The Tour de France

by Paul Hansford

  Truth be told, there was only ever going to be one winner. Sky backed Wiggins to the hilt — the contrite Froome playing the good employee for the remainder of the race — and he was virtually untouchable in the time trials, taking big chunks of time in both stages. The cherry on the cake was Wiggins leading the Sky train on the streets of Paris, helping pal Mark Cavendish to his fourth win on the Champs-Élysées in succession.

  Off the bike, Wiggins is a complex character with many sides to his personality. A self-confessed ‘loner’ and ‘hermit’, he remains extremely humble about his achievements and seems to be uncomfortable with his newfound fame at times (he even shaved off his trademark sideburns after too many people began to recognise him post-Olympics). He dealt with the pressure of the Tour by regularly referring to it as ‘only a bike race’, although his iconic air-punch and scream after he won the final time trial said otherwise. He clearly doesn’t suffer fools and is very much his own man, rocking the Fred Perry button-down shirts and mod hairstyles when most riders are all polos and short back and sides.

  If one comment sums up this complicated man perfectly — his humour, his self-deprecating streak, but also the awareness of his importance — it would be Wiggins’s answer to why he agreed to make a film about his quest for the yellow jersey in 2012: ‘Well, it’s a film about Bradley Wiggins … and I don’t really know who he is.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Tour de France’s greatest moments

  Trying to distil a hundred years of the Tour de France into a series of greatest moments is nearly impossible. The very nature of a three-week race around one of Europe’s largest countries means that heroic feats take place on a daily basis, but most are lost in the frenetic blur of the passing peloton.

  Just what constitutes a great Tour moment is a matter of debate: some take place in a flash as a rider makes a split-second decision to pull away from the pack and strike out on their own; others are at a slower pace, as mountain slopes provide the setting for attacks that demoralise opponents mentally as well as physically; a number take place over a series of stages, where monumental comebacks or Tour-winning margins are built. Furthermore, a legendary moment can be about a single rider, a battle between rivals, or a stage that has gone down in history.

  What they all share at their core are individuals with a will to overcome everything their body, the course and their opponents can throw at them to carve out their own place in Tour history.

  François Faber: 1909 Tour de France

  François Faber was a giant of the early years of cycling, and not just due to his massive 1.86-m, 92-kg frame. Granted, he would never have been able to haul himself up the mountains the Tour travelled to in subsequent years, but the way in which he destroyed the 1909 Tour despite atrocious conditions makes him worthy of legendary status. Few Tours suffered worse weather than in ’09, with wind, rain, sleet and snow all rearing their ugly heads. Roads back then weren’t the smooth tarmac contemporary racers are used to nowadays; competitors had to negotiate deeply rutted, muddy thoroughfares that the strongest of horses would have turned their noses up at. A third of the field wussed out in the first week alone, but a little bit of weather wasn’t going to stop the big Luxembourger from his date with destiny.

  Working as a manual labourer on the banks of the Seine had hardened Faber to the harsh weather, more so than the other riders who struggled from the start. ‘Garrigou and van Hauwaert [were] frozen to the core, Lapize bent over himself with cold, and Trousselier [had] a nose that outshone the headlamps of the official car,’ said Faber, clearly employing a ghostwriter to pen his somewhat gloating recollections, after an early stage. What made the twenty-two-year-old’s win even more astonishing was that he did most of his riding on his own, rarely aided or shielded from the harsh conditions by fellow riders. His solo efforts included the final 200 km from Roubaix to Metz and more than 100 km the next day over the icy Ballon d’Alsace, which he won by a massive thirty minutes. Other tests included knee-high puddles, broken chains, blinding sleet and winds that blew him off the road. And that’s before he was kicked off his bike by a horse … While the riders were dropping like flies, the spectators proved hardier, with thousands lining the streets — 20,000 in Lyon — to cheer Faber to victory. Winning six stages in all, he won what is considered to be one of the hardest Tours of all time, prompting his manager to call him ‘the god who came down to ride a bicycle’. In a sad footnote, Faber was killed in 1915 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, shot in the head as he carried an injured comrade back from the German lines on his shoulders. A giant until the end.

