Читать книгу Mapping Le Tour: The unofficial history of all 100 Tour de France races - Ellis Bacon - Страница 29
Оглавление| Start: Paris, France, on 21 JuneFinish: Paris, France, on 19 July | |
| Total distance: 5430 km (3374 miles)Longest stage: 433 km (269 miles) | |
| Highest point:Col du Galibier: 2556 m (8386 ft)Mountain stages: 6 | |
| Starters: 130Finishers: 49 | |
| Winning time: 219 h 10’ 18”Average speed: 24.820 kph (15.422 mph) | |
| 1. Ottavio Bottecchia (Ita)2. Lucien Buysse (Bel) at 54’ 20”3. Bartolomeo Aimo (Ita) at 56’ 37” |
While Ottavio Bottecchia again won the Tour de France in 1925, fundamental changes were made by organiser Henri Desgrange to help push his race forward. The Tour increased its number of stages – up to eighteen from the fifteen it had been run over for so long – and the time bonuses for stage wins were done away with, for the time being. Desgrange even went as far as proposing that every rider was to eat the same amount of food, but that idea was dropped after the riders threatened to strike.
The race also started a little further outside Paris, in the suburb of Le Vésinet, while new stage start/finish towns included Mulhouse, near the Swiss border and, a little further south, spa town Évian.
Bottecchia started where he had left off, winning the first stage to Le Havre before losing the jersey two days later to unheralded Belgian Adelin Benoît. There was to be no repeat of the Italian’s 1923 Tour win when he wore the famous golden tunic from start to finish, but Bottecchia was back in yellow after winning the flat stage 7 between Bordeaux and Bayonne.
Benoît then showed the race his climbing legs, winning the tough first day in the Pyrenees and reclaiming the race lead before Bottecchia took control once more the next day – and this time retained yellow all the way to Paris.
It was also Eugène Christophe’s last Tour – the unlucky Frenchman whose dreams of winning the race were dashed by broken forks, but who nonetheless would always be remembered as the first ever wearer of the yellow jersey in 1919. Christophe finished a lowly eighteenth overall, almost seven hours down on the Italian winner. In fact, no French rider was even to finish in the top ten; Romain Bellenger was the highest-placed home rider in eleventh.
A weary Bartolomeo Aimo struggles up to the Col d’Izoard
