ned boulting on tour

Ned Boulting

Ned Boulting is a British sports journalist and television presenter best known for his coverage of football and cycling.

Ned Boulting tour dates listed on Ents24.com since Apr 2016.

Official website twitter.com/nedboulting

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Re-Tour de Ned review: Ned Boulting is a captivating raconteur with a surreal mind

The commentator's new one-man show opens on 8 October

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Re-Tour de Ned is tightly prepared, expertly performed and laugh-out-loud funny throughout.

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There’s a moment in Ned Boulting’s new one-man show, Re-Tour de Ned, where the cycling commentator does an impression of Richie Porte. It’s both oddly authentic and utterly ridiculous. Boulting crouches, raises his hands in a Kung Fu gesture and barks in a piercing Australian accent, pretending to be Chris Froome’s bodyguard in the Tour de France . 

The sketch is one of countless impersonations that bring the new stage show to life. For the best part of two hours, Boulting masterfully weaves silly accents with commentary anecdotes and history lessons, offering a glimpse behind the curtain of the world of cycling.

Boulting begins by transporting the room back to the origins of the Tour de France. The year is 1903 and the audience is suddenly in Paris, watching on as plans for the sport’s newest and most gruelling event are hatched. 

What follows is a journey through the decades. After a four-year hiatus from the stage, Boulting spins tales of the race’s biggest stars, from its early pioneers to its most recent champion, a humble fish factory worker called Jonas Vingegaard. 

The second half of the two-part show hones in on the Dane's heroics this past July. “Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are time trialists,” Boulting starts one section. In another, the commentator takes a self-deprecating swing at his own well-trodden clichés. 

Some theatregoers might be disappointed by the lack of robust racing analysis throughout the performance. This, it's worth noting, is not the point of the show. Instead, audiences should turn up ready to unwind and laugh along as Boulting unveils the brilliant surrealism of his own imagination.

I saw a dress rehearsal staged in a cosy theatre above a London pub. The seat cushions were tired and mismatched, and scuffed plastic busts were scattered throughout the venue. Such is the charm of the show, that the dingier the setting, the better. 

With this one-man show, the commentator proves that he is more than just a friendly voice off the telly. He’s a showman, an entertainer and a captivating raconteur, who hops around at ease under the bright lights of the stage.

Re-Tour de Ned opens in Plymouth on 8 October, travelling to 28 different locations across the country. The final performance will take place at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh on 13 November. 

Tickets are available to purchase through Ents24 . 

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Tom joined Cycling Weekly as a news and features writer in the summer of 2022, having previously contributed as a freelancer. He is the host of The TT Podcast , which covers both the men's and women's pelotons and has featured a number of prominent British riders. 

An enthusiastic cyclist himself, Tom likes it most when the road goes uphill and actively seeks out double-figure gradients on his rides. 

He's also fluent in French and Spanish and holds a master's degree in International Journalism. 

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Ned Boulting returns to stage with Marginal Mystery Tour

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Author and ITV cycling commentator Ned Boulting returns to theatres nationwide with a new one-man stage show based on the 1923 Tour de France.

Ned Boulting's Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That is based on a mysterious roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France that fell Ned's possession during the Covid pandemic, and inspired his book "1923!"

Described as "part detective story, part murder mystery, part costume drama and part French farce," Ned weaves his own typically ridiculous story into the astonishing discoveries he makes about the hidden world of the 1923 Tour de France, its characters and tragedies, and ties it all together with the wild upheavals of Europe between the wars.

Of course Boulting is well placed to draw parallels with contemporary racing, and the show does just that - connecting the dots between the heroes of yesteryear and the champions of today, from Cavendish to Pogačar and beyond.

"The film led me on an adventure around France and Belgium trying to discover the riders and stories of the 1923 Tour de France, and following the success of the book, I'm excited to get head back to the theatres to bring this fascinating piece of history to life."

David Millar, former pro cyclist, and Ned's Tour de France co-commentator said:

"There is no one quite like Ned at recreating a fascinating story for the stage. Expect high production values and a stellar one-man performance that is brilliantly written and executed, appealing to both cycling enthusiasts and keen theatre goers."

The 21-date tour will travel up and down the country, starting at the Hertford Theatre on Tuesday 22nd October, and ending at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley on Wednesday 20th November.

Find our more and book your tickets at  www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/ned-boulting .

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Tour de Ned: We preview Ned Boulting's latest show - and interview the man himself

Ned Boulting – ITV4 reporter and, more recently, commentator on the Tour de France – is about to embark on a nationwide jaunt of his own as he takes his Tour de Ned on a 21-date trip around the UK. We caught up with him last week as he previewed the show in the Stanley Halls in south London.

Getting underway in Southampton on 28 September, the Tour de Ned concludes in Lincoln on 17 November, allowing for more rest days – and more time for those long transfers – than the race Boulting chases round France each July does.

The version of the show we saw may have been a rough cut with some work to be done before the tour proper, a bit of a Criterium du Dauphiné translated to the theatre, perhaps?

But it was a belter, and much in the same way that comedians will perform one-off shows to preview the act they plan to take to the Edinburgh Fringe ahead of August each year, one of the aims was to see what works in front of an audience, and what doesn’t.

It turns out that Boulting is a natural stand-up, If you’ve read his 2011 book, How I Won The Yellow Jumper , you’ll know that he isn’t afraid to have a joke at his own expense.

He certainly isn’t adverse to taking the piss out of his ITV4 colleagues either, including Gary Imlach, Matt Rendell, Chris Boardman and David Millar – although the fact that the latter was sitting in the front row at the preview did send Boulting scurrying for cover after a joke at Millar’s expense that brought perhaps the biggest laugh of the night from the audience.

The Tour de Ned is billed as following this year’s Tour de France, but it is so much more than that, with Boulting invoking memories – and ghosts – of Tours past. If it’s on near you, we’d thoroughly recommend catching it.

As well as getting a sneak preview of the show, we also got a chance to ask Boulting about his career as a broadcaster and his views on cycling.

TV vs theatre

There’s clearly a difference between working on TV, where an audience that at times may number in the millions can’t be seen, and being in a theatre where a much smaller audience can. Having already toured with one show, how did that transition make him feel?

“Terribly nervous,” Boulting reveals. “That feeling of fear has never totally left me. If truth be told, live telly never makes me nervous – just tense – whereas stepping onto stage has me in bits.

“The flip side of that is the reward when the show is running well, and the audience are with you. Some nights can be really special.”

Picture courtesy Holbeck Ghyll

Why cycling?

As you may know, Boulting first appeared on TV on Sky’s Soccer Saturday before moving to ITV, where he was involved in coverage of the Champions League and FIFA World Cup, among other things.

Given that working on flagship football tournaments might be seen as the biggest aim of many aspiring sports broadcasters, what made him decