Читать книгу The Call of the Road - Chris Sidwells - Страница 9

There’s debate about when the first ever bike race was held. Many quote a race in Parc St Cloud, Paris, on 31 May 1868. It was won by an Englishman, James Moore, but it was part of a series of races in the same park on the same day. The names of the other winners were lost, and only Moore’s survived.

It’s possible that other races pre-date the St Cloud meeting, although it can’t have been by much. The first bike with pedals – the act of pedalling is what I think defines cycling – was made in 1864, and the first patent for a pedal-powered bicycle given in 1866. So there wasn’t much time between those dates and the Parc St Cloud races.

But because they were held on a 2-kilometre lap of prepared cinder paths inside the park, not on the open road, they weren’t the first ever road races. The first proper road race of which there is a record happened in November 1869. It went from Paris to Rouen on normal roads. But since James Moore also won that race, he is the father of road racing.

There are stories of races on the public roads of Europe in the spring and summer of 1869, but they weren’t very long and only attracted local riders. For example, the writer and researcher Rosemary Southey discovered an account of a short bicycle race on the roads of what was then the English county of Cumberland, now part of Cumbria, in May 1869.

‘The race is recorded on the 21 May 1869 issue of the Carlisle Patriot newspaper,’ Southey says. ‘Under the title “Grand Picnic and Sports at Keswick: A Velocipede Race”.’ The report continues: ‘Perhaps the greatest novelty of the day was the bicycle race. The course was along the Lake-road to Portinscale and back. The winner took the lead at a rattling pace, was never headed, and came in victorious by a great distance. Much merriment was created as the defeated competitors returned through the streets, many of them not riding their “iron horses” but, puffing and flushed, one foot propelling them along to the point from which they had started. The greatest good humour, however, prevailed, as was evidenced by one of the disappointed, struggling at the tail of his “steed,” replying to the badinage with which he was assailed, “Well, never mind, there’s three more behind.”’

‘The results read “Velocipede Race: 1 Mr Irving, Carlisle. 2. Mr G Graham, Carlisle. 3. Mr Stalker, Carlisle.” The Keswick event is the earliest I can find on the road in Cumberland, but there were others in the same year on the path,’ Southey says. ‘The path’ was a 19th century term for a cycle track – like running tracks – surfaced with cinders or red shale.

Southey continues, ‘Cycling seems to have taken off in the county very early on, though of course there were plenty of sceptics, and disapproving magistrates and horse owners. I have records of cycling clubs in around a dozen places. Carlisle for instance had three clubs in the 1890s.’

The first mass-produced bikes were called ‘boneshakers’ in Britain and vélocipèdes in France. They were made from wrought iron, had wooden wheels with iron bands around their circumference to reduce wear, and one rudimentary brake. The pedals were attached to the front wheel, so these early bikes were direct drive; one revolution of the pedals meant one revolution of the wheel. And because wheels with greater circumference cover more ground per pedal revolution, the front wheels of early bikes were slightly bigger than the rear.

A Paris blacksmith and coach builder called Pierre Michaux was the man who put pedals on a two-wheeled running machine of the type that had become very popular in Germany, France and Britain. Or it may have been his son, Ernest. Again, there are conflicting accounts. But by creating the first pedal cycle, Pierre and/or Ernest Michaux made France the birthplace of cycling. By 1869 there were around sixty bicycle manufacturers in Paris, and about fifteen in the provinces. But the possibilities of this new invention were quickly being discovered on both sides of the English Channel.

The first newspaper dedicated to cycling was also born in 1869 in France. It was called Le Vélocipède Illustré, and although there had been news sheets about bikes before, Le Vélocipède Illustré was professionally produced, lavishly illustrated and lavishly written. This is what the editor, Richard Lesclide, also known by his pen name of Le Grand Jacques, wrote at the beginning of the first issue, which was published on 1 April 1869:

The Vélocipède is rapidly entering our lives, and that is the only justification we need for starting this new magazine. And yet never has the famous phrase: ‘People began to feel the need for a special organ devoted to a fashionable conveyance’ been so appropriate.

Indeed the Vélocipède is gaining ground at amazing speed, spreading from France to the rest of Europe, from Europe to Asia and Africa. Not to mention America, which has outstripped us and now has the advantage of us in the race for further improvements.

