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

Light-years behind the records of Eddy Merckx and nowhere as famous as the three other five-time winners of the Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, a total of 67 riders have worn the yellow jersey for just one day (or even less) in their careers and exemplified the pursuit of excellence from a humble start. Back in 1987, Jean-François Bernard was taking part in his second Tour, the first one as the leader of Toshiba-La Vie Claire, when he added the yellow jersey to his race number 1 after a colossal performance on the slopes of the Mont Ventoux. However, things were about to go pear-shaped…

French cycling fans were looking for references in summer 1987. Bernard Hinault had just hung up his bicycle and Laurent Fignon was out of shape, while those who had fallen in love with Greg LeMond, an American with a lot of French character, in 1986 were left disappointed after a serious hunting accident forced him to sit out the race. The Tour had „changing of the guard“ written all over it, with riders such as Charly Mottet, Pedro Delgado and Stephen Roche as the main favourites. However, it was another contender who burst onto the scene in stage 18, a gruelling time trial on the Mont Ventoux coming right after a rest day. It was a performance that turned Jean-François Bernard from an outsider into a hero: Hinault’s former lieutenant crushed the best power riders in the flat section between Carpentras and the foot of the mountain and then left the Colombian mountain goats in the dust on the slopes of the Giant of Provence. Jean-François Bernard’s stellar performance evoked memories of Charly Gaul, who had also won a time trial to the summit of Mont Ventoux, and turned him into the new leader of the race and the odds-on favourite to take the yellow jersey all the way to Paris.

„Bernard à la Hinault“, read the provocative headline in the next morning’s edition of L’Équipe, harking back to Bernard’s glorious origins and auspicious future. In his column in the newspaper, Pierre Chany wrote about the young Burgundian’s leap forward: „This rider who has just proved to be one of the favourites to win the race on the Champs-Élysées with this dazzling performance, maybe even the top favourite, showed in just under an hour and a half that he knows perfectly how to amalgamate his talent and the animalistic fire that burns within all extraordinary riders, without which talent means nothing or almost nothing.“ However, Bernard was still not in the clear, with Roche, Mottet and Delgado within less than 4 minutes and four Alpine mountain stages left before the finish.

In the next stage, the yellow jersey suffered a series of setbacks that his rivals did not hesitate to use to their advantage. It all began with a puncture right before the Col de Tourniol, about 100 km from the finish in Villard-de-Lans. „It was insane: I had a flat, it got fixed and I got back“, explains „Jeff“ Bernard, evoking the bitter memories of that day. „After that, bottlenecks formed in the feeding zone and then my chain came off on the Col de la Bataille. I was going crazy. I managed to hold on at 1′, 1′30″, until I just gave up 10 km from Villard-de-Lans after chasing for 90 klicks. I had nothing left in the tank.“ Bernard’s ordeal cost him 4′16″ to the stage winner, Pedro Delgado, and put him 1′39″ behind the new leader, Stephen Roche. Even winning the Dijon time trial on the eve of the finish in Paris was not enough to put him back in contention, and the Burgundian had to settle for the bottom step of the podium in the 1987 Tour de France.
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@Presse Sports
Light-years behind the records of Eddy Merckx and nowhere as famous as the three other five-time winners of the Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, a total of 67 riders have worn the yellow jersey for just one day (or even less) in their careers and exemplified the pursuit of excellence from a humble start. Back in 1971, Dutchman Marinus Wagtmans took the yellow jersey from his leader Eddy Merckx without even realising… but only for a third of a stage!

It was 1971 and Merckx Mania was in full swing. The two-time winner and defending champion of the Tour de France had (again) won Milan–San Remo and Liège–Bastogne–Liège in the early season, as well as strengthening his team with several super-domestiques. Eddy Merckx’s new team, Molteni, had recruited 1968 Tour runner-up Herman Van Springel as well as Marinus Wagtmans, who had finished sixth in 1969 and fifth in 1970. Even with Luis Ocaña’s dominant performance in the Critérium du Dauphiné a few weeks before, these star signings further dimmed the competition’s already faint hopes of toppling the Cannibal from the throne. The Italian-Belgian outfit struck with overwhelming force from the opening team time trial, putting Merckx in yellow from the start.
The next stage dabbled with a peculiar formula due to the influence of sports politics related to the Regio* bid to organise the first European Games. It was agreed to hold three partial stages on the same day, with finishes in Basel (Switzerland), Freiburg (Germany) and Mulhouse (France). Even though this stage race within a stage tested the patience of the peloton, the riders started the triple challenge almost at the crack of dawn. There was no doubt that Éric Leman had won the first sector in a sprint, but the overall lead had to be decided on countback… with Marinus Wagtmans coming ahead of the rest of the Molteni riders without even realising.
„Rini“ began the 90 km romp from Basel to Freiburg clad in yellow, but the Cannibal remained as voracious as ever despite racing for the same team, and he pounced on a „Miko hotspot“ just 7 km into the stage to claim a five-second time bonus. Merckx continued to widen the gap all the way to the finish line, stripping Wagtmans of the yellow jersey after only 2 h 29′31″. However, the Dutchman does not hold the record for the shortest stint in yellow, as several riders have only got to wear it in a time trial. Philippe Gilbert has been the most ephemeral leader so far, keeping the coveted garment for just over 25 minutes in the Les Essarts team time trial at the beginning of the 2011 Tour. After this golden experience, Wagtmans went on to win the stage to Nancy and finish the 1971 Tour in 16th place overall… at a respectable distance from Eddy!
*: short for Regio Basiliensis, meaning „Basel Region“ in Latin.
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@Presse Sports
Light-years behind the records of Eddy Merckx and nowhere as famous as the three other five-time winners of the Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, a total of 67 riders have worn the yellow jersey for just one day (or even less) in their careers and exemplified the pursuit of excellence from a humble start. Jean-Pierre Genet, one of Raymond Poulidor’s most loyal domestiques, went from finishing dead last in the 1967 Tour to taking the yellow jersey at the start of the 1968 edition.
Back in 1968, Raymond Poulidor was still in the first half of his Tour de France career, but with a few weeks to go before the start of a race he was touted to win, the book Poulidor, or Glory Without The Yellow Jersey could already be found in every bookshop. Even though this edition was the last hurrah for national teams in the Tour, the ties forged throughout the season remained strong in the peloton, with „Poupou“ receiving the support of some of his teammates in Cycles Mercier. One of them, a 1.83 m and 78 kg giant known as Jean-Pierre Genet, was as unconcerned about the general classification as he was hard-working and devoted to his leader. He had served Poulidor in every spring campaign since 1964, helping him to three podium finishes in the four previous editions. In 1967, Genêt had even dragged his wounded, aching body all the way to Paris, finishing dead last in the general classification (78th).

