The Tour de France Read online

  For Karina, Lukas and the tiny rider due to be joining us mid-Tour.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  A brief history of the Tour de France

  Chapter Two

  Tour essentials

  Chapter Three

  The road cycling lexicon

  Chapter Four

  Tour de France evolution

  Chapter Five

  How-to’s of the Tour de France

  Chapter Six

  Tour de France Hall of Fame:

  The legends and the heartbreaks

  Chapter Seven

  Tour de France Hall of Fame:

  The heroes and the history makers

  Chapter Eight

  The Tour de France’s greatest moments

  Chapter Nine

  Tour to the dark side

  Chapter Ten

  Tour de France’s best rivalries

  Chapter Eleven

  The weird and wonderful Tour

  Roll of Honour

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

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

  — Henri Desgrange

  As the Tour de France moves towards its 100th edition, professional cycling is at a critical juncture. To use a road-racing analogy — and why wouldn’t I? — it’s as if the sport is at the mid-point of a leg-shredding Alpine climb. Will cycling continue to ascend, fighting through the pain barrier to emerge triumphantly at the finish line? Or will the weight of continuous doping scandals (and cycling’s inability to clean itself up) force the sport to quit in exhaustion and shame?

  Those who believe cycling is on the ascent point to its new levels of popularity. Crowds in the thousands continue to line the stages, from the early season Classics to the summer Grand Tours, while broadcast coverage has expanded from specialist sports channels into the mainstream.

  Cycling is also enjoying a new level of competitiveness, bidding farewell to the one-rider dominance of years past to witness a wide-open field where any number of riders can win honours. If you look at the General Classification results of the three Grand Tours — the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España — there has not been a repeat winner in any event since Roberto Heras won consecutive Vueltas in 2003 and 2004, leading to far more open and entertaining competition in the big races. That Ryder Hesjedal, a thirty-two-year-old who had never won a stage race in his career, was victorious in the 2012 Giro d’Italia speaks volumes of the depth of talent in professional cycling.

  There’s also a belief that the sport is finally getting its house in order. The 2011 and 2012 Tour winners — Australia’s Cadel Evans and England’s Bradley Wiggins — are shining examples that you can win the big races without the need for performance-enhancing drugs. A new age of riders, led by Peter Sagan, Tejay van Garderen, Thibaut Pinot and Marcel Kittel, have no association with the dark years of cycling and are leading the way towards a brighter, cleaner sport.

  There are many observers who disagree with this point of view, though; they believe there is a cancer in the sport that will eventually be its downfall. The ongoing drama about doping in the professional ranks continues to cast a long shadow, with the revelatory books, government investigations and high-profile TV confessions of 2012 alone serving to keep the doping issue at the forefront of people’s minds. The accepted view is that dopers will always be one step ahead of the testers and cycling will never be able to rid itself of the cheats and charlatans that blight its good name.

  Where cycling is fortunate is that, in the Tour de France, it has an event that transcends the sport. It is a phenomenon of such scale and tradition that it demands attention, pulling in the fanatic and passing fan alike. With my background in football journalism, I always hear people say, ‘I don’t like football but I watch the World Cup’ — and the same goes for the Tour de France. Whether you’re mesmerised by the breathtaking scenery, captivated by the sporting drama or just have a thing for really big thighs, La Grande Boucle is one of sport’s most compelling events.

  The ‘ordeal’ that ‘Father of the Tour’ Henri Desgrange spoke of shines a light on the true nature of the men who compete over the three torturous weeks. It inspires the powerful of mind and body to superhuman achievements, while pulling those of a weaker disposition down to new depths of deception and immorality. On one side you have the legends such as Merckx, Anquetil, Hinault and Indurain, who inspired generations of riders; on the other, the disgraced Festina team and admitted cheats like Floyd Landis, Richard Virenque, Tyler Hamilton, Michael Rasmussen and Lance Armstrong who leave a stain on the competition. Their stories are intertwined, forming a rich tapestry of a race that has always featured courage, inspiration, intrigue and controversy in equal measure.

  This book aims to bring the stories of the Tour de France’s 110-year history to life, from the legends, heroes and history makers to the best rivalries, greatest moments and the weird and wonderful side of the race (including riders being kidnapped by donkeys, pulled out of ravines by inner tubes and faking their deaths after a crash). For those new to the sport, it will give you an insight into why the Tour is such a special sporting event (and also make you seem a little more informed when down the pub), and for the more established fan, it will tell you all you need to know about the men and the moments that have contributed to the storied history of the race.

  Bonne lecture!

  CHAPTER ONE

  A brief history of the Tour de France

  If not for a French military scandal, the Tour de France may never have been born. The complex web of events that led to the formation of the world’s most famous sporting event can find its origins in the infamous Dreyfus Affair.

  In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus was arrested for selling French military secrets to the Germans and was sentenced to life imprisonment on a penal colony in French Guiana. Two years later new evidence emerged that the captain was an innocent victim of an anti-Semitic campaign. The case and its legal wrangling fiercely divided France for more than six years and it created two distinct groups: the Dreyfusards (his supporters) and the anti-Dreyfusards. The taking of sides touched all corners of French society, including publishing, and it was in the formation of a new sports newspaper amid this crisis that the Tour de France was conceived.