  Eugène Christophe: 9 July 1913, Stage 6 Bayonne to Luchon, 326 km

  In 1919 Eugène Christophe was the first rider to wear the yellow jersey as the leader of the race, but it was something that had happened to him six years earlier on the descent of the Col du Tourmalet that secured his place in the annals of Tour de France history.

  Second place in 1912, Christophe was the favourite to win the following year — and his prospects improved when leader (and defending champion) Odile Defraye pulled out due to exhaustion and Christophe inherited first place halfway through the race. As he and Belgian rider Philippe Thys summited the Col du Tourmalet, the twenty-eight-year-old looked poised to take the race by the scruff of the neck — only for an errant race car to throw him onto the seat of his pants. As Thys rode off into the distance, Christophe assessed the damage: a broken fork, which should have signalled the end of his race. Not one to give up, he threw his bike over his shoulder and walked 10 km downhill to the nearest village where he found a blacksmith. Tour rules at the time stated that if a rider broke his bike, it had to be fixed without any outside assistance, so Christophe grabbed a hammer and went about making a new set of forks … as you do.

  ‘Monsieur Lecomte was the name of the blacksmith,’ recalled Christophe:

  He was a nice man and wanted to help me, but he wasn’t allowed to. The regulations were strict. I had to do all the repair myself. I never spent a more wretched time in my life than those cruel hours in Monsieur Lecomte’s forge.

  At one point, with hammer in one hand and forks in the other, Christophe asked a seven-year-old boy to pump the bellows for him, an act that the race official gave him a ten-minute penalty for (which, generously, was later reduced to three minutes). The repairs took three hours in total and when he finally arrived in Luchon, it was three hours and fifty minutes after Thys, who went on to win the Tour.

  The broken forks of 1913 were just one in a long line of unfortunate incidents to befall Christophe during the Tour; even the plaque erected in the village to commemorate his heroics in the blacksmith’s spelt his name wrong: ‘Cristophe’.

  Lucien Buysse: 6 July 1926, Stage 10 Bayonne to Luchon, 326 km

  Henri Desgrange’s sadistic streak towards the Tour’s riders reached its high point in 1926 when he devised the longest course ever — 5745 km — but it nearly came back to bite him on the behind during stage 10 between Bayonne and Luchon. Riding the ‘Circle of Death’ — over the Pyrenean peaks Osquich, Aubisque, Soulor, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde — was a tough ask under normal circumstances, but the freezing, rainy conditions on that July day turned the mountainous stage into a war of attrition. Much of the course proved impassable due to ice and mud, with riders hoisting the white flag all the way along the 326-km stage. One man who seemed unaffected by the conditions — or should that be ‘less affected’ — was Lucien Buysse, who steadily took time from the leaders over every icy peak. The Belgian, who initially made a name for himself as a super-domestique in the service of Italian ace Ottavio Bottecchia, emerged the victor after more than seventeen hours in the saddle — but by midnight, twenty-two men were still unaccounted for.

  Showing a hitherto unseen concern for the competitors, Desgrange sent search parties out into the night. They discovered broken riders
seeking shelter in bars, hotels and farmhouses all the way along the route. Buysse went on to claim the Tour that year, a feat made all the more incredible after news emerged that he had been told of his daughter’s death before the third stage and had to be persuaded by his family to continue riding.

  André Leducq: 21 July 1930, Stage 16 Grenoble to Evian, 331 km

  With Desgrange looking to breathe new life into the Tour, 1930 saw the introduction of national teams instead of manufacturer teams, and it was over the 331-km Alpine stage from Grenoble to Evian that the French team showed how teamwork and selflessness could win the race.

  André Leducq, once described as having ‘gueule d’amour, muscle d’acier’ — ‘muscles of steel and a face made for love’ (I think I’ve got that the right way round, for the sake of Leducq’s conquests) — had the yellow jersey as the Tour entered the Alps, and he looked to be in a strong position due to his well-known descending skills as he peaked the Galibier on stage 16. But the mountain had other ideas that day, and introduced Leducq’s head to the tarmac, knocking him out cold on the descent. Surrounded by his teammates, it took a dazed André a quarter of an hour to regain his senses, by which time the Italians had gunned themselves into a fifteen-minute advantage. Learco ‘The Locomotive’ Guerra was now the overall race leader on the road, with little more than 60 km to go to claim yellow.

