During the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, author Ned Boulting bought a spool of film that featured a clip from stage 4 of the 1923 Tour de France. This book could be considered a dedication to the obsession that Boulting soon had to find out as much information as he could about the people in the film clip and the events surrounding that race.

Boulting does a yeoman’s job of research, interviews (as best he could during lockdowns) and writing in order to gain this material. The book itself covers a lot of material and that is both good and bad. The bad: Boulting diverges a lot from the film and the race and writes much about French and German history and important figures. It is interesting, but it takes a lot of attention away from the main topic – the race and the stage 4 winner, Theofile Beekman.

Beekman is the lone rider who crosses a bridge (which had its own history, covered by Boulting, of course) on the film and he won stages but the overall winner was Henri Pélissier. The stories of Beekman, Pelissier and others in the race were really interesting as were the writings about the Tour itself. Had the book concentrated on the riders, the pieces in the film and the riders, it would have been a much better read.

I wish to thank Bloomsbury Sport for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m not a cyclist by any means, but every year I get caught up in watching the Tour de France. I really enjoy looking at the countryside through go through, past castles and farms. I’m impressed by the stamina, especially knowing I could never come close to doing something like that. Still, I’m not entirely sure why I make sure to watch each summer.

And like the author of this book, I’m not entirely sure why I also became obsessed with learning about the people and places in a couple of minutes of century-old film.

Ned Boulting’s day job is as a British cycling sportscaster. He pours a incredible amount of time and effort into understanding the race world and the athletes. But when the world froze in 2020, Boulting had no outlet for this fastidious research or enthusiasm. On a whim, a friend sent him an auction listing for a scrap of silent film reel that was labelled Tour de France. He won Lot 212 and embarked on a three-year, multinational odyssey to preserve the film and restore it to its place in history, however small that might be.

Some digitising revealed the film to be a Pathé newsreel highlighting Stage 4 of the 1923 Tour de France. Newsreels were short movie clips that would be played before the main feature. these opening reels would give news updates, share clips from world travels, or even serialized adventures. These short films would be seen by hundreds of audiences for a week, or maybe two, before being replaced by the next newsreel and travelogue. Like so much from the silent film era, many of these movies have been lost (although Pathé has quite a solid archive).

Boulting, with little else to do during lockdowns and travel bans, pours over every detail in the clips and realizes one of the riders is Theophile Beeckman. Beeckman was a strong rider but never quite gained the legendary fame of others like the Pelessier brothers. Boulting researches every angle, every moment of the film. He reaches out to archives, historical societies and local gossips in search of tidbits that will make the movie more real.

I began instead to daydream about visiting Ninove. Though the pandemic would keep me at arm’s length for some time to come, Meerbeke, the humble district on the south side of the river Dender in Ninove, had become as totemic in my imagination as the bridge over the river Vilaine, where my film first affords a glimpse of Beeckman. … Deep down, I knew that being there, feeling the bite of a Flandrian wind, hear the actual traffic on the road and real Flemish voices talking into the mobile phones around me; there could be no substitute for that. ~Loc. 1482

This tracing of a person never met was enough to keep me engaged (after all, I buy old photos of people who are unknown) but Boulting also brings a richness of historical layers to the story. He explores the effects of WWI on small towns in France and Belgium, as well as the cycling athletes who served. He frames the horrors of the Ruhr Valley in a way that made the whole scenario so much more understandable to me.

Boutling also explored the differences in the present Tour de France to the one a hundred years ago. And honestly, as hard as it looks now, it sound absolutely miserable and mad in the 1920s.

This book is truly readable for anyone who likes a good wander down a rabbit hole. The reader need never have seen a moment of a cycle race to enjoy it — although it may make you want to tune in next year and raise a glass to the ones who rode before.

My thanks to Bloomsbury for the review copy. Read via NetGalley.

Publisher: ‎Bloomsbury Sport (August 22, 2023)
Language: ‎English
Hardcover: ‎288 pages
ISBN-10: ‎1399401548

The author, a professional cycling journalist/commentator spend his pandemic down the rabbit hole of researching a 2+minute bit of historical footage from the Tour de France that he won in an online auction. After preserving the film, he began scouring sources for any information he could find on the year, route, riders, towns, rivalries, etc. that he could find. A bit of history of France, a bunch of cycling history, all shaped by the pandemic lockdown which fostered this intense focus needed for an obsession like this. The narrative follows the film segment by segment (and the film is available online to view) and the reader is given insights about the race/ers and France in 1923.

While readers not immersed in cycling culture will be able to follow the narrative as it is not too technical, readers who are interested in cycling history, the Tour de France, or the post WWI years in France will get the most out of this book.

Ned Boulting is a life long cycling enthusiast, who in 2020 acquired a piece of Pathe film from the 1923 Tour de France. Because the route was laid out at the beginning of the 2.5 minute snippet he knew where the film was shot. But that was it, he didn't know what year it was shot and never found out how it ended up being offered on an online site for sale.

The film was so fragile that it couldn't be watched until Ned could find someone who could copy it without destroying the old nitrate film. Once he obtained a copy he was able to tell that the film was of the fourth stage of the 1923 Tour de France. But this was an obscure time of the Tour and there was little documentation with which to compare the film.

Boulting spends the years of the Covid shut down tracking down information about the 1923 Tour but also the identity of the riders who are on the film. These were some of the stars of the post-WW1 stars and some of the second level riders. Boulting spends a good part of the time trying to track down information of the man who leads the race at that time of the film.

The rider Theophile Beekman (he had multiple spellings of his name) was just one of those riders who never won the race but did win a couple of stages and finished at respectable times. But there is little information about his life. and that is what makes Ned's obsession so interesting.