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The First Road Races

There’s some debate about when the first ever bike race was held. Many quote a race in Parc St Cloud, Paris, on 31 May 1868. It was won by an Englishman, James Moore, but it was part of a series of races in the same park on the same day. The names of the other winners were lost, and only Moore’s survived.

It’s possible that other races pre-date the St Cloud meeting, although it can’t have been by much. The first bike with pedals – the act of pedalling is what I think defines cycling – was made in 1864, and the first patent for a pedal-powered bicycle given in 1866. So there wasn’t much time between those dates and the Parc St Cloud races.

But because they were held on a 2-kilometre lap of prepared cinder paths inside the park, not on the open road, they weren’t the first ever road races. The first proper road race of which there is a record happened in November 1869. It went from Paris to Rouen on normal roads. But since James Moore also won that race, he is the father of road racing.

The first mass-produced bikes were called ‘boneshakers’ in Britain and vélocipèdes in France. They were made from wrought iron, had wooden wheels with iron bands around their circumference to reduce wear, and one rudimentary brake. The pedals were attached to the front wheel, so these early bikes were direct drive; one revolution of the pedals meant one revolution of the wheel. And because wheels with greater circumference cover more ground per pedal revolution, the front wheels of early bikes were slightly bigger than the rear.

A Paris blacksmith and coach builder called Pierre Michaux was the man who put pedals on a two-wheeled running machine of the type that had become very popular in Germany, France and Britain. Or it may have been his son, Ernest. Again, there are conflicting accounts. But by creating the first ever pedal cycle, Pierre and/or Ernest Michaux made France the birthplace of cycling. By 1869 there were around sixty bicycle manufacturers in Paris, and about fifteen in the provinces. But the possibilities of this new invention were quickly being discovered on both sides of the English Channel.

Young men rode these early bikes around parks, doing tricks on them and generally showing off. But soon they started exploring the countryside by bike, and the capacity to cover great distances on two wheels became a statement of masculinity. In February 1869 John Mayall set himself the personal challenge of riding non-stop between London and Brighton. He completed the 83 kilometres in around twelve hours, attracting a lot of interest during what was a mini boom for the bicycle.

The first newspaper dedicated to cycling was born in 1869 in France. It was called Le Vélocipède Illustré, and although there had been news sheets about bikes before, Le Vélocipède Illustré was professionally produced, lavishly illustrated and lavishly written. This is what the editor, Richard Lesclide, also known by his pen name of Le Grand Jacques, wrote at the beginning of the first issue, which was published on 1 April 1869:

The Vélocipède is rapidly entering our lives, and that is the only justification we need for starting this new magazine. And yet never has the famous phrase: ‘People began to feel the need for a special organ devoted to a fashionable conveyance’ been so appropriate.

Indeed the Vélocipède is gaining ground at amazing speed, spreading from France to the rest of Europe, from Europe to Asia and Africa. Not to mention America, which has outstripped us and now has the advantage of us in the race for further improvements.

The Vélocipède is a more serious plaything than people realise. As well as the great fun it offers, it is indisputably a functional article. It is one of the signs of the times; it is a personal affirmation of human strength, translated into speed by means of ingenious agents.

The Vélocipède is a step forward along the road traversed by the genius of man. It replaces collective, brutish, unintelligent speed with individual speed, rational speed, avoiding obstacles, adapting itself to the circumstance, and obeying man’s will. This horse in wood and steel fills a gap in modern living; it does not merely answer a need, it fulfils people’s aspirations.

The Vélocipède is not a mere flash in the pan, here today and gone tomorrow. As you can see from the fact that, as it obtains a footing in the fashionable world, the government and the major public services are using it for special duties. It has now won complete acceptance in France, and we are founding a magazine under its patronage in order to bring together, in the same fellowship, its adherents and believers.

His piece set the timbre of cycling journalism, or at least French cycling journalism, for the next 100 years. A few months after Lesclide wrote those words, the long association between the cycling press and race promotion began when Le Vélocipède Illustré organised that Paris to Rouen race. Or Paris–Rouen, following the accepted protocol that the ‘to’ in the names of place-to-place road races is always replaced by a dash.

The date was 7 November 1869, and Paris–Rouen set a pattern of place-to-place road races that was copied and developed over the years as the template for some of cycling’s biggest races. Thirty-one men and one woman gathered at 7.15 a.m. outside Le Pré Catalan, on the Route de Suresnes in the Bois de Boulogne for the first Paris–Rouen. Le Pré Catalan is now a restaurant with three Michelin stars, but was then an exhibition centre where a cycle show had been held for five days preceding the race.

According to James Moore’s son, also called James, who was speaking to Sporting Cyclist magazine in 1968 on the occasion of the centenary of the historic Parc St Cloud race, before the inaugural Paris–Rouen his father announced: ‘Unless I arrive first, they will find me lying beside the road.’ Gritty, determined words that set the mood and mind-set for road racing that still dominates the sport.