  But the French weren’t about to give up, and teammate Pierre Magne literally lifted Leducq back onto his bike to begin the ride up the Col du Télégraph. Disaster struck on the ascent though, as Leducq lost a pedal and came down hard on his knee, screaming that it was broken. Marcel Bidot quickly ‘borrowed’ a pedal from a spectator — and by ‘borrow’, I mean ‘shouted at people until someone gave him one’ — and fixed it to the broken bike, but by then Leducq was writhing in pain on the side of the road, ready to give up the fight. ‘Stop blubbering,’ said Bidot, who later in his career became France’s most successful team manager. ‘The yellow jersey never gives up. Look, the whole team is waiting for you. We will take you to the finish.’

  Bidot’s ‘grow a pair’ speech did the trick, and with the Herculean efforts of brothers Antonin and Pierre Magne and Charles Pélissier, Leducq was able to make his way back to Guerra in the final 50 km and catch him on the line. Guerra never recovered and Leducq ended up winning the tour by a healthy 14:19, with Antonin Magne finishing third, Bidot fifth and Pierre Magne sixth overall.

  Gino Bartali: The mountains of the 1948 Tour

  For the first half of the 1948 Tour, Gino Bartali was showing his age. The thirty-four-year-old was twenty-one minutes behind young French upstart Louison Bobet and, ten years after his one and only Tour victory, it looked like the sun was setting on a glorious career that had included, amongst other things, three Giros d’Italia, four Italian national championships and four Milan–San Remos. That was, until all hell broke loose in Italy and Bartali was called upon to save his country from anarchy (no pressure then!).

  It may have been a rest day for the Tour on 14 July 1948 but, over in Italy, Domenico Pallante thought he would liven things up a bit by sticking a couple of bullets in the chest of Communist Party chairman Palmiro Togliatti. Thousands took to the streets in protest as word spread, with civil unrest a real possibility. Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi needed a distraction on a grand scale, so he turned to one of the few men who could provide it.

  ‘Gino … everywhere’s in chaos here,’ said De Gasperi, calling Bartali in his hotel in Cannes. ‘Do you think you can still win the Tour? It could make a difference, and not just for you.’

  Never one to shirk his civic duty, Bartali set about the near-impossible task of pegging back Bobet — but even then, he was almost apologetic about doing so. As he began his assault on the first climb of stage 13, Bartali turned to the Frenchman and said, ‘You are a great fighter and a great champion’ — and then promptly burned him off. Over the last climb of the day, the imposing Izoard where Bartali had dominated on the way to winning in 1938, the Italian put in another breathtaking performance and ended the day having made up more than eighteen minutes on Bobet. Almost overnight, the Italians put down their pitchforks and tuned in to their hero’s superhuman efforts instead.

  The next day the race, as well as the fate of a nation, was decided by a 263-km stage that took nine and a half hours to complete. By the time they reached the Galibier, Bartali and Bobet were neck and neck on the road — and it stayed that way for nearly 100 km before the Italian began to pull away. Bobet faltered leaving Grenoble, as Bartali went solo over the Col de la Croix de Fer, and then the cols Porte, Cucheron and Granier, to take a GC lead of 8:03. Communist paper L’Unita called off the general strike and Togliatti emerged from his coma to ask about what he’d missed in the Tour (presumably after asking, ‘Why does my chest hurt so much?’).

  Bartali took a third mountain stage in a row between Aixles-Bains and Lausanne, and a win five days later in Liège took his tally to seven stages. His twenty-six-minute margin of victory over Briek Schotte was an astounding forty-seven-minute turnaround from the moment he received the call from De Gasperi to ride for his country.

