1928 Tour de France
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The 1928 Tour de France was the 22nd edition of the
Tour de France The Tour de France () is an annual men's multiple-stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally passing through nearby countries. Like the other Grand Tours (the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España), it consists ...
, taking place from 17 June to 15 July. It consisted of 22 stages over . The Tour was won by
Nicolas Frantz Nicolas Frantz (; 4 November 1899 – 8 November 1985) was a Luxembourgish bicycle racer with 60 professional racing victories over his 12-year career (1923 to 1934). He rode for the Thomann team in 1923 and then for Alcyon- Dunlop from 1924 to 1 ...
, his second win. He held the
yellow jersey The general classification is the most important classification, the one by which the winner of the Tour de France is determined. Since 1919, the leader of the general classification wears the yellow jersey (french: maillot jaune ). History Th ...
from beginning to end, despite an incident three days before the end of the race. Frantz had a mechanical failure between Metz and Charleville and had to finish 100 km of the stage on an undersized women's bicycle, resulting in a loss of 28 minutes. Regardless, Frantz won the tour, with his Alcyon team winning the team trophy and having riders finish in second and third places. The 22nd tour featured the first appearance of an Australian/New Zealand team, indicating the beginning of a more international sporting field. Their experience was turned into a film by
Phil Keoghan Philip John Keoghan ( ; born 31 May 1967) is a New Zealand television personality, best known for hosting the American version of ''The Amazing Race'' on CBS, since its 2001 debut. He is the creator and host of ''No Opportunity Wasted'', whic ...
, Le Ride, released in July 2016. Tour director
Henri Desgrange Henri Desgrange (31 January 1865 – 16 August 1940) was a French bicycle racer and sports journalist. He set twelve world track cycling records, including the hour record of on 11 May 1893. He was the first organiser of the Tour de France. Yo ...
allowed teams to replace exhausted or injured cyclists with new riders, to give the weaker teams a fairer chance. However, the experiment backfired, having the opposite effect, so the concept was quickly abandoned.


Innovations and changes

In the
1927 Tour de France The 1927 Tour de France was the 21st edition of the Tour de France, taking place from 19 June to 17 July. It consisted of 24 stages over . This tour featured the first win by Nicolas Frantz, a cyclist from Luxembourg. Frantz had come in second i ...
, the team time trial format had been introduced, where teams started 15 minutes apart. This was done to make the flat stages more competitive. Although in 1927 this had not been successful, the formula was repeated in 1928; this time the teams started 10 minutes after each other. The team time trial format had been an advantage to the strong teams; therefore the tour organisation invented a new rule, intended to help the weak teams: the teams were allowed to replace cyclists in the beginning of stage 12, halfway through the competition. They were not eligible for the general classification. Another new concept was regional teams. The riders were separated in three groups: there were eight trade teams, nine regional teams of five riders and the touriste-routiers, without teams. Between them, the eight trade teams formed five competing units for the race. Three of them – Alcyon, Armor and Thomann, all of which had sponsorship from Dunlop – combined to compete as a single unit of ten riders. Elvish and Fontan, with Wolber sponsorship, did the same. The formidable Alcyon-Armor-Thomann combination would go on to fill the top five places overall. In other years, the mountain stages, especially in the
Pyrenees The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to C ...
, had decided the race. To reduce the importance of these stages, the Tour organisation had changed the route of the first mountain stage, that had been the same since 1913. Two mountains, the Aspin and the
Peyresourde The Col de Peyresourde ( oc, Còth de Pèira Sorda) (elevation ) is a mountain pass in the central Pyrenees on the border of the department of Haute-Garonne and Hautes-Pyrénées in France. It is situated on the D618 road between Bagnères-de-Lu ...
, were left out of the stage. The tour also saw the introduction of the Australian/New Zealand team, sponsored by Ravat. It was headed by
Hubert Opperman Sir Hubert Ferdinand Opperman, OBE (29 May 1904 – 18 April 1996), referred to as Oppy by Australian and French crowds, was an Australian cyclist and politician, whose endurance cycling feats in the 1920s and 1930s earned him international acc ...
, who had been the Australian cycling champion for a few years. After ''
The Melbourne Herald ''The Herald'' was a morning and, later, evening broadsheet newspaper published in Melbourne, Australia, from 3 January 1840 to 5 October 1990, which is when it merged with its sister morning newspaper ''The Sun News-Pictorial'' to form the ''H ...
'' had a campaign to send Opperman to the Tour de France, a team was made. The plan was to add six experienced European cyclists to the team, but this did not happen. Opperman rode some races in Europe and could compete with the European top cyclists, but the rest of his team could not. Because a major part of the race was in the team time trial format, Opperman had no chance to win the Tour. The Kennett Brothers wrote a book about the New Zealander on the team— Harry Watson—that was read by cycling enthusiast and ''
The Amazing Race ''The Amazing Race'' is an adventure reality game show franchise in which teams of two people race around the world in competition with other teams. The ''Race'' is split into legs, with teams tasked to deduce clues, navigate themselves in forei ...
''-host
Phil Keoghan Philip John Keoghan ( ; born 31 May 1967) is a New Zealand television personality, best known for hosting the American version of ''The Amazing Race'' on CBS, since its 2001 debut. He is the creator and host of ''No Opportunity Wasted'', whic ...
, who was surprised that he had never heard of the fellow Cantabrian before. Keoghan decided to celebrate the team's achievement and with a friend, he rode the 1928 stages on period bicycles to the original 26-day schedule. Their experience was turned into a film, '' Le Ride'', which premiered in July 2016 in Watson's home town
Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...
.