The Vélocipède is not a mere flash in the pan, here today and gone tomorrow. As you can see from the fact that, as it obtains a footing in the fashionable world, the government and the major public services are using it for special duties. It has now won complete acceptance in France, and we are founding a magazine under its patronage in order to bring together, in the same fellowship, its adherents and believers.

His piece set the timbre of cycling journalism, or at least French cycling journalism, for the next 100 years. A few months after Lesclide wrote those words, the long association between the cycling press and race promotion began when Le Vélocipède Illustré organised the Paris to Rouen race. Or Paris–Rouen, following the accepted protocol that the ‘to’ in the names of place-to-place road races is always replaced by a dash.

It was 7 November 1869, and Paris–Rouen set a pattern of place-to-place road races that was copied and developed over the years as the template for some of cycling’s biggest races. Thirty-one men and one woman gathered at 7.15 a.m. outside Le Pré Catalan, on the Route de Suresnes in the Bois de Boulogne for the first Paris–Rouen. Le Pré Catalan is now a restaurant with three Michelin stars, but was then an exhibition centre where a cycle show had been held for five days preceding the race.

According to James Moore’s son, also called James, speaking to Sporting Cyclist magazine in 1968 on the occasion of the centenary of the historic Parc St Cloud race, before the inaugural Paris–Rouen his father announced: ‘Unless I arrive first, they will find me lying beside the road.’ Gritty, determined words that set the mood and mind-set for road racing that still dominates the sport.

The riders set off for Rouen at 7.25 a.m., and at 6.10 p.m. the same day Moore crossed a finish line drawn by members of the Rouen cycling club at the gates to their city. A fine drizzle fell, and it was dark when Moore finished. The first prize was 1,000 gold francs and a Michaux bicycle, the race having been organised by the Michaux brand owners, the Olivier brothers Aimé, René and Marius.

Roads outside cities were appalling. They were either made of bone-jarring hard-packed clay or stones, or were muddy tracks with puddle-filled ruts and holes. They were very muddy that November day between Paris and Rouen, and the mud sucked at the riders’ heavy bikes. Even Moore walked up the hills, and he finished 15 minutes ahead of the next man. The female competitor, made mysterious by her pseudonym of Miss America, finished 12 hours after the winner, but she wasn’t last. That honour fell jointly to E. Fortin and Prosper Martin, who crossed the line together 14 hours and 15 minutes after Moore.

Moore was to all intents a professional cyclist by 1869. His success in the Parc St Cloud race was followed by more victories on cinder cycle tracks, which was where cycle racing grew quickest at first. At the St Cloud event Moore raced on a standard Michaux vélocipède, with a front wheel slightly bigger than the rear, but by the time he won Paris–Rouen he was riding a prototype bike made under the direction of a Parisian manufacturer, Jules Suriray.

It was far lighter than Moore’s original bike, had ball bearings to reduce friction in its hubs, and was custom-built in the workshop of Sainte-Pélagie prison in Paris.

Suriray invented ball bearings, but needed the forced labour of prisoners to make and polish the steel balls he needed. Moore’s bike also had Clément Ader patented rubber tyres. Plus its front wheel measured 48.25 inches in diameter, while the rear was just 15.75 inches. It was one of the first ‘penny-farthing’ bikes, which were called ‘ordinaries’ or ‘high-wheelers’.

There was a boom in French manufacturing during the late 1860s, but it was stopped dead by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and bicycle development switched to the UK. With the French bicycle industry stymied, investment flowed into what at first was just a few British bicycle companies, and they became big. New companies formed, and older manufacturers started including bikes in their product range. Some even changed their names, like the Coventry Sewing Machine Company, which became Coventry Machinists so it could manufacture bikes.

The French were still leaders in bike design, but the English bought patents on nearly everything they invented. For example, a major step forward affecting racing was made by Jules Truffault, who reduced the weight of bikes he made from 25 kilograms down to 15 by using a cheap consignment of steel scabbards (sword holders) that he had obtained. By adapting scabbards, Truffault manufactured hollow forks and wheel rims, but the British bike industry bought the patent on his idea, used it to manufacture their own bikes, and paid him a small royalty for each one sold.