  ‘Just as it seemed the communists would stage a full-scale revolt, a deputy ran into the chamber shouting, “Bartali’s won the Tour de France!”’ said an obituary in the UK’s Daily Telegraph. ‘All differences were at once forgotten as the feuding politicians applauded and congratulated each other on a cause for such national pride.’ At thirty-four, Bartali became the Tour’s oldest winner — and quite possibly the only sportsman to stop a war by winning a bike race.

  Hugo Koblet: 15 July 1951, Stage 11 Brive to Agen, 177 km

  Before the 1951 Tour, Swiss rider Hugo Koblet was probably best known by his fellow riders as the dandy who used to pull out some cologne and a comb near the end of races to ensure he was perfectly coiffured and fragrant at the finish. However, the peloton only had a view of the back of his head on 15 July 1951 when he launched the greatest solo ride in the history of the race, taking off on a 140-km solo dash to the line in Agen. Koblet broke away from the pack after just 30 km, but with so much of the race still to be ridden, few riders were worried about a suicidal break for glory. However, Koblet maintained a steady pace on his own and, with little more than 70 km to go, the Swiss still had a five-minute lead. Despite the combined efforts of the chasing group — including such luminaries as Coppi, Bartali, Bobet, Géminiani and Robic — Koblet still had time to pull out the comb before the finish.

  ‘In the ten years I’ve raced, I’ve never seen such a feat,’ said Fiorenzo Magni about Koblet’s ride. Koblet took the stage by 2:35, a win that primed him to take the Tour outright two weeks later, prompting the French singer Jacques Grello to dub him ‘the pedaller of charm’.

  Fausto Coppi: The mountains of the 1952 Tour

  By 1952 Fausto Coppi’s standing as one of cycling’s all-time greats was secure, but his performance in the mountains of a Tour he almost didn’t ride proved to be his crowning glory. Already a multiple Grand Tour winner, and the only rider to win the Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double, the thirty-two-year-old entered the season under a cloud after the death of his younger brother in a race the year before. Ironically, it was Coppi’s great rival, Gino Bartali, who persuaded him to race the 1952 Tour (he too had lost a brother, Giulio, during a race in 1936) and, after an indifferent start, Coppi took off — literally and figuratively — into the mountains.

  This was the first year the race took in two legendary mountains — L’Alpe d’Huez and the Puy de Dôme — and, whether it was Coppi’s sense of occasion or him just wanting to show the peloton he was still their daddy, he put in a climbing performance for the ages. It began on L’Alpe d’Huez, where the plucky Jean Robic launched an attack at the start of the ascent. Coppi went with him, riding alongside the Frenchman just long enough to give him false hope before shooting off up the
mountain to take the stage by eighty seconds, as well as the yellow jersey.

  The next day into Sestriere, Coppi rode in a manner that few who were watching — or racing against him — would ever forget. Pushing himself to the limit and attacking on the steepest parts of the course, the Italian blew the field away. He finished seven minutes ahead of the second-place rider, Bernardo Ruiz, and in the overall standings his five-second advantage was transformed into a twenty-minute lead. On stage 18 into Pau a week later, he secured the King of the Mountains title by leading over the Tourmalet, Soulor and Aubisque on the way to a stage win.

  And still he wasn’t finished. The following day, on the Puy de Dôme, Coppi enjoyed his greatest Tour moment. Climbing to the plateau of a long-extinct volcano, the killer part of the climb is a 4.5-km stretch that averages out at an 11 per cent gradient. It’s not the kind of place where most riders think of attacking, but then Coppi wasn’t most riders. Approaching his rivals from behind, the Italian effortlessly picked off the competition one by one.

  Frenchman Raphael Géminiani was one of the riders the Italian passed:

  With two kilometres to go, his eyes fixed, his mouth open, his hands on top of the bars, Coppi rose out of the saddle … and started to sprint. I was ahead of him, engulfed in hooting cars, backfiring motorbikes and screaming fans. Young men ran 50-metre stretches beside me, shouting, ‘Come on, Gém. Come on!’ I tried but someone was going even faster: Coppi. Like a bird he flew past me.

  It proved to be Coppi’s last Tour de France victory, but what a parting gift it was.