The Call of the Road: The History of Cycle Road Racing

But as time went on, although he continued setting records, Mills was getting pushed hard by a club-mate. His name was Montague Holbein, and he broke a number of Mills’s records as well as setting new ones of his own. That’s why Mills and Holbein, along with Selwyn Edge and J. E. Bates, who were all from the same North Road Cycling Club, were invited to take part in the first ever Bordeaux–Paris race by its organisers, a newspaper called Le Véloce Sport.

When the British riders were invited, Bordeaux–Paris was scheduled to be a professional race, but Mills and the other Brits were amateurs. So the National Cycling Union (NCU), which like so many early British sporting bodies didn’t approve of professionalism, asked the French organisers to change the race’s status and only allow amateurs to enter.

They did, and the first ever Bordeaux–Paris, held on 24 May 1891, was a race for amateurs only. The 38 entrants started at 5 a.m. from the Pont Bastide in Bordeaux. As well as four British riders, there was one Swiss, one Pole, and the rest were French. All rode safety bicycles apart from one French amateur entrant, Pierre Rousset, who preferred a tricycle – as befitted his age perhaps? He was 56.

The betting put Mills and Holbein as 2:1 favourites. Holbein had recently set a new British 24-hour bicycle record of 340 miles, and a 12-hour record of 174 miles. Those figures impressed the bookies, who’d obviously done their homework. To ensure everybody covered the same course, and that they covered it entirely by bicycle, or tricycle in Rousset’s case, each competitor was given a booklet with fourteen towns and villages in it. The booklet had to be signed by race officials and stamped at controls in each of the fourteen designated towns and villages, otherwise the rider would be disqualified. Gold medals and objets d’art were offered for the first ten to arrive in Paris. Silver medals and a palm branch were given to each of the next finishers, so long as they arrived within three days of starting. Bronze medals were awarded to finishers inside four days, and there were diplomas for those who were inside five days.

Race day dawned dark and foggy. Rain had fallen for several days, there were very few spectators early on, but a big crowd awaited the riders at Angoulême, where the four Brits arrived together at 10.30 a.m. They had a good lead, and stopped for five minutes. They ate soup, replenished the stores of food they carried with them, had their control books stamped and signed by officials, then remounted and rode off into the grey gloom.

A Frenchman, Henri Coulliboeuf, was next to arrive at 10.55 a.m., then Joseph Jiel-Laval at 11 a.m. He was half an hour ahead of the next rider, and the tricyclist Rousset rolled into Angoulême around 1.45 that afternoon.

Pacers were allowed to join the race at Angoulême, and after meeting his first one, who was called Lewis Stroud, Mills tucked in behind him and drew away from his compatriots. By the time he reached Châtellerault, Mills led by half an hour from Holbein, then Edge, and then Bates. And so it went on, Mills drawing inexorably further ahead as pacemaker after pacemaker relayed him towards Paris. Mills passed the finishing post in Paris 26 hours and 36 minutes after he’d set off from Bordeaux. The total distance ridden was 356 miles.

It was a very professional and disciplined display by the British amateur. As well as having fast pacers, Mills spent minimal time when he stopped at controls, just taking morsels of food. He carried anything else he needed with him. The race was big news in Britain, and several British newspapers followed it, placing journalists at various points along the route. At Tours the Birmingham Daily Post correspondent noted that ‘Mills swallowed a dog-mouthful of finely-chopped meat and drank a bottle of specially-prepared stimulant.’

British riders took the first four places in that first Bordeaux–Paris. Holbein was second in a time of 27 hours and 52 minutes, Edge was third in 30 hours and 10 minutes, and Bates was fourth, just 8 seconds behind him. The first French rider, Jiel-Laval, was fifth, nearly two hours behind Bates. And the stately Rousset? He finished 15th on his tricycle in 63 hours and 29 minutes.

