that would plague him for the rest of the season: some fifty other riders competing at Hinault's level were also diagnosed with tendinitis at around the same time, an apparent statistical anomaly that has never been convincingly explained and which has led some researchers and fans to suspect the cause was an unknown doping agent; since no doping agent known to have been in use at that time has such an effect, it seems more likely that the high incidence of the disease was due to a combination of the cold weather at early season races and chance rather than skulduggery. Nevertheless, Zoetemelk was not affected and it allowed him to gain the upper hand at the Tour that year. Most historians are agreed that, had things have been otherwise, Hinault would have been the first man to win six Tours rather than the third to win five and, when he returned to the race in 1981, he stamped his authority on it by winning with an advantage of more than fourteen and a half minutes over second place Lucien van Impe and almost eighteen and a half over Zoetemelk.

In 1982, Hinault won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour, then the Vuelta in 1983. He was second at the Tour the following year and rumours suggesting that - as had been the case with Merckx - his best years had come to a relatively early end began circulating; but whereas Merckx failed to recognise the fact and kept trying long after the highpoint he said would mark the end of his career, Hinault still had another Tour in his legs - and what a Tour it was. American prodigy Greg Lemond had been invited to join Hinault's La Vie Claire that season, either because Hinault saw him as a great rider of the future and altruistically wished to give him a chance to learn and develop (say Hinault's fans) or to prevent him becoming a rival in what was likely to be Hinault's final realistic attempt to win the Tour (say those who believe Hinault incapable of altruism, many of whom are also fans). Hinault at his peak was all but unbeatable on a flat mass-start race or time trial and, once, had been able to rely on his sheer brute strength to muscle up the climbs; however, he was now 31 and sufficiently wise to realise that younger riders were going to beat him in the mountains - especially the Colombians, who were new to European racing but grew up training on mountains with foothills higher than Galibier, so he made an unwritten, unofficial agreement with them: he would sit back and let them win as much as they wanted without challenge on the mountain stages and in return they would not challenge him for the General Classification. He also made an agreement with Lemond: for the first part of the Tour they would see who stood the better chance of winning and the lesser man would then ride in support. It soon became apparent that Hinault, still able to do as he pleased on the flat stages and still good enough on the climbs to carry him through, was the better rider. Lemond graciously accepted, Hinault set about winning his fifth Tour. Then, in the last kilometre of Stage 14, Hinault and five others crashed. His nose was broken but, after being checked over by a doctor on the roadside for several minutes, he was able to continue. The photographs of him covered in blood taken immediately afterwards and with two black eyes over the following days have become some of the most iconic images in cycling, but the crash left Hinault in a precarious position: while his nose gave him breathing difficulties, he could still win so long as Lemond helped. The trouble was that if Lemond refused and pulled out all the stops, he was now in with a chance too. The American showed himself to be an honourable man by agreeing to support his leader and, thus, Hinault became the third man in history to win the Tour five times; in return, he agreed that in 1986 he would ride in support of Lemond.

Of course, being the man that he was, Hinault wasn't going to ride his final Tour as a humble domestique - to do such a thing was simply not in his nature and there are still those who believe that  he planned to go back on the agreement and win for himself until it became obvious to him that Lemond was going to beat him. Hinault, however, says that he did not and that his plan all along was to grind down the opposition; either way, his chances ended with a spectacular, suicidal attack on the Alpe d'Huez. The two men rode to the finish line hand-in-hand before Lemond let The Boss take the stage, knowing that the yellow jersey he'd won the day before would remain his and that he was going to be the first American to win the Tour. Shortly afterwards, Hinault announced his retirement from road racing; no other Frenchman has won the Tour since.

Hinault today

Hinault's nickname among fans - Le Blaireau ("The Badger") - is usually attributed to his aggression and fearlessness, though he argues that it was a common name used among local cyclists in his youth. The aggression that famously drove him to punch a striking docker (who, with a large number of others, had disrupted the race as a protest) at the 1984 Tour de France is still evident - when a protestor climbed onto the stage after Stage 3 in the 2008 Tour, Hinault had tackled him and thrown him off before security had even had time to react. In the peloton he was known as Le Patron, "The Boss," because he ruled cycling both on and off the bike; while many riders fade away and vanish from cycling once they reach retirement, Hinault has increased his control - as a special advisor to the Tour's organising committee the Société du Tour de France, he has a great deal of say in the route that the race takes each year, deciding whether it will favour climbers, sprinters, time trial specialists or rouleurs. He is also vehemently opposed to doping and supports lifetime bans for those proven guilty.

November the 14th also marks the anniversary of Hinault's final race, a cyclo cross event followed by a party in his honour. At the party, he hung his bike up on a specially-provided hook to symbolise that his career was over. He claims that he did not ride a bike again for many years afterwards.


Mara Abbott
Born in Boulder, Colorado on this day in 1985, Mara Abbott - in common with a probable majority of female professional riders - didn't intend to make a career from cycling. She was, in her teenage years, a swimmer, and she took part in competitions while she was at college. Cycling was just a handy addition to her springtime training regime, when she she needed to get back to race fitness after winter.

