National teams at the Tour de France (1930-1961)

Col d’Allos was part of the program of Tour de France since the race visited the Alps for the very first time in 1911. Especially during the 1920s and the 1930s was very popular. In the second half of the 20th century it was used muvh more rarely. 1911: François Faber 1912:  Octave Lapize 1913:  … Read more

Plateau de Beille, located in the Pyrenees, is a realtively newcomer in the world of Tour de France climbs. It was introduced to the race in 1998, the first rider on the top was Marco Pantani. List of riders winning a stage up to Plateau de Beille 2015  Joaquim Rodríguez (ESP) 2011 Jelle Vanendert (BEL) … Read more

Tour de France 2024 will start in Florence (Italy). Although the race visited neigbour countries before the First World War already, the tradition of starting the first stage of Tour de France abroad dated back to 1954  only, when the Grand Départ took place in Amsterdam (Netherland) One of the most uniqe occasions was the … Read more

Louis Trousselier (1881-1939), the winner of the 3rd Tour de France (1905) was an entertaining person, for sure. He even shouldn’t have been there, when he won the race, because his official leave from the French army ended days before.  But he stayed a bit longer and won the general classification of the Tour de … Read more

Gino Bartali was already a two-time Giro d’Italia winner (1936 and 1937) when he first entered Tour de France in the summer of 1937.The years before World War II witnessed the growing political-military tension in Europe. In 1936, the year when Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles (1919) by sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland, … Read more

Col du Galibier was part of the 7th stage alongside with Thélégraphe and Lautaret at the Tour de France in 1936. (Usually, when the peloton climbs Galibier, they climb also Thélégraphe and Lautaret.) The 230 km long stage ended in Grenoble (hilltop finishes were introduced to Tour de France only in 1952), and a whole … Read more

Before Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault on the top of Alpe d’Huez, there were André Leducq and Antonin Magne in Paris. Two dominant French riders from the first part of the 1930s, both Leducq (1930 and 1932) and Magne (1931 and 1934) won the Tour de France twice. In the very last stage of Tour … Read more

The good old days of road cycling races oroved plehty of funny Tour de France images. For our 21st-cemturian eyes and mind, of course, cycling rsces in tge 1920s and 1930s seem so different. Maybe a bit less professional? Not exaclty. Let’s just stick to the word different. Different roads. Different bikes. Different type of … Read more