The Final Descent, by Michael Thompson

Title: The Ultimate Descent – The Untold Story of the First Rider to Die within the Tour de FranceAuthor: Michael ThompsonPublisher: ThompsonYear: 2023Pages: 213Order: ThompsonWhat it’s: A biography of Francisco ‘Paco’ Cepeda, who died whereas participating within the 1935 Tour de FranceStrengths: Thompson’s dogged analysis has scraped away the layer of fable and lies which have develop into connected to Cepeda’s story, permitting him to get to the reality beneath and provide a becoming tribute to the primary rider to die in the course of the Tour as a consequence of a racing accident Weaknesses: As with numerous biking books, just a few extra footage can be appreciated

Rising within the north of the Massif des Écrins and fed by the meltwater of the Plate des Agneux glacier, the Romanche river flows down via the valley that bears its identify, passing Bourg-d’Oisans and Vizille earlier than emptying into the Drac close to Grenoble, after simply 78 kilometres. Within the early a part of the 20th century the river fed native industries, its water producing electrical energy which powered paper mills and metal works within the villages alongside its size.

Rioupéroux is one such village, about midway between Bourg-d’Oisans and Vizille. Little distinguishes it from different villages within the Romanche valley. However in 1935, towards the tip of the seventh stage of the twenty-ninth Tour de France, Rioupéroux’s identify was written into the historical past books. It was there, on Thursday July eleventh, on an innocuous stretch of highway on the outskirts of the village, that the Spanish rider Francisco ‘Paco’ Cepeda fell and fractured his cranium. His unconscious physique was rushed to a hospital in Grenoble the place, three days later, he succumbed to his accidents and died. He was the Tour’s first racing fatality, and solely the second rider to die in the course of the race, after Adolphe Hélière’s rest-day loss of life in 1910 whereas swimming.

Besides … the historical past books don’t bear in mind Rioupéroux. Cepeda’s loss of life, they nearly all inform you, occurred on the descent off the Galibier. Most preserve it that easy, he died descending Henri Desgrange’s favorite mountain. A few of the extra ingenious add garish color by having Cepeda plunge off the highway right into a ravine.

Even Rioupéroux itself doesn’t bear in mind its position within the Spaniard’s loss of life: not even a plaque remembers the occasions of that fateful day. Tom Simpson has his altar on the slopes of the Ventoux, Fabio Casartelli his shrine on the Portet d’Aspet, however Cepeda – like Hélière – is with out memorial on the Tour’s route.

Have we develop into extra mawkish lately in the best way that we have a good time the deaths of riders, or is there one thing about Cepeda’s loss of life that makes it troublesome for the Tour and its mythographers to mark correctly?

Michael Thompson’s The Ultimate Descent – The Untold Story of the First Rider to Die within the Tour de France doesn’t tackle the primary a part of that query (the reply, in case you’re in any doubt, is sure, we now have develop into extra mawkish) nevertheless it does go deep into why the second half can be answered within the affirmative.

Cepeda’s loss of life wasn’t merely a racing accident. It was an emblem of the informal cruelty with which the Tour handled riders because the race turned increasingly more commercialised. Within the decade since Albert Londres had not referred to the riders of the 1924 Tour as forçats de la route a lot had modified, for the higher. The Tour was exiting the Heroic Age of the vagabonds of the highway and gearing up for the Golden Age of stars like Coppi, Koblet, and Bobet. However on the identical time most of the criticisms levelled on the Tour in 1924 had been nonetheless legitimate within the ‘30s. You wouldn’t deal with a mule the best way the Tour handled its riders in these years.

Francisco Cepeda will not be in contrast to Théo Beeckman, the ostensible topic of Ned Boulting’s current e book concerning the 1923 Tour. Like Beeckman’s, his identify seems in all of the blow-by-blow Tour histories however – once more like Beeckman – he doesn’t actually function wherever. Within the massive image of the Tour, he was one other who was by no means actually all that necessary. Which is true of 99% of those that have contributed to the Tour’s historical past. (And the ghost of Homer whispered…)

Not like Boulting’s plague diary, which in the end had little to say about Beeckman and favoured as an alternative the writer’s manic, Covid-fed obsessions, Michael Thompson’s The Ultimate Descent has loads to inform us about Cepeda and his rise via the ranks of the game, in addition to portray a useful portrait of the Tour within the Nineteen Thirties.

Thompson’s curiosity in Cepeda was first piqued after he and his spouse purchased a small condo close to Valloire, the ski resort sandwiched between the Col du Télégraphe and the Col du Galibier. Realizing a bit of Tour historical past Thompson knew – or thought he knew – that Cepeda had died descending the Galibier and so, in 2014, he set about discovering out the place.

