Download Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep: The Tale of the First Tour de France AudioBook Free
Full of excitement, mishaps and audacious efforts at cheating, the first Tour de France in 1903 was a colourful affair. Its riders included heroes like Maurice "The White Bulldog" Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a circular of cheese to be able to smuggle him into France as a 14-year-old; Hippolyte Aucouturier, who, with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, appeared as if the villain from a Buster Keaton movie; and amateurs like Jean Dargassies, a blacksmith who acquired no idea what he was allowing himself set for. Cyclists of that time period weren't thinking about this 'heroic' contest, dreamed up to revive a struggling publication, through roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to 20 kilos, on a single fixed equipment, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the contest intended paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat. There is no indication that this ramshackle cycling load up would attract crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. However they did, and all thanks to a marketing ruse, bicycling could not be the same again. Acclaimed bicycling article writer Peter Cossins calls for us through the inaugural Tour de France level by level to see where in fact the ideal sporting event of all began.