It didn't take long before someone noticed how fast she was on the bike and suggested she join the college's cycling team - which, with her onboard, won the team time trial and the omnium. Then, in 2005, she won the bronze medal in the Under-23 National Championship (which makes you wonder how many world-class cyclists - and other athletes - are never discovered here in Britain and other countries where colleges don't have such well-financed sports programs, doesn't it?) In addition she won the infamously difficult Mount Evans Hill Climb with its finish line at 4,308m - 1,506m (roughly equal to the total height of the Col du Grand Columbier) higher than the Cime de la Bonette, the highest point ever reached in the Tour de France - that year, and again in 2006 when she would also take fifth place in the Elite National Road Race Championships.

In 2007, Abbott turned professional with Webcor and got her season off to a promising start with victory on Stage 1 and second place overall (behind Amber Neben) at Redlands, then won Stage 2 and overall at the Tour of the Gila. She was second at the Nature Valley GP, beat Kristen Armstrong and Amber Neben to become National Road Race Champion and came second at the Tour de Toona to round off the year. Having graduated and signed a contract with Columbia, she won no General Classifications in 2008 but took stages at San Dimas, Redlands, Mount Hood, the Krasna Lipa Tour and the Giro della Toscana - the latter two proving to be the first of many successes still to come in Europe, from the next season onward: in 2009, Stage 3 and second place overall (behind Claudia Hausler) at the Giro Donne; Stage 4 and second place overall and in the Mountains classification at the Tour de l'Aude, Stages 8 and 9 and overall at the Giro Donne in 2010 (and, back at home, another National Road Race Championship, then a stage and overall at Cascade).

Suddenly, without obvious cause, Abbott began to perform at first less well (though not badly - tenth at the Giro Donne could never be described as bad) and then worse. In 2012, she announced that she would be retiring, and gave two reasons. One was her concern at the environmental impact of professional cycling (cycling is seen as a "green" activity, and in almost all cases it is. Professional cycling, which requires a rider such as Abbott to travel around the world by airliner in order to attend races where large numbers of vehicles - as many as four thousand, not including five or six helicopters, at a race like the Tour de France, though most races including women's races will have many times fewer - follow the peloton, is rather questionable). The other was that she had developed an eating disorder.

She thought she was done with cycling and got a job working in a coffee shop to supplement the income she earned teaching yoga. Cycling, however, was not done with her: "I thought I could quit cycling and solve all my problems. At the end of a year off, I still had all the same hang-ups, the same problems, the same angsty things that we all have. They were all still there, and I missed cycling," she said, soon after she'd approached Exergy-Twenty16 and been offered a new contract. Still recovering from her illness, she and the team coaches carefully planned a program designed to gradually return her to peal fitness, using minor races - certainly not anything on the scale of the Giro Rosa, as the Giro Donne was now known.


By May, she'd come on leaps and bounds and had begun to think she couldn't bear not to with her team at the Giro so, following consultation with her doctors, she was given a place on the squad - and, in what since Lance Armstrong was exposed as a cheat might be the most incredible comeback story in cycling, she won Stages 5, 6 and the General Classification

*Total vertical gain (ie, actual height ascended) on the Mount Evans parcours is 2,008m; Bonette, from Jausiers, is 1,589m. Mount Evans is made even more difficult because, at altitudes greater than 3,500m, severe altitude sickness is a real issue. Symptoms include pulmonary oedema, cerebral oedema, retinal haemorrhage and loss of consciousness.


Vincenzo Nibali
Girls, as we have seen with Mara Abbott, are rarely encouraged to consider professional cycling as a potential career path - this is partly because of out-dated attitudes in society and partly because of the sad truth that, as things are now, very few of them will ever make a decent salary from their sport (even the very best - even a rider like Marianne Vos, who is widely considered the best cyclist of either sex of her generation - will earn much, much less than any half-decent male Elite rider). For boys, this is not so often the case - especially if they were born and raised in a region where cycling is popular such as Brittany, where Bernard Hinault was born on this day in 1954, or Italy (Messina, Sicily, to be precise) where Vincenzo Nibali was born on the same day three decades later.

Aged 16, Nibali was given an opportunity to move to the other end of the country in order to be able to race in cycling-mad Tuscany; by 2002 he was Junior National Champion and had won the junior Giro della Lunigiana, which got him a place on the G.S. Mastromarco Chianti Sensi team for 2003 and 2004. More success followed: four races in 2003, then five - and bronze at the Under-23 World Championship - in 2004, and he signed his first professional contract to race for Fassa Bortolo at the end of the season. As tends to be the case, the culture shock experienced by most riders when they move into the top level of the sport hit Nibali hard and he didn't win that season (though he was with the team when they won the time trial at the Tour de Suisse, and managed second place on Stage 9 at the same race), but he was able to negotiate a contract with Liquigas for 2006 and won two races with them, including the prestigious GP Ouest France.

Nibali would stay with Liquigas for seven seasons. In 2007, having won the Giro di Toscana, he raced his first Grand Tour, the Giro d'Italia, and performed surprisingly well - he was seventh on Stage 20 and finished in 19th place overall. Later in the same year, he won two stages at the Tour of Slovenia and came second at the National Championships. In 2008 he won the Giro del Trentino and came 11th overall at the Giro d'Italia, then entered the Tour de France for the first time, finishing in 20th place overall and taking third in the young riders' classification. He was third young rider again the following year, but upped his General Classification result to seventh place overall.

