1940: The Tour that wasn’t (4/10)

At the turn of each decade, the Tour de France has gone through organisational changes and backstage struggles that have variously turned out to be decisive or utterly inconsequential. The journey back in time proposed by letour.fr continues in 1940: when the country entered the war, Henri Desgrange tried to keep the 34th edition of the Tour alive until spring, but had to resign himself to its cancellation. Before July France was already under German occupation, and Desgrange left the Tour orphaned in August.

According to the tautological principle that you can’t suppress something that doesn’t exist, the 1940 edition of the Tour de France is the only one in history to have been cancelled. Although its detailed route was never published and its dates were not officially announced, its organisation was well thought out, envisaged and programmed in the offices of the organising newspaper, in a France that was nevertheless at war and whose youth had been drafted in September 1939. It would be far-fetched to suspect L’Auto of existing naively in a sports bubble ignoring the major issues in the balance on the battlefield, quite the contrary. From mid-September, the newspaper even assumed a total commitment by changing its title to L’Auto-Soldat, and its editorial line then split between news of the world conflict, analysis of the competitions that continued to take place and news of the champions called up to serve in the armed forces. On 16 September, the headline was accompanied by an unequivocal quote from Voltaire: „Every man is a soldier against tyranny“. It is in this line that Henri Desgrange, who, although seriously ill, did not let go of his pen but distanced himself from sport, multiplied patriotic editorials and caricatures, for example Hitler, whom he described as a „house painter“.

In its services, all the assistants were active and strove to give shape from the very beginning of winter to a cycling season that could also sustain the idea that France continued to live on. In December, discussions began with the heads of the bicycle manufacturers to try to come up with a calendar and invent a new formula. How can a bunch of riders of at the same skill level be formed when most of the riders in the 1939 Tour were fighting? Were foreign cyclists from non-belligerent countries going to be accepted? Who would therefore have their best people available? Where can we get bicycles when the entire industry is focused on the war effort? The debate was launched, and even initiated in the columns of the newspaper, which transcribed the content of the negotiations like a soap opera. Alcyon’s boss was optimistic, but not as determined as Colibri’s: „I’ve come, like all my colleagues, to put a white ball in to get unanimous congratulations,“ read the 16 January edition of L’Auto. On the other hand, Genial-Lucifer had more misgivings („Maurice Evrard felt that in his own opinion the uselessness of certain road races was obvious“, L’Auto of 13 January), and the tone was also very cautious from the head of Dilecta. However, we manage to get everyone to agree year after year on a formula published on 6 February which, among other measures, only admits riders who are not yet old enough to carry weapons and limits the number of foreigners to 33% of the peloton.

On 11 July, on the BBC, an anonymous columnist chose sport to make the voice of London heard. „Today, if Mr. Hitler had agreed to let Europe live in peace, the 34th Tour de France would have set off joyfully.”

Everything seemed more or less in place, but while it was business as usual at the velodromes throughout the winter, there were great difficulties at the start of the road racing season. Paris-Roubaix, whose route was initially validated by military authorities, was transformed into Roubaix-Paris and finally saved in-extremis as Le Mans-Paris! It looked like there was also going to be course reversal for Paris-Tours, and the clouds were particularly threatening on the Race to the Sun, which L’Auto was exceptionally associated with the Le Petit Niçois newspaper in an attempt to save the organisation. Above all, Henri Desgrange published a paper with a very pessimistic tone for the future of the 1940 Tour de France. He evoked a course in the form of a „deflated bladder“, listed all the constraints he faced, and concluded as follows: „It would be enough, wouldn’t it, for you to expect this article to end with the announcement that the 1940 Tour de France will not take place? Well! It is not enough for us and we still have one last hope of being able to triumph over all these difficulties, and we want to give it a try“. The sentence was not long in coming. Four days later, the announcement was posted on the front page: „The Tour de France will not take place this year. It is postponed to 1941. See the explanations provided by its creator, Henri Desgrange, in the 13 and 14 April issues.”