Teams

Altogether, 162 cyclists started the race, a new record at that time.


Race overview

In the first team-time-trial like stages, the Alcyon team emerged the best. The individual Touriste-routiers could not compete to the professional teams. The Alcyon team finished first in five of the eight stages.
Nicolas Frantz Nicolas Frantz (; 4 November 1899 – 8 November 1985) was a Luxembourgish bicycle racer with 60 professional racing victories over his 12-year career (1923 to 1934). He rode for the Thomann team in 1923 and then for Alcyon- Dunlop from 1924 to 1 ...
, the winner of the previous tour, crossed the finish line first in the first stage, and was leading the classification, and kept the lead during these stages. After the first eight stages, Frantz was leading the race, followed by his teammate
Maurice De Waele Maurice De Waele (; 27 December 1896 – 14 February 1952) was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer. De Waele placed 2nd in the 1927 Tour, an hour and fifty eight minutes Nicolas Frantz and 3rd in 1928, again won by Frantz. However, he ...
at 99 seconds.
Julien Vervaecke Julien Vervaecke (3 November 1899 – May 1940) was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer. He won Paris–Roubaix, Paris–Brussels, 2 stages in the Tour de France and finished 3rd in the 1927 Tour de France. At the start of the Second Worl ...
, the Belgian from the Armor team, followed in third place, 135 seconds behind. In stage 9, the first mountain stage, Frantz did not crush the competition as he had done on previous year. Instead,
Victor Fontan Victor Fontan (born Pau, France, 18 June 1892, died Saint-Vincent 2 January 1982) was a French cyclist who led the 1929 Tour de France but dropped out after knocking at doors at night to ask for another bicycle. His plight led to a change of r ...
, who was more than one and a half hour behind in the general classification, was allowed to escape and win the stage. Frantz still finished second, seven minutes behind, and extended his lead on his direct competitors, and was now leading by more than 40 minutes. In the tenth stage, the Alcyon team-mates Leducq, Frantz and De Waele finished first, and they now had the first three places in the general classification. Next came the alps. Here, Frantz increased his lead. Behind him, De Waele gained time on Leducq, and was now in second place. After the alps, the three Alcyon cyclists still held the first three places in the general classification, with Frantz comfortably leading by more than 75 minutes. In the 19th stage, Frantz bicycle frame broke, when he rode over a railroad track. His sponsor, Alcyon, did not like the bad publicity, and wanted Frantz to go to an Alcyon dealer and get a replacement bike. The team manager from Alcyon was against this idea, because this would cause a major time loss, and maybe even the loss of the Tour de France. According to some sources, they found a bicycle shop that only had one bicycle left, an undersized women's bicycle, and they decided to take it. Other sources say that when they were thinking what to do, Frantz spotted a woman with a bicycle, and persuaded her to give him her bike. Frantz rode the last 100 km on this undersized women's bicycle, and did this with 27 km/h, whereas the winner of the stage had 34 km/h. His lead dropped with 30 minutes, but he was still leading the race. In the 21st stage, Antonin Magne and Francis Bouillet had escaped together, and it was Bouillet who won the sprint. This was a problem for the Tour organisation, as Bouillet had already left the race in stage 9, to start again as a replacement in stage 12. Hence, he was no longer eligible for the general classification, and could not be the winner of a stage. The Tour organisation solved the problem by giving Bouillet the best time and proclaiming him the moral winner of the stage, and making Magne the official winner of the stage.