Now there was no doubting: Nibali was a potential Grand Tour winner, yet he was not chosen for the Giro d'Italia that year until days before the race when irregularities regarding Franco Pellizotti's biological passport came to light. He came closer to winning than ever before with third place in the General Classification and the Points at the Giro, also winning Stage 14 - his first ever Grand Tour stage win. Though attempting to win the Tour de France in the same season as the Giro is, for most riders, too much, Nibali's victory at the Tour of Slovenia proved the earlier Grand Tour hadn't taken too much out of him; having shown that he had the necessary form, he was allocated a place with the Vuelta a Espana squad - and having finished four stages in second place (and, perhaps, receiving a little boost with the withdrawal of Igor Anton, who was injured in a crash two-thirds of the way through the event), he won overall and was third in the Points competition.

In 2011, Nibali was third overall and in the Points at the Giro, after spending much of the race fighting it out with Michele Scarponi, who was second overall, when it became apparent that neither of them was going to be able to catch Alberto Contador - however, Contador would later be stripped of the win following his controversial doping ban; as a result, Scarponi is listed as winner and Nibali as second place. At the Vuelta, he was settled for seventh - though he achieved many impressive placings, he went without victory in major races that year. It wouldn't take long in 2012 to demonstrate that he was back, however: an early season stage victory and second place overall at the Tour of Oman, then another stage win and victory in the General Classification and on Points at Tirreno-Adriatico did the trick, as did a good showing at the Classics (3rd at Milan-San Remo, 8th at the Flèche Wallonne and 2nd at Liège-Bastogne-Liège) and third place overall at the Tour de France.

Nibali leading the 2013 Giro

Nibali left Liquigas at the end of 2012, moving on to Astana. With them, he won Tirreno-Adriatico and the Giro del Trentino again before returning to the one race that all Italian cyclists want to win even more than the Tour de France - the Giro d'Italia. He performed consistently well and won Stage 18, taking overall victory as well as second on Points and in the King of the Mountains - evidence of a highly unusual ability to sprint and climb, which might well earn him a Tour one day too. Later that year, he would manage second place overall and fifth in the King of the Mountains at the Vuelta (and broke a record, becoming the Italian rider to have led the Vuelta most), then came fourth at the World Championships. He will remain at Astana for 2014.



It's also Petra Rossner's birthday. The German professional was World Road champion in 2002, an Olympic gold medallist and won the Liberty Classic on seven occasions. She lives in the city of her birth, Leipzig.

Guy Ignolin was also born on this day, in Vernou-sur-Brenne in 1936. He won a series of races from the end of the 1950s through to the end of the 1960s as well as three stages of the Tour de France and two at the Vuelta a Espana.

Today marks the anniversary of the birth in 1927 of Renato Perona, the Italian professional who won a gold medal for the tandem event (with Ferdinando Terruzzi) at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. He died on the 9th of April 1984, aged 56. Terruzzi, born three years earlier, is still with us.

Other cyclists born on this day: Andi Bajc (23), Zachary Bell (29), Lien Beyen (26), David Boifava (65), Timothy Duggan (29), Ben Gastauer (24), Yoshinori Irie (41), Alo Jakin (25), Gianluca Leonardi (22), Adam McGrath (24), Guillaume Nelessen (28), Madeleine Olsson (29), Adam Pierzga (27), Joey Van Rhee (19), Amelie Rivat (22), Jose Alberto Benitez Roman (30), Matthias Russ (28), Pavel Shumanov (43), Marina Theodorou (23), Hege Linn Eie Vatland (32), Patricia Vazquez (21), Nikita Zharovem (19)

Daily Cycling Facts 28.06.2013

The Tour de France has begun on this day three times - 1914, 1969 and 1985. By 1914, eleven years since the first edition, the race had been increased to 15 stages and the total distance was 5,405km; making stages on average 360km in length. In fact, the longest was 470km - while this is as long as two long stages together in a modern Tour, riders had a rest day after ever stage. There were eight plain stages and seven mountain stages, time trials not being introduced until 1927. Today is also the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo: one month and once day later the First World War began, then six days after that Germany invaded Belgium and declared itself at war with France. There would not be another Tour for five years.

Le Tour, 1914

The assassination was the tipping point at which Europe descended into war rather than the cause, of course: her most powerful forces (Great Britain, Germany, Austro-Hungary and France) had been building up their armies for decades, peering nervously at one another and turning the entire continent into a powderkeg. The relationship between France and Germany had been especially frosty for a very long time due to the question of Alsace, the region that has changed hands between the two countries numerous times and where, until comparatively recently, the majority of the population spoke a German dialect (that row led in a roundabout way to the invention of the Tour, as it happens, but describing how with sufficient detail to make doing so worthwhile would take a lengthy article of its own); as a result the parcours went from Belfort, which sits between the Vosges and Jura and is just kilometres from Alsace to Longwy near the Luxembourgian border. That way, it stayed well clear of the German border for a fourth consecutive year.

Le Grand Départ, 1914

The number of starters had grown enormously since the first Tour, meaning that reporters and race officials were no longer able to recognise every rider; so for the first time each bike had a number displayed upon it. Don Kirkham and Ivan Munro became the first Australian riders to take part, racing for Phebus-Dunlop they would come 17th and 20th respectively.

