No bannana's, lots of coffee

Bottecchia did the double in the 1925 Tour de France. He is famous for his limited French and apparently only knew how to say: "No bannana's, lots of coffee, thank you". You wouldn't get a more simple recipe to winning the greatest race on earth. This picture is of Léon Despontins and Eugène Dhers during the sixth stage from Bayonne to Luchon. Of the 130 riders starting only 49 would finish, back then the Tour was still made up of teams and touriste-routiers. Just finishing would be impressive but Léon Despontins managed to finish 16th and be the highest placed non-team rider.

Léon Despontins et Eugène Dhers, Bayonne - Luchon

Photo from L'Equipe and info from Wiki

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Bottecchia Battered

A rider I would really like to find out more about is Ottavio Bottecchia. The first Italian to win the Tour be was another character of the peloton. The picture from the stage over the Tourmalet show's the conditions these riders had to take part in. I think mountain bikers of today would bulk at having to climb scree like this but these machines were the working class, hard as nails and for a time where courage was the order of the day. Bottecchia himself was a bricklayer and and in the 1924 Tour he would go on to win the grand prize after rattling through the Pyranees and building up a 50 minute gap.

Ottavio Bottecchia, Bayonne - Luchon

Photo from L'Equipe

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The sprinter almost takes it

The 6th stage of the 1923 Tour saw the riders heading into the mountains again. Robert Jacquinot, who was primarily known as a sprinter, broke away and went over the first there mountains in the lead. He seemed to in for a chance with the win and take over the lead, but the last mountain was too much for Jacquinot, and he fell off his bike climbing the Peyresourde. Alavoine passed Jacquinot and went on to win the stage, while Bottecchia won back enough time to regain his lead from Bellenger, who lost a lot of time. Hector Heusghem actually lost the previous years Tour in 1923 because he took a spare bike which was disallowed before the rule change in the 1923 Tour. He would go on to finish 4th again in this ride.

Hector Heusghem, Bayonne - Luchon

Photo from L'Equipe

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Tour Detox 1920's

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.