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 the 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.
It 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, 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, 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. 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 a 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 prisoners to make and polish the 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’.
There was a boom in 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 big. 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 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.
Getting back to racing, even though Paris–Rouen sparked some interest in France, and later in surrounding countries, track cycling was the focus in Britain. Big crowds attended track meetings, 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, 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 did that, something people could compare their own journeys by train or by carriage to.
The first road race in Italy was 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 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 races were much longer by then. 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 the term ‘taking a header’ was coined to describe it.
But then came the safety bicycle. Safety bicycles had two wheels of equal size, slightly smaller in diameter than most road bike wheels are today, and the rider sat balanced between them. Safety bicycles were much easier to ride 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