Philippe Thys and his Peugeot-Wolber team mate Henri Pélissier were favourites, but also racing were six previous winners: Louis Trousselier (1905), Lucien Petit-Breton (1907, 1908), François Faber (1909), Octave Lapize (1910), Gustave Garrigou (1911) and Odile Defraye (1912). Three riders would win after the war - Firmin Lambot (1919, 1922), Léon Scieur (1921) and Lucien Buysse (and 1926). Thys also won in 1913 and in 1920 would become the first man to win three Tours; Pélissier won in 1923. Eleven Tour winners with fifteen victories between them in one edition remains a record, and one that's unlikely to be broken. When Thys won Stage 1, beating several of his main rivals in the sprint and the rest by at least 3'21", he looked set to dominate the race - though Jean Rossius, who second with the same time, came very close to taking the lead on Stage 2, which he won. However, on that occasion it was Thys who was second, also recording the same time, so they shared leadership. This situation remained until after Stage 5.

On the third stage, riders arrived at a checkpoint (in those days, they had to stop and sign their names to prove they hadn't taken shortcuts) an hour late and found that the official in charge had got bored and left a subordinate to wait for them. As a result, they were given incorrect instructions and ended up riding 30km in the wrong direction, completely unaware until organisers discovered the mistake and sent a car to find them so that they could be brought back and the race could be restarted. Emile Engel, who had won stages in the Independents class in 1909 and 1910, won his only stage as a professional, sponsored rider that day (later on he was in a collision with another rider named Maurice Brocco. The language he used when explaining to Brocco why it was his fault was so strong that he was disqualified); Thys, Rossius and several others finished joint fifth. Stage 4, the longest at 470km, went to the Swiss Oscar Egg with Pélissier second for the same time, Thys and Rossius were joint fourth. It was on Stage 5, when Egg won again, that Thys finally managed to get away from Rossius and gained upper the hand; he was third and Rossius was fifth.

Stage 6 brought the riders to the Pyrenees and the climbers took over. Lambot won the stage whilst Thys was second, 7'40" behind him. Rossius was eleventh, 1h02'09" behind the winner: overall victory slipped from his grasp. The Tunisian Ali Neffati was hit by an official race car on the Aubisque and couldn't finish the stage; fortunately for him the rules of the day allowed him to remain in the race after his likely time had been determined and he was given 42nd place and raced again. Jean Alavoine won the sixth stage of his career when he was first over the finish line for Stage 7, leading a group of five men that, in addition to himself, included Marcel Buysse (2nd), Thys (3rd), Pélissier (4th) and Rossius (5th). The mountains were left behind in Stage 8 for the 370km trip between Perpignan and Marseilles and the weather was so hot that the riders didn't want to race, riding at little more than walking pace. Henri Desgrange, trying to prevent a boring stage, stopped the race and rapidly organised an impromptu sprinting contest eventually won by Lapize (who got into an argument with Egg - Egg's language, like that of Engel earlier the same day, was found disagreeably coarse, but he escaped with a fine). Stage 9 took a mountainous 338km route from Marseilles to Nice: Rossius won with a 6'54" led over joint second Pélissier and Thys, but by now his overall disadvantage was so great that it no longer mattered. François Faber, who had become the first foreigner to win the Tour in 1909, was spotted taking a drink from a motorcycle and being pushed, for which he was awarded a 90' penalty - that didn't matter either, any chance he may have had at the start of the race were long gone now.

Pélissier's disadvantage was 44'30" at the start of Stage 10, but he was the only man in the race able to take on Thys and still thought he might be able to do so, fighting hard to win Stage 10 - he managed it and took back more than 10', starting Stage 11 34'27" behind. That day, the finished together so the gap remained untouched after Garrigou won; after Stage 12, which he won, he reduced it by another 2'37" whilst Thys was sixth - the only stage in which he didn't finish in the top five.

Philippe Thys

Faber won Stages 13 and 14. Pélissier was still 31'50" at the beginning of Stage 14, but then an opportunity fell into his lap: on the way to Dunkirk, one of Thys' wheels collapsed. The rules stated that a rider had to either repair all faults himself (strictly without outside help) or wait for a race official to declare it irreparable, in which case a replacement part could be provided from the team car. Thys realised that following correct procedure was likely to cost him too much time, so he took a risk and went off in search of a bike shop to buy a new wheel (it was a big risk, because officials were being especially firm that year: earlier in the race, one of the sponsored riders threw away a half-eaten sandwich. Seconds later it was pounced upon by an independent, thanking his lucky stars for some free food - and the professional rider got a 30' penalty for assisting a rider who wasn't a member of his team). Officials spotted him and he was penalised 30', which sent Pélissier haring off towards Dunkirk in an attempt to make up the remaining 1'50" and take control of the race. Precisely what happened next is a mystery: Pélissier said that there were spectators in the road at Dunkirk and they wouldn't let him through. This happened, rather conveniently, at a time when there were no race officials nor police officers around to back him up, which has led many to wonder if he was simply unable to counter the heroic - and successful - attempts Thys made to preserve his lead. Pélissier would win the final stage, but took back no more time.

