The Call of the Road by Chris Sidwells

Author:Chris Sidwells
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008220785
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

12

Time Lords and Ladies

Time trials have been part of road racing since its earliest days. The first place-to-place road race in Italy, from Florence to Pistoia, was a time trial. For reasons discussed in Chapter 10, from 1895 onwards the only races on open roads in Great Britain were time trials, and that remained the official line until the late Fifties. Some early Tour de France stages were run as team time trials. The first individual time trial in the Tour was held in 1934, and went from La-Roche-sur-Yon to Nantes. The first two official world road race championships, in 1921 and 1922, were run as time trials. The 1931 amateur world road race championships, which were held in Copenhagen, was also a time trial. There were even time trials that became regarded as classics, and the biggest of those was the Grand Prix des Nations.

The first Grand Prix des Nations was held in 1932, and it was another race invented by journalists trying to promote a newspaper. Gaston Bénac and Albert Baker d’Isy were the journalists, and France-Soir was the newspaper. Bénac and Baker d’Isy covered the 1931 world road race championships in Copenhagen, and they were impressed by the racing. They told France-Soir’s readers that in their opinion competing individually against the clock, so that a rider couldn’t shelter behind anyone or use tactics to defeat a stronger opponent, was the best way to find true champions. The fact that time trials are cheaper to organise than road races sat well with France-Soir’s accountants, so the Grand Prix des Nations was born.

René de Latour, who wrote for top French cycling magazines as well as the British magazine Sporting Cyclist, designed the race route. It started in Versailles, crossed the Chevreuse valley twice, taking two bites out of the tough hills there, before heading into Paris to finish on the Vélodrome Buffalo, where many early world hour records were set. The total distance was 140 kilometres, and the first winner was Maurice Archambaud, a future world hour record holder. The race was deemed a success and another edition was sanctioned by France-Soir for 1933. Raymond Louviot won it, then Antonin Magne scored the first Grand Prix des Nations hat-trick by winning from 1934 to 1936.

Although time trials had been used to decide the occasional world road race championships, there was no separate official time trial world title in the Thirties, and there wouldn’t be one until 1994, so Bénac and Baker d’Isy hoped that their race would become an unofficial world time trial championships, and it quickly did. Entry was by invitation only, and while the pro event did spawn an amateur Grand Prix des Nations, unfortunately there was never one for women. They had to wait until the first official world time trial championships in 1994 to get an equivalent race. Still, although all-male, the Grand Prix des Nations winners were quality. Some were time trial specialists, but others were great all-rounders. In fact, one woman did compete in the Grand Prix des Nations, but more about her later.

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