The riders set off for Rouen at 7.25 a.m., and at 6.10 p.m. the same day Moore crossed a finish line drawn by members of the Rouen cycling club at the gates to their city. A fine drizzle fell all day, and it was dark when Moore finished. The first prize was 1,000 gold francs and a Michaux bicycle, the race having been organised by the Michaux brand owners, the Olivier brothers Aimé, René and Marius.

Roads outside cities were appalling in those days. They were either made of bone-jarring hard-packed clay or stones, or were muddy tracks with puddle-filled ruts and holes. They were very muddy that November day between Paris and Rouen, and the mud sucked at the riders’ heavy bikes. Even Moore walked up the hills, and he finished 15 minutes ahead of the next man. The female competitor, made mysterious by her pseudonym of Miss America, finished 12 hours after the winner, but she wasn’t last. That honour fell jointly to E. Fortin and Prosper Martin, who crossed the line together 14 hours and 15 minutes after Moore.

Moore was to all intents a professional cyclist by 1869. His success in the Parc St Cloud race was followed by more victories on cinder cycle tracks, which was where cycle racing grew quickest at first. At the St Cloud event Moore raced on a standard Michaux vélocipède, with its front wheel slightly bigger than the rear, but by the time he won Paris–Rouen he was riding a prototype bike made under the direction of a Parisian manufacturer, Jules Suriray.

It was far lighter than Moore’s original bike, had ball bearings to reduce friction in its hubs, and was custom- built in the workshop of Sainte-Pélagie prison in Paris. Suriray invented ball bearings, but needed the forced labour of prison inmates to make and polish the numbers of steel balls he needed. Moore’s bike also had Clément Ader patented rubber tyres. Plus its front wheel measured 48.25 inches in diameter, while the rear was just 15.75 inches. It was one of the first ‘penny-farthing’ bikes, which were called ‘ordinaries’ or ‘high-wheelers’ back then.

There was a boom in all French manufacturing during the late 1860s, but it was stopped dead by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and bicycle development switched to the UK. With the French bicycle industry stymied, investment flowed into what at first was just a few British bicycle companies, and they became very strong. New companies formed, and older manufacturers started including bikes in their product range. Some even changed their names, like the Coventry Sewing Machine Company, which became Coventry Machinists so it could manufacture bikes.

The French were still leaders in bike design, but the English bought patents on nearly everything they invented. For example, a major step forward affecting racing was made by Jules Truffault, who reduced the weight of bikes he made from 25 kilograms down to 15 by using a cheap consignment of steel scabbards (sword holders) that he had obtained. By adapting the scabbards Truffault manufactured hollow forks and wheel rims, but the British bike industry bought the patent on his idea, used it to manufacture their own bikes, and paid him a small royalty for each one sold.

But getting back to racing, even though Paris–Rouen sparked some interest in France, and later on in surrounding countries, track cycling was the focus in Britain. Tracks attracted big crowds, and the first race billed as the world cycling championship was held on 6 April 1874, over one mile on a cinder track in Wolverhampton. James Moore won the race from John Keen in a time of 3 minutes and 7 seconds, setting a new world record for the distance.

Across the Channel confusion reigned for several years after the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871. There were a few short road races in 1870, mostly in Paris and Toulouse. Leon Tarzi and Jean-Marie Léotard won them, and they would win more, but the longest race in France in this period was only 63 kilometres, and most were around the 30-kilometre mark. Not nearly long enough for road racing to capture people’s interest and imaginations. Long place-to-place races would do that, something people could compare with their own journeys by train or by carriage.

The first road race in Italy was held in 1870: a time trial between Florence and Pistoia. It was won by an American, Rynner Van Heste. The first Italian bunched road race appears to have been in Milan in January 1871. It was just 11 kilometres long and won by Giuseppe Pasta. The next bunched race in Italy was a place-to-place race, 46 kilometres from Milan to Novara, held in December the same year. The winner was Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi. However, it’s always possible that there were others that preceded these races.

Documentary evidence of road racing is thin after that. There could have been races in Italy during the next couple of years, but the next race about which there is certainty was the Milan–Piacenza race in 1873. It was 63 kilometres long and the winner, Valsecchi again, did the distance in 3 hours and 44 minutes. There were at least two more races in Italy that year, one in Florence and the other from Milan to Cremona. There’s also evidence of a road race in Bagnères-de-Luchon, France.

After that the numbers of road races rose slowly until 1876 when Europe, and in particular 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 penny-farthing bike round and round it.

Planning 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 little 572-kilometre race pale into insignificance, and for a while it did. Paris–Brest–Paris was the longest road 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.