CQ22-Digital

Bordeaux-Paris didn’t make it into the first Tour de France as one of
the iconic six original stages. Instead the peloton tackled Bordeaux-
Nantes, a mere 425 km, in a stage won by Maurice Garin. The
diminutive French-Italian rider would go on to win the race overall,
having led from start to finish. It was the start of a long and illustrious
relationship between the biggest cycling race of them all and the
jewel of the South West – Bordeaux has hosted the Tour 80 times
since 1903.
It’s not difficult to see how a 500 km+ one-day race in May became a
playground of future Tour champions. It was the ideal preparation for
the gargantuan stages of that race and the roll call of winners between
1903 and the outbreak of world war one reads like a Who’s Who of the
Iron Age of cycling – Hippolyte Aucouturier (1903), 2nd in the Tour
and winner of Paris-Roubaix that year; Louis Trousselier (1908) winner
of the Tour – Paris-Roubaix double in 1905; Francois Faber (1911)
winner of the 1909 Tour and a record 5 stages back-to-back.
When the race resumed in 1919 it was with a win by Henri Pélissier,
the flamboyant star of the new French cycling who would finally win
the Tour in 1923. His brother Francis would win Bordeaux-Paris in
1922. He was the last French winner before a long string of fabled
Belgian hard men dominated the palmarès – Georges Ronsse the
cyclo-cross specialist, Classics winner and two-time world champion
won 3 editions of the race between 1927 and 1930.
The dominance of the twin superpowers of world cycling was briefly
interrupted in 1925 by the first rider to pull off the illustrious Ronde
van Vlaanderen / Paris-Roubaix double in 1923 – a feat unmatched
until his countryman Fabian Cancellara did it again in 2010. Heinrich
‘Heiri’ Suter was born 8 years after the first Bordeaux-Paris was
raced and won the GP Wolber – at that time the unofficial world
championships – in 1922 at just 23 years of age and then again in 1925,
the year he conquered Bordeaux-Paris. In 1926 he’d go one-two at
Paris-Tours with fellow Swiss Kastor Notter.
The youngest and most successful of six brothers who all raced, Heiri
nailed 58 professional wins in his career. Neat as a toy soldier with
his slicked-down hair, Suter was Swiss champion 7 times before he
retired at the end of a 14-year career that was ridden entirely between
the two world wars.
95