Comparing Cycling's Great Eras, Part 1
The Team Chef
in Background: Comparing Cycling's Great Eras
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As mentioned in the previous post (The Top 25 Rider of the Modern Era, Part 1), I’ve been working on a system of assigning point values based on race results, which has then been used to rank the greatest riders of the Modern Era.
Of course, there are a number of problems encountered when trying to put together any kind of ranking system for the best riders of all time. Chief among these are comparing riders from different eras; accounting for gaps in rider’s careers due to illness, injury, or war; and changes to the race calendar through the years.
I’ll have to break this into several posts to cover it all, but addressing each of these issues is critical to understanding some of the logic that was used in developing the scoring system, and the impact on the final rankings. This article will be the first of a four part series focusing on the major differences between cycling’s two main eras.
The Heroic Era and the Modern Era
As I started researching and compiling data on races and riders, it became clear that it would be too difficult to compare to compare cyclists from what I will call The Heroic Era (turn of the century – 1937) to those of the Modern Era (1938 – present). These cutoff dates will make more sense in light of the comparisons, and contrasts, to follow.
In the end, I think you’ll agree that it is a fruitless exercise to compare a rider from the early age of road racing, such as Philippe Thys (photo, left), to one his modern counterparts, like Miguel Indurain (photo, above right). Ultimately, these types of comparisons become pointless given the profound differences in the two time periods.
First off, it just wasn’t that easy to get around Europe during the first half of the 20th century. As a consequence, most riders tended to race in their home countries. When Italy’s Fiorenzo Magni won the Tour of Flanders in 1949, he was only the second rider from outside Belgium to have won the race since its inception in 1913 (Switzerland’s Henri Suter was the first in 1923). Similar patterns could be found at the other Northern Classics, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Paris-Roubaix. Likewise, the Italian Classics, Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Lombardy, rarely featured winners from outside Italy, especially from the end of WWI -1950.
The Grand Tours also exhibited these same regional biases. Before 1938, there was only one Italian who managed to win the Tour de France, Ottavio Bottecchia (photo, right). He accomplished this, and in consecutive years for good measure (1925 and 1926), while actually riding as member of a French team.
The Giro d’Italia proved to be even more nationally exclusive than its French counterpart. Since its inception in 1909 the Italians had won every edition of their Grand Tour until Switzerland’s Hugo Koblet would finally break their long string of victories in 1950.
As for the Spaniards, they were almost non-existent in any of the significant one day races or Grand Tours prior to the end of WWII, racing almost exclusively in their homeland.
It’s also important to mention that many of the significant races used in my scoring system did not even exist during most of the Heroic Era. Ghent Wevelgem wasn’t introduced until 1934. Fleche-Wallonne’s first run didn’t occur until 1936. The Tour of Spain wasn’t launched until 1935. Even the World Championship Road Race didn’t exist prior to 1927. Further, all of the classification jerseys in the Grand Tours made their first appearances after 1932 - Tour de France, mountains competition, 1933; Tour, points competition, 1953; Giro, mountains competition, 1933; and the Giro points competition, not until 1966.
Further complicating comparisons of the Heroic Era to the Modern Era was the emphasis on individual efforts in the early racing years versus team tactics which would play a much more prominent role later on. The Tour even had a category for individual riders who were not part of a team. Teamwork was not fully realized until the mid ‘20s when Lucien Buysse (photo, left) was widely credited with being the first true domestique, sacrificing his chances at the 1925 Tour de France in order to help Ottavio Bottecchia secure his second victory (Lucien would eventually have his day in the sun, as he went on to win the following year. Sadly, Botecchia’s career would come to an abrupt and premature end in June of 1927 when he was found badly injured at the side of the road. Although his bike was resting peacefully against a nearby tree, poor Ottavio was severely bruised and his skull had been fractured by a blow to the head. He died in a hospital shortly thereafter, apparently the victim of murder. No one was ever charged with the crime).
No overview of the early days of racing would be complete without noting that World War I decimated the professional ranks, as many cyclists never returned from battle or were too seriously injured to ever race again. The notable names killed in action included Luxembourg’s Francois Faber, the Tour winner of 1909; France’s Octave Lapize (photo, right), another former Tour winner (1910) who also won Paris-Roubaix three times in a row from 1909-1911; and also France’s Lucien “Petit-Breton,” the first man to win the Tour two times in a row (1907 and 1908).
The Great War also took a huge bite out of the careers of many others, including Philippe Thys, Firmin Lambot, Henri Pellisier, and the first great Italian champion, Costante Girardengo. Thys had back-to-back Tour de France victories just before the race was put on hold from 1915-1918, and then won again in 1920. Might he have been the first rider to win not only three Tours, but four, five, or more?
To be continued in Comparing Cycling's Great Eras, Part 2
Photo credits: Miguel Indurain, Flickr gallery of a-zehn-r; Philippe Thys, Cyclingnews; Ottavio Bottecchia, Bottecchia Bikes; Lucien Buysse, Ciclismo Paco Jimenez; Octave Lapize, Aaitvedan
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