The race was a great success, and Bordeaux–Paris soon became a professional race and a fixture in the pro calendar. For a while it was considered one of road racing’s classics, especially from 1945 onwards, when the competitors were paced for the last two-thirds of the race by men riding small motorbikes called Dernys, after their inventor Roger Derny. Pacing was preserved in Bordeaux–Paris long after similar marathon bike races died, because it meant they covered the distance in a reasonable time, but the race required specific and dedicated training which, as the sport developed, fewer riders were prepared to do each year. The last Bordeaux–Paris was in 1988.

Le Véloce Sport achieved a coup by staging Bordeaux–Paris, which was irksome to Pierre Giffard, the editor of Le Petit Journal. So in response he came up with something absolutely staggering, something he hoped would make Le Véloce Sport’s piddling little 572-kilometre race pale into insignificance, and for a while it did. Paris–Brest–Paris was the longest road race in the world. The trip from Paris to Brest, near the tip of the Breton peninsula, and back to Paris is close to 1,200 kilometre and, like Bordeaux–Paris, it was done all in one go. Riders could rest, sleep, sit down to eat, do what they liked, but the clock kept ticking, and any non-riding time was included in their finishing time.

Giffard called his race an épreuve, a French word that can mean test, trial or ordeal. He chose the word because he saw the race primarily as a test of bikes, something designed to show the durability and capability of what was still a fairly new invention. The founding rule of Paris–Brest–Paris was that competitors must complete the course on the same bike, which had to be delivered to the organisers before the start. Identifying seals were placed on each bike and on its parts, and the bikes were kept in parc fermé conditions until the start. That doesn’t happen in cycling any more, but the French stuck with épreuve as a word to describe bike races. It helps convey the sense of bike races being tests of man or woman and machine.

When news of Paris–Brest–Paris got out, entries came from abroad and from a few women, but they were all refused. So, on 6 September 1891, a group of 207 Frenchmen set out from Paris and headed for Brest. There were ten riding tricycles, four on two tandems, and one die-hard listed as Monsieur Duval who was riding a penny-farthing. The other 192 competitors raced on safety bicycles. Amateurs and professionals were mixed together, but the pros were allowed up to ten pacers each to meet them at different points along the way. The pacers carried extra food and drinks for their riders. Racers weren’t allowed to swap bikes with anybody, but they could make repairs, so long as they did them without help.

Charles Terront raced without sleep for 71 hours and 22 minutes to win the first Paris–Brest–Paris by almost eight hours. Ninety-eight riders battled through to finish behind him. Some competitors took days longer than Terront, stopping at inns and hotels overnight. It was a huge success, though, and the race captured the imagination of people who lined the route and followed the riders’ progress through newspaper dispatches and reports.

Ten thousand people welcomed Terront at the finish line in Paris, and Giffard waxed lyrical about the race in Le Petit Journal: ‘For the first time we saw a new mode of travel, a new road to adventure, and a new vista of pleasure. Even the slowest of these cyclists averaged 128-kilometre a day for ten days, yet they arrived fresh and healthy. The most skilful and gallant horseman could not do better. Aren’t we on the threshold of a new and wonderful world?’

Giffard was bewitched by cycling, and in 1896 he joined the cycling newspaper Le Vélo as joint editor with Paul Rousseau. Le Vélo was founded in December 1892, and was the pre-eminent source of cycling news and information in France until 1903. By then, though, it had picked a battle with a rival, which Le Vélo lost badly.

But going back to Paris–Brest–Paris, it was a victory for Terront, but also a victory for the bicycle, and for pneumatic tyres. The first two riders, Terront on Michelin and Jiel-Laval on Dunlop, both used pneumatic tyres, which were relatively new. They both had punctures, and took around one hour each in total to repair them, but the tyres were demonstrably faster than solid tyres when they were rolling. Above all, though, Paris–Brest–Paris was a victory for long-distance road racing.

The following year, 1892, saw the return of Bordeaux–Paris, and the race was repeated annually, apart from 1955, 1971 and 1972, and during the two World Wars, until 1988. Paris–Brest–Paris, however, because it was longer and harder to organise, was run only every ten years, the next edition being in 1901. By then the race was so famous the organisers commissioned a top pastry chef, Louis Duran, to invent a cake for it. It was called Paris-Brest and is still a popular dessert in France today. It’s even been made by contestants of the Great British Bake-Off TV programme.