When the riders returned to the real world after the race, Europe was a very different place. The war began just two days later, and a few weeks after that Desgrange used his L'Auto newspaper to publish the following letter to his champions:

"For 14 years, Le Auto has appeared every day.  It has never let you down. So listen my dear fellows, my dear Frenchmen.  There can be no question that a Frenchman succumbs to a German.  GO! Go without Pity!"

Faber, Petit-Breton and Lapize would not return in 1919 when the Tour next took place: Faber was shot in the back while trying to rescue a fallen comrade from no man's land between the trenches, Petit-Breton died when he was hit by a car while serving as an Army message carrier and Lapize, who became a fighter pilot, was shot down over Flirey and died a few days later. They were not the only ones, but most of those who could only dream of Tour success are now forgotten.


In 1969 there were 22 stages and the race covered 4,110km - seven more stages than 1914, but 1,295 fewer kilometres. After a few decades in which the Tour was open only to national teams, commercially sponsored trade teams returned in 1962. However, after a riders' protest against ani-doping tests in 1966 (which organisers believed had been provoked by sponsors, who wanted the problem covered up rather than brought out into the open where they might become associated with it) they decided to return to national teams (or at least, that was the official reason: in his book Le Tour (ISBN 0-340-54268-3), Geoffrey Nicholson argues that the decision may have been prompted by accusations that the race caused too many road closures and that by reintroducing national teams teams they were trying to drum up patriotic support). Trade teams countered by refusing to allow their best riders to compete, which is why Eddy Merckx didn't take part in the Tour of 1968. Organisers relented and the trade teams returned on 1969 (with Eddy Merckx, once political intervention - and the hundreds of protesting fans who surrounded the Belgian Federation's headquarters - had seen to it that his highly questionable doping conviction from the Giro d'Italia earlier in the year had been quashed), initially on the understanding that the race would revert to national teams every few years. 43 years later, this has not happened.

Eddy Merckx

Merckx had not yet won a Tour, but he'd already been World Champion and won a Giro, three editions of Milan-San Remo, a Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and La Flèche Wallonne; the spectators that saw him on the start line were already realising that here was a rider whose talent was far greater than any of those who had come before him. He had made no secret of the fact that he was there to win, yet one thing stood in his way - for a period of eighteen days between the positive test at the Giro and the start of the Tour, he'd been suspended from competition. That was enough time without race practice to affect his form, and he was not at his best. Rudi Altig of Salvarani knew that and he put it to good use by beating the Belgian by 7" in the prologue. Stage 1a ended at Merckx's hometown Sint-Pieters-Woluwe and he was determined to win, but now Marino Basso took advantage of his reduced form and sprinted past him in the last 50m (Sint-Pieters-Woluwe is also home to the Palais Stoclet, a private home that must be seen if you ever happen to be in the area as it's the finest example of 20th Century architecture anywhere in the world); Altig finished outside of the top ten but was able to retain the yellow jersey when the first 96 finishers were awarded the same time.

Stage 1b was a team time trial, in which Faema beat Bic by 46" and Salvarani by 48". Merckx therefore started the next day in yellow, but he didn't chase when a group led by his team mate Julien Stevens escaped because none of his rivals went with them. He finished 16" after Stevens, which meant Stevens took the maillot jaune. "It was a great moment for him to take over the yellow jersey. I was quite happy to give it up - temporarily; it's much too conspicious," he said later. Only a year ago, the moment the break got away, Merckx would have been after them and kept going until he'd hunted down every single member regardless of whether they presented him with any sort of challenge or even if they were team mates - he was maturing, and that made him even more dangerous. Stage 3 went to Eric Leman of the Flandria team, this time the first 116 riders over the line were given the same time and so Stevens remained in yellow for another day. He'd have lost it on Stage 4 when Rik van Looy escaped, making good use of the terrain (described as flat stage officially, it's actually rather hilly and precisely the sort of parcours a Flanders Classics specialist such as van Looy can use to his advantage) - not because he thought he had any chance of winning the Tour, but in an attempt to get himself noticed by the selection panel for the World Championships; he managed to build up a considerable gap that, if he'd kept it to the end, would have got him into yellow. Stevens wasn't ready to give it up just yet, however, and went after him  accompanied by seven other riders. Among them was René Pijnen, who rode with van Looy on the Willem II-Gazelle team (ah, those heady days when a bicycle manufacturer and cycling team were happy to associate themselves with a cigar firm), who set about trying to disrupt the chase. The others turned on him and using the various means and ways by which an unwanted rider can be ejected from a group (including, but not limited too, verbal warnings that the unfavoured one is going to be kicked into a ditch or wall just as soon as there's a reasonable chance that the race officials are looking the other way) got rid of him. Stevens finished 42" after van Looy and kept the yellow jersey, the rest of the group were 2" behind and Pijnens arrived 53" later (van Looy got his ticket to the Worlds and came 24th; so did Stevens, but he won a silver medal).

