A 'Tour' by comparison
or "You think YOU have it tough?
I remember back when the tour was HARD..."

Martin Criminale
03/July/2002


So, you think you know the Tour de France. You've read up on Lance Armstrong 
and the US Postal team, you know what things like 'Peleton', 'drafting' and 
'Hors Category' mean and you've been boning up on your English accents so that 
you will be able to understand Phil Liggett's commentary. Good for you. 

This years Tour promises to be quite challenging, and with some of the favorites 
out before it starts, this writer believes that it will actually add to the 
excitement as the wild card element of so many unknown riders will make for 
some extremely exciting racing. 

In 2002, the riders will contest 6 stages of more than 190 km, 7 mountain stages, 
5 high altitude finishes, 108 km of individual time-trials, a 68 km team 
time-trial, 21 category 2+ mountain passes, all over the course of 22 days 
and 3,300 km. Oh yeah, there are two rest days as well. Sounds impressive, 
and indeed it is. But it wasn't so long ago that this kind of ride was eclipsed 
in no uncertain terms by the (now considered inhuman) stages that men rode in 
the past Tours. 

The Tour de France started off as a crazy idea and got steadily more outlandish 
during its first years. In 1903 the (first) Tour saw 60 riders traveling 2,500 km 
over 19 days in the basic cycle machinery of the day - a single speed, fixed gear 
(no coasting allowed) bicycle. There were only six stages and no convenient 
breaks for sleep. Riders were expected to ride through the night. That year, 
the winner was French rider Maurice Garin who won by a margin of 2 hours 49 minutes, 
which is still the largest winning margin in the history of the Tour. 

The idea of the Tour was to sell copies of L'Auto newspaper, a publicity stunt 
that was such a success it destroyed the paper's rival Le Velo in the process. 
With any huge media/sporting success come the fans. And make no mistake; fans 
back then were just as rabid as they are now. Some left nails in the road in 
front of their favorites' rivals while cheating among the riders was so extreme 
that some took car and even train rides. 

In 1905, mountain roads were added to the mix. By this time the Tour had lengthened 
to 4,500 km. And riders were still on single speed bikes! Incredibly, the average 
speed continued to climb. 

1910 saw the introduction of the real high mountains of the Pyrenees and the Alps 
one year later. The Tour's founder - Henri Desgrange - was a hard man but even he 
was skeptical when the idea of crossing these huge obstacles was suggested. A famous 
Tour quote is by Octave Lapize who reportedly spat the word "Assassin" at Desgrange 
after completing the first mountain stage of any Tour. Desgrange was, however 
unmoved as the complaining rider went on to win the Tour that year. In retrospect, 
this is perhaps quite unfortunate. 

Not only were the roads paved with gravel and the clothing wholly inadequate 
compared to all the high-tech wicking materials we have today, neutral support 
or even team support was not allowed. If a rider had a mechanical problem - of 
any kind - he had to fix it himself. When Eugene Christophe broke his forks in 
the Pyrenees he stopped off at a forge, begged a length of metal and proceeded 
to fix the bike himself. In fact a race official watched him the whole time to 
make sure that he did all the work himself or face time penalties. A small boy 
working the bellows in the forge cost the rider an extra time delay in addition 
to the hours lost repairing his fork! 

The first race after WWI (1919) saw the introduction of the yellow jersey. 
Ironically, the first leader to be offered it rejected the jersey since it made 
him an easier target for his rivals. Soon however, the yellow jersey became the 
most coveted garment in cycling and remains so to this day. 

By now, race founder Henri Desgrange's creation had become the toughest event 
in world sport and was essentially run for the benefit of rival bicycle manufacturers 
and to sell newspapers. When a non-cycling journalist, Albert Londres, followed 
the 1924 Tour he found a group of men whose morale resembled those during his 
last assignment. The problem was that his last job had been writing about those 
imprisoned in the French penal colonies. Londres verdict was that the riders were 
"Les Forcats de la Route - convicts of the road." 

The race was now 5,500 km in length, with long overnight stages and perhaps the 
most draconian rules a sporting event has ever seen. Riders were restricted from 
any outside assistance and could still not change bikes - or anything else. In 1924, 
defending champion Pelissier and his brothers were so unimpressed with petty 
bureaucracy that they quit the 1924 race in the full view of Londres. The argument 
was over clothing, and the rule that said riders must finish a stage with 
everything they started it with. The long days often began in the early hours, 
and continued in the heat of a July day, so it was no surprise that layers were 
shed. When Pelissier was fined for having thrown away a jersey, he quit in disgust. 
His brothers followed suit. 

The race founder was unimpressed by the accusations - and Desgrange regarded 
"convicts of the road" as a compliment. 

When one looks at many of the scandals in the sport of cycling today - fraud, 
doping, time penalties for getting pushed up a hill or an illegal feed from the 
team car, you can clearly see the origins in the history of this event. In this 
writer's humble opinion, it's absolutely incredible to conceive of any mortal 
completing this kind of historical Tour under those conditions without the 
assistance of SEVERAL pharmaceutical aids. When Tom Simpson collapsed and died 
July 13, 1967 on the slope of Mont Ventoux and it was discovered that he had 
amphetamine in his blood, it came as a shock only to those that did not know 
the history of cycling and the Tour. 

Another little-known fact: until 1937, popular derailleur systems - long used 
by cyclo-tourists - were not allowed. Up until that year, riders wanting to 
change their gear had to stop, get off of their bicycle, unclamp their rear 
wheel, turn it around (they had different size cogs on each side of the rear 
hub) and install it again with the larger/smaller cog in the chain. This was 
done for every incline and descent. This restriction was in the interest of 
maintaining the 'purity' of sport. 

The Tour's founder Henri Desgrange died in 1940 and with him died much of the 
tradition of the Tour. Most people would agree that this was not a bad thing. 

These days when you watch the Tour on OLN and sip your malted beverage as riders 
clad in shiny Lycra tm go whizzing by at 50+ km/hr getting handed bottles of 
energy drinks and food bars while their soigneur and mechanic and trainer await 
them at the end of the stage, let your mind drift back to a time of long, long 
ago. When men were men, wool was what was worn and there simply was no one 
around to listen to you if you wanted to re-negotiate your salary. 

Sure, Lance is an amazing athlete and I enjoy watching him in action, but 
nothing can compare to the true grit that must have been possessed by those 
riders of Tours gone by. The race that is the Tour de France now can only be 
called a 'tour' in comparison to what was once called by the same name.