France, was more settled. That was the year when road racing started to gain more interest, maybe because the races were a lot longer than they had been. Angers–Tours–Angers, for example, was 222 kilometres long. It was won by M. Tissier, who beat a top track racer Camille Thibault using a light bike of Truffualt’s design, to win in 11 hours and 25 minutes.
Another longer road race, one that still exists today, was born in 1876, this time in Italy. It went from Milan to Turin and was won by Paolo Magretti, who went on to be an eminent entomologist, discovering a number of new species of African Hymenoptera. Magretti was the best of just ten initial competitors, and the race wasn’t run again until 1894. After that, editions were intermittent until 1913, when Henri Pelissier of France won. Apart from times of political upheaval, war, lack of sponsorship and on one occasion a flood, Milan–Turin has run fairly consistently ever since.
All the bikes used in races so far were penny-farthings, but racing on these was quite dangerous, given the road conditions. On a smooth track a penny-farthing is stable and not too bad to ride, but out on a road it’s a different story. Hit a pothole with that big front wheel, or apply the brake a bit sharply, and you could be pitched straight over the handlebars. It was so common that the term ‘taking a header’ was coined to describe it.
But then came the safety bicycle. Safety bicycles had two wheels of equal size, a fraction smaller in diameter than most road bike wheels are today, and the rider sat nicely balanced between them. Safety bicycles were much easier to ride and handle than penny-farthings, so they were safer, hence the name, but the safety bicycle’s appeal for racers was that they had gearing through a roller chain.
The safety bicycle was partly invented by an Englishman, John Kemp Starley. In the 1870s he was working for his uncle, James Starley, whose bike manufacturing business made one of the best penny-farthings there was, the Ariel. But Starley junior saw the big flaw in high-wheeled bikes, namely their danger and the fact that they were tricky to get on and off and to handle, and thought there had to be a better, more stable; way to go cycling.
In 1876 John Lawson designed a bike with equal-sized wheels, where treadles transferred the rider’s leg power to the rear wheel, but treadles are complicated and heavy. Starley thought that Lawson was on the right track, but treadles were the wrong way to drive the rear wheel, so along with fellow enthusiast William Sutton they came up with the ‘Safety Bicycle’, with the drive coming from pedals on cranks turning a chain-wheel, or chainring as it’s more commonly known today. The chain-wheel was connected by a roller chain to a sprocket on the bike’s rear wheel, and the chain-wheel was bigger than the sprocket, so every pedal revolution meant several revolutions of the rear wheel. That is basic gearing, and it meant that for the first time a bike’s potential speed was determined solely by the power its rider applied to the pedals, not a combination of that and the size of its direct-drive wheel.
Safety bicycles made cycling more popular in general, because riders could place their feet on the floor while they were still seated on their bikes, and that increased people’s confidence in them. Once under way, safety bicycles were much easier to ride and control than penny-farthings, which made them much safer. Safety bicycles saw an increased uptake of cycling among women, and they played a big part in the emancipation movement, which is well documented in other books.
Road racers first saw the benefits of safety bicycles in 1877, the same year that Starley and Sutton founded their company, when a Bordeaux bike mechanic called Georges Juzan covered 100 kilometres from Bordeaux to Libourne and back in 4 hours and 40 minutes. He rode a French version of the safety bicycle, and he showed that these were ideal for covering long distances. And long-distance rides were how road racing became well established.
People understood long-distance rides by comparing them with their own experiences. One hundred miles back then was like a thousand now. The less well-off rarely travelled far, while for the rich a 100-mile carriage ride, even a rail journey of that length, was no small undertaking. By helping cyclists cover long distances relatively quickly the safety bicycle played a pivotal role in the development of road racing in Europe.
British cyclists were already doing long rides on penny-farthings, and 100 miles quickly became the mark of the serious British cyclist. It’s still worn as a badge of honour by cyclists today. A challenge, but a doable one that’s quite normal to many modern cyclists. The safety bicycle made 100 miles more accessible, and it provided a jump in performance for those who wanted it.
In 1878 Frank Dodds set a British 100-mile record on a penny-farthing of 7 hours, 18 minutes and 15 seconds. His time stood for six years before George Smith broke it riding a Kangaroo brand safety bicycle made by Hillman, Herbert and Cooper Ltd. The following year, on an improved version of the Kangaroo, Smith reduced his 100-mile record by nearly 6 minutes. But then, on 20 October 1885, Teddy Hale knocked almost half an hour off Smith’s record by riding 100 miles, again on a Kangaroo safety bicycle, in 6 hours, 39 minutes and 5 seconds.
That sealed the reputation of the ‘safety’, as it was commonly called, for speed on the road, and more manufacturers started making them. To show it was best, and hopefully sell more, manufacturers started employing top racers to ride their bikes, sowing the seeds of professional road racing. In 1886 the Rudge Bicyclette became the pre-eminent safety bicycle, due mainly to the efforts of H. O. Duncan. He was a British racer who settled in France to compete in a growing programme of long road races there, against a growing number of top riders – men like De Civry, Medinger and the first real superstar of road racing, Charles Terront.
Terront was born in St Ouen in 1857 and took up cycle racing with his brother Jules. Success came almost immediately. Charles won eight races in 1876, including Paris–Pontoise, where despite being only 19 years old he beat a well-established star in Camille Thuillet, covering 62 kilometres in 2 hours and 53 minutes. Terront was described in Le Vélocipède Illustré as wearing ‘a spotted shirt, coloured breeches, black and white stockings and a magnificent red scarf flung over the top’. Very dashing.
Terront started racing on a Michaudine Vélocipède, similar to the one James Moore rode when he won the St Cloud race in 1868, and he graduated through the racing ranks by riding bigger and better penny-farthing bikes in road and in track races. But Terront switched to a safety bicycle as soon as they proved to be faster. His fame grew rapidly, and Terront’s racing career coincided with a huge growth in interest in cycling. Soon books were being written on the subject, and more cycling newspapers were founded. The distances of races grew rapidly too.
Cycling fans loved reading about their champions struggling through long, gruelling races, defying the odds, suffering setbacks and yet still coming through to glory. The fascination was such that newspapers begin to vie for who could organise the longest, most gruelling race. This gave rise to two incredible road races, which in different forms still exist today. They aren’t races now, but are challenges for long-distance cycling enthusiasts. They aren’t run every year either, but one of them was so long it never was run every year.
The first race was Bordeaux–Paris, a 572-kilometre slog from the southwest of France to the nation’s capital, which was first held in 1891. It was a tough journey by train in those days, but unimaginable on a bike. And it was raced all in one go. The clock started in Bordeaux and it stopped in Paris; if riders stopped to eat or to sleep the clock carried on, and the stationary period was included in their overall time. The roads were nothing like they are now, still stage-coach tracks really. It sounds overwhelming, but there had already been a lot of long-distance track races, as well as the growing number on British roads.
Long-distance track cycling took a big jump in profile with a challenge laid down in 1878. In it David Stanton, a gambler and a professional racer, bet that he could ride 1,000 miles inside six days. His attempt took place in the Agricultural Hall in London’s Islington, and the man who took his £100 bet was called Davis. A flat, oval track was marked out inside the hall, and Stanton rode his
