on riding up to eighteen hours a day if he needed to, Stanton completed 172 miles on the first day, and 160 miles on each subsequent day until he hit 1,000 miles with 27 minutes left of the sixth day. His total riding time was 73.5 hours, giving an average speed of 13.6 miles per hour.
Watching a man ride round in circles on a big bike at thirteen and a bit miles per hour might not seem like a spectacle now, but Londoners flocked to see Stanton do it. Another six-day race was quickly organised in the Agricultural Hall, but this time with other competitors involved. All were cyclists apart from one horse rider, and the horse rider won, with 969 miles covered in six days. The first cyclist was 59 miles behind the horseman, but all the cyclists complained because the horseman was allowed to change mounts as each one grew tired.
The result stood, but no more horses were allowed in six-day races, while the Agricultural Hall became a regular venue for them. The next six-day race held there had ten cyclists competing, including Charles Terront, and a Sheffield rider called W. Cann, who won with 1,060.5 miles ridden in six days. His first prize was £100, which is worth about £12,000 now. The public loved it, and in April 1879 a race billed as the six-day world championships was held at the same venue. George Waller of Newcastle won with 1,172 miles, including 261 miles ridden on the first day. Events came thick and fast after that. The six-day distance record grew and grew, and so did the fame of the riders. Soon there were six-day races in other British cities, then in Europe and in America, where it really took hold.
But while all that was going on inside halls and stadiums, British long-distance road races were growing in number. A lot were run over set distances, 50 and 100 miles, but the most popular were races where the competitors didn’t cover a set distance, but competed to see how far they could ride in 12 or 24 hours.
George Pilkington Mills quickly became the man to beat in all long-distance road races. He started cycling aged 12, and in 1885, when he was still only 18, Mills set a new British 24-hour record of 259 miles in the Anfield Cycling Club race, riding a penny-farthing.
Mills won the Anfield 24-hour again the following year, then between 5 and 10 July 1886 he rode from Land’s End to John O’Groats, just over 900 miles in the days before ferries and bridges shortened it, in a new record of 5 days and 1 hour. Again, Mills rode a penny-farthing, but he was slowly changing his mind about what was the most efficient and fastest way to go racing. Mills set his last record on a penny-farthing on 5 August 1886, when he did 273 miles in 24 hours.
A few days later Mills started another ‘End to End’, as the Land’s End to John O’Groats record was already being called. This time he rode a tricycle, a three-wheeled version of the safety bicycle, which some long-distance road racers preferred because of its stability. Mills set a new tricycle record of 5 days and 10 hours, but he still wasn’t done for the year. In September 1886, along with his partner A. J. Wilson, Mills broke the British tandem tricycle records for 50 and 100 miles. Then on 5 October Mills switched to a safety bicycle and set a new 24-hour figure of 295 miles. Six long-distance records in one year must be a record in itself.
But as time went on, although he continued setting records, Mills was getting pushed hard by a club-mate. His name was Montague Holbein, and he broke a number of Mills’s records as well as setting new ones of his own. That’s why Mills and Holbein, along with Selwyn Edge and J. E. Bates, who were all from the same North Road Cycling Club, were invited to take part in the first ever Bordeaux–Paris race by its organisers, a newspaper called Le Véloce Sport.
When the British riders were invited, Bordeaux–Paris was scheduled to be a professional race, but Mills and the other Brits were amateurs. So the National Cycling Union (NCU), which like so many early British sporting bodies didn’t approve of professionalism, asked the French organisers to change the race’s status and only allow amateurs to enter.
They did, and the first ever Bordeaux–Paris, held on 24 May 1891, was a race for amateurs only. The 38 entrants started at 5 a.m. from the Pont Bastide in Bordeaux. As well as four British riders, there was one Swiss, one Pole, and the rest were French. All rode safety bicycles apart from one French amateur entrant, Pierre Rousset, who preferred a tricycle – as befitted his age perhaps? He was 56.
The betting put Mills and Holbein as 2:1 favourites. Holbein had recently set a new British 24-hour bicycle record of 340 miles, and a 12-hour record of 174 miles. Those figures impressed the bookies, who’d obviously done their homework. To ensure everybody covered the same course, and that they covered it entirely by bicycle, or tricycle in Rousset’s case, each competitor was given a booklet with fourteen towns and villages in it. The booklet had to be signed by race officials and stamped at controls in each of the fourteen designated towns and villages, otherwise the rider would be disqualified. Gold medals and objets d’art were offered for the first ten to arrive in Paris. Silver medals and a palm branch were given to each of the next finishers, so long as they arrived within three days of starting. Bronze medals were awarded to finishers inside four days, and there were diplomas for those who were inside five days.
Race day dawned dark and foggy. Rain had fallen for several days, there were very few spectators early on, but a big crowd awaited the riders at Angoulême, where the four Brits arrived together at 10.30 a.m. They had a good lead, and stopped for five minutes. They ate soup, replenished the stores of food they carried with them, had their control books stamped and signed by officials, then remounted and rode off into the grey gloom.
A Frenchman, Henri Coulliboeuf, was next to arrive at 10.55 a.m., then Joseph Jiel-Laval at 11 a.m. He was half an hour ahead of the next rider, and the tricyclist Rousset rolled into Angoulême around 1.45 that afternoon.
Pacers were allowed to join the race at Angoulême, and after meeting his first one, who was called Lewis Stroud, Mills tucked in behind him and drew away from his compatriots. By the time he reached Châtellerault, Mills led by half an hour from Holbein, then Edge, and then Bates. And so it went on, Mills drawing inexorably further ahead as pacemaker after pacemaker relayed him towards Paris. Mills passed the finishing post in Paris 26 hours and 36 minutes after he’d set off from Bordeaux. The total distance ridden was 356 miles.
It was a very professional and disciplined display by the British amateur. As well as having fast pacers, Mills spent minimal time when he stopped at controls, just taking morsels of food. He carried anything else he needed with him. The race was big news in Britain, and several British newspapers followed it, placing journalists at various points along the route. At Tours the Birmingham Daily Post correspondent noted that ‘Mills swallowed a dog-mouthful of finely-chopped meat and drank a bottle of specially-prepared stimulant.’
British riders took the first four places in that first Bordeaux–Paris. Holbein was second in a time of 27 hours and 52 minutes, Edge was third in 30 hours and 10 minutes, and Bates was fourth, just 8 seconds behind him. The first French rider, Jiel-Laval, was fifth, nearly two hours behind Bates. And the stately Rousset? He finished 15th on his tricycle in 63 hours and 29 minutes.
The race was a great success, and Bordeaux–Paris soon became a professional race and a fixture in the pro calendar. For a while it was considered one of road racing’s classics, especially from 1945 onwards, when the competitors were paced for the last two-thirds of the race by men riding small motorbikes called Dernys, after their inventor Roger Derny. Pacing was preserved in Bordeaux–Paris long after similar marathon bike races died, because it meant they covered the distance in a reasonable time, but the race required specific and dedicated training which, as the sport developed, fewer riders were prepared to do each year. The last Bordeaux–Paris was in 1988.
Le Véloce Sport achieved a coup by staging Bordeaux–Paris, which was irksome to Pierre Giffard, the editor of Le Petit Journal. So in response he came up with something absolutely staggering, something he hoped would make Le Véloce Sport’s piddling
