Commemoration 2014
Commemoration
Head Master’s Commemoration Address, 4 July 2014 On Sunday morning, the extraordinary caravan that is the 101st édition of the Tour de France will sweep past the Minster’s mighty walls and make its looping 123-mile progress from York to Sheffield via the Pennine hills of West and South Yorkshire. The route for the Tour is different every year, becoming more and more elaborate over the past 111 years. Studying this year’s route, it looks like the work of a malfunctioning satnav with a wicked sense of humour. Rather than going direct from A to B, the route deviates wildly, wilfully seeking out cruel detours, harsh gradients and sharp descents. Amongst the contenders for the Yellow Jersey will be GB riders Mark Cavendish and Chris Froome. A year ago Froome won the 100th édition of the Tour, completing the 2,128-mile course at an average speed of 25 miles an hour. That’s including the mountains. One hundred years ago today, the 12th édition of the Tour de France was already well under way. Back then, the average speed of the 54 riders was a more modest 16 miles an hour and the 1914 course was wonderfully simple. It was a 3,359-mile grand tour of the outline of France; Le Tour autour, as it were. Starting in Paris, they headed up to Le Havre and proceeded anticlockwise around France’s noble exterior, all the way back to Dunkirk.
Well before the inception of professional sport, the 1914 Tour was characterized by a unique blend of sporting spirit and moments of glorious amateurism. On the third stage, the riders reached the first checkpoint one hour late, after they had taken the wrong route and ridden more than 20 miles in the opposite direction. The wives and mothers in this congregation will know all too well how unlikely it is that 54 grown men would admit that they’re lost, let alone stop and ask directions. In fairness though, anyone who has driven across France might sympathize that the road signage is often enigmatic or even self-contradictory. By the sixth stage, the Pyrenees Mountains appeared. The weather was getting increasingly hot and, by the eighth stage, the cyclists did not want to race. Perhaps because this was France, the spirit of unionism and direct action was in the air: the entire field agreed to cycle at low speed. The Tour management got the message, stopped the race and held a sprint tournament instead. On the ninth stage, scandal broke as former Tour winner François Faber was given a 90-minute time penalty for being pushed and for taking drink from a motor-cyclist. History does not record what was in the drink. It is tempting to imagine that it was a half-bottle of Chablis.
The Peterite 2013-2014
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