After a relatively slow uptake, by the last decade of the nineteenth century road racing was becoming a feature of European life. Races were analysed in the press, riders written about, their thoughts recorded and their performances and characters dissected and discussed. More long races were organised: Vienna–Berlin, Rennes–Brest, Geneva–Berne, Paris–Besançon and Lyons–Paris–Lyons. All have disappeared from the race calendar now, but some races born in the early days of road racing still exist.

Milan–Turin and Paris–Brussels are among the survivors, but two others are much bigger. They have grown through the status of being classic races to become two of the five single-day races called the monuments of cycling. They are Liège–Bastogne–Liège in Belgium, and Paris–Roubaix in northern France.

Liège–Bastogne–Liège was first held in 1892, a race for amateurs that actually ran from Spa, close to the city of Liège, south through the green hills of the Ardennes to turn at Bastogne, then head back to Spa. Liège is the capital of the French-speaking Walloon region of Belgium, and according to legend Bastogne was chosen as the southern turnaround because it was the furthest point the Liège-based organisers and cycling officials could reach by train which would still allow them to check the riders through and return in time for the first riders to finish.

Liège soon replaced Spa as the start and finish, and the race became about its hills, which are anything from 1.5 to 3 kilometres long. They are very British hills; in fact, the Ardennes are a bit like the North York Moors or the Scottish border country. It took a while for the race to get the shape it has today, where the selection and order of the climbs vary only slightly from year to year. Then again, it took Liège–Bastogne–Liège a while to get going at all.

A Liège man, Léon Houa, won the first three editions, after which it was shelved from 1895 to 1907. Two more editions were run in 1908 and 1909, then nothing in 1910. After that there were three more, 1911, 1912 and 1913, then nothing for the whole of the First World War. There is even some dispute about when professionals were first allowed to take part. Some authorities put it as early as 1894, others say as late as 1919.

The reason for the on-off start of Liège–Bastogne–Liège was because cycle racing in general went through a hard time in Belgium during the very early twentieth century. Velodromes closed in both the Walloon and Flanders regions. The number of road races dwindled, and the best Belgian riders had to compete in other European countries for foreign sponsors in order to make a living.

The next big race, Paris–Roubaix, was created to publicise a new velodrome. Track cycling had moved from flat cinder tracks, or indoor ovals, to tracks with straights and bankings, which allowed faster and more exciting racing. Some tracks were indoors, similar to new velodromes today, but bigger banked tracks of 400 to 500 metres a lap were in big open-air velodromes. There were a lot in northern France, and they were in competition with each other to get the paying public to come through their gates to watch their racing.

Many road races finished on tracks in those days, but Paris–Roubaix is the only big one that still does, albeit on a newer track in a slightly different position to the original. The original Roubaix velodrome was at the junction of Rue Verte and the main road from Hem, not far from Paris–Roubaix’s route into town today. The men who had it built were two local textile magnates, Maurice Perez and Théodore Vienne, and they built it to make money.

Perez and Vienne needed to publicise the ambitious programme they planned. When the Roubaix track opened in 1895, the legendary African-American track sprinter Major Taylor made one of his first European appearances. Perez and Vienne had other big ticket events planned, but needed publicity because the velodromes in nearby Lille and Valenciennes put on good meetings too. They thought that hosting the finish of a big road race from Paris could grab attention away from their rivals. With the help of the major French cycling publication Le Vélo, Perez and Vienne put on the first Paris–Roubaix in 1896.

The route was different to today, but it was still a race of cobbled roads. The difference was that in 1896 the organisers didn’t have to look for cobbles; all roads in the industrial north of France were cobbled. So the race went from Paris almost directly to Roubaix. It started outside the offices of Le Vélo, went due north to Amiens then continued to Doullens, where it veered northeast to Arras, then went north again to Roubaix. The total distance was 280 kilometres.

Almost all the roads used in 1896 are now tarmac or concrete, which is why a modern Paris–Roubaix starts north of Paris so it can seek out the back roads, those that still have cobbled surfaces. In fact the cobbled back roads the race uses now are protected, and they are maintained by a group called Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix. Going this way and that to find those roads, and not direct from Paris to Roubaix, is why the start is now a bit nearer Roubaix as the crow flies, but not as the race goes.

