Feargal McKay

@cycologies.com

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Reviewing cycling books and writing about professional cycling's mythological past and the reality behind the stories told and retold by cycling's duff historians cycologies.com 🇮🇪

Km 87.6 Col du Télégraphe The men's Tour de France has passed through the Col du Télégraphe 30 times since 1911, when Émile Georget was the first to reach the summit. In 2022, Pierre Latour led the way.
A damp squid
B+W photo of rider standing inside an indoor velodrome
A fans chases behind a lone rider, trying to push him. The rider is trying to push him away. Another fan, at the side of the road, grabs the running fans scarf to pull him back and choke him.
Scene from the Shawshank Redemption. Andy looking at a poster not of Rita Hayworth but of Alpe d'Huez
Maurice Dewaele – who had fi nished second and third at the previous two Tours – inherited Fontan’s lead, with a fi fteen minute advantage over Génial Lucier’s Jef Demuysère. By Grenoble that had become 18 minutes. But disaster struck and Dewaele came down with a stomach problem. He spent the whole of the rest day in his hotel room, and when he arrived at the start of the stage to Évian – which included the climbs of the Lautaret, Galibier and Aravis – Dewaele was pale as a ghost. Somehow, though, his Alcyon team-mates were able to hide this fact from their rivals and – with, it is alleged, more than a little help from others in the peloton – shepherded Dewaele to the fi nish, safe in his yellow jersey. His margin over Demuysère remained unchanged, but the third placed- rider, La Rafale’s Giuesppe Pancera, leap-frogged Demuysère and closed to within 15 minutes of Dewaele. Dewaele recovered a bit over the next rest day but was still off form when the riders set off for Belfort. But again his Alcyon team- mates were able to shepherd him safely to the fi nish, his overall lead unchallenged by Pancera, Demuysère or, for that matter, anyone else. And that’s pretty much how the rest of the race remained, with Dewaele riding into Paris in yellow, the only change being that Pancera slipped back to third, behind Demuysère. It was a victory that displeased Desgrange greatly, he complaining that his Tour had been won by a corpse.
Rifkin's The Age of Access
Wizard of Oz gives lion an oversized medal
Star Wars medal scene
Bullseye meme ... "Look at what you could have won!"
Increased focus on the endogenous steroid markers measured in blood serum as part of the steroidal module of the ABP, and on the endocrine module of the ABP to better detect markers of human Growth Hormone (hGH) abuse
Around 600 in-competition samples to be collected during the event, with the final number determined based on the testing strategy, intelligence and investigations priorities and operational requirements
An Irish €2 coin
Are the UCI and ASO treading on thin ice? We won’t speculate. But without much information, the ASO and the UCI are treading on thin ice. A nighttime check seems like an absolute last resort—something you certainly don’t do lightly. The fact that Pogacar and Vingegaard were simply at the start of Stage 15 also speaks volumes. According to all available information, the number one and two in the general classification were the only ones singled out during the check. Will this have any further repercussions? It’s possible. If nothing comes of these tests, the teams might take action. Whether they will do so, however, is far from certain. One more note regarding the rules: “A protest regarding whether the UCI had sufficient grounds to conduct nighttime testing will not be considered a valid defense in the event of a doping violation.”
Mauro Gianetti
Out of competition testing, Froome’s French reaction and the need for eternal vigilance You mentioned night-time testing, which under WADA rules means that for the first time riders can be tested after 11pm at night. However it is not in yet permitted in France. Why is that? Well, this is a technical legal matter which I think will be addressed pretty quickly by the French government. It is allowed under the World Anti Doping Code. It is something that I am sure the French will want to sign up to. But of course that kind of thing is perhaps not as critical in competition as it is out of competition. There have already been night-time tests out of competition. I would expect them to continue now that it is available under the rules.
The no testing window from 11pm to 6am helps riders who micro-dose to avoid being caught. The CIRC is conscious of the principle of proportionality but the absence of night-time testing is a weakness in the current system and needs to be addressed. UCI/CADF should make more use of the exception contained in Article 5.2 of the 2015 UCI Anti-Doping Rules (“serious and specific suspicion that the Rider may be engaged in doping”) to test at night-time.
