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Lapize .. Now There Was An Ace

Jean Bobet’™s ‘œLapize’ฆ Now There Was an Ace” tells the story of one of the early greats of cycling and in particular the Tour de France. 2010 was the centenary of the introduction of the Pyrenees into the Tour de France route. It was a contentious decision at that time to send riders on their primitive bicycles into the high mountains. How Tour organiser Henri Desgrange was tricked by his assistant, Georges Steines, into agreeing to direct his riders over 2,000-metre cols is one of the great legends of Tour history. The 1910 race itself was won by the French champion Octave Lapize, who added to the controversy on the top of the Col du Tourmalet by shouting out to the Tour officials, `Vous รชtes des assassins! Oui, des assassins!` – `You are murderers! Yes, murderers!` For Lapize himself, this was his only Tour victory, but he was an outstanding one-day classics rider and also a fine track cyclist, winning a bronze medal at the 1908 Olympics. During the First World War Lapize, a fighter pilot in the French army, was shot down in June, 1917, and died in a hospital the following month. For all his initial misgivings, Desgrange had no hesitation in calling the Pyrenean venture a great success and those high cols immediately became an indispensable part of any Tour route. In the 100 years since Octave Lapize`s first epic ascent the Tourmalet has figured 73 times, and none so memorably than that very first time.

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