race in the world. The trip from Paris to Brest, near the tip of the Breton peninsula, and back to Paris is close to 1,200 kilometre and, like Bordeaux–Paris, it was done all in one go. Riders could rest, sleep, sit down to eat, do what they liked, but the clock kept ticking, and any non-riding time was included in their finishing time.
Giffard called his race an épreuve, a French word that can mean test, trial or ordeal. He chose the word because he saw the race primarily as a test of bikes, something designed to show the durability and capability of what was still a fairly new invention. The founding rule of Paris–Brest–Paris was that competitors must complete the course on the same bike, which had to be delivered to the organisers before the start. Identifying seals were placed on each bike and on its parts, and the bikes were kept in parc fermé conditions until the start. That doesn’t happen in cycling any more, but the French stuck with épreuve as a word to describe bike races. It helps convey the sense of bike races being tests of man or woman and machine.
When news of Paris–Brest–Paris got out, entries came from abroad and from a few women, but they were all refused. So, on 6 September 1891, a group of 207 Frenchmen set out from Paris and headed for Brest. There were ten riding tricycles, four on two tandems, and one die-hard listed as Monsieur Duval who was riding a penny-farthing. The other 192 competitors raced on safety bicycles. Amateurs and professionals were mixed together, but the pros were allowed up to ten pacers each to meet them at different points along the way. The pacers carried extra food and drinks for their riders. Racers weren’t allowed to swap bikes with anybody, but they could make repairs, so long as they did them without help.
Charles Terront raced without sleep for 71 hours and 22 minutes to win the first Paris–Brest–Paris by almost eight hours. Ninety-eight riders battled through to finish behind him. Some competitors took days longer than Terront, stopping at inns and hotels overnight. It was a huge success, though, and the race captured the imagination of people who lined the route and followed the riders’ progress through newspaper dispatches and reports.
Ten thousand people welcomed Terront at the finish line in Paris, and Giffard waxed lyrical about the race in Le Petit Journal: ‘For the first time we saw a new mode of travel, a new road to adventure, and a new vista of pleasure. Even the slowest of these cyclists averaged 128-kilometre a day for ten days, yet they arrived fresh and healthy. The most skilful and gallant horseman could not do better. Aren’t we on the threshold of a new and wonderful world?’
Giffard was bewitched by cycling, and in 1896 he joined the cycling newspaper Le Vélo as joint editor with Paul Rousseau. Le Vélo was founded in December 1892, and was the pre-eminent source of cycling news and information in France until 1903. By then, though, it had picked a battle with a rival, which Le Vélo lost badly.
But going back to Paris–Brest–Paris, it was a victory for Terront, but also a victory for the bicycle, and for pneumatic tyres. The first two riders, Terront on Michelin and Jiel-Laval on Dunlop, both used pneumatic tyres, which were relatively new. They both had punctures, and took around one hour each in total to repair them, but the tyres were demonstrably faster than solid tyres when they were rolling. Above all, though, Paris–Brest–Paris was a victory for long-distance road racing.
The following year, 1892, saw the return of Bordeaux–Paris, and the race was repeated annually, apart from 1955, 1971 and 1972, and during the two World Wars, until 1988. Paris–Brest–Paris, however, because it was longer and harder to organise, was run only every ten years, the next edition being in 1901. By then the race was so famous the organisers commissioned a top pastry chef, Louis Duran, to invent a cake for it. It was called Paris-Brest and is still a popular dessert in France today. It’s even been made by contestants of the Great British Bake-Off TV programme.
After a relatively slow uptake, by the last decade of the nineteenth century road racing was becoming a feature of European life. Races were analysed in the press, riders written about, their thoughts recorded and their performances and characters dissected and discussed. More long races were organised: Vienna–Berlin, Rennes–Brest, Geneva–Berne, Paris–Besançon and Lyons–Paris–Lyons. All have disappeared from the race calendar now, but some races born in the early days of road racing still exist.
Milan–Turin and Paris–Brussels are among the survivors, but two others are much bigger. They have grown through the status of being classic races to become two of the five single-day races called the monuments of cycling. They are Liège–Bastogne–Liège in Belgium, and Paris–Roubaix in northern France.
Liège–Bastogne–Liège was first held in 1892, a race for amateurs that actually ran from Spa, close to the city of Liège, south through the green hills of the Ardennes to turn at Bastogne, then head back to Spa. Liège is the capital of the French-speaking Walloon region of Belgium, and according to legend Bastogne was chosen as the southern turnaround because it was the furthest point the Liège-based organisers and cycling officials could reach by train which would still allow them to check the riders through and return in time for the first riders to finish.
Liège soon replaced Spa as the start and finish, and the race became about its hills, which are anything from 1.5 to 3 kilometres long. They are very British hills; in fact, the Ardennes are a bit like the North York Moors or the Scottish border country. It took a while for the race to get the shape it has today, where the selection and order of the climbs vary only slightly from year to year. Then again, it took Liège–Bastogne–Liège a while to get going at all.
A Liège man, Léon Houa, won the first three editions, after which it was shelved from 1895 to 1907. Two more editions were run in 1908 and 1909, then nothing in 1910. After that there were three more, 1911, 1912 and 1913, then nothing for the whole of the First World War. There is even some dispute about when professionals were first allowed to take part. Some authorities put it as early as 1894, others say as late as 1919.
The reason for the on-off start of Liège–Bastogne–Liège was because cycle racing in general went through a hard time in Belgium during the very early twentieth century. Velodromes closed in both the Walloon and Flanders regions. The number of road races dwindled, and the best Belgian riders had to compete in other European countries for foreign sponsors in order to make a living.
The next big race, Paris–Roubaix, was created to publicise a new velodrome. Track cycling had moved from flat cinder tracks, or indoor ovals, to tracks with straights and bankings, which allowed faster and more exciting racing. Some tracks were indoors, similar to new velodromes today, but bigger banked tracks of 400 to 500 metres a lap were in big open-air velodromes. There were a lot in northern France, and they were in competition with each other to get the paying public to come through their gates to watch their racing.
Many road races finished on tracks in those days, but Paris–Roubaix is the only big one that still does, albeit on a newer track in a slightly different position to the original. The original Roubaix velodrome was at the junction of Rue Verte and the main road from Hem, not far from Paris–Roubaix’s route into town today. The men who had it built were two local textile magnates, Maurice Perez and Théodore Vienne, and they built it to make money.
Perez and Vienne needed to publicise the ambitious programme they planned. When the Roubaix track opened in 1895, the legendary African-American track sprinter Major Taylor made one of his first European appearances. Perez and Vienne had other big ticket events planned, but needed publicity because the velodromes in nearby Lille and Valenciennes put on good meetings too. They thought that hosting the finish of a big road race from Paris could grab attention away from their rivals. With the help of the major French cycling publication Le Vélo, Perez and Vienne put on the first Paris–Roubaix in 1896.
The route was different to today, but it was still a race of cobbled roads. The difference was that in 1896 the organisers didn’t have to look for cobbles;