Events then precipitated the country into the dark sequence of the German occupation following the signing of the armistice of 22 June 1940 by Philippe Pétain. Meanwhile, Charles De Gaulle launched his 18 June appeal on the BBC, the Free France timidly structured itself behind the „Leader of the French who continue the war“. It so happened that from London, the following 11 July, a small French enclave decided to act as if the Tour de France had started. The programme „Ici la France“ was broadcast daily for half an hour on the BBC. That day, an anonymous columnist whose name remains unknown chose sport to make the voice of London heard. „Today, if Mr. Hitler had agreed to let Europe live in peace, he would have set off joyfully on the 34th Tour de France*. A completely fictitious story began, as a way to reunite the divided country and to find itself in a shared and happy wistfulness. This was far from reality, but in the legend of the Tour, the story is as important as the race.

It is unlikely that Henri Desgrange could have heard this report, which would have certainly given him chills, perhaps even drawn a few tears. For the 1940 Tour de France, even if it had been able to take place, would also have been the first without him. Operated on a few months earlier and seriously weakened, the father of the Tour de France died on 16 August, at the age of 75. His successor and spiritual son, Jacques Goddet, took over the reins of the newspaper and the following year he opposed the organisation of a Tour de France whose prestige would be claimed by the Vichy regime. The return of the real Tour de France had to wait until 1947.
@ASO

1930: The Tour revolutionizes (3/10)

At the turn of each decade, the Tour de France has gone through organisational changes and backstage struggles that have variously turned out to be decisive or utterly inconsequential. The journey back in time proposed by letour.fr continues in 1930, the year of a major revolution when, Tour boss and editor-in-chief of L’Auto, Henri Desgrange decided riders would compete in national teams and no longer for bicycle manufacturers. To pay for this costly reform, the newspaper also found a new source of income with the creation of the advertising caravan.

Tensions between the bicycle brands and the organisers were a common thread that followed and forged the history of the nascent Tour de France and then the interwar period. Henri Desgrange, who was a purist and uncompromising in his conception of sporting competition, despised and fought against any form of agreement likely to contaminate the simple athletic confrontation between the heroes of the Grande Boucle. Since the resumption in 1919, following the First World War, the Tour de France boss introduced regulations to reduce the influence of the most powerful manufacturers in the industry, which had a tendency to dictate race scenarios. The situation even began to disgust Desgrange following the 1929 Tour, won by Maurice De Waele, a Belgian champion who was certainly solid and exemplary, but in the end wasn’t challenged nearly enough by the competition on his victorious ride to Paris.

For the 1930 edition, Desgrange decided to radically change the format. Teams were no longer formed by bicycle manufacturers, but were made up of national selections whose composition was also decided by L’Auto. In order to be in complete control, he committed to supplying the bikes to the Tour riders, at least those entered in the Aces category, even if it meant making the “tourists-routiers” wait a few years. The great project quickly developed in the mind of Desgrange, who announced precisely his plans and objectives in L’Auto on 25 September 1929: „The major change is the suppression of commercial rivalries that have been significantly shattering the success of the race every year since 1903. With only one brand available for the Aces, we can say that there is no longer a commercial battle, and that the race will be able to take place in a sporting manner. From now on, nothing will prevent the best from winning“.

The change to national teams must not be considered as a declaration of war, as the brands retain their riders in all other competitions throughout the year and could, for example, require them to boycott the Tour.

The transformation wanted by the organizing newspaper implied major constraints since the bicycles, accommodations and provisions were fully taken care of. The financial expenditures to be made were significant and had to be paid for by some income if the reform was to be feasible. This is where a genius idea was born to balance the accounts. Desgrange was assisted by an advertising director, Robert Desmarets, who had noticed that for several years, brands had taken advantage of the exceptional crowds around the peloton to set up commercial ventures. Vehicles in the colours of Menier chocolates, for example, were already handing out thousands of bars to the public in 1929. “Grand Bob”, as he was nicknamed, decided to officially accept them at the opening of the race, in return for a fee covering most of the extra expenses for the year. Menier, Fromagerie Bell (Vache Qui Rit), Biscottes Delft and Montres Noveltex formed the Tour’s first publicity caravan.

