Biking Guide Critiques: 1923 – by Ned Boulting

Title: 1923 – The Thriller of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession
Creator: Ned Boulting
Writer: Bloomsbury
12 months: 2023
Pages: 284
Order: Bloomsbury
What it’s: The clown prince of biking commentary wipes off the greasepaint after buying a Pathé newsreel from the 1923 Tour and units off on a voyage of discovery
Strengths: There’s one thing about bike racing in these years
Weaknesses: Boulting doesn’t even try to supply an argument for why his piece of Pathé historical past is necessary

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Biking is stuffed with half-remembered forgotten heroes. Take my good good friend Teddy Hale, the Irishman who wasn’t. I and others have tried to analysis and write about his story, have buried ourselves within the archives and spoken to his descendants and nonetheless we all know little about this Englishman who received the 1896 Madison Sq. Backyard Worldwide Six Day Race whereas pretending to be an Irishman.

Or how about the primary lady of the Hour, Mlle de Saint-Sauveur? A number of individuals have tried to seek out out extra about her however all we’ve been in a position to be taught at this stage comes from a few races earlier than her Hour report and a few races after. We don’t even know her first identify.

Resurrecting the forgotten, remembering the ignored, reinstating these airbrushed from historical past, it’s what retains the publishing business alive. Ned Boulting’s 1923 – The Thriller of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession issues itself with bringing again to life Théophile Beeckman, whose palmarès consists of two Tour stage wins and a few close-calls within the Tour and different races.

Sure, it’s possible you’ll effectively be capable of discover Beeckman’s identify in Christopher Thompson’s Tour de France. And it goes with out saying that he seems in Invoice and Carol McGann’s two-volume Story of the Tour de France, and all the opposite blow-by-blow Tour histories too: successful a Tour stage offers you a sure immortality. However like many different immortalised Tour stage winners, Beeckman doesn’t actually characteristic wherever. Within the large image of the game, he was by no means all that necessary. Which is true of 99% of those that have contributed to the historical past of the game. (And the ghost of Homer whispered…)

Beeckman fell into Boulting’s life when the ITV commentator-come creator – How I Gained the Yellow Jumper (2011), How Cav Gained the Inexperienced Jersey (2012), 101 Damnations (2014), On the Street Bike (2014), Boulting’s Velosaurus (2016), Coronary heart of Dart-ness (2018), Sq. Peg, Spherical Ball (2022) – acquired at public sale a portion of a Pathé newsreel from the 1923 Tour after which set about turning its two-and-a-half-minutes of celluloid right into a e-book and a TV programme.

Ned Boulting / Bloomsbury

Different Pathé newsreels from this period exist and you’ll see lots of the similar individuals in them, together with the likes of Henri Desgrange, Ottavio Bottecchia and Henri Pélissier. You’ve in all probability seen some in the event you’ve ever watched any of the French TV programmes celebrating the Tour’s historical past. However this one is a recent discovery.

The footage comes from the fourth stage of that yr’s Tour, the 400-plus kilometre haul down from Brest to Les Sables d’Olonne. It begins about 150 kilometres and 6 hours into the stage, nonetheless one other 260 or so kilometres and greater than 9 hours of racing to go. After Henri Desgrange offers the sign for the riders to restart after a two-minute cease to sign-in on the management within the city of Lorient, the peloton will get underway once more.

The movie cuts to the riders on the street to Vannes, using behind Pathé’s camera-carrying automobile. Then it cuts to only earlier than La Roche Bernard, 250 or so kilometres into the stage and getting on for midday, as Beeckman launches a solo assault. We see him using by means of the city earlier than the movie abruptly ends earlier than he reaches the exit.

Ned Boulting / Bloomsbury

The primary six seconds of movie Boulting describes in a few hundred phrases. Even with added adjectives you may see {that a} written description of two-and-a-half-minutes of movie received’t fill a 300-page e-book. However nor will the lifetime of Théo Beeckman, with the sum of Boulting’s information of the person summarised thusly:

“I conduct an audit of what I do know of Beeckman: that he was small, that he was usually quiet, that he was revered, robust, and that he grew up in modest circumstances. He received sure races, maybe not as many as he ought to. He married, he had a daughter, he retired and ran a storage. He died in 1955, aged 59.

“It’s not a lot, actually.”

What’s a person to do when there’s a e-book and a TV programme at stake? Pad it.

“Théo Beeckman had been a month outdated when, in December 1896, there was a very riotous theatrical night staged on the Nouveau-Théâtre on the Rue Blanche in Paris. It was a seminal evening within the historical past of French theatre, which noticed the premiere of a rare ground-breaking play referred to as Ubu Roi. The shock which emanated from its first efficiency would change theatre perpetually. Actually, it closed on its opening evening, and it will be a very long time earlier than it was carried out once more, besides by puppeteers. However it’s typically credited with being the inspiration for what would grow to be the Dada motion.”

Sure, that’s proper. Yet one more biking e-book that flogs the lifeless horse of Alfred Jarry. And, higher nonetheless, Ernest Hemingway will get to make an look too!