Julien Stevens

The following day, the Tour reached the mountains of Alsace and everything changed. Stevens had used up too much energy the day before; he couldn't stay with the break led by Désiré Letort, who had been in the Stage 4 chase group, and lost the jersey. Joaquim Agostinho won the stage by 18" against Altig; Letort was tenth he'd won enough time to put himself into the overall lead the only time he wore the maillot jaune in his nine years as a professional - but Merckx was now in second place overall with a disadvantage of only 9". It was no surprise the next day, when the race climbed its first serious mountains (including the Grand Ballon, Alsace's highest point, and the Ballon d'Alsace which, on the 11th of July 1905, had been the first mountain the Tour ever climbed) when he converted that disadvantage into a 2'03" advantage. He was 28th on Stage 7 but none of the riders that came before him were close enough to cause much concern and Altig remained 2'03" behind, so Merckx was confident going into the Stage 8a individual time trial. It didn't go quite as well as he might have liked with only 2" being added to his lead, but it was still early days and while he was 29th behind stage winner Michele Dancelli in 8b that afternoon, Altig recorded the same time so again nothing changed.

In Stage 9, Merckx and Roger Pingeon escaped together. Merckx had the strength to win mountain stages even though he was built like a sprinter, but Pingeon's lighter build left him less tired at the end of the stage and he was able to win the sprint. For Altig, a sprint specialist, the stage was an unmitigated disaster: he finished in 76th place, 7'59" behind Pingeon and Merckx, which cost him. Now trailing Merckx by 10'04" overall, his chance to win was lost.

Pingeon was now in second place overall, but trailed Merckx by 5'21" in the General Classification. Herman van Springel won with a 2'01" lead the next day but was much to far down the leadership to make any difference at all, and the 5'21" stayed intact. Then Merckx won Stage 11, adding another 22", then 1'28" when he was third behind Felice Gimondi on Stage 12. He maintained it at 7'11" for the next two stages (which went to Guido Reybrouck and Agostinho) and had no reason at all to win the time trial in Stage 15 - but he did, and finished with 8'03" advantage overall. Raymond Delisle beat him by 2'45" on Stage 16 after a small group away up Portet d'Aspet; since he too was no rival there was even less reason for Merckx to bother himself with winning Stage 17. But Merckx had a greater competitive drive than anyone else, as well as the legs to go with it - he went solo for 140km over Tourmalet and the Aubisque; and when the stage finished and he'd beaten Dancelli by 7'56", he was 16'18" ahead overall. Pingeon may have technically been in second place, but it was irrelevant now: Merckx had reduced the entire field to the level of also-rans. Barry Hoban won Stages 18 and 19, thus becoming the first British rider to win two consecutive days at the Tour (it would be 29 years before Cavendish repeated his feat, then did it again - twice - a year later).

Pierre Matignon's unexpected victory in Stage 20 is worthy of note. He was the lowliest of domestiques, in the race purely to act as a servant for Frimatic's leader Agostinho; and he started the stage in 86th place. Three hours behind Merckx, he'd given up all hope of a good result so long ago that he'd spent much of the intervening time locked in a private competition with Sonolor's André Wilhem to become lanterne rouge, because being last in the Tour gains a rider far more media attention and race contracts than finishing anywhere else outside the top ten does. Wilhelm decided he was unable to ride as slowly as Matignon and gave up the battle early in the stage, sprinting away from him.

Puy-de-Dôme

Up at the front of the peloton, the leaders (or those that were left; around 45 riders had abandoned by this point) were biding their time, waiting for the final decisive climb up the corkscrew road to the summit of the Puy-de-Dôme. When Wilhelm rode away, Matignon punctured and, being a domestique, was left to fend for himself because he wasn't important enough for the team to try to help him back into the race. They wouldn't expect to see him the next day, and at that point Matignon would have been certain he'd been on his way home later that evening. Ah, what the hell - he decided he may as well hurry up a bit, perhaps he'd at least get a chance to see the stage being won. Then he caught the peloton, so when it slowed to pass through the feeding station with 66km to go he grabbed a musette and attacked. The leaders watched him go and remained steadfastly unconcerned. Over the following 20km, he built up a 3' lead. The leaders still weren't especially concerned, but when he had 5"with 30km to go they decided it would be better to be safe than sorry - a chase group, made up of domestiques who'd pleased their masters sufficiently to be permitted a chance to get themselves on television, was sent off to catch him and return him to his rightful position. They couldn't catch him; he had a lead of seven and a half minutes when he got to within 20km of the finish line. Now Peugeot began to worry - at this rate, there was a chance that a complete unknown was going to rob Pingeon of his second place in the General Classification, so they sent a serious chase group of strong climbers off to do the job. They got within 2km of him by 10km to go, at which point Merckx decided he'd better sort things out. When he launched, Matignon's fun could last only seconds longer.

Or could it? Merckx got within sight of his quarry just as Matignon turned onto the final section towards the summit, a private track that rises for 5km at 12.5%, but with 500m to go he still hadn't caught up. Angry now, he stomped on the pedals and lurched forward after a man who was clearly suffering and weaving about all over the road in a desperate attempt to deal with the gradient. He didn't look back again. From then onwards, he saw nothing - there was nothing to see, the universe was him, his bike, a gradient and the pain. Then there was also the summit, and 1'25" there was Merckx. The most unimportant man in the Tour had won one of its most prestigious stages, and in doing so he had beaten the greatest cyclist that ever lived. He died in 1987, aged only 44.

Van Springel and Spruyt won Stages 21 and 22a, but it was far too late for anything to change now. Merckx increased his advantage to 17'54" in the Stage 22b time trial. He'd won six stages and worn the maillot jaune for seventeen days, as well as winning the General Classification, the King of the Mountains and the Points competition, all after turning up to the race after missing two valuable weeks of preparation. What was he going to do to his rivals next year?