Good prize money, the winner receiving the equivalent of seven months’ pay for a French miner, the number one industry around Roubaix, attracted a large entry. But most had entered blind and hadn’t a clue what the race held in store for them. Come to that, neither did the organisers. Paris–Roubaix wasn’t long by the standards of the day, but the roads were appalling, as the man charged with finding a route quickly found out.

He was a Le Vélo journalist called Victor Breyer. In planning the race he simply drew a direct route on a map, then followed it. He drove the first leg from Paris to Amiens, where he stayed overnight. Next day he set off for Roubaix by bike, and by the time he got there he thought the idea of holding a race in this part of France was mad. He was cold, wet, muddy and exhausted, and determined to send a telegram next morning to his boss asking him to cancel the race. But after sleeping on it, Breyer saw the epic potential of Paris–Roubaix. A potential the race has lived up to ever since.

However, it did not have the most auspicious start. Many entrants for the first edition had never seen the roads of the north, and when word spread about Breyer’s ride, and especially as there was a lot of rain just before the race, half the field didn’t start. The professional riders were all there, though, with their eye on the big first prize. Professionals were allowed to use pacers, some riding tandems, to help them, and the field soon split up across the rolling roads of Picardie. Even a lot of the roads in Picardie were cobbled, and the cobbles and weather conditions grew worse as the riders went further north.

The reason they were worse, and the reason why there were so many cobbled roads in the first place, was that the north was the heart of heavy industry in France. Hundreds of coal mines, steel mills and factories, often barely 100 metres apart, belched fire and filth across the countryside. Mining subsidence buckled the roads and warped the houses, while heavy carts lifted loose stones and spread mud and coal dust wherever they went.

Josef Fischer of Germany won the race in a time of 9 hours and 17 minutes, which is an average speed of 30.162 kph (18.742 mph). He entered the Roubaix velodrome 25 minutes ahead of the next rider, Charles Meyer of Denmark. And when Fischer arrived, the crowd, who were enjoying some track racing while being informed of the progress of Paris–Roubaix, were shocked by his appearance. He was covered from head to foot in coal dust and mud from the roads, and with dried blood from his frequent crashes.

Apart from Meyer, only two other riders finished within an hour of Fischer. The first of them was Maurice Garin, who would win Paris–Roubaix the following year and again in 1898; the other rider was a Welshman called Arthur Linton; and both would continue to feature in the story of early road racing.

Once he’d cleaned off the mud and muck, Fischer was remarkably casual about his victory. ‘The race was quite easy for me,’ he told reporters. ‘You must be strong to ride so far over cobblestones, and I am strong. I know that about myself.’ Given his domination, and how seemingly straightforward it was for Fischer to win, it’s incredible that Germany had to wait 119 years for its next Paris–Roubaix winner, which was John Degenkolb in 2015.

Promoting and/or organising road races helped make the names of many newspapers and periodicals, but it also saw an intense rivalry grow between them. A rivalry that had them trying to outdo each other with longer, bigger and more attention-grabbing races. This inter-publication war moved the sport along, and it helped write the next page in the history of road racing, with the creation of the biggest road race in the world: the Tour de France.

3

The Tour is Born

By 1894 Le Vélo, the newspaper that organised the first Paris–Roubaix, was the leading cycling journal in France. It had an advantage over its rivals because as well as carrying news it was also the official voice of the governing body of French cycling. Le Vélo published the locations and start times of all official races in France, so cyclists and cycling fans alike needed to buy it, to read race reports and interviews, and to find out where future races were being held.

Everything was looking good for Le Vélo. Even if some advertisers grumbled when the newspaper hiked its ad prices up, it didn’t affect their need to be seen in its pages. Then, just when it looked like Le Vélo had French cycling sewn up, its editor Pierre Giffard got involved in something outside of the sport that ended up costing his newspaper dearly. It was the Dreyfus affair, a cause célèbre in which a Jewish army officer called Alfred Dreyfus was framed for treason by a section of the French military and was convicted in 1895 on very dubious evidence.

