CQ22-Digital

pride – the riders of Bordeaux, alarmed at reports the cycling
clubs of Grenoble and Lyon were about to adopt the English model
of endurance time trialling, jumped the gun and opted for a less
logistically challenging point-to-point race. The pacing came later –
the 1899 race was paced by motorcar, the raffishly knickerbockered
figure of Josef Fischer tucked in the slipstream of an elegant
automobile. The familiar profile of the smelly little Derny would be
introduced in the 1930s.
The UVF had always been open about attracting professional riders
to their ranks and allowing them to compete in their races. But one of
France’s elite riders, Charles Terront, would not be at the start line in
1891. In order to attract British riders to the race, Le Véloce-sport was
forced to accept the diktat of the National Cycling Union that the race
be strictly amateur. Which meant that the shamateur Mills, riding for
his North Road club but heavily sponsored by Humber bicycles, was
free to be paced by a professional and beat the peloton of French club
riders. Ironically, the British had turned what was dreamed of as a
randonnée into a proper road race.
The debate over where Paris-Bordeaux could and would lead the
sport of bike racing would rage on over the next decade. By the late
1890s the race had been taken over by Giffard’s Le Vélo and the 1902
edition was won by Édouard Wattelier, who had already finished
second in that year’s Paris-Roubaix.
But there was another Bordeaux-Paris race that year, where the
winning rider smashed the winning time by over 4 hours. It was
unpaced because the organiser despised anything that might impede
on the Spartan cruelty of long-distance riding. That second race was
won by a rider known variously as the White Bulldog and le petit
ramoneur and was organised by the new kid on the sports journalism
block – L’Auto-Vélo under the editorship of Henri Desgrange.
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