Results

In stages 1 to 8 and 15 to 21, the cyclists started in teams. The cyclist who reached the finish fastest was the winner of the stage. In the other stages, all cyclists started together. The time that each cyclist required to finish the stage was recorded. For the
general classification The general classification (or the GC) in road bicycle racing is the category that tracks overall times for riders in multi-stage races. Each stage will have a stage winner, but the overall winner in the GC is the rider who has the fastest cumulat ...
, these times were added up; the cyclist with the least accumulated time was the race leader, identified by the yellow jersey.


Stage winners

Nicolas Frantz wore the yellow jersey from the start of the race to the end of the race. Since the introduction of the yellow jersey in 1919, this has only happened in 1924, 1928 and
1935 Events January * January 7 – Italian premier Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval conclude Franco-Italian Agreement of 1935, an agreement, in which each power agrees not to oppose the other's colonial claims. * ...
. As the winner of the previous year, Frantz also wore the yellow jersey during the first stage; he is the only cyclist to wear the yellow jersey during an entire Tour de France.


General classification

The Alcyon team had all the podium positions. Since 1928, it has never happened again that one team had all the podium positions.


Other classifications

The organising newspaper, L'Auto named a ''meilleur grimpeur'' (best climber), an unofficial precursor to the modern
King of the Mountains The King of the Mountains (KoM) is an award given to the best climbing specialist in a men's cycling road race; in women's cycle racing, Queen of the Mountains (QoM) is used. While the title may be given to the rider who achieves the highest ...
competition. This award was won by
Victor Fontan Victor Fontan (born Pau, France, 18 June 1892, died Saint-Vincent 2 January 1982) was a French cyclist who led the 1929 Tour de France but dropped out after knocking at doors at night to ask for another bicycle. His plight led to a change of r ...
. There was also a team trophy. The team trophy for teams was won by Alcyon, the Champagne-regional team won the team trophy for regional teams. This team trophy was not the same as the
team classification The team classification is one of the different rankings for which competitors can compete in a multiple stage cycling race. It differs from the other usual rankings (general classification, points, king of the mountain and best young rider competi ...
that has been run since
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.


Aftermath

The team time trial method had not given the desired result; in the
1929 Tour de France The 1929 Tour de France was the 23rd edition of the Tour de France, taking place from 30 June to 28 July. It consisted of 22 stages over . Nicolas Frantz had won two consecutive Tours, in 1927 and 1928, and was looking for a third. In addition t ...
it was only used if the previous stage had been too slow, and after 1929 it disappeared. The rule with replaced cyclists did not even make it until the next year. Some riders had been grouped in regional teams; this was considered successful; in 1930 the system would change to the national team system, where riders were grouped in national or regional teams.


Notes


References


Bibliography

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External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tour De France 1928 in road cycling 1928 in French sport
1928 Events January * January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA. * January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris Bazhanov, J ...
June 1928 sports events July 1928 sports events