This is such a great picture of 1926 winner of the Tour, Lucien Buysse. Celebrating with a bottle of champagne with the classic glass instead of the now popular flute. The 1926 Tour was the longest in its history (5,745 km), with 17 stages averaging 338 km. With Andy and his brother Frank racing together Lucien topped this by racing with two other brothers, Jules and Michel. He was actually a domestique for Ottavio Bottecchia, but he would abandon this Tour. Lucein would need to battle two storms on his way to victory. The first seeing him into the Malliot Jeune over the Col d'Aspin and the other the loss of his daughter.
André Leducq was a prolific stage winner at the Tour de France and pulled off the overall in the 1930's so we will be getting back to him in a later post. He would go on to win 25 stages in 9 trips around the French country side. This is a picture of him after his stage win in the 1928 Tour where he won stage 24.
Tour de France Winner Nicolas Frantz posing with Andre Leducq and the majestic 1928 Podium Girls!
Nicolas Frantz who can be seen here with De Waele in the 1927 Tour after stage 2 from Dieppe-LeHavre, he would go on to win this year his first of two wins. Franz can also be seen above in the picture with Andre Leducq where he would win his second Tour in 1928 back to back. He was a Luxembourg national and would win 60 races during his 12-year racing career.
These are two pictures also from the 1928 edition of the Tour showing riders, unfortunately unknown, having a drink and fixing a puncture. I may be wrong here but I think that the race back then was not one of a giant peloton kicking up dust but rather a strung out group of riders that would ride in two's and three's. I may be completely wrong but I will do some more reading and see if I can find anything about this type of racing in the early days.