In 1985, cycling had left the Era of Merckx behind and now another one, the Age of Hinault, was coming to an end as the Breton aimed for a fifth and final Tour; which would make him Merckx and Anquetil's equal. He had been beaten by Laurent Fignon the year before and the American Greg Lemond came close several times - now Fignon was away recovering from surgery on his knee, so the La Vie Claire team dealt with the Lemond problem by signing him up. A deal was reached - if Lemond looked the better bet for overall victory, Hinault would ride for him. If Hinault was better, Lemond would ride for him.

There were 22 stages and a prologue that year, covering 4,109km in total. For the first time, the multi-coloured Combination jersey was inflicted upon the eyes of spectators (it had been white when the classification was introduced in 1968, then the classification vanished in 1975 and the white jersey was given to the leader of the new Youth classification instead. In 1980 it reappeared as the TF1 GP but lasted only three years. After reintroduction in 1985, it vanished again in 1989 and has never returned), but otherwise there were no major changes to the way the race was run in 1984. Hinault won the prologue - he had to, really, because it was in Brittany and he was a Breton folk hero. He beat Lemond by 21", but a 6km time trial gives no indication of what will happen later in a three-week Grand Tour.

As is usually the case, the General Classification contenders didn't worry too much about the first week and Hinault didn't mind when Eric Vanderaerden took the yellow jersey in Stage 1 thanks to time bonuses. Rudy Matthijs won Stages 1 and 2, then La Vie Claire beat Kwantum by a minute in the Stage 3 team time trial, which sounds an even better result when one bears in mind that they did so on their standard road race bikes rather than using specialised time trial machines like the other teams did; which may be why a huge mob of fans climbed over the barriers to get to them. Hinault, who felt uncomfortable in crowds and had felled a well-built shipyard worker during an angry protest at Paris-Nice in 1982, flew into a panic and landed the sort of punch that would make a boxer proud on the chin of a press photographer. Police bundled him into a car and sped him away to his hotel before he set his sights on another target.

Eric Vanderaerden

Vanderaeden stayed in yellow, but Hinault was 32" behind him in second place and La Vie Claire riders occupied the next seven places in the overall top ten too. Kim Andersen (who now works with Frank and Andy Schleck), who was with the team, escaped in a breakaway during Stage 4; Kwantum's Gerrit Sollevend won the stage but Andersen ended up in the maillot jaune with an advantage of 19" over Vanderaerden and 1'01" over Hinault. Little changed during Stage 5 which was won by another Kwantum rider, Henri Manders; then, once initial winners Vanderaerden and Sean Kelly had been penalised for irregular sprinting, Lemond came second behind Francis Castaing (Peugeot) the next day, picking up sufficient time bonuses to place himself third overall with a 2" advantage over Hinault. Ludwig Wijnants won Stage 7, the gap between Lemond and Hinault stayed the same.

It all changed with the Stage 8 time trial. All great Tour riders can perform well on any type of parcours, like many of the very best Hinault was especially good in a time trial - and he won this one by 2'20", taking back the maillot jaune with a 2'30" advantage over second place Lemond. This time, police were ready and he was protected from the crowd - or the crowd was protected from him - by a police escort. Dietrich Thurau (Hitachi) was judged to have drafted behind another rider and penalised, though he made it quite clear he disagreed with the decision. He was still furious at the start of Stage 9 the next morning when he spotted the chief of the race judges, a man named Raymond Trine, and then it was his turn for trouble: he had his hands clenched around Trine's throat when the race started, at which point he dropped him and ran to his bike, jumped on and started pedaling. After the stage had finished, he was apparently quite surprised when informed that he'd been thrown out. That stage, and the next, were hilly, so some of the less well-known riders used them to gain time on rivals while the General Classification contenders conserved energy for the upcoming mountains where bigger gains could be found: Maarten Ducrot and Jørgen V. Pedersen shared them. On Stage 10, the British rider Paul Sherwen (who is now the "Voice of the Tour" for people who watch it on TV in Britain, Australia and the USA) crashed in the first kilometre of Stage 10; two team mates stayed with him to help get back to the peloton, but he told them to go on without him rather than risk their own chances. He tried desperately to catch up, riding solo for more than six hours over six tough climbs, but could not; when he reached the finish line (he'd met the aravan coming back the other way some kilometres down the road - everyone had assumed he'd abandoned and the finish line infrastructure was being packed away) he was more than an hour behind Pedersen and a full 23 minutes beyond the maximum time. He should therefore have been eliminated, but judges were so impressed by his efforts that just as had been the case following a similar incident in 1979, the rule was waived and he stayed to ride again the following day. In the General Classification, Lemond won back a few seconds and, when they arrived at the Alps for Stage 11, he was 2'16" behind Hinault.

Parra at the Vuelta, 1989

Luis Alberto Herrera and Fabio Enrique Parra climbed the Alps like a short flight of stairs because they were both Colombian and had grown up training on Andean roads that started at far higher altitudes than those at which Alpine roads stopped. Herrera rode for Cafe de Colombia, but his team were only interested in the King of the Mountains and so he had no reason not to agree when Hinault suggested they work together. La Vie Claire management forbade Lemond from following them - they'd decided now who the boss was. The Breton crossed the finish line 7" after the Colombian and his overall lead rose to four minutes - the next day he took things much easier and finished 16th, making sure he recorded the same time as 10th place Lemond.