Getting back to racing, even though Paris–Rouen sparked some interest in France, and later in surrounding countries, track cycling was the focus in Britain. Big crowds attended track meetings, and the first race billed as the world cycling championship was held on 6 April 1874, over one mile on a cinder track in Wolverhampton. James Moore won the race from John Keen in a time of 3 minutes and 7 seconds, setting a new world record for the distance.

Across the Channel confusion reigned for several years after the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871. There were a few short road races in 1870, mostly in Paris and Toulouse. Leon Tarzi and Jean-Marie Léotard won them, but the longest race in France in this period was only 63 kilometres, and most were around the 30-kilometre mark. Not nearly long enough for road racing to capture people’s interest and imaginations. Long place-to-place races did that, something people could compare their own journeys by train or by carriage to.

The first road race in Italy was in 1870: a time trial between Florence and Pistoia. It was won by an American, Rynner Van Heste. The first Italian bunched road race appears to have been in Milan in January 1871. It was just 11 kilometres long and won by Giuseppe Pasta. The next bunched race in Italy was 46 kilometres from Milan to Novara, held in December the same year. The winner was Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi. However, it’s always possible that there were others that preceded these races.

Documentary evidence of road racing is thin after that. There could have been races in Italy during the next couple of years, but the next race about which there is certainty was the Milan–Piacenza race in 1873. It was 63 kilometres long and the winner, Valsecchi again, did the distance in 3 hours and 44 minutes. There were at least two more races in Italy that year, one in Florence and the other from Milan to Cremona. There’s also evidence of a road race in Bagnères-de-Luchon, France.

After that the numbers of road races rose slowly until 1876 when Europe, and in particular France, was more settled. That was the year when road racing started to gain more interest, maybe because races were much longer by then. Angers–Tours–Angers, for example, was 222 kilometres long. It was won by M. Tissier, who beat a top track racer Camille Thibault using a light bike of Truffualt’s design, to win in 11 hours and 25 minutes.

Another longer road race, one that still exists today, was born in 1876, this time in Italy. It went from Milan to Turin and was won by Paolo Magretti, who went on to be an eminent entomologist, discovering a number of new species of African Hymenoptera. Magretti was the best of just ten initial competitors, and the race wasn’t run again until 1894. After that, editions were intermittent until 1913, when Henri Pelissier of France won. Apart from times of political upheaval, war, lack of sponsorship and on one occasion a flood, Milan–Turin has run fairly consistently ever since.

All the bikes used in races so far were penny-farthings, but racing on these was quite dangerous, given the road conditions. On a smooth track a penny-farthing is stable and not too bad to ride, but out on a road it’s a different story. Hit a pothole with that big front wheel, or apply the brake a bit sharply, and you could be pitched straight over the handlebars. It was so common the term ‘taking a header’ was coined to describe it.

But then came the safety bicycle. Safety bicycles had two wheels of equal size, slightly smaller in diameter than most road bike wheels are today, and the rider sat balanced between them. Safety bicycles were much easier to ride than penny-farthings, so they were safer, hence the name, but the safety bicycle’s appeal for racers was that they had gearing through a roller chain.

The safety bicycle was partly invented by an Englishman, John Kemp Starley. In the 1870s he was working for his uncle, James Starley, whose bike manufacturing business made one of the best penny-farthings, the Ariel. But Starley junior saw the danger in high-wheeled bikes, and the fact that they were tricky to get on and off and to handle. He thought there had to be a better, more stable, way to go cycling.

In 1876 John Lawson designed a bike with equal-sized wheels, where treadles transferred the rider’s leg power to the rear wheel, but treadles are complicated and heavy. Starley thought that Lawson was on the right track, but treadles were the wrong way to drive the rear wheel, so along with fellow enthusiast William Sutton they came up with the ‘Safety Bicycle’. Drive came from pedals on cranks turning a chain-wheel, or chainring as it’s more commonly known today. The chain-wheel was connected by a roller chain to a sprocket on the bike’s rear wheel, and the chain-wheel was bigger than the sprocket, so every pedal revolution meant several revolutions of the rear wheel. That is basic gearing, and it meant that for the first time a bike’s potential speed was determined solely by the power its rider applied to the pedals, not a combination of that and the size of its direct-drive wheel.

Safety bicycles made cycling more popular because riders could place their feet on the floor while they were still seated on their bikes. This increased people’s confidence in them. Once under way, safety bicycles were easier to ride and control than penny-farthings, which made them much safer. Safety bicycles saw an increased uptake of cycling among women, and they played a big part in the emancipation movement, which is well documented in other books.