He additionally set about discovering out extra concerning the man himself, in 2015 visiting the Basque village of Sopuerta the place Cepeda was born in 1906. He devoured books concerning the Tour and, in addition to the French journals obtainable on Gallica, he trawled Spanish archives, from ABC to Excelsius, La Gaceta del Norte to El Mundo Deportivo.

In 2017 Thompson’s analysis led him to Cepeda’s grand nephew, Alvaro Rey Cepeda, who was additionally searching for solutions to questions on Cepeda. This led to a treasure trove of analysis materials: “The household had stored nearly each Spanish press reducing the place Cepeda’s identify was talked about,” Thompson instructed me not too long ago, “and each journal article proper as much as the current day, so I had a wealth of fabric from Spain.”

Taken with the outcomes of his personal analysis, Thompson started to really feel he had sufficient data obtainable to him to inform Cepeda’s story. His first victories in 1925. His rise via the ranks of Basque biking after which the broader realm of Spanish biking. His debut on the worldwide stage when, as a member of the Spanish workforce within the 1930 Tour, he was to the fore when the race crossed the Galibier. The frustration of the 1931 Tour. His slide into semi-retirement. His return to racing when he was invited to trip the primary Vuelta a España in 1935. His return to the Tour later that very same yr and his loss of life ten days into that race.

Buried inside all the data obtainable to him, Thompson shortly realised, was numerous misinformation. “I got here throughout a number of inaccuracies once I was writing the story,” Thompson instructed me. “One was from the Tour de France: Official one centesimal Race Anniversary Version and was fairly unhealthy. Underneath the chapter 1935 it exhibits an image of Cepeda main Vicente Trueba up the Galibier with a caption saying, ‘Quickly after this picture was taken, Cepeda suffered a deadly crash’. The image is from Cepeda’s debut Tour, in 1930, after they climbed the Galibier from the southern facet. In 1935, they climbed it from Valloire on the opposite facet. This e book was by the famend Tour historian, Serge Laget. Are you able to describe 5 years as being quickly?”

The errors lengthen past badly captioned photographs, as Thompson defined to me: “In a few of the historical past books I’ve learn the household is described as bourgeois and rich. They are saying Cepeda didn’t have to trip for the cash. That’s not true both. He definitely didn’t go into biking for the cash however when he did begin to earn cash it definitely helped the household. All of them labored exhausting. With the cash he earned from biking Cepeda rented a automobile for the household however then labored as a taxi driver to assist pay for the operating of it. The household ran a really small normal retailer from their home within the village however there have been many mouths to feed.”

The concept Cepeda was bourgeois, that comes from the pages of L’Auto, the place the playwright Robert Dieudonné, eulogising Cepeda, described him in these phrases:

“Poor little Cepeda! He was not, like Trueba, a bit of peasant who hoped to make his fortune on the roads of France. He was the son of a bourgeois household: his father is on the head of a enterprise the place his son was employed. I can see the daddy shrugging his shoulders when the son left to compete but once more within the Tour de France: ‘As in the event you wanted it!’”

Whether or not it was his intent or not, in putting Cepeda as a member of the bourgeoisie, Dieudonné was suggesting that Cepeda was not a correct, skilled bicycle owner, only a dilettante. Whether or not it was his intent or not, Dieudonné was saying Cepeda was complicit in his personal loss of life, a devoted skilled wouldn’t have fallen the best way Cepeda did.

Few right this moment blame Cepeda for what occurred to him, it usually being agreed right this moment that Cepeda’s accident was brought on by the Duralumin – a light-weight aluminium-copper alloy – rims Tour bikes got here geared up with in 1935, changing the picket rims favoured as much as then. All through the early a part of the 1935 Tour, some journalists had been blaming the steel rims for what they felt was an extreme variety of punctures and crashes, the argument being that steel rims performed warmth badly and this prompted the glue binding the tyres to them to soften and the tubulars to then roll off.

“I’ve had the expertise of a tubular rolling off the rear rim in a highway race again within the late 70s,” Thompson instructed me. “I’d punctured warming up and didn’t have a spare wheel so I put a brand new tub on for the race. A lot of the adhesive comes off with the punctured tyre whenever you rip it off and the brand new tyre is barely caught on with what’s left on the rim. Forty miles into the race on a nook it rolled off. It was the again wheel so I fortunately simply went right into a slide and bought the same old highway rash.

