1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession

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On the left, one of the Agence Rol images that can be found on Gallica, on the right a similar image from the pages of Le Miroir des Sports in August 1923. An education in the effects of War (post and looming,) in a particular society (time and place) and how life reboots and copes. You can’t rely on Henry Decoin telling you that Beeckman was a “timid man, modest, who never says anything except with his legs” because Decoin is playing with stereotypes to sell a particular image of the Tour.

I have no idea how Boulting managed to get this so wrong, missed Gallica’s captions and somehow dated the pictures to 1925. The roots of the Tour were in a battle for supremacy between competing papers, and egos, as well as an urge to teach the French about their own nation – “France was still in the process of convincing its constituent parts… that it was indeed a whole and coherent entity”. It looks like he is a wearing a wedding band, so it must have been taken after February 1925 [when he married].There’s also a healthy dose of genealogy that would make for a great spin-off of the Who Do You Think You Are?

In case you think that Gallica has simply miss-captioned the images – it happens – reports from the Critérium des Aiglons can be found in Le Miroir des Sports, including another photograph taken that same afternoon, similar to one of the other photographs available on Gallica. But it is further evidence that Beeckman may not have been the most straightforward man to manage, after all. The places he has taken it by the end of the book are a really nice way to cap it off and they give readers some form of closure.The juxtaposition of the two worlds a century apart, and the tying together of assorted historical loose threads makes for an entertaining read, not just for cycling enthusiasts. I cannot recommend it more highly, especially since I have the same palpable feeling of loss once the tale has been concluded. 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. Ein Guthaben pro Monat, einlösbar für einen beliebigen Titel, den du herunterladen und auch nach deiner Kündigung behalten kannst.

Join him as he explores the history of cycling and France just five years after WWI - meeting characters like Henri Pélissier, who won the Tour that year but who would within the decade be shot dead by his lover using the same pistol with which his wife had killed herself. 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. There is in part real-world, real-time sleuthing, as I drag my project into the light of the day, a century later. At its core is a snippet of film of the 1923 Tour de France and it would be easy to say the book is about Ned’s quest to find out as much as he could about it. It sets him off in fascinating directions, encompassing travelogue, history, mystery story – to explain, to go deeper into this moment in time, captured on his little film.

Biography: Ned Boulting is the UK's best known voice of cycling - he commentates on the Tour de France for ITV, and all other major cycling races. But 1923 isn’t the type of book that seeks to build on the work of others (needless to say, none of those authors appear in Boulting’s bibliography … but three books by Hemingway do).

This enthralling read takes you with him down a rabbit hole of his love for cycling, and the Tour de. The book blends the modern day story of his investigation with the history of cycling, politics, culture and geography.

A unique, satisfying book that’ll appeal not just to cycling fans, but to all who enjoy a varied and lovingly pieced together story of a moment in time, and all that has been touched by it. The real issue here isn’t that Boulting isn’t aware that Thomann was an Alcyon subsidiary (never mind that it’s even on a rather well-known digital encyclopedia). The picture of Beeckman Boulting has built up in his head – and which becomes a series of imagined accounts from the man himself – is based on what cycling journalists said about him in race reports.