Road racers first saw the benefits of safety bicycles in 1877, the year that Starley and Sutton founded their company, when a Bordeaux bike mechanic called Georges Juzan covered 100 kilometres from Bordeaux to Libourne and back in 4 hours and 40 minutes. He rode a French version of the safety bicycle, proving they were ideal for covering long distances. And long-distance rides were how road racing became well established.

People understood long-distance rides by comparing them with their own experiences. One hundred miles back then was like a thousand now. The less well-off rarely travelled far, while for the rich a 100-mile carriage ride, even a rail journey of that length, was an undertaking. By helping cyclists cover long distances relatively quickly the safety bicycle was pivotal in the development of road racing in Europe.

British cyclists already did long rides on penny-farthings, and 100 miles became the mark of the serious British cyclist. It’s the same for cyclists today. One hundred miles is a challenge, but doable on a bike. The safety bicycle made 100 miles more accessible, and it provided a jump in performance for those who wanted it.

In 1878 Frank Dodds set a British 100-mile record on a penny-farthing of 7 hours, 18 minutes and 15 seconds. His time stood for six years before George Smith broke it riding a Kangaroo brand safety bicycle made by Hillman, Herbert and Cooper Ltd. The following year, on an improved version of the Kangaroo, Smith reduced his 100-mile record by nearly 6 minutes. Then, on 20 October 1885, Teddy Hale knocked almost half an hour off Smith’s record by riding 100 miles, again on a Kangaroo safety bicycle, in 6 hours, 39 minutes and 5 seconds.

That sealed the reputation of the ‘safety’ for speed on the road, and more manufacturers started making them. To show it was best, and hopefully sell more, manufacturers employed top racers to ride their bikes, sowing the seeds of professional road racing. In 1886 the Rudge Bicyclette became the pre-eminent safety bicycle, due mainly to the efforts of H. O. Duncan. He was a British racer who settled in France to compete in a growing programme of long road races there, against a growing number of top riders – men like De Civry, Medinger and the first big star of road racing, Charles Terront.

Terront was born in St Ouen in 1857 and took up cycling with his brother Jules. Success came almost immediately. Charles won eight races in 1876, including Paris–Pontoise, where despite being only 19 years old he beat a well-established star in Camille Thuillet, covering 62 kilometres in 2 hours and 53 minutes. Terront was described in Le Vélocipède Illustré as wearing ‘a spotted shirt, coloured breeches, black and white stockings and a magnificent red scarf flung over the top’.

Terront started racing on a Michaudine Vélocipède, similar to the one James Moore rode when he won the St Cloud race in 1868, and he graduated through the racing ranks by riding bigger and better penny-farthing bikes in road and in track races. But Terront switched to a safety bicycle as soon as they proved to be faster. His fame grew rapidly, and Terront’s racing career coincided with a huge growth in interest in cycling. Soon books were being written on the subject, and more cycling newspapers were founded. The distances of races grew rapidly too.

Cycling fans loved reading about their champions struggling through long, gruelling races, defying the odds, suffering setbacks and yet still coming through to glory. The fascination was such that newspapers begin to vie for who could organise the longest, most gruelling race. This gave rise to two incredible road races, which in different forms still exist today. They aren’t races now, but are long-distance challenge rides. They aren’t run every year; one was so long it was never made into an annual event.

The first race is Bordeaux–Paris, a 572-kilometre slog from the southwest of France to the nation’s capital, which was first held in 1891. It was a tough journey by train in those days, but unimaginable on a bike. And it was raced all in one go. The clock started in Bordeaux and it stopped in Paris; if riders stopped to eat or sleep the clock carried on, and the stationary period was included in their time. The roads were nothing like they are now, still stage-coach tracks. It sounds overwhelming, but there had already been a lot of long-distance track races, as well as the growing number on British roads.

Long-distance track cycling took a big jump in profile in 1878, when David Stanton, a gambler and a professional racer, bet that he could ride 1,000 miles inside six days. His attempt took place in the Agricultural Hall in London’s Islington, and the man who took his £100 bet was called Davis. A flat, oval track was marked out inside the hall, and Stanton rode his penny-farthing bike round and round it.

