Mapping Le Tour: The unofficial history of all 100 Tour de France races. Ellis Bacon

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СКАЧАТЬ distance: 5320 km (3306 miles)Longest stage: 360 km (224 miles)Highest point:Col du Galibier: 2556 m (8386 ft) Mountain stages: 6Starters: 142Finishers: 39Winning time: 198 h 16’ 42”Average speed: 27.244 kph (16.928 mph)1. Nicolas Frantz (Lux)2. Maurice De Waele (Bel) at 1 h 48’ 21” 3. Julien Vervaecke (Bel) at 2 h 25’ 06”

      Francis Pélissier’s older brother, Henri, had done little to impress Tour organiser Henri Desgrange over the years. The two were almost permanently at loggerheads over how tough the race was – Henri the rider believing that it was too hard; organiser Henri always on the hunt for something to make it even harder. Even Henri’s 1923 victory displeased the race founder: it meant he had to put Pélissier on the cover of his newspaper.

      One can only imagine, then, Desgrange’s feelings when Francis Pélissier became the first rider to quit the Tour while clad in the by-now hallowed yellow jersey. He was simply unable to match the speed set by his Dilecta-Wolber team-mates on stage 6 – one of the race’s many team time trials – and waved them onwards once it all became too much. It was in fact a good call: his team-mate, Ferdinand Le Drogo, took yellow in Brest that evening, although, by the end of the ninth stage, the whole eight-man team had quit the race.

      It’s a dubious ‘honour’ for the young Pélissier to hold. Only fifteen riders have ever abandoned while in the yellow tunic, Britain’s Chris Boardman being another, in 1998, with the latest being Michael Rasmussen at the 2007 Tour, thrown out by his Rabobank team for having lied on his UCI ‘whereabouts’ form about where dope testers would be able to find him. He told them Mexico; he was training in Italy.

      Nicolas Frantz became the second rider from Luxembourg to win the race, following in the tyre tracks of 1909 champion François Faber.

      Dinan, Vannes, Pontarlier and Charleville were used as stage starts/finishes for the first time in a race made up of a massive twenty-four stages, with sixteen of those run as team time trials, in which teams started at 15-minute intervals, confusing the spectators immensely. Sponsored teams – usually headlined by bicycle manufacturers – had only just begun to reappear following a number of financially difficult post-war years for the major bike brands, such as Alcyon, Dilecta and JB Louvet.

      André Leducq (left) and Tour champion Nicolas Frantz (right)

       1928

       22nd Edition

	Start: Paris, France, on 17 JuneFinish: Paris, France, on 15 July
	Total distance: 5475 km (3402 miles)Longest stage: 387 km (241 miles)
	Highest point:Col du Galibier: 2556 m (8386 ft) Mountain stages: 6
	Starters: 162Finishers: 41
	Winning time: 192 h 48’ 58”Average speed: 28.400 kph (17.646 mph)
	1. Nicolas Frantz (Lux)2. André Leducq (Fra) at 50’ 07” 3. Maurice De Waele (Bel) at 56’ 16”

      Nicolas Frantz’s convincing 1927 Tour win was repeated in 1928, and this time he became only the second rider to hold the yellow jersey all the way from start to finish. Ottavio Bottecchia had been the first to perform the feat, in 1924, but that was ‘only’ over fifteen stages. Luxembourger Frantz defended it over twenty-two stages.

      It was touch and go as late as stage 19 between Metz and Charleville, however, when a mechanical problem lost Frantz 40 minutes to stage winner Marcel Huot of the Alleluia-Wolber outfit, but by that point in the race, Frantz had enough of a buffer over team-mate André Leducq to ensure that the race was in the bag anyway.

      Leducq, having finished fourth overall, and best Frenchman, the year before, held the French end up again, improving this time to finish runner-up to his Alcyon team-mate, the dominant Frantz. The importance of team riding continued to grow – in the Tour’s first couple of decades in existence, riders rode very much for themselves – and Desgrange stuck with the team time trial format for most of the race, despite the confusion of the roadside crowds. Of the Tour’s twenty-two stages, fifteen were held as team time trials.

      One of those teams was the French-sponsored, but green-and-gold-jerseyed, Ravat-Wonder-Dunlop squad, made up of three Australian riders – Ernie Bainbridge, Hubert Opperman (knighted in 1968 for his work as the Maltese High Commissioner) and Perry Osborne – plus a Kiwi, Harry Watson.

      Nicolas Frantz won despite losing 40 minutes due to a mechanical problem

       1929

       23rd Edition

       “My race has been won by a corpse.”

      Organiser Henri Desgrange bemoans the ailing Belgian Maurice De Waele having won the Tour after being helped by his team-mates

	Start: Paris, France, on 30 JuneFinish: Paris, France, on 28 July
	Total distance: 5256 km (3266 miles)Longest stage: 366 km (228 miles)
	Highest point:Col du Galibier: 2556 m (8386 ft) Mountain stages: 6
	Starters: 155Finishers: 60
	Winning time: 186 h 39’ 15”Average speed: 28.319 kph (17.596 mph)
	1. Maurice De Waele (Bel)2. Giuseppe Pancera (Ita) at 44’ 23” 3. Jef Demuysere (Bel) at 57’ 10”

      Nicolas Frantz and André Leducq had dominated the 1928 Tour as Alcyon team-mates, and that looked set to continue in 1929 when Leducq won the second stage between Caen and Cherbourg, with Frantz following up with victory in Bordeaux on stage 7.

      Frantz, Leducq and Elvish-Wolber’s СКАЧАТЬ