It is one thing to allow clean riders the opportunity to rest in between the gruelling stages, but it is entirely another thing to allow riders with suspicious profiles, backed up by robust intelligence, the same opportunity. It is fully acknowledged that this is a difficult balance to find, but in order to protect those riders who compete clean, the IO Team believes that the UCI has an obligation to act decisively and develop and execute testing strategies that target riders who demonstrate the behaviour of doping and to seriously consider removing the informal knowledge and comfort that all riders have in knowing that they will not be tested in the middle of the night.
Cursed
Henri Pélissier, as drawn by Mich
Greg LeMond
Georges Speicher
Maurice Archambaud.
Henri Desgrange. Put some clothes on.
Georges Lemaire
Maurice Archambaud
Jean Aerts
Alfredo Binda
Five Giri d'Italia (1925, 1927-29, 1933, three Worlds (1927, 1930, 1932), the Giro di Lombardia (1925, 1926, 1927, 1931) and Milan–Sanremo (1929, 1931) and still Alfredo Binda is best remembered for putting his name on some toe-straps.
Learco Guerra. Yes you would.
Maurice Dewaele, the Corpse that Won the Tour
Victor Fontan. He was 37 when he took the race lead, then the second oldest rider to wear yellow (Christophe having been a few months older when he last wore yellow, in 1922).
The three yellow jerseys
Maurice Dewaele
Francis Pélissier
The word Cursed, looking, well, a bit spooky
Ottavio Bottecchia
The Many Faces of Ottavio Bottecchia - three caricatures.
Hector Heusghem
Eugène Christophe
Henri Pélissier
Henri Pélissier.
Émile Georget
Louis Trousselier
Pottier on the cover of La Vie au Grand Air
B+W photo of René Pottier
On the road to Nantes three of La Française’s riders – Garin, Lucien Pothier and Fernand Augereau – got into an argument over who should win the stage. In the version of the story told by Augereau, Garin had said that he would pay the others to let him win, but he, Augereau, refused to be party to such a deal. At which point there was some argy-bargy and Pothier – known as the butcher of Sens for the rather prosaic reason that he was, well, a butcher from Sens – knocked Augereau to the ground. Then Garin attacked his bike, damaging the forks. Garin, for his part, said Augereau was delusional and dismissed the story out of hand. But reporters in Nantes’ Vélodrome de Longchamp were quick to note that the fi nal sprint was barely contested, the win a formality for Garin. And they found eye- witnesses to support Augereau’s version of the tale. At best Garin was facing a penalty that might wipe out his lead (which was now 2h58’02” over team-mate Pothier, Georget having abandoned). At worst he could be thrown off the race. Neither outcome would have looked good for L’Auto. Nor would either outcome have looked good for La Française, who happened to have been one the original investors in L’Auto. So a certain sense of relief must have been felt by both when Augereau withdrew his story.
B+W photo of Maurice Garin
B+W photo of Maurice Garin, with a green armband, said by some to signify he was leading the Tour (it didn't)
Illustration from La Vie au Grand Air in 1919 showing Christophe in the new yellow jersey.
Miles Teller. But Google saying it's Gino Bartali.
Children of the Gods If Gaul wasn’t powered by amphetamines, what does Maunder want you to believe he was powered by? For answer to that, he turns to Roland Barthes: Barthes portrayed the Tour de France as an epic contest, with the heroes tested on hellish sites such as Ventoux. To take on these human challenges, the racers must channel spirit energies: ‘The strength a racer possess … may assume two aspects: form, a state more than an impulse, a privileged equilibrium between quality of muscles, acuity of intelligence and force of character; and leap, a veritable electric influx which erratically possesses certain racers beloved of the gods and causes them to accomplish supernatural feats … Charly Gaul, glamorous beneficiary of grace, is precisely a leap specialist; he receives his electricity from an intermittent commerce with the gods: sometimes the gods inhabit him and he works wonders; sometimes the gods abandon him and his leap is exhausted. Charly can do nothing more of any use’. Not all of those words Maunder quoted were written by Barthes (via his translator, Richard Howard). Barthes actually called Gaul “a jump specialist”, not as Maunder prefers to put it, “a leap specialist”. The difference between the two isn’t just pedantry. Here’s Maunder: The leap. The term may be obscure – Barthes’s analysis of cycling has not made it into the popular lexicon – but the idea is familiar, even to casual sports fans. It is a moment of such brilliance that the athlete is transformed in our eyes. They become more than a mortal being. And it applies to any sport. It is Diego Maradona dribbling past half a dozen players, it is Roger Federer producing an impossible backhand, it is an Ayrton Senna overtaking manoeuvre that seems to defy the laws of physics. Leap might well be an obscure term that hasn’t become part of the popular lexicon but the same cannot be said of jump. As early as 1939 you can find Henri Desgrange explaining in the pages of L’Auto how t…
Three photos of other riders on the Ballon
Gino Bartali on the Ballon d'Alsace in 1937