The Shattered Peloton: The Devastating Impact of World War I on the Tour de France

by Graham Healy

A fascinating, mind-boggling account of young athletes in their prime destroyed in the hell of war. A mesmerizing view of cycling in its golden age, and the darkness that followed. On June 28, 1914, one hundred and forty-five riders lined up in a suburb of Paris at 3 a.m. to start the first stage of the Tour de France. The race, which had been founded just a decade earlier, had grown to become the biggest bicycle race in the world. The riders did not know it at the time, but as they raced, an event was taking place on the opposite side of Europe which would change all of their lives Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, triggering World War I. While racing went on in France, a diplomatic crisis had started that would try but fail to avert war. Shortly after the finish of the race, France mobilized its troops and went to war with Germany. The organizer of the Tour de France, Henri Desgrange, despite being fifty years old, enrolled in the army shortly afterwards and encouraged the cyclists to do the same. The war would see over 16 million soldiers and civilians die. Many of the riders from that Tour de France did not return, and three previous winners of the race would be among those killed in action. The Shattered Peloton tells the story of that Tour de France and what happened to the top cyclists of the day during the course of the war. A brilliant, disturbing, important book for anyone with an interest in cycling or military history.

Genres: Cycling

205 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 21, 2014

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had such potential both to recover the lost histories of almost-forgotten riders and to be a fascinating cultural narrative of the way the Tour changed (or didn't) in the face of war. Instead, it's a series of interesting anecdotes with no central cohesion. Paragraphs meander from cyclist death to cyclist death, and although clearly a huge amount of research and detective work went into the book, the facts aren't communicated in a way that illuminates them. Troop casualties are muddled with cyclists' win-loss ratios, and all other emotional content is left murky; Henri Desgrange is never called out for the sadist he was, but merely quoted by rote. There is no central thesis or overarching structure, and the impact on the peloton is attenuated from the microscopic focus on individual riders' fates. The larger picture - the Hell of the North as a pilgrimage in the face of devastation - is relegated to a few paragraphs at the end. I went in with high hopes, and though I'm glad I read it, this book is not what I'd wanted it to be.