Planning on riding up to eighteen hours a day, Stanton completed 172 miles on the first day, and 160 miles on each subsequent day until he hit 1,000 miles with 27 minutes left of the sixth day. His total riding time was 73.5 hours, giving an average speed of 13.6 miles per hour.

Watching a man ride in circles on a big bike at thirteen and a bit miles per hour doesn’t sound like a spectacle now, but Londoners flocked to watch Stanton. Another six-day race was quickly organised in the Agricultural Hall, but with other competitors involved. They were cyclists and one horse rider, who won with 969 miles covered in six days. The first cyclist was 59 miles behind the horseman, and all the cyclists complained because the horseman was allowed to change mounts as each one grew tired.

The result stood, but no more horses were allowed in six-day races, while the Agricultural Hall became a regular venue. The next six-day race held there had ten cyclists competing, including Charles Terront, and a Sheffield rider called W. Cann, who won with 1,060.5 miles. His prize was £100, which is worth about £12,000 now. The public loved it, and in April 1879 a race billed as the six-day world championships was held at the same venue. George Waller of Newcastle won with 1,172 miles, including 261 miles ridden on the first day. Events came thick and fast after that. The six-day distance record grew and grew, and so did the riders’ fame. Soon there were six-day races in other British cities, then in Europe and in America, where it really took hold.

But while that was going on inside halls and stadiums, British long-distance road races were growing in number. Many were run over set distances, 50 and 100 miles, but in the most popular races competitors rose as far as they could in 12 or 24 hours.

George Pilkington Mills quickly became the man to beat in all long-distance road races. He started cycling aged 12, and in 1885, when he was still only 18, Mills set a new British 24-hour record of 259 miles in the Anfield Cycling Club race, riding a penny-farthing.

Mills won the Anfield 24-hour again the following year, then between 5 and 10 July 1886 he rode from Land’s End to John O’Groats, just over 900 miles in the days before bridges shortened it, in a new record of 5 days and 1 hour. Again, Mills rode a penny-farthing, but he was slowly changing his mind about what was the most efficient and fastest way to go racing. Mills set his last record on a penny-farthing on 5 August 1886, when he did 273 miles in 24 hours.

A few days later he started another ‘End to End’, as the Land’s End to John O’Groats record is called. This time he rode a three-wheeled version of the safety bicycle, which some long-distance road racers preferred because of its stability. Mills set a new tricycle record of 5 days and 10 hours, but he still wasn’t done for the year. In September 1886, along with his partner A. J. Wilson, Mills broke the British tandem tricycle records for 50 and 100 miles. Then on 5 October Mills switched to a safety bicycle and set a new 24-hour figure of 295 miles. Six long-distance records in one year must be a record in itself.

But as time went on, although still setting records, Mills was pushed hard by a club-mate: Montague Holbein, who 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, all members of the 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 56-year-old Frenchman, Pierre Rousset, who rode a tricycle.

Holbein had recently set a new British 24-hour bicycle record of 340 miles, and a 12-hour record of 174 miles. The bookmakers were impressed and made him the race favourite. To ensure everybody covered the same course, and did so entirely by bicycle, or tricycle in Rousset’s case, each competitor had a booklet with fourteen towns and villages in it, which had to be signed by race officials and stamped at the fourteen designated towns and villages. Gold medals and objets d’art were offered for the first ten to arrive in Paris. Silver medals and palm branches were given to each of the next finishers, if they arrived within three days of starting. Bronze medals were awarded to finishers inside four days, and there were diplomas for those inside five days.

The race started in the dark and fog. There were 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 tricyclist Rousset rolled into Angoulême around 1.45 that afternoon.

Pacers could join the race at Angoulême, and after meeting his first one, 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 further ahead as pacemaker after pacemaker relayed him towards Paris, where Mills passed the finishing post 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. 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 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. 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 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, sleeping in hotels overnight. It was a success. 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, first run in 1876, is the oldest race from this period still in existence. Two others born a little later have grown 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 early road races finished in velodromes, 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. It was built by two local textile magnates, Maurice Perez and Théodore Vienne, to make money.

Perez and Vienne needed to publicise races at their velodrome. When the Roubaix track opened in 1895, the legendary African-American sprinter Major Taylor made one of his first European appearances. Perez and Vienne had other big events planned, but needed publicity because 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.