Most of Boulting’s padding comes from the On This Day in Historical past recordsdata, the story of the 1923 Tour augmented by tales from the identical time however elsewhere.

There’s the Seznec affaire, through which somebody will get murdered and that’s someway linked to the very day of the Pathé newsreel by advantage of some piece of paperwork or different being signed by somebody on that day.

On the identical day, there’s the bombing of the Duisburg-Hochfeld bridge spanning the Rhine, through which a number of individuals have been killed.

Soar ahead to July 8 and throughout France Boulting finds information of a four-year-old boy killed in Argenteuil, a aircraft crashing and killing its pilot in Le Havre, and a lady committing suicide in Nantes.

Two days later a cyclone hits Rostov-on-Don “slaughtering dozens of cattle and killing 23 individuals.”

Wherever Boulting seems, loss of life is to be discovered. It’s nearly like he’s residing out a Quick Present sketch.

This manic on-this-day-in-history ‘Not The 1923 Tour’ strand takes up a big a part of 1923 and once you be a part of the dots – see the sample! – I believe it’s alleged to have one thing to do with the Second World Conflict being a repeat of the First, Covid being the Spanish Flu, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being the German invasion of Belgium (which one I overlook), all of this telling us how historical past repeats and we would as effectively simply surrender now. Which is definitely fairly humorous in a approach because the riders of the Twenties’ Excursions have been seen as sandwich-board males hawking the wares of the bicycle business and Boulting does come off a bit like a type of males standing outdoors parliament with hand-made indicators hanging on his chest and again, warning us of our impending doom.

Getting again to the biking, Beeckman’s story being skinny gruel we get transient portraits of Henri Pélissier, who was killed by his lover; of Ottavio Bottecchia, who died in mysterious circumstances; and of Jean Alavoine, who died following a crash (I do know that that is historical past and in historical past everybody dies, however Boulting actually does trowel it on thick, it’s like he’s adapting Horrible Histories’ ‘Silly Loss of life’ sketches by eradicating the laughs).

When the story does get again to Beeckman, because it does sometimes, I’m left questioning how dependable a narrator Boulting actually is. From the off he’s informed us he knew little of the historical past of the Tour on this period, how he had solely vaguely heard of Henri Pélissier, who received the 1923 race. However at this stage I’m so used to the blind main the blind in books like this that I didn’t actually contemplate how limiting this could be. I’d even switched my mind off when it got here to the varied factual infelicities that invariably seem in books like this. Till, that’s, I acquired to this passage, which follows a piece through which Beeckman has been reported as shifting from the Griffon staff – the place he rode in 1923 and 1924 – to Alcyon for the 1925 season:

“However, and this throws me off-kilter, Théophile Beeckman by no means made the transfer to Alcyon. Someplace alongside the road, shortly earlier than the racing season started, the switch should have collapsed. For he’s a Thomann-Dunlop rider the following time the Tour de France comes spherical in 1925. The explanation for the transfer breaking down is misplaced to time, unreported and now unknowable. However it’s additional proof that Beeckman might not have been probably the most easy man to handle, in spite of everything.”

Enjoyable reality for you: because the French bicycle business went from increase to bust, the surviving firms had a bent to choose up the items left behind by their fallen comrades. And so – in the identical approach that, in the present day, Bianchi and Peugeot and Gitane are owned by the identical firm – Alcyon had subsidiary manufacturers in its portfolio. Manufacturers like Armor. And Labor. And Thomann. So whereas Beeckman was using in a Thomann jersey in 1925, he was nonetheless a part of the Alcyon secure.

The true challenge right here isn’t that Boulting isn’t conscious that Thomann was an Alcyon subsidiary (by no means thoughts that it’s even on a relatively well-known digital encyclopedia). It’s that, simply because Boulting doesn’t perceive it, the reason is “misplaced to time, unreported and now unknowable.”

The image of Beeckman Boulting has constructed up in his head – and which turns into a sequence of imagined accounts from the person himself – relies on what biking journalists mentioned about him in race stories. The issue with utilizing these as the premise of a portrait of the person is that they’re bullshit. As a now forgotten French creator as soon as wrote, the Tour is like an epic, the riders are archetypes. You possibly can’t depend on Henry Decoin telling you that Beeckman was a “timid man, modest, who by no means says something besides together with his legs” as a result of Decoin is taking part in with stereotypes to promote a specific picture of the Tour. Males of motion, not males of phrases.

However Boulting does depend on Decoin, and others like him. And so when he finds one thing that doesn’t match the romantic portrait he’s painted in his head – such because the information that in later life Beeckman may very well have been a little bit of an arse – he isn’t in a position to do as Daniel Coyle did in Lance Armstrong’s Conflict and present that our hero is definitely extra like us than we realise. He will get thrown off-kilter.

Typically he even throws himself off-kilter. Take these two photos:

Agence Rol / BnF

“A only a few images of the Belgian rider are immediately searchable. It’s exhausting to discern a lot from them save for the truth that he was relatively quick and really slight. You possibly can plunder Google Photographs for Beeckman and be completed inside a minute or two.

