Vive le Tour!

WELCOME TO LE TOUR

It was supposed to be Year Zero, the year when the Tour de France was reborn. Again.

Lance Armstrong was gone, the British were coming and, not for the first time, there was an air of renewed optimism in the air as the greatest race in the world converged on the Belgian city of Liege for the start of the 2012 race.

And for those three hot weeks in July, it seemed that for once the hype was justified. Record crowds lined the 3,500km route, there were thrills, spills and controversies, and at the end of it, unbelievably, a British rider stood on the winner’s podium in the Champs Elysees.

Yet even at its moment of triumph, the Tour was about plunge into the most damaging scandal of its 109-year history. Shockingly the man at the centre of it was Armstrong himself, the man who had single-handedly raised the profile of the race to global proportions.

Throughout his career there had been rumours of doping, but nothing was ever proved. Now, two years after his official retirement, the dam finally broke. Within weeks, the Texan had been stripped of his seven titles and virtually a decade of Tour history had been rendered null and void.

At the time of writing this book, the fallout from the Armstrong affair is still continuing, as cycling once again purges itself of the drug cheats. It is likely to be a long and painful process.

What of the Tour itself? The good news is the 2012 edition will be remembered for all the right reasons. It was, possibly for the first time, road cycling in its purest form, with riders challenging the limitations of their own bodies rather than relying on the skills of their pharmacists.

For the first time it was possible to believe the claims of the organisers and team directors that this was indeed a ‘clean’ Tour.

We have, of course, been here before. This book celebrates the great moments and characters of the Tour without ever skirting the murkier episodes in its history – of which there have been many.

What is encouraging is that the race itself has always been bigger than its participants. The Tour has a remarkable ability to bounce back from the body blows that assail it, and it is typical of the event that in the same week that Armstrong was being stripped of his seven titles the organisers were unveiling the route of the 100th edition of the race in 2013.

This is the third edition of Vive le Tour!. The first, which came out in 2007, made brief reference to Tom Simpson, the great British cyclist of the 1960s. The second, in 2010, noted the emergence of an exciting young sprinter from the Isle of Man called Mark Cavendish and, in passing, a daring breakaway by converted track star Bradley Wiggins.

At no stage did I expect to be revising the book for the 2013 Tour with Wiggins as reigning champion, Cavendish as the sport’s greatest-ever sprinter, and Britain as the leading power in world cycling.

But that’s cycling – and that’s the Tour de France. Crazy, unpredictable, heart-breaking, joyous, addictive, magnificent.

Who knows what will happen in the 2013 Tour? The only thing for certain is that the whole world will be watching. See you there.

Vive le Tour!

Nick Brownlee, January 2013

‘Today, my brothers, we gather here in common celebration of the divine bicycle. Not only do we owe it our most pious gratitude for the precious and ineffable love that it has given us, but also for the host of memories sown over our whole sports life and which today has made concrete. In my own case I love it for its having given me a soul capable of appreciating it; I love it for having taken my heart within its spokes, for having encircled a part of my life within its harmonious frame, and for having constantly illuminated me with the victorious sparkle of its nickel plates. In the history of humanity, does it not constitute the first successful effort of intelligent life to triumph over the laws of weights?’

Henri Desgrange,

 the father of the Tour de France

A BRIEF GLOSSARY OF CYCLING TERMS

Abandon: When a rider quits during a race, usually due to injury. Sprint specialists will often abandon the Tour once it hits the mountains.

Attack: A sudden acceleration to move ahead of another rider or group of riders. These most commonly occur on mountain ascents.

Autobus: A group of non-climbers, usually sprinters, who help each other through the arduous mountain stages by riding together at the back of the peloton.

Bidon: Water bottle.

Bonk: Total exhaustion caused by lack of sufficient food during a long race or ride. Also known as the ‘Hunger Knock’. At its most extreme, it can cause light-headedness and even hallucinations.

Break/Breakaway: A rider or group of riders that has left the main group behind.

Classics Race: A one-day race, usually staged in spring. Examples include: Milan–San Remo, Bastogne–Liège–Bastogne, Paris–Roubaix.

Commissaire: A race marshal, who usually follows the riders in a car.

Domestique: A team rider who will sacrifice his individual performance to help the team leader by chasing down breaks and shielding the boss from the wind. Also known as ‘water carrier’, due to his main duty of keeping the team supplied with water bottles from the team car.

Drop/Dropped: When a rider has been passed by another, or left behind. ‘Cracked’ is when a rider dramatically runs out of steam, usually on a tough mountain stage.

Bunch Sprint: A mass sprint at the finish of a flat stage, often at speeds in excess of 37.2 mph (60 kph).

Gap: The amount of time or distance between a rider or group of riders and another rider or group of riders.

General Classification (GC/GC): The overall leader board for the race, representing each rider’s total cumulative time in the race.

Giro d’Italia: The three-week Tour of Italy which takes place in May and early June. Riders who have achieved the Giro–Tour de France double include Fausto Coppi of Italy and Belgium’s Eddie Merckx.

Grand Départ: The moment when the peloton sets off on the Tour.

Gruppetto: A group of riders that forms at the back of the field on mountain stages, riding at a pace that allows them to finish just inside the time limit. Usually, the gruppetto is comprised of sprinters and other riders who are not climbing specialists or race leaders. Gruppetto is Italian for ‘small group’.

Grande Boucle: The ‘Big Loop’, another name for the Tour de France.

KoM: King of the Mountains. Awarded to the best climber.

Lanterne Rouge: ‘Red Lamp’ the last rider to finish a stage.

Maillot Jaune: The ‘Yellow Jersey’ worn by the race leader in the Tour de France.

Peloton: The main field, or pack, of riders in the race. Peloton is French for a ‘group moving forward’.

Soigneur: General team factotum, responsible for everything from massages to carrying the luggage to and from hotel rooms. The most famous soigneur was Willy Voet, who was found to be carrying boxes of doping products in the back of his car (see The Festina Affair).

Team: The Tour is made up of twenty professional, sponsored teams drawn from the year-long ProTour circuit, plus any wildcard teams chosen at the discretion of the Tour organisers. Each team consists of nine riders.

Team Leader: The top rider in a team, or at least the one believed to stand the best chance of winning.

Time Trial: A race in which riders start individually and race against the clock. The fastest over a set distance is the winner. Also known as a ‘Race of Truth’.

UCI: Union Cycliste Internationale, the international governing body of cycling.

Vuelta: The three week Tour of Spain, usually run in September.

THE JERSEYS OF THE TOUR DE FRANCE

Yellow jersey for the General Time Classification (best overall time).

Polka-dot jersey for the Best Climber Classification (points earned at the tops of climbs) – the King of the Mountains.

Green jersey for the General Points Classification (points earned for sprints).

White jersey for the Best Young Rider, awarded to the best rider aged 25 and under.

SCANDALS AND ASSASSINS

1903–1914

‘When I feel bad I attack – that way no one can find out how bad I feel.’

Bernard Hinault,

five-times Tour winner

‘In this business you cannot afford sentiment or else you’ll be flattened.’

Marcel Bidot,

1920s French professional and later team manager

‘The ideal Tour would be a Tour in which only one rider survived the ordeal.’

Henri Desgrange

THE PROLOGUE

The Prologue is a short race against the clock, usually no more than 6 miles (10 km), in which Tour fans get their first opportunity to see their heroes in action as they set off at two-minute intervals on their time-trial bikes. Although the result of the Prologue counts towards the final classification, it is generally regarded as a means of heralding the start of the Tour, and often takes place in countries outside France. In 2007, the Prologue takes place in London for the first time.

THE LONG ROAD

Long distance road races – the precursor to the Tour – were hugely popular in France in the late nineteenth century. And they really were long distance. In 1891, Charles Terront completed the 736 mile (1,185 km) Paris–Brest–Paris race in just 71 hours – a remarkable achievement considering the state of the roads and the fact he was riding a cumbersome steel bike weighing 9.5 lb (21 kg), fitted with new-fangled pneumatic tyres which punctured five times. An indication of the rapid improvement in bike manufacture came ten years later, when Maurice Garin rode the same course in a comparatively lightning-quick 52 hours.

JOYEUX’S LOOPY ACHIEVEMENT

In 1895 Terront, arguably cycling’s first superstar, announced a bold plan to ride all the way around France – on a motorcycle. However, his thunder was stolen in May of that year by one Théophile Joyeux, who set off to complete le Grande Boucle (the Big Loop) on his bicycle. Nineteen days later, Joyeux completed his epic journey. He had covered 2,800 miles (4,500 km) at an average of 146 miles (235 km) a day.

TOUR TRIVIA

James Moore of Bury St Edmunds won the first recognised bike race, in Paris in 1868.

HAIRPINS

One of the great skills of the top Tour rider is being able to descend hairpin mountain bends in excess of 80 kph (60 mph), using only minimal braking. The technique, illustrated here, relies upon the rider moving out towards the far side of the road, braking slightly, then sweeping round in a parabola in order to keep the ‘racing line’. Obviously, this requires superb judgement to know when the apex of the parabola has been reached – and as we will see later in this book, even the best riders have been known to get it horribly wrong.

WAR OF WORDS

The birth of the Tour de France in 1903 can be reliably traced back to a bitter circulation war between two rival sporting newspapers in the 1890s. Le Vélo was the undisputed best-seller in France until a row between its owner and one of its main advertisers led to the establishment of L’Auto Vélo in 1899. Henri Desgrange, a 30-year-old former world hour-record holder, was hired as the new journal’s editor. After a protracted legal wrangle, L’Auto was forced to drop Vélo from its masthead – but the ambitious Desgrange set about competing for its rival’s circulation with a series of innovative stunts. One was to launch a cycle race around France, sponsored and organised – and of course covered in great detail – by L’Auto.

CIRCULATION IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

The idea for the Tour came not from Desgrange – although he would never seek to dispel the myth – but from his 23-year-old editorial assistant at L’Auto, Géo Lefèvre. Lefèvre himself never denied that he came up with the idea in desperation at a crisis meeting with Desgrange to discuss the plummeting circulation of the newspaper. At first Desgrange was not convinced. ‘So what you are suggesting, petit Géo,’ he said sniffily, ‘is a Tour de France?’ It was only when Victor Goddet, L’Auto’s financial manager, agreed to raid the company safe in order to fund the exercise that Desgrange changed his mind. Although Desgrange would later wax lyrical about the Tour, describing it as ‘the great moral crusade of cycle sport’, it’s a fair assumption that if Goddet had said no, then the world’s greatest cycle race would have been quietly shelved.

TOUR TRIVIA

Géo Lefèvre is also credited with having invented cyclo-cross, the branch of the sport in which cyclists follow a route that takes them off-road.

THE TOUR IS ON THE MENU

The historic meeting between Desgrange and Géo Lefèvre at which the idea for a round-France cycle race was first discussed took place at the Taverne Zimmer, a restaurant on the Boulevard de Montmartre in Paris. Although the venue is now the site of a TGI Friday, the occasion is marked by a small plaque on the wall.

ROLL UP FOR THE FIRST TOUR

The first Tour de France was grandly announced in L’Auto in January 1903 as a cycle race to cover 1,508 miles (2,428 km) in six stages between 31 May and 5 July, with no trainers or physios for the first five stages so that all riders would compete on equal terms.

When only fifteen riders had dared to register a week before the start date, Desgrange was forced to rethink. When he announced that the race was being extended from six to nineteen days, that the entry fee was being halved, and that expenses of five francs per day were to be paid to the first 50 finishers, the entries suddenly went up to 50.

TOUR TRIVIA

Belgian rider Julien Lootens rode the 1903 Tour under the pseudonym ‘Samson’.

1903: GARIN SWEEPS TO VICTORY

At 3.16 pm on 31 May 1903, the first Tour de France set off from a small café named the Réveil Matin in the Parisian suburb of Villeneuve-St Georges. There were 50 riders from France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany, 21 of whom were professionals – although such were the meagre wages for cyclists that none was full-time. When he was not in the saddle, the eventual winner, Maurice Garin – who stood just 5ft 3ins (160cm) tall – was a chimney sweep.

TOUR TRIVIA

For winning the first ever Tour de France, Garin was paid 3,000 francs. In modern money that works out at around €26,500 or £17,000.

ANATOMY OF A LEGEND: MAURICE GARIN

Garin was born in Arvier, Italy, in 1871, although he moved to France as a child.

He always rode in a fetching white jacket – an item of clothing that earned him the nickname ‘The White Bulldog’. He was also known as the ‘Little Chimney Sweep’, because of the part-time job he did when he wasn’t working in the family bike shop in Roubaix.

He was renowned for his long, droopy moustache and the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

Garin rode his first race in 1892, and two years later chalked up his first win: a 24-hour marathon staged around the streets of Liège.

After winning the first Tour de France, his adopted town of Lens organised a parade of honour for him.

Garin’s brother César was also a Tour de France rider. The pair were among the top four riders disqualified for cheating in the 1904 Tour.

After retiring, Garin opened a garage and filling station on the main street in Lens, which he ran until his death in 1957.

TOUR TRIVIA

To distinguish him as the first leader of the race, Maurice Garin wore a green armband rather than the yellow jersey. This would not be introduced until 1919.

1903: THE FATHER OF THE FLOP?

Henri Desgrange is forever known as ‘The Father of the Tour’ – but in 1903 he was conspicuous by his absence from the start of the inaugural race. Indeed, as the 50 riders set off from the Parisian suburbs, Desgrange was back in his office in the city, evidently unwilling to associate himself with an event that could turn out to be a major flop. The only representative of L’Auto present at the grand départ was Desgrange’s loyal assistant, Géo Lefèvre – the man who had first suggested the race to his boss eight years earlier.

1903: MARATHON ON WHEELS

The sheer length and winning times of the stages in the inaugural Tour de France in 1903 are eye-watering even to today’s pro riders, who rarely ride more than 124 miles (200 km) in a day or spend more than six hours in the saddle.

RESULTS OF THE FIRST TOUR DE FRANCE

1st:       Maurice Garin (France), 2,428 km in 94h 33m 14s (26.450 kph)

2nd:      Lucien Pothier (France), + 2h 49m 21s

3rd:      Fernand Augereau (France), + 4h 29m 24s

4th:      Rodolfo Muller (Italy), + 4h 39m 30s

5th:      Jean Fischer (France), + 4h 58m 44s

6th:      Marcel Kerff (Belgium), + 5h 52m 24s

7th:      Julien Lootens (Belgium), + 9h 31m 08s

8th:      Georges Pasquier (France), + 10h 24m 04s

9th:      François Beaugendre (France), + 10h 52m 14s

10th:    Aloîs Catteau (Belgium), + 12h 44m 57s

1903: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Although 50 riders started the Tour, only 21 survived the 1,508 miles (2,428 km) marathon. The last man to finish was Frenchman Arsène Millocheau, in a time of 159h 27m – a full two days behind Maurice Garin. The first riders to sign on for the race way back at the Réveil Matin bar, Henri Ellinamour and Léon Pernette, had simply disappeared during the course of the race.

1903: LAP OF HONOUR

The inaugural Tour finished with a circuit of the newly built concrete cycle track at the Parc des Princes in Paris. A crowd of 20,000 was waiting to greet the riders as they arrived, although an estimated 100,000 spectators lined the route through the suburbs of Paris.

THE ROUTE OF THE FIRST TOUR

1903: A HIT WITH THE READERS

Any doubts Henri Desgrange may have had about the popularity of the Tour were dispelled by the circulation figures of L’Auto during the nineteen days of the inaugural race,