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The First Tour de France
Sixty Cyclists and Nineteen Days of Daring on the Road to Paris
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Cyclists of the time weren’t enthusiastic about participating in this “heroic” race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat. From Maurice “The White Bulldog” Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a round of cheese in order to smuggle him into France as a fourteen-year-old, to Hippolyte Aucouturier, who looked like a villain from a Buster Keaton movie with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, the cyclists were a remarkable bunch.
Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France’s rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.
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"A book that will entertain everyone - from those casually interested in an adventure tale to avid sports enthusiasts."Galveston County Daily News
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"Essential...The First Tour de France takes you back to the race itself. Cossins produces a deeply researched and detailed description of the race that toggles between background information on the race's organization and the individual stages, with long stretches of real-time-style stage reporting one chapter at a time.The effect of this, especially the latter, is soaring."Chris Fontecchio, Podium Café
- On Sale
- Jun 6, 2017
- Page Count
- 384 pages
- Publisher
- Bold Type Books
- ISBN-13
- 9781568589855
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