The power struggle between Desgrange and the bicycle manufacturers can, however, be put into perspective, as the co-dependent relationship remained very real. The move to the national teams should not have been seen as a declaration of war, as the brands retained their riders all year round on all other the competitions, on the roads of France as well as on the velodromes, and could for example require them to boycott the Tour. This context of more or less harmonious cohabitation partially explained the tone adopted by Desgrange in his opening article on the day of the race’s start: „It will be the honour of the bicycle manufacturers to have accepted this experience, which may seem to deprive this or that of a profitable advertisement, but which must benefit the entire bicycle industry. (…) They did not accept this experience passively; they followed it and will follow it, for a month, with great interest. (…) Yes, we owe André Leducq and Delannoy to Alcyon, Marcel Bidot to La Française, Demuysère to Génial-Lucifer, Bonduel to Dilecta, and the Magne Brothers to the Société Française de Cycles. Our great brands have lent them to us, or better said… they gave them to us without any restrictions. What a guarantee of success that such a gift, and what recognition for such a gesture do we not owe to our major cycle manufacturers?”. The recognition was also that of a businessman, well aware that these firms were also huge advertisers who contributed to the financial health of the newspaper throughout the year.

In any case, in the Aces category there were five national teams of eight riders at the start. Belgium’s black jerseys, Italy’s green, Spain’s red, Germany’s yellow and France’s blue-white-red were about to spark phenomenal enthusiasm among the public… and among the readers. Desgrange naturally found that the patriotic fibre was working to full effect with the French Tennis Musketeers, who were taking the entire country by storm in their matches with the Australians and Americans in the Davis Cup. He found his Musketeers on wheels with André Leducq, Antonin Magne and Charles Pélissier. As if by magic, while the French were generally outclassed during the 1920s by the Belgians, Luxembourgers and Italians, the collective force of the French squad was impressive. Pélissier won a total of eight stages, a record that still stands, while „Dédé gueule d’amour“ won the general classification after a hard-fought battle with Alfredo Binda and Learco Guerra among others. The success of the French clan was also a tremendous victory for Henri Desgrange, who concluded the Tour with these words: „This is now, indisputably, the National Bicycle Holiday. From now on, we will celebrate it every year under the same conditions, to the greatest glory of this divine machine and to the glory of our great cycling industry. (…) Thus the Tour de France will henceforth be a great international and peaceful competition where cycling nations will come every year to measure the value of their champions“.
@ASO

1920: “sportsmen” according to Desgrange (2/10)

At the turn of each decade, the Tour de France has gone through organisational changes and backstage struggles that have variously turned out to be decisive or utterly inconsequential. The journey back in time proposed by letour.fr continues in 1920, with a look at the strong-minded decisions and writings of Henri Desgrange, the director of the Tour de France and chief editor of the newspaper L’Auto. In keeping with a French nation in admiration of its heroes from the Great War and enthralled by the adventures of the first aviators ready to risk their lives for heroics, the former holder of the hour record, who had become a powerful press figure, can also be considered to have made the Tour rhyme with trial and tribulation…

It is a tricky exercise to determine the level of difficulty when designing a race to be demanding, to require its participants to stand out via their bravery and endurance, but to avoid going beyond what is reasonable… This question has been central to debates between organisers, participants, supporters and journalists since the beginnings of sport. Evidently, the notion put forward by Henri Desgrange, the boss of L’Auto newspaper and the Tour in France of the 1920’s, was not troubled with tantrums and bellyaching: his role was to organise a trial, in both the sporting and true sense of the word. It is always possible to discuss which edition of the Tour de France has been the most formidable. The race in 1920 may not necessarily feature at the top of the list, but it definitely included all the suitable ingredients. With a total distance of 5,503 kilometres, it is not the longest in history, though due to only boasting 15 stages, the average daily distance of 367 km is only beaten by the 1919 edition. It should be remembered that the damage caused by the First World War still disfigured the country, with most of the roads made up of potholes, broken cobbles, cracks and ruts… These conditions were not exactly ideal for a bicycle race, especially in light of the fact that the stage starts took place on average at 2 o’clock in the morning.

