utterly captivating…an amazing concept and a truly fascinating adventure into cycling, history and people… a truly addictive read.”— Cyclist If it were possible, if it didn’t make me sound insane, I would have to say that I fell in love with a year. I fell in love with a moment in time. I fell in love with a single event that is bigger than everything I have ever imagined. This is my testament to a race that is bigger in scope than even its creator imagined possible. This is my love letter to the Tour de France. It’s no exaggeration to say that what began as a journey to satisfy a certain curiosity, during that long, sad first Covid winter rapidly became an overwhelming obsession; one which spun off in any number of different directions, all of which seemed to me to be uniquely fascinating. As interesting as the story of how Boulting pins down the precise year of the film, 1923 – weather reports and clothing confirmed it couldn’t have been 1924’s appalling heatwave – and starts to attach names to faces, is the insight he gives into the “heroic age” of cycling. 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”. Added to this was, by 1923, an air of defiance to the immediate post-War Tours, cycling through the devastated landscape in which the guns had finally fallen silent.

Witty, discursive, and tons of fun, Ned Boulting has the Tour De France under his skin, and you will too by the time you read this”—Al Murray GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (CO/IL/IN/KS/KY/LA/MD/MI/NJ/OH/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY), (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Yes, that’s right. Yet another cycling book that flogs the dead horse of Alfred Jarry. And, better still, Ernest Hemingway gets to make an appearance too!Or how about the first woman of the Hour, Mlle de Saint-Sauveur? Several people have tried to find out more about her but all we’ve been able to learn at this stage comes from a couple of races before her Hour record and a couple of races after. We don’t even know her first name. utterly captivating...an amazing concept and a truly fascinating adventure into cycling, history and people... a truly addictive read. * Cyclist * Witty, discursive, and tons of fun, Ned Boulting has the Tour de France under his skin, and you will too by the time you've read this * Al Murray, comedian, author and presenter of history podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk *

It looks like he is a wearing a wedding band, so it must have been taken after February 1925 [when he married]. But he is wearing a Griffon jersey, a team he reportedly left at the end of 1924.” Boulting says: “I imagine you could ask 100 cycling enthusiasts across the world whether they had heard of him and not a single one would say yes because he a was very, very good rider without being one of the greats. He went on to win two stages of the Tour de France and finished just off the podium so he was a notable rider but for whatever reason his story has been entirely forgotten. How Cav Won the Green Jersey: Short Dispatches from the 2011 Tour de France (Vintage Digital, 2012) The story of an obsession. When cycling commentator Ned Boulting bought a length of Pathé news film featuring a stage of the Tour de France from 1923 he set about learning everything he could about it - taking him on an intriguing journey that encompasses travelogue, history and detective story. Boulting made his darts commentary debut at the 2020 Masters after being a long term pundit for ITV Sport PDC events. [10]Weaknesses: Boulting doesn’t even attempt to offer an argument for why his piece of Pathé history is important Ned Boulting’s history of Not The 1923 Tour, in 940 grisly deaths fmk Please Gamble Responsibly. Call 1-800-NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (NH), 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), or visit OPGR.org (OR) or www.1800gambler.net (WV). Following on from the success of his Bikeology tour, in 2018 Ned announced his newly revamped 'Tour de Ned'. A one-man theatrical cycling roadshow that tours the UK in conjunction with the Tour de France from 28 September - 17 November. [9]

Boulting is certainly no stranger to cycling or to writing. The sports journalist, television presenter and author has been involved with ITV’s Tour coverage since 2003. Ned Boulting’s voice is synonymous with cycling coverage and, as one might expect, he has a devotee’s commitment to the sport. “This is the story of an obsession,” he writes at the beginning of 1923, a curious, absorbing mix of historical sleuthing and travel writing. He’s not lying. The pandemic arrested the usual rhythms of his life: “I measured out my life in yellow jerseys,” he notes, when he’s ­confined to providing commentary from the studio, biking to Kent rather than the mountain passes of France. To add injury to insult, he also broke his arm and was left in a deskbound state, mourning the general shutdown. On the same day, there’s the bombing of the Duisburg-Hochfeld bridge spanning the Rhine, in which several people were killed. Boulting, Ned (31 January 2020). "Tonight I will be commentating on darts for the first time in my life. I've reported on it for a decade, and I've even written a book all about it. I love the darts. But I am more nervous than I can ever remember being since I started out in TV. Go easy on me, folks. 7pm @itv4". @nedboulting . Retrieved 31 January 2020. Beginning with a fragment of a century-old race, Ned has written a 'biography of the unknown rider'. And in honouring him he's told us more about bike racing, the Tour and about Europe in the years between the wars than we'd ever have learned from a book about a star”— Michael Hutchinson, racing cyclist and writera b Marquand, Rupert (11 August 2013). "Winning over the cycling audience". Bedfordshire on Sunday. Witty, discursive, and tons of fun, Ned Boulting has the Tour de France under his skin, and you will too by the time you've read this”— Al Murray, comedian, author and presenter of history podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk The footage comes from the fourth stage of that year’s Tour, the 400-plus kilometre haul down from Brest to Les Sables d’Olonne. It starts about 150 kilometres and six hours into the stage, still another 260 or so kilometres and more than nine hours of racing to go. After Henri Desgrange gives the signal for the riders to restart after a two-minute stop to sign-in at the control in the town of Lorient, the peloton gets underway again. Ned's captivating book explores one man's obsession with this magnificent event and casts an intriguing light on a tiny fragment of a race long gone by”— Alexei Sayle