Dreyfus was sent to the French penal colony, Devil‘s Island. His Jewish heritage and the fact that he was born in Mulhouse in Alsace, which was then part of Germany having been won during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, were accepted as evidence that he had passed French military secrets to the Germans. Somebody had done so; there was no doubt about that, but no direct evidence implicating Dreyfus.

There was public disquiet, and even some of the French Army didn’t believe in his guilt. One officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, conducted his own investigation, and he came up with credible evidence that the real traitor was a Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. The French high command wouldn’t listen, and Picquart was transferred to Tunisia to keep him quiet, but the questions he and others raised wouldn’t go away. Reports of a cover-up started appearing in the French press.

A campaign led by artists and intellectuals, including the novelist Emile Zola, gathered strength and eventually won a pardon for Dreyfus in 1899, but the case stirred deep emotions. It was a massive talking point in France, with everybody having a view. There were some very public arguments and demonstrations on both sides. At one protest an influential backer of Le Vélo, the Count de Dion, was arrested. He was demonstrating against the campaign to pardon Dreyfus, and was alleged to have hit the President of France, Emile Loubet, on the head with a walking stick he was waving about to emphasise his point.

Le Vélo’s editor Giffard was pro-Dreyfus, and had high principles. Putting principle before business, he criticised De Dion in an article he wrote for a serious newspaper, Le Petit Journal. De Dion was outraged, and even though he was imprisoned when word of what Giffard had written reached him, he withdrew his support for Le Vélo as well as all of the money he’d invested in it. Then, still unhappy, De Dion went further.

When he was released from prison after a fifteen-day sentence in 1900, De Dion formed his own sports newspaper, which he called L’Auto-Vélo. It was funded by his businesses, and by those of his friends who either sympathised with his views or were unhappy with Le Vélo’s advertising rates. They included Edouard Michelin, the biggest tyre manufacturer in France.

The new venture needed an editor, and De Dion went for somebody young and ambitious who knew about cycling. He was Henri Desgrange, a 35-year-old former racer who ran the biggest velodrome in Paris, the Parc des Princes. Desgrange had a law degree, and had started his working life practising law, but he was too adventurous to spend his life in fusty courts arguing arcane cases. He was a racer first and a lawyer second, and he came unstuck when one of his employer’s clients saw Desgrange speeding around a Paris park with his calves exposed. The client complained to Desgrange’s boss, who promptly sacked him.

So Desgrange changed careers, quickly becoming the head of advertising for the tyre manufacturer, Clément et Cie. He continued racing, setting the first official World Hour Record in 1895, riding a distance of 35.325 kilometres on the Vélodrome Buffalo in Paris. There had been unofficial hour records before. James Moore rode 23.2 kilometres in 1873, and Frank Dobbs did 29.552 in 1876, but Desgrange’s hour was the first recognised by the then governing body of world cycling, the International Cycling Association.

While working in advertising, Desgrange wrote articles about cycling for various newspapers, including Le Vélo. He also wrote a best-selling book on training called The Head and the Legs. By the time Desgrange left advertising to run the Parc des Princes he had a big following in French cycling, and influential friends. De Dion chose well.

It was 1900, the beginning of a new century, but starting a new publication is never easy even when there are good reasons to do so. Giffard and Le Vélo were in a very strong position. As well as the backing of the French Cycling Federation, Le Vélo still had a lot of advertisers because Giffard only put up rates for De Dion’s associates. And Giffard held the moral high ground because of his stand over Dreyfus.

But still not willing to make life easy for his new rival, three years after L’Auto-Vélo was launched, Giffard instituted proceedings in the courts that forced it to drop the word vélo from its title. Giffard won, and L’Auto-Vélo had to call itself L’Auto from then on. The newspaper covered many new and adventurous pursuits, but focused on cycling, and now its title said it was about cars. Circulation hadn’t been great since it was founded, so how would it hold up in future? Desgrange needed a marketing plan to cement L’Auto’s association with cycling, the sport people were interested in.