The Belgian and French teams carved up the first few stage wins after the Grand Départ in Vittel. As the peloton headed to Rouen on the fourth day of racing, Poulidor’s lieutenants at Mercier were on top of things. Jean Stablinski blew up the race going into the final third of the stage, only to be caught by a counter-attack including riders such as George Chappe and Jean-Pierre Genet. The rider from Marseille and the man from Brest worked well together and shared the spoils on 1 July: Chappe took the stage win by pre-empting the sprint, while the 3′26″ gap to the peloton was enough to catapult Genet past Van Springel and into the yellow jersey.
„Until now, he was a water carrier. From now on, he will play a more glorious role, with its fair share of trials and tribulations, as a gold carrier“, waxed lyrical Jacques Goddet in his column in L’Équipe the next day. Multiple articles in his newspaper hailed a self-effacing rider who offered his perspective on serving as a domestique: „I’ve always stayed true to my commitments and friends. I’ll freely admit that, some years, when I looked back, there were a lot of regrets and not a lot of money, but it turns out I was right to keep going at it. I got my reward, so I’m happy.“ The first half-stage of the next day started at 7 am and took the peloton to Bagnoles-de-l’Orne. Sporting the ephemeral nickname Bouton d’Or („Buttercup“), Genet had returned to his usual role by the end of the morning, surrendering the yellow jersey to Georges Vandenberghe… but another triumph awaited in the shape of a stage win in Saint-Étienne two weeks later. Genet would remain a „Poupou“ man through and through, supporting his leader in every Tour de France campaign until the last one in 1976.
@ASO

@Presse Sports
Light-years behind the records of Eddy Merckx and nowhere as famous as the three other five-time winners of the Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, a total of 67 riders have worn the yellow jersey for just one day (or even less) in their careers and exemplified the pursuit of excellence from a humble start. Years before he met a tragic end on the slopes of the Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour, Tom Simpson had become the first British rider ever to wear the yellow jersey in 1962.
The 1962 Tour ushered in a small revolution as trade teams returned to the race and national teams exited the stage. The favourites were galvanised under the leadership of their directeurs sportifs, who now managed their campaigns (and paid their wages) year-round. For example, defending champion Jacques Anquetil spearheaded the fearsome ACBB–Saint-Raphäel outfit, while Raymond Poulidor, who had put his name on the map with victories in Milan–San Remo and the French championships, was making his Tour debut with Cycles Mercier. Tom Simpson had an unassuming start to the race after failing to make an impression in his previous two starts (29th in 1961 and DNF in 1961), while his leader in the team sponsored by chicory company Leroux, André Darrigade, hit the ground running with a bunch sprint triumph in stage 2 to Herenthals.
„If it’s raining in Wimbledon, I’ll no doubt have a chance of seeing a few articles a bit longer than normal in the press. Otherwise, there’s a risk this will go unnoticed.“
The Brit (a Breton by adoption ever since moving to Saint-Brieuc) had long struggled with a reputation as a dreadful strategist. L’Équipe described him as „a fool with an incredible amount of talent, which was seemingly wasted on someone so impetuous“. In any event, Simpson was well positioned as the race headed into its first mountain stages in the Pyrenees, sitting in third place overall and ready to pounce on the road to Saint-Gaudens. Bahamontes jumped on the Tourmalet and Col d’Aspin to hoover up mountain points, but the real selection was made on the Col de Peyresourde, leaving a 22-man group that included almost all the favourites. Even though Robert Cazala ended up taking the stage, it was Tom Simpson who stepped into the limelight as the first British rider ever to wear the yellow jersey.
Seven years earlier, Brian Robinson had led the charge for the first British team in the Grande Boucle, later going on to take the first British stage win in 1958. Since then, Simpson had risen as a contender for the Tour de France, notching up a win in the Tour of Flanders in 1961 and second place in Paris–Nice in spring 1962. It was enough to fill with confidence a champion who revelled in his role as an ambassador for cycling hours after seizing the lead of the Tour: „If it’s raining in Wimbledon, I’ll no doubt have a chance of seeing a few articles a bit longer than normal in the press. Otherwise, there’s a risk this will go unnoticed“, he said humorously before predicting he would struggle in the next stage. „Of course, I’d like to keep the yellow jersey for as long as possible, but I’m a bit apprehensive about the Superbagnères time trial. It’s a bit too long for my taste.“ And so it was: Simpson surrendered the yellow jersey to Jef Planckaert, who would in turn yield it to Anquetil a few stages later. 50 years later, Simpson’s distant heir and fellow track racer Bradley Wiggins took the Union Jack to the top step of the podium on the Champs-Élysées.
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