le grimpeur

Check your Tour knowledge1
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages on September 20th, 2008

Last month, le grimpeur presented the Tour de France quiz from the 1978 paperback edition of The Great Bike Race by Geoffrey Nicholson. The prizes from Magnum Publishers were three Raleigh bikes of various models, the top prize “based on the model used by the TI-Raleigh Team” for the Tour in 1976.

The team, which had its origins in the track racing success of Raleigh riders, made its debut in 1973 with all British riders. The parent company, Tube Investments (hence the ‘TI’), was a large steel products manufacturer, which most notably in the cycling world made Reynolds tubing (”Reynolds 531,” ran an advertisement at the time, “gives you lightness where you need it most.”). The company also owned a number of bicycle brands, including Raleigh. (more…)

The yellow jersey1
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages, Climbers on September 15th, 2008

That the Tour de France was even held in 1919 seems like a small miracle, attributable to the incorrigible belligerence of Henri Desgrange to return the race to the roads of France.

La der des ders, World War I, had concluded less than 12 months prior to the start of the 1919 Tour and the race got underway on June 29, the day after the armistice was finally signed with Germany. The main protagonists at the Tour, France and Belgium, had suffered grievously on the Western Front. Belgium and northern France were the battlefields and Belgium suffered close to 500,000 military casualties and well as its economy devastated.

The numbers for France in World War I were worse: 1.4 million dead and around 3 million wounded (one-third permanently disabled), according to sources. Two-thirds of soldiers were from rural occupations and lists of the dead can still be seen on monuments in even the smallest villages all over France. In northern France, estimates put the devastation of farmland at 2.5 million hectares, with 62,000 kilometres of roads and 5,000 kilometres of railway lines needing rebuilding.

Remarkably, cycle racing had not stopped entirely during the war and Paris-Tours was run in 1917 and 1918. Paris-Roubaix returned in 1919 over roads so terrible and in weather so desperate that a journalist from L’Auto christened the race with its famous name. (more…)

Thanks for your patience0
Guy WR posted in Posts on September 11th, 2008

Yahoo has resolved the technical troubles I was having with Le Grimpeur and the site is now, as you – dear reader – can see, back online.

Thanks for your patience and I will have new posts shortly, including the answers to last month’s quiz. In the interim, don’t forget to check out some of these older posts:

Charly Gaul part 1 and part 2

Climb like a badger

The original grimpeurs

The good old days

Richard Virenque part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4