  Le Vélo was the country’s most popular sporting publication and, for cycling fans, it was the bible for news and results around the country. It sold by the bucketload, helped by its editor, Pierre Giffard, who created such sporting events as the Paris–Brest–Paris cycle race and the Paris–Rouen car race and then monopolised the reporting of them. Internally, the paper’s management was at odds; one of its wealthy advertisers, the Comte de Dion, was a vociferous anti-Dreyfusard, while Giffard was pro-Dreyfus — and in 1900, Giffard wrote an article critical of de Dion in another paper he worked for. More than a little annoyed, de Dion promptly pulled out his backing of Le Vélo and started up his own paper, L’Auto-Vélo, headed editorially by a bike racer and former ad man, Henri Desgrange.

  The papers went to war from the start, with Le Vélo winning the early rounds, including forcing L’Auto to drop the ‘vélo’ part of their name. Desgrange found it hard going against such an established rival — especially trying to cover cycling with a paper called ‘The Car’ — and with his publication haemorrhaging sales in its first two years, he realised he needed something big, a publicity stunt or promotion, to save it.

  It was during a brainstorming session at L’Auto’s Paris office that young journalist Géo Lefèvre mentioned the idea of a grand bike race touching all
corners of France’s ‘hexagone’, the biggest of its kind ever to be held. He only blurted the idea to avoid being the only employee not to contribute, but there was something about it that Desgrange liked and they took lunch at the local Taverne Zimmer to talk more. It was there that Desgrange uttered the immortal words: ‘What you are suggesting, my little Géo, is a Tour de France.’ He thought there was something in the idea, but didn’t want to commit, preferring to put the onus on the paper’s accountant, Victor Goddet. Usually moments of great vision and creativity take place as far away from accountants as possible, but Goddet broke the mould and enthusiastically greenlit the project.

  On 19 January 1903, L’Auto announced the new race on its front page, under the header ‘Le Tour de France — Le Depart’.

  ‘We intend to run the greatest cycling trial in the entire world,’ wrote Desgrange. ‘A race more than a month long; from Paris to Lyon, then to Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and back to Paris.’ And with that, the Tour de France was born.

  1903—1909

  The first editions of the Tour de France were almost unrecognisable compared to the ones we know today. The stages were much longer — with an average of more than 400 km — and they frequently began in the middle of the night in order to finish on time the next day. The prize money was phenomenal for those taking part, with the winner taking home 3000 francs and daily winners 1000. The 6000 francs Maurice Garin received for winning the first Tour equated to almost a decade’s wages for the average French worker. As for the equipment, the bikes were made of heavy steel (weighing up to 20 kg) and only had two gears, which could be changed by taking the back wheel off and flipping it round to another sprocket. The riders looked like they were heading off to desert warfare, with big goggles and heavy cotton clothes all the rage.

  As one might expect, France dominated the early races, winning the first six before the big Luxembourger François Faber became the first foreign winner in 1909. Champions such as René Pottier and Lucien Petit-Breton epitomised the tough-as-nails character you needed to win the race; they had faces like robbers’ dogs, the physiques of dockyard workers and a capacity for suffering that would make most modern riders shrivel in their chamois padding. (For the uninitiated, ‘chamois padding’ is the pad sewn into cycle shorts to protect a rider’s basement furniture.)

  Riding 4000 km through the French countryside wasn’t the only hardship the competitors faced. With hardly any infrastructure to support the riders, they were at the mercy of the population to provide them with food and shelter when needed. At times the spectators got a little carried away, beating up racers they didn’t like and sabotaging them by smacking them with clubs and strewing nails across the road (organisers would disperse rowdy fans with a few polite gunshots from the official car). After the second edition Desgrange thought his race was finished, destroyed by cheats and unruly fans, but its popularity endured what would be the first of many scandals over the years.

  Public support of the Tour translated into increased newspaper sales, making Desgrange a very happy man. After all, getting more readers was the reason he started the race in the first place. After selling a reported 20,000 papers a day pre-Tour, L’Auto sold an average of 65,000 during the race, taking market leadership to such an extent as to put Le Vélo out of business in 1904.

  1910s

  The second decade of the twentieth century saw several key changes to the race, leading many to view the period as the birth of the modern Tour.

  The most significant development was the introduction of the barely rideable mountain roads of the Pyrenees and the Alps, which left a trail of broken men behind and changed — physically and mentally — the type of rider who would be able to win the race. The 1913 Tour saw the winners decided on time rather than a points system, keeping the racers on their toes during every stage — and the decade also saw the introduction of properly organised teams and even gears on some of the bikes.

  On the road, the Belgians emerged as a cycling powerhouse, winning four of the six races during the decade. Although spread out across several teams, the Belgians’ national identity couldn’t always be held in check; when Odile Defraye took an early lead in 1912, all team allegiances went out the window as the lowlanders joined forces to ensure their countryman would win the race.