“In 1935 they had been puncturing a number of instances so I’m undecided how a lot adhesive can be left on the edges or how good the adhesive was within the first place. I’ve additionally ridden from the Galibier all the best way to Grenoble and there’s a lot of braking and the route they took down the south facet was loads steeper than the current route.

“The part of highway the place Cepeda crashed isn’t that steep and the bend is extra of a gradual curve so I feel it’s unlikely that the autumn might be put solely right down to an unlucky error of judgement by the rider however the absolute fact won’t ever be recognized.”

Thompson doesn’t go into the story of the Duralumin rims in any nice element. “Within the e book I write about what I do know to be true and keep away from something which I’ve doubts about or haven’t any proof for,” he defined to me, and on the subject of the Duralumin rims, a lot is unknown. That mentioned, I personally would have most popular a bit extra on this side of the story. Incidents like Annemiek van Vleuten’s crash within the 2022 World Championships or Thomas de Gendt’s within the 2024 UAE Tour have demonstrated we might be fairly crap at correctly figuring out the reason for some crashes. We shouldn’t simply settle for unquestioningly the claims made concerning the position of the Duralumin rims in Cepeda’s fall.

The reason for Cepeda’s fall is necessary, nevertheless it isn’t the true concern right here. The actual concern right here is how Desgrange and L’Auto responded to Cepeda’s loss of life. And that is a matter Thompson does go into element on.

The brief model of how Desgrange and L’Auto responded to Cepeda’s loss of life is that they responded badly. Cepeda’s fall on the Aix-les-Bains — Grenoble stage went unreported in L’Auto and when information of his loss of life got here via three days later the race had moved on to Good, paradoxically the place Hélière had died 25 years earlier. As they did then, and as they’ve carried out since, the riders paused a second in silence to recollect their fallen comrade. After which bought on with issues.

However they weren’t all getting on with issues on Duralumin rims. A report in Le Miroir des Sports activities claimed that even earlier than Cepeda’s accident Desgrange had accepted there was a difficulty with the edges and referred to as in substitute wheels, with tried-and-tested picket rims. “The truth that Desgrange switched the Duralumin rims for picket rims,” Thompson instructed me, “demonstrated that he had doubts about them. However he stopped wanting a full and correct investigation, which I feel amounted to negligence. You wouldn’t get away with that now.”

Inside the pages of L’Auto, little was written about Cepeda past Dieudonné’s saccharine eulogy. Communist and socialist newspapers took up Cepeda’s trigger and criticised Desgrange and the Tour, however in contrast to in 1924 when L’Auto had addressed criticisms of the race being made by Albert Londres and Henri Pélissier, this time around the critics had been met with silence.

“It appeared that Henri Desgrange went out of his method to not acknowledge Paco’s loss of life,” Thompson writes in The Ultimate Descent. “He was presumably determined to keep away from any unfavourable protection of his race, in addition to accusations of blame. […] Primitivo, Paco’s youthful brother, was indignant concerning the absence of any monetary compensation from the Tour and the truth that Desgrange didn’t attend the funeral or provide his private condolences. He confirmed that the household had written to the Tour asking for the insurance coverage protection however, in return, had solely obtained a duplicate of a clause, through which the organisers acknowledged they weren’t accountable for any accidents obtained by the riders, and, moreover, wouldn’t even be accountable for any damages prompted to 3rd events.”

Having washed their palms of the issue in 1935, the Tour has continued to have a problematic relationship with Cepeda. Writing in his 1991 memoir L’Équipe Belle Jacques Goddet – Desgrange’s successor, who was on the 1935 Tour – didn’t even point out Cepeda’s loss of life when he wrote concerning the 1935 race, preferring as an alternative to recount an anecdote about Georges Speicher almost getting arrested. Within the Tour’s official historical past, even the suggestion that the Duralumin rims might need performed a job in Cepeda’s loss of life is ignored, Laget and his colleagues as an alternative claiming that “Cepeda suffered a deadly fall on the descent of the Galibier as a consequence of brake failure.”

Cepeda deserves higher than this. His is a crucial story, one as related now because it was then for the best way it exhibits how little we query the risks in our sport and the way used we’re to only sweeping accidents away and getting on with it. The followers. The media. The authorities. It doesn’t should be like that.

However The Ultimate Descent is about extra than simply that. It is usually a few man, an actual individual, a man who shone brightly briefly however whose life and whose loss of life have largely been missed, develop into shrouded in lies and half-truths. Cepeda could also be with out memorial on the highway the place he fell however Thompson right here has given him a becoming tribute, one price your time studying.