Hinault was apparently still feeling the effects of the mountains in the Stage 13 time trial because Vanderaerden beat him by 1'07". This, however, was not enough to break into the overall Top Ten; meanwhile, Lemond finished 19th, 1'23" slower than Hinault. The Breton's advantage rose to 5'23". Stage 14 was hilly - no problem at all for Herrera, who attacked early to pick up some more King of the Mountains points. This time, Lemond was given the go-ahead to chase, accompanied by Robert Millar, Pedro Delgado and six others while Hinault stayed where he was. They couldn't catch him, but did well to finish 47" later. Hinault was with Panasonic's Phil Anderson around 1'30" down the road, but in the final kilometre they were in a crash with three others. Race rules state that, if a rider crashes within the final 3km, his or her overall time will not be reduced for the time that passes until he or she is back on the bike but that the rider must get to the finish line unaided. This was fortunate for Hinault because he was on the ground for some time while doctors attended to him but lost only 1'50" overall, though his face and the maillot jaune were covered in blood when he got back on his bike. What was less fortunate was that he'd broken his nose.

Lemond in yellow, 1990

Few people expected him to show up at the start of Stage 15, but Hinault was tougher than that - he had two black eyes, his nose was bandaged and he was having difficulty breathing, but he was there. Incredibly, he lost no time that day, then added 6" the next by first matching and then beating the American as Eduardo Chozas and Frédéric Vichot won the stages. Stage 17 nearly proved to be his undoing - featuring Tourmalet and Luz-Ardiden, two of the toughest climbs in the Pyrenees, it was simply too much for a man in his condition and he was unable to respond when Lemond escaped with Delgado and Stephen Roche. Further on, Delgado attacked. Roche went after him, which forced Lemond to respond because Roche was close enough to potentially become a General Classifiation rival. Lemond believed that he had a better chance of chasing down Delgado and could even win the stage, which in turn he might be able to upgrade into overall leadership over the next few stages; but when he asked team manager Paul Koechli for position he was refused. Instead, they ordered him to wait for Hinault and help him limit time losses, claiming that the Breton was only 40" back down the road. Koechli may have been mistaken, but Lemond maintains that it was a lie told because they were afraid he might pretend not to have received the order and go for glory if he knew the truth, which was than Hinault was actually some minutes away (later, the team claimed that Lemond had in fact been given permission and had made it all up rather than admit he wasn't strong enough). Lemond slowed, waited, then slowed some more. Various other riders sailed past him, but still Hinault hadn't caught up. Eventually, the finish line came within sight and he had no choice but to cross it at a gentle pace 2'52" behind Delgado, the man he still says he knew he could have beaten. Hinault 1'11" later, though with an overall lead still standing at 2'25". Lemond was, understandably, furious; especially when he realised he'd been lied to. Hinault was grateful that he'd proved himself faithful, and promised that next year he - Le Patron - would ride as Lemond's domestique.

Roche won Stage 18a and Régis Simon won Stage 18b before the race left the mountains behind, then Vanderaerden and Johan Lammerts won the two plain stages that followed. None of them posed any sort of challenge to Hinault who still led by 1'59" after Stage 20. Stage 21 was the last time trial and turned out to be Lemond's ever Tour stage win, but the 5" by which he beat Hinault made no difference now when there was only Stage 22 left. Matthijs finished the Tour as he had started by winning that last stage, while Hinault's final overall advantage was 1'42". He had equalled Anquetil and Merckx, but next year would be different: another era had ended and, while Lemond won three Tours and is one of the greats by any standards and although Miguel Indurain won five and Lance Armstrong won seven, it's been a long time since fans saw a rider in the same vein as Merckx, Hinault and their like. At the time of writing, it was also the last time a Frenchman won the Tour - they need another, soon.

Hinault, his face battered after Stage 14

The 1985 race had two major effects. The first came as a result that there had been too many time trials in the last few years, which gave some riders what was perceived to be an unfair advantage - it took a while to happen, but in the early 1990s race organisers found themselves in agreement and times trial kilometres started to decrease. Nowadays there'll usually be one or two individual time trials, one team time trial and sometimes a prologue, though any one of them can be omitted (interestingly, if time trial results hadn't counted towards General Classification results in 1985, the overall outcome would have been very different: Herrera would have won with an advantage of 16", Delgado would have been second and Lemond would have been third at +2'28. Hinault would have been eighth at +4'47". The second was that Hinault was the first rider to win using clipless pedals, having worked closely with LOOK during their development. It was largely as a result of his victory that they replaced the older type, with toe cages and straps, as rapidly as they did.


Cyclists born today: Vasil Kiryienka (USSR, 1981); Leslie Rawlins (Trinidad and Tobago, 1954); Pietro Guerra (Italy, 1943); Simone Cadamuro (Italy, 1976); Filiberto Mercado (Mexico, 1938); Rafael Montiel (Colombia, 1981); Lucien Victor (Belgium, 1931, died 1995); Ernst Fuhrimann (Switzerland, 1913); Julio Cesar Rodríguez (Colombia, 1966).