As if the physical conditions of the race were not tough enough, Desgrange inaugurated a formula aimed at diminishing bicycle brands’ influence on the race and forbid any sort of collusion. The director of the Tour de France was obsessed by this combat, conveyed by strict rules that were applied without the slightest indulgence: “A participant on the Tour de France is placed in the situation of a rider who sets off to train alone without having prepared anything on his route for refreshments. This means: 1. He cannot assist his comrades or competitors in any way and they cannot accept anything from him; 2. On the road, the rider must be responsible for his own refreshments, without having ordered or requested the ordering of anything, and must not receive any help from whomsoever, to the extent by which he is obliged to collect water from the springs or fountains he may encounter by himself. With regard to the bicycle, each rider must complete the Tour de France on the same machine, except in the case of serious accidents. In such a case, he may swap the machine with a cyclist encountered on his route, on the sole condition that the machine borrowed is a different brand to his own”.

After 4 stages, the pack was only made up of 48 riders out of the 113 who started the race.
The mood was glum, all the more so as the French were palpably dominated by the Belgians.

Thus the scene was set. When the Grande Boucle began at Place de la Concorde on 27th June, the worries about a plethora of punctures became reality. After four stages, the pack was only made up of 48 riders out of the 113 who started the race. The mood was glum, all the more so as the French were palpably dominated by the Belgians. Of course, Henri Pélissier triumphed in Brest and at Les Sables-d’Olonne, but the rebellious temperament of the winner on the Paris-Roubaix and Bordeaux-Paris races in 1919 was hardly to the liking of Desgrange, who did not hold back from writing exactly what he thought about him in L’Auto, the day after he exited the race on the longest stage, between Les Sables d’Olonne and Bayonne (483 km). “Firstly, is Pélissier worse after the war than before? Not at all! (…) He is not worse, but the others are better and the obstacles have become more difficult. Those are some of the reasons. They count for something, but not as much as the reason which dominates all the rest and that Pélissier finely explains as follows: ‘I have money and circumstances that exempt me from undertaking such difficult tasks’. Who can blame him for such a line of thought? At the most, could we ask him why he even starts to undertake them? His mind is no longer what it was in days gone by. He enjoys life, his enthusiasm has been becalmed with age and his heart no longer beats to the devilish rhythm of his beginnings. (…) Moreover, for him the cream is too thick, the spoon stands up in it by itself. He is already morally flabby and cuts a heavy figure, when on the Tour de France it is necessary to be as skinny as a whippet”.

Le 1920 Tour de France continued without Henri Pélissier (who nevertheless enjoyed his revenge over Desgrange in 1923!) and continued to wring out the pack, whittled down to 31 members on completion of the first Pyrenean stage. In his diatribe against Pélissier, the director of the Tour incidentally continued to describe the mental and moral qualities of the valiant champion as he saw them: “And what about his effeminate edginess?! In Morlaix he was not interested, in Brest he was; at Les Sables-d’Olonne he showed intent, but one hundred kilometres further he would not show the slightest bit more. Compare this ‘fair-weather’ attitude with, if I may say, the unswerving will of Christophe”.

Dogged, as often, by bad luck, Eugène Christophe, Desgrange’s favourite, also exited the race, beaten by unconquerable back pains. Nonetheless, it was a similarly tough guy who was victorious in Paris. Philippe Thys became the first three-time winner of the Tour when completing a series started before the war (in 1913 and 1914). He dominated the classification in which the top seven places were occupied by Belgians, after more than 228 hours on the saddle, which is almost three times more than the 83 hours on a bike that Egan Bernal spent last July. It would be interesting to read a portrait of the first Colombian winner of the Tour de France written by the hand of “HD”!
@ASO