Sévéragais Bernard Garcia, a great fan of cycling, has published the second volume of the great history of the Tour de France, since its beginnings in 1903.
Last October, Bernard Garcia published his first work after having put his passion for cycling at the service of the history of the Tour de France by collecting all the anecdotes that have marked true epics, since its origin in 1903, until 2020. That is ten volumes which each have more than 300 glossy pages!
Thus, after the first volume (1903-1914), the second, of 442 pages, has just been published, covering the period from 1919 to 1929.
More than 600 photos on 442 pages
“For this one, I carried out a work which approaches that of historian insofar as I went to seek information at the source, that is to say by consulting the newspapers of the time, the sports dailies such as L’Auto (organizing newspaper of the Tour) or L’Écho des sports (from 1921), but also general daily newspapers such as Le Petit Parisien, Excelsior, L’Intransigeant, La Presse or L’Humanité from 1926, without forgetting the sports weekly Le Miroir des sports which appears twice a week during the Tour. I was able to obtain a lot of photos (more than 600) and detailed the stages by noting only what seemed to me. essential and interesting. The pagination is thus increased since, from 325 pages for volume 1, one passes to 442 pages for the 2, which explains a higher price of 61 €. “
Otherwise, “seven pages are devoted to quotes and formulas evoking the Tour de France then three pages to developments and major dates”, agrees the author.
Quotes from Chirac, Mitterrand, Dali …
Among the most striking quotes, there are those, among others, of Jacques Chirac: “The Tour de France is the marriage of sport and the epic. It has taken the place of a myth in the collective imagination and tells the story of French passions in its own way.” Or even François Mitterrand: “Each July magically arises a State within the State: the Tour de France. And this State borders on a state of grace.” ; by Tristan Bernard: “When the Tour passes, France is on the doorstep.” And that, more surprising, of Salvador Dali: “When the Tour de France ends, I have a kind of depression that doesn’t require me to go to a rest area, but I feel that I am missing something: a large part of the paradisiacal enchantment of my summer has just ended. “
Finally, Bernard Garcia also reveals that three former Tour winners – Lucien Petit-Breton, François Faber and Octave Lapize – died in action during the First World War.
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