CONTENTS

Introduction 1

1 The Vélocipède as a good cause 3

2 A Sports Epic 15

3 The Mighty Marques 26

4 Hard Labour 39

5 Lessons in Obstinacy 51

6 Sweat of the Gods 67

7 Pens in a Trance, Lenses in Delirium 81

8 Nice but Boring 95

9 Character 109

10 The Big Money 124

11 Fuelled by Dynamite 137

Index of names 161

3 – The Mighty Marques

3
The Mighty Marques

In 1903 it had cost Desgrange a lot of effort to interest the industry in his
enterprise. Initially the manufacturers were at least as pessimistic about
the prospects of the Tour as he was. They doubted strongly whether public
interest would be great enough to justify the investments they were being
asked to make. They didn’t have to engage pacemakers, but the costs of
looking after the riders in their service were naturally much higher than
for a one-day race. So long did they hesitate that one of the favourites, the
German Josef Fischer, a former winner of Paris–Roubaix, Bordeaux–Paris,
and many other races, had to advertise for a sponsor in the editorial columns
of L’Auto.
As public enthusiasm kept mounting during the course of the first
Tour, the manufacturers’ attitudes changed radically. Desgrange’s
regulations insisted that riders were to compete strictly as individuals,
but the manufacturers very quickly found ways of getting around that.
The organisers had been so afraid that too few riders would appear at the
start that they permitted dropouts to participate in the remaining stages
and do battle for the day’s prizes. The manufacturers immediately took
advantage of this by engaging riders who had dropped out to serve as
disguised pacemakers for their top men, forcing Desgrange in turn to
introduce special regulations to prevent it.
By 1904 the manufacturers had completely abandoned their scepticism,
but Desgrange did not wish to change the formula that had secured so great
a success the year before. His critics had predicted that riders who had to ride
without pacemakers would not be willing or able to initiate any attacking
moves. They were proved wrong; the progress of the race was extremely
lively, with escapes that sometimes went on for hundreds of kilometres.
Moreover, several completely unknown riders managed to stay among
the ranks of the leaders. Lucien Pothier, ‘the terrible butcher from Lens’,
even finished second, while Jean Dargassies, the Belgian Julien Lootens
competing as ‘Samson’, and several other complete outsiders became
involved in the struggle for the top places as well. Their achievements
sparked great public enthusiasm and contributed in a major way to the

26
 Sweat of the Gods

sales of L’Auto. As Géo Lefèvre wrote, surprises like this were practically
out of the question if these riders, ‘alone and without being cared for, had
to do battle against the big stars supported by the mighty marques’.
The ‘mighty marques’ themselves did not care for surprises, and
in 1904 they did everything they could to prevent them. In spite of
Desgrange’s rule that the race must have a strictly individual character,
riders such as Dargassies and Pothier were retained by Alcyon and La
Française to assist the stars of these companies, among them Hyppolite
Aucouturier and Maurice Garin. These were not the only measures taken
by the commercial firms. No one doubted that they played an active role
in the many irregularities marking the 1904 Tour, just as they had during
Bordeaux–Paris a few months earlier, when the first four finishers were
disqualified by the French Cycling Federation in the same way that the
Tour’s first four finishers were.
Desgrange was undoubtedly fully informed about the way in which the
big companies tried to get around the regulations, but he made virtually
no effort to expose their machinations in his paper. Whatever criticisms he
made were aimed exclusively at individual riders. His silence about the
role played by the manufacturers in the numerous irregularities was so
conspicuous that he was openly accused of having made a deal with the
powerful La Française company.
Charges like these were not wholly unfounded. An unmistakable
understanding between Desgrange and the big firms did exist. The reason
was that, without the cooperation of the most important manufacturers,
the Tour simply could not have been organised.
Until the end of the 1920s, L’Auto had to finance the organisation of
the Tour entirely from its own means. The journal’s management was in
no position to pay the costs of providing food and accommodation for
the participants as well. For some riders this was no problem. During the
early years, registration was in principle open to anybody, and enthusiastic
amateur cyclists from the well-to-do classes were often unable to resist
matching themselves with the ‘giants of the road’. One of them was a very
rich aristocrat from southern France, Baron Henri Pépin de Gontaud, who
took part in the 1907 Tour. Because he did not think himself capable of
completing the full distance under his own steam, he secured the services of
two professional riders. These were supposed to ride ahead at set intervals
so as to order a sumptuous restaurant meal, which could be served the
moment the baron himself arrived. One of these two domestiques was none
other than ‘the burly blacksmith from Grisolles’, Dargassies, whose career
had gone off the rails after a fourth place in the 1904 Tour.
Most of the participants were from decidedly humbler backgrounds, and

