Mapping Le Tour: The unofficial history of all 100 Tour de France races. Ellis Bacon
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Название: Mapping Le Tour: The unofficial history of all 100 Tour de France races
Автор: Ellis Bacon
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007585427
isbn:
François Faber struggles over the summit of the Ballon d’Alsace
| Start: Paris, France, on 5 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 1 August | |
| Total distance: 4488 km (2789 miles)Longest stage: 415 km (258 miles) | |
| Highest point:Col de Porte: 1326 m (4350 ft) Mountain stages: 4 | |
| Starters: 150Finishers: 55 | |
| Winning time: 37 pointsAverage speed: 28.658 kph (17.807 mph) | |
| 1. François Faber (Lux) 37 points2. Gustave Garrigou (Fra) 57 points 3. Jean Alavoine (Fra) 66 points |
True to his word, 1907 and 1908 winner Lucien Petit-Breton retired from racing and followed the 1909 Tour as a journalist, leaving the door open for his former team-mate, François Faber, to take the race.
At 6 ft 2 in and weighing 91 kg, ‘The Giant of Colombes’ must have taken advantage of his bulk to help keep him warm in a race run in freezing conditions, and thought to still be the coldest weather ever encountered by the Tour.
Faber, to all extents and purposes a Frenchman but officially a Luxembourger, blazed to six stage wins – five of them consecutive – on his way to becoming 1909 Tour champion, and the race’s first non-French winner.
Mondialisation – globalisation – is an oft-bandied-around term in modern Tour de France circles to describe the ever-growing number of countries that the race has visited and the ever-increasing number of nationalities that have taken part as riders. But the 1909 Tour saw not only its first foreign winner in Faber, but after Belgium’s Cyrille van Hauwaert won the opening stage, non-French riders and French riders shared the fourteen stages with seven wins apiece.
The 1909 race had again followed a very similar route to that used in both 1907 and 1908, but the Tour was about to become much more mountainous…
François Faber won six stages on his way to overall victory in 1909
France’s Octave Lapize trudges up the Col du Tourmalet in 1910. It was the first time that the 2115-m (6939-ft) pass had been used at the Tour, and was in fact the first time that the Pyrenees had been used at all. Despite having to walk, he was the first rider across the summit, and on the next climb — the Col d’Aubisque — he accused the race organisers of being murderers for taking the race over such difficult terrain. Lapize nevertheless went on to win the 1910 Tour overall.
“Crossed the Tourmalet. Very good road. Perfectly passable. Steines.”
Alphonse Steines’ telegram to boss Henri Desgrange having failed to cross the Col du Tourmalet in January 1910
| Start: Paris, France, on 3 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 31 July | |
| Total distance: 4737 km (2944 miles)Longest stage: 424 km (264 miles) | |
| Highest point:Col du Tourmalet: 2115 m (6939 ft) Mountain stages: 6 | |
| Starters: 110Finishers: 41 | |
| Winning time: 63 pointsAverage speed: 28.680 kph (17.822 mph) | |
| 1. Octave Lapize (Fra) 63 points2. François Faber (Lux) 67 points 3. Gustave Garrigou (Fra) 86 points |
Although the overall race distance changed little, with only one extra stage added to make fifteen at the 1910 edition of the Tour, the big change was the addition of Pyrenean climbs to the race.
The Portet d’Aspet, Col du Peyresourde, Col d’Aspin, Col du Tourmalet and Col d’Aubisque all featured for the first time.
It was one of Henri Desgrange’s employees, Alphonse Steines, whose job it had been to map the race since its 1903 beginnings, and it was therefore Steines that Desgrange sent to scout out the Pyrenees in January 1910 in the hope of including some tougher climbs that summer.
Steines almost killed himself trying to cross an impassable, blocked-by-snow Tourmalet but, for reasons only known to himself – perhaps not wishing to upset Desgrange – he sent his boss a telegram to say that the 2115-m (6939-ft) climb was “perfectly passable”.
Come July, the snow had indeed gone, but 18 km of riding and walking up gradients of up to 10 per cent on unmade roads would test even the Tour’s best riders in 1910.
Reaching the top of the Tourmalet without stopping – an easily quantifiable feat of strength in those early days of the Tour’s climbs – earned Gustave Garrigou a 100-franc prize for his no-doubt considerable trouble.
He wasn’t even first over the Tourmalet, though; that honour fell to overall race winner Octave Lapize, who then crested the summit of the stage’s next climb, the 1709-m (5606-ft)-high Col d’Aubisque hollow-eyed and spitting, “You’re all murderers!” in the race organisation’s general direction.
1910 also saw the first appearance of the voiture balai – the broomwagon – so called because it’s the final vehicle in the race convoy, ‘sweeping up’ riders unable to go any further due to exhaustion or injury. With the Pyrenees making their first appearance in the race, there were plenty of riders who needed it.
The inclusion of Pyrenean climbs takes its toll on a shattered Octave Lapize as he reaches the summit of the Col du Tourmalet during stage 10