  The era also played out the career of one of the most unfortunate riders in the history of the Tour, Eugène Christophe, who, if he were a character in the Mr Men books, would surely have been called Mr Really, Really Unlucky. A set of broken forks, a trudge down a dark mountain and a time penalty for ‘accepting help’ put paid to his chances in 1913 (see chapter 8 for more details) and in 1919 a series of mechanical issues and punctures saw him lose a leading position with just a couple of stages left. (When his forks broke during a third Tour in 1922, he said he wasn’t too upset: ‘By then I was a bit of an expert.’)

  On a more serious note, the winds of war swept through Europe in 1914 and cycling would not escape unscathed. The race was abandoned during the four years of war and by the time it returned in 1919, many riders, including three former winners — Octave Lapize, François Faber and Lucien Petit-Breton — had lost their lives.

  1920s

  With the race trying to re-establish itself after the war, one person the conflict hadn’t softened was race director Henri Desgrange, who set about creating harsher rules and more savage routes to test the riders. In 1924 there was ‘The Tour of Suffering’, a race where thirteen of the fifteen stages were more than 300 km long and five were over 400 km; two years later saw the longest Tour to date, clocking in at 5745 km. The high point of that Tour — or low point, if you were unfortunate enough to be cycling in it — was the stage 10 ride through ‘The Circle of Death’. It’s a stage that has entered Tour history as one of the most brutal ever, with winner Lucien Buysse spending seventeen hours in the saddle in terrible conditions and more than twenty men still unaccounted for as the clock struck midnight. It was at that point Desgrange thought it might be a good time to dial it back a bit.

  If the distances weren’t enough to bring the riders to their knees, the new rules gave it a shot, too. Still forbidden to have mechanical help, riders now had to finish each stage with the same clothes they started with, a draconian measure considering the cold night-starts and blazingly hot finishes. Riders would complain and threaten to pull out, and Desgrange, with his often unrealistic views on the physical and mental strength of the athletes, would counter with accusations of riders being weaklings and crybabies.

  In the middle of the decade, one of Desgrange’s biggest challenges was to retain interest in a race that had seen no French winner since 1911. But the descent continued for France, reaching a low point in 1926 when there were no French stage winners in the race (the only time in the first ninety-six years of the Tour this happened). The ’20s were bookended by domination from the usual suspects: Belgium and Luxembourg. The early races continued to be commanded by the Belgians; in 1920 they won twelve of fifteen stages and filled eight of the top ten places on GC in one of the least competitive Tours on record. At the end of the decade, two wins for Luxembourg’s Nicolas Frantz kept his country punching above its weight. Throw in two wins by an upstart Italian by the name of Ottavio Bottecchia and there seemed very little light at the end of the tunnel for the host nation.

  1930s

  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Desgrange knew he had to do something drastic to reverse the fortunes of French cycling in order to save the Tour from extinction. Prompted by the emergence of French riders Antonin Magne, André Leducq and Roger Lapébie, his decision to change the competition from teams sponsored by manufacturers to national teams proved a masterstroke and ushered in a golden age of French dominance. France won the first five races of the ’30s and regained bragging rights as the most successful nation in what was now the most prestigious cycling race in the world. The last of the five wins proved the most dominant, with Antonin Magne taking out his second T
our and every rider in the French team winning at least one stage. (Not all the French riders were happy though, as René Vietto twice gave his wheel to Magne in the race, scuppering any chance he had of winning the Tour.)

  Not everything Desgrange touched turned to gold, however. His constant tinkering with time bonuses for the stage winners skewed both the 1932 and 1933 results, and the bonus system was extremely short-lived when it emerged that the third-placed racer in 1933, Giuseppe Martano, was the winner by overall time; Frenchman Georges Speicher won by virtue of his time bonuses.

  The Tour had a watershed moment in 1936. Jacques Goddet, son of Victor Goddet, the accountant who greenlit the funds for the first Tour, took over the running of the race from Henri Desgrange, who had fallen into ill health. (Desgrange died in August 1940.) The new director’s first decision was to allow derailleur gears for the team racers in 1937, and it didn’t take long for him to experience what running the Tour was all about when that year’s race exploded in controversy. The French and Belgian teams went to war, with alleged sabotage on both sides, and Frenchman Roger Lapébie was accused of having more pushers than Pablo Escobar on his way up the mountains to Tour victory. Tensions ran high, and who knows what might have happened the following year if Italian Gino Bartali hadn’t diffused the tension by winning the Tour crown and confirming his reputation as the ‘best rider in the world’.

  As the ’30s drew to a close, war was again on the horizon in Europe; Italy, Spain and Germany did not send riders in 1939. The Tour would not return until 1947, and by then many riders — most notably Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppi and René Vietto — would have lost their best years to the war.

  1940s

  After suffering several years of declining sales and rumours of a cosy relationship with the occupying German forces during the war, L’Auto was closed down in the middle of 1944, but the same fate did not befall the Tour — Jacques Goddet wisely refused to run it during the war, so it wasn’t tainted by the Nazis. A new publication, L’Equipe, was established, which was L’Auto in everything but name.