“And but there are, as I later found, two fairly charming and detailed portraits of Beeckman saved on the French nationwide archive. They took a little bit of trying to find. In each photos the Belgian has the identical disarmingly critical gaze, although in a single he seems startled, maybe from the elation of success. On this picture, he holds a victor’s bouquet in a single hand and his bike within the different, by the facet of the observe at what seems to be the Parc des Princes velodrome in Paris. The yr of this photograph is 1925, maybe within the spring and even the late autumn as his bike is fitted with mudguards. It’s exhausting to know.”

Onerous to know? Actually?

Right here’s how exhausting it’s to know. Go to Gallica, the French nationwide library’s web site. Kind Théo Beeckman’s identify within the search field and hit return. Click on pictures within the left sidebar. In amongst different pictures the 2 above will seem. Each captioned as having been taken in the summertime of 1923, August.

The one Boulting says Beeckman seems startled in (or is that disappointment in his eyes?) and seems to have been taken within the Parc des Princes was really taken in Luxembourg (the Vélodrome du Bel Air, a fast jaunt elsewhere tells us), on the finish of the primary stage of the Critérium des Aiglons. The victor’s bouquet is definitely for having completed in third place on the stage.

That’s four-for-four, in case you’re counting the assumptions Boulting acquired improper.

The opposite {photograph}, that one really was taken within the Parc des Princes, the place the Petit Tour de France was being held, a post-Tour track-meet Desgrange organised yearly and which kinds an early step on the street to in the present day’s post-Tour critérium circuit. If Boulting even talked about the Petit Tour in 1923 – or, for that matter, the Critérium des Aiglons – I should have missed it.

I don’t know how Boulting managed to get this so improper, missed Gallica’s captions and someway dated the photographs to 1925. However improper he acquired it. After which he went and compounded the error by making a thriller out of it, with eagle-eyed Ned recognizing one thing he thinks important within the image with the bouquet:

“It seems like he’s a carrying a marriage band, so it should have been taken after February 1925 [when he married]. However he’s carrying a Griffon jersey, a staff he reportedly left on the finish of 1924.”

Dun dun duuunn!!!

One other enjoyable reality for you: the third finger, left hand factor, whereas it’s nice to know once you’re on the lookout for somebody to hit on in a bar, it’s a cultural factor, not authorized. It’s extra a suggestion than a rule. There are a few of us who ignore it.

Confronted with a cultural assumption and competing possible and inconceivable outcomes – Griffon jersey, saying the photograph is both 1923 or 1924, and doable marriage ceremony ring, that means the photograph must be after 1925 when he must be carrying a special jersey – which razor do you assume Mr Occam would counsel you select to shave with? Boulting might attain for the one designed by Heath-Robinson however try to be going for the single-bladed Bic disposable.

When the details contradict your assumptions, it truly is a good suggestion to query your assumptions.

In case you assume that Gallica has merely miss-captioned the photographs – it occurs – stories from the Critérium des Aiglons will be present in Le Miroir des Sports activities, together with one other {photograph} taken that very same afternoon, just like one of many different images obtainable on Gallica.

Agence Rol (left) / Le Miroir des Sports activities (proper) / BnF

Within the land of the tasteless the one-eyed man might be king. However he makes for a poor tour information in issues like this. With so little obtainable to get proper about Beeckman, getting any of it improper is a matter. Boulting main himself astray is one factor, however when he then tries to take his readers with him down some duff historical past cul-de-sac, that’s an issue.

One substitute for not realizing the place to look is realizing who to ask about the place to look. When reviewing the final e-book to land about Desgrange’s period, Adin Dobkin’s e-book concerning the 1919 Tour, I discussed among the different books masking early biking historical past, from Peter Cossins’ e-book about the 1903 Tour by means of David Coventry’s novel concerning the 1928 race, with stops for Dave Thomas (the 1911 Tour), Tim Moore (the 1914 Giro), Gareth Cartman and Ian Chester (each additionally masking the 1919 Tour), and Tom Isitt (the 1919 Circuit des Champs de Bataille). We now even have Michael Thompson’s latest e-book concerning the 1935 Tour. There are individuals on the market who can supply tips to anybody researching pre-WWII racing, people who find themselves typically very accommodating once you ask in the event you can bounce concepts off them.

However 1923 isn’t the kind of e-book that seeks to construct on the work of others (for sure, none of these authors seem in Boulting’s bibliography … however three books by Hemingway do). This can be a journey of non-public discovery, with Boulting presenting himself as one man in opposition to a world detached to his inquiries, a person alone placing proper what as soon as went improper by remembering the forgotten, uncovering the ignored and portray in once more a person who has been airbrushed from historical past, Beeckman someway having acquired the complete trifecta of historic annulments.

However how proper has he put it when actually all he does is see the interwar years as a “tense, troubled peace that had fallen like a shroud” which he feels impelled to tug again as a way to present us loss of life stalking the land? How proper has he put it when he pushes his romantic, idealised picture of Beeckman off into the background of the story and nonetheless manages to get fundamental details like these improper?