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Mythologies: The Stories Cycling Books Keep Getting Wrong

Mythologies: The Stories Cycling Books Keep Getting Wrong
Mythologies: The Stories Cycling Books Keep Getting Wrong
Getty / fmk

What happens when fake stories infiltrate cycling history?

They get repeated. And repeated. And repeated.

In this on-going series of occasional articles, the truth of some of these stories is revealed.


Stories of the Tour

Queen Stages and Circles of Death – Things Ancient and Modern

Why do bike races have Queen Stages? What even is a Queen Stage? What are the real origins of the Circle of Death? And how did the 1949 Tour d’Algérie join the Monuments Club before Paris-Roubaix did?

The Col d’Izoard’s Casse Déserte, a frequent component of the Tour de France’s queen stage.
The Col d’Izoard’s Casse Déserte, a frequent component of the Tour de France’s queen stage.
LB / Tim De Waele / Corbis / Getty

Alphonse Steinès and the Invention of the Pyrénées

Pretty much everything you think you know about Alphonse Steinès and how the Tour first came to visit the Pyrénées in 1910 is wrong, a story invented in the 1950s. The truth is an even more remarkable story.

Octave Lapize crossed the Col du Tourmalet on foot
Octave Lapize crossed the Col du Tourmalet on foot

Assassins of the Aubisque!

What did Octave Lapize really say that day in the Pyrénées in 1910? And did he really say it on the Col d’Aubisque?

Climbing from Argelès-Gazost (east to west), the 1910 Tour first ascended the Col du Soulor before reaching the Col d’Aubisque via the now disused Col de Tortes.
Climbing from Argelès-Gazost (east to west), the 1910 Tour first ascended the Col du Soulor before reaching the Col d’Aubisque via the now disused Col de Tortes.
Glenn Van Der Knijff / Getty Images

Stories of the Hour

The First HoursThe Hour Record Before Henri Desgrange

Did Frederick Lindley Dodds, from Stockton-on-Tees, really set the first Hour record in 1876?

The UCI One hour Record
The UCI One hour Record
UCI.ch

Revolutionary Times – The Birth of the Women’s Hour Record

Why do we know so little about Mlle de Saint-Sauveur, first name unknown?

Mlle de Saint-Sauveur, from the Spanish fortnightly journal ‘Crónica del Sport’, August 1893
Mlle de Saint-Sauveur, from the Spanish fortnightly journal ‘Crónica del Sport’, August 1893
BNdE

The Penny HourThe Last Hour Record Set On A High-Wheeled Bicycle

Why do so many books and articles claim that the last man to set an Hour record on a penny-farthing was Frederick John Osmond? And what do we know about the man who really holds that distinction, William A Rowe?

Bike races at the annual Springfield Tournament
Bike races at the annual Springfield Tournament

Miscellaneous Stories

When Josephine Baker Sprinkled Her Stardust on the Tour de France

From 1933 to 1938 the American star of the Jazz Age played a role in the Tour’s grand départ and in doing so helped reshape the Tour for a new audience.

Josephine Baker at the start of the 1936 Tour de France
Josephine Baker at the start of the 1936 Tour de France
BnF

Major Taylor, Henri Desgrange and a Wheelbarrow Full of Centimes

Was Henri Desgrange a racist? And what are we saying about Major Taylor if we believe he was?

Postcard depicting one of the May 1901 Major Taylor versus Edmond Jacquelin races.
Postcard depicting one of the May 1901 Major Taylor versus Edmond Jacquelin races.