27
3 – The Mighty Marques

if they failed to qualify for the daily prizes they sometimes had to try all
possible ways of augmenting the per diem of five francs they received from
the organisers. For example, in 1907 Marcel Dozol sold picture postcards
in the towns where the stages ended, while Jules Deloffre performed
somersaults and other acrobatic stunts after completing each stage, and
then solicited contributions from the spectators.
The only way of avoiding such a fate was to sign a contract with a
bicycle or tyre manufacturer. The riders who had successfully managed
this received, aside from a fixed salary, free equipment and extra bonuses
when they won a stage. Moreover, their expenses were reimbursed. In
exchange for this, the companies exacted not only the right to use their
names in advertisements, but absolute loyalty as well. It rarely happened
that a rider transgressed against this rule. One of a very few exceptions
was Marcel Buysse, who registered for the 1914 Tour of Flanders without
his firm’s approval. Such an act of independence was so uncommon that
the organiser of the race, the journalist Karel van Wijnendaele, was still
writing about it in awed tones thirty years later.
To put together a strong field of riders, the organisers of cycle races
were totally dependent on the goodwill of the manufacturers, who had all
the leading riders under contract and who immediately offered a contract
to every new discovery. For this reason alone, Desgrange could not afford
to antagonise the major companies. But there was also a second reason:
like any other journal, L’Auto’s continued existence depended on income
from advertising. In that respect the tyre and bicycle manufacturers did
not stint themselves. In the event of a victory by one of their riders they
almost always placed at least a half-page advertisement. They were all the
more willing to do this because L’Auto gave them good value for money.
The major advertisers could count on being treated highly favourably
in the journal’s editorials as well as its news columns. Not only were all
kinds of negative publicity totally forbidden, but beyond this the editors
rarely passed up an opportunity to give a plug to the products of the most
important companies. The Tour de France offered ample opportunity for
this. In almost every article, reporters would point to the solid construction
of the escorting cars, the dependability of the tyres, and the reliability of
the bicycles. A typical example is the comment on Lucien Petit-Breton’s
Tour victory in 1907, printed opposite a full-page advertisement shared
by Peugeot and Dunlop:

In this way the Argentinian rider [Petit-Breton had spent his childhood
in Argentina] has given Peugeot a splendid and incontestable victory,
one that goes also to the superb tyres made by Dunlop, a name that

28
 Sweat of the Gods

appears more and more in connection with the great victories on the
road. Petit-Breton quite naturally chose Dunlop tyres. What other
brand is better designed to cope with 5,000 kilometres of road? None,
and Petit-Breton, taking all due precautions, knew very well what
he was doing.

This panegyric aimed at Peugeot and Dunlop did not mean that L’Auto
had special ties to these two marques. A few years later, when Petit-Breton
signed a contract with two other companies and these placed similarly
large advertisements, one of the editors promptly wrote: ‘We cannot praise
too highly the qualities of Automoto and Continental, which have made
Petit-Breton an even more extraordinary champion than he already was.’
In spite of the clear relationship between L’Auto and the industry,
Desgrange realised very well that his interests squared only partly with
those of the manufacturers. Nothing stimulated the circulation of his journal
like a lively race, full of coups de théâtre and unexpected happenings. The
factory managers had very different ideas about the ideal progress of a race.
Having put a lot of money into a team, they tried to forestall unforeseen
events and sought to keep matters under control as much as possible. To
achieve these goals they were often willing to come up with large sums of
money. The Tour was a potential goldmine for the bicycle manufacturers.
Its publicity value was huge, so that when a manufacturer scored a Tour
success he could count on an enormous rise in his sales figures. No wonder
that the manufacturers were ready to invest tens of thousands of francs in
the hope of winning a Tour. The best method to that end was to hire as many
likely winners as possible. The big companies fought for the services of the
stars, who as a result received monthly salaries of 3,000 francs, excluding
bonuses, on the eve of the First World War – a good deal more than a cabinet
minister earned in those days.
Initially Peugeot had the edge, winning the Tour in 1906, 1907, and 1908.
The next year, though, Alcyon put together a team so strong that the Peugeot
people rated their own prospects non-existent, and instead of participating
in the Tour organised their own Tour de France for independents (a category
of riders who were allowed to take part in races for pros as well as amateurs).
The consequence was that Alcyon was scarcely threatened in 1909 and
1910. In 1911 the factory miscalculated, because its well-paid champions
were unable to hold their own against a relative outsider, Paul Duboc of La
Française. The Tour threatened to turn into a financial disaster for Alcyon,
until in the Pyrenees Duboc accepted a water bottle from a spectator. After a
few swallows he fell off his bike, seriously ill, and began to vomit up black
fluid. Only after several hours had passed was he well enough to continue

29
3 – The Mighty Marques

the race, but of course his chances of winning were gone. Everyone was
convinced that Duboc had been poisoned, but Desgrange, who had seen
the drama with his own eyes, did not want to hear about such a blemish
on his Tour. In L’Auto he dismissed the collapse as a ‘minor indisposition’.
He did, however, send Calais, Alcyon’s race director, home and banned him
from ever returning to the Tour.
Thanks to Desgrange’s benevolent attitude, Alcyon sustained little
harm from the scandal, and the company’s sales figures rose so fast that
Peugeot could not afford to stay away from the Tour. In 1912 the firm did
not invest enough to score a success, but after that year its managers spared
neither effort nor expense to retain as many great champions as possible.
As a result Peugeot riders occupied the first five places in the final general
classification in 1913 and the first three in 1914.

x x x

30