The life of the Big Loop

Championships SportAs a sporting event, the Tour de France represents both the best and worst of human nature.

Violence, deception, cheating, betrayal, drug-taking and even death have marred La Grande Boucle (literally, the Big Loop) over the past century. Stopped only by the two world wars, the race teetered on the brink of collapse in 1998 during one of its more malevolent phases, when L'Affaire Festina showed the extent of the drug problem afflicting the sport.

And yet, just as mankind is flawed and fallible, this imperfect event also has much to redeem itself. The virtues of courage, determination, persistence, loyalty, honour and selflessness have been displayed countless times during the last century and it is this dichotomy, this propensity to bring out the best and worst which makes the event so fascinating and so relevant, even today.

Being the centenary of the first holding of the Tour, the story of the three-week, two-wheeled battle is being told by several different authors this summer. Perhaps the most unusual source is Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a journalist, historian and former literary editor of the Spectator. While Wheatcroft has had a long-running interest in the race, his previous books have dealt with subjects as far removed as Jewish nationalism (The Controversy of Zion), the development of diamond and gold mining in South Africa (The Randlords) and a history of biographical sketches, entitled Absent Friends. Fortunately, Wheatcroft is well up to the task of dissecting the Tour, dealing assuredly and entertainingly with the history, anecdotes and background of the contest.

Generally, newspapers report the news rather than creating it. The Tour de France is an exception to this rule, having been dreamed up as a wildly ambitious marketing device to save a paper facing ruin. At the start of the 20th century two newspapers were in direct competition. Le Vélo, edited by Pierre Giffard, had been heavily backed by the Compte de Dion since 1891, some eight years before the Count was arrested when a crowd of anti- Dreyfusards endangered the French president, Emile Loubet.

Giffard, a Dreyfus supporter, criticised Dion in the sister publication, Le Petit Journal. In response, the Count withdrew his patronage and founded a rival newspaper called L'Auto-Velo. Giffard promptly took a court action due to the similarity of the names, forcing the latter publication to become, simply, L'Auto. Concerned by this loss of identity and also by Le Vélo's highly successful running of races such as the Paris-Brest-Paris, the editor, Henri Desgrange, needed to come up with a marketing device to guarantee the survival of the paper.

Géo Lefèvre's suggestion of a Tour de France was initially greeted with incredulity by his boss, Desgrange, due to the scale and difficulty of organising - not to say competing in - such an event. And yet the race proved to be a massive success, with huge crowds turning out to watch the riders and L'Auto's circulation soaring, all at the expense of the soon-to-collapse Vélo. In the years since, L'Auto has become L'Equipe, the bicycle has since been replaced by the car as the method of transport for the masses, but the Tour has gained in strength to become the world's single biggest annual sporting event.

Wheatcroft's entertaining study deals with this evolution, running through the history in blocks of three or four years which synopsise the action without bogging the reader down in too much detail. He deals with a multitude of anecdotes and tales in the book, ranging from the violence and skulduggery which almost led to the Tour's demise in 1904 (riders were beaten up, nails scattered on the roads, and the first four riders overall were disqualified due to cheating) to the exploits of champions current and past. We learn of riders such as Hippolyte Aucouturier, who guzzled red wine on his way to second place overall in 1905, won five stages in the Tour, but who also suffered the obvious debilitating effects of this drug of choice. And there are the sorry tales of Francesco Cepeda, Tom Simpson and Fabio Casartelli, who each died during the race.

Also featured are the achievements of multiple champions Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, plus cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, who is aiming to join this elite club of five-time winners this year. But it's not all racing; details of the contest are interspersed with occasional chapters entitled Repos (rests), which provide an interesting overview of French history, culture, gastronomy and literature, thus giving a reminder of the outside influences in each era of the race.

Wheatcroft's book is not perfect; there are several factual errors in the text, such as the statement that Simpson never finished a Tour, or that the 2000 prologue winner, David Millar, is the son of Robert Millar, the Scottish climber. The book would also have benefited from more photographs. But these flaws aside, Le Tour is an informative and well-written piece of work which helps the reader understand what makes La Grand Boucle such a special event.

There may be no Irish participants this year, but don't let that put you off watching the centenary race, or buying this fine book. Like the race, it is well worth a look.

Shane Stokes writes on cycling for The Irish Times, Irishcycling.com and a number of specialist publications.He has covered the Tour de France, Paris-Nice, the Tour of the and the World Cycling

Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France By Geoffrey Wheatcroft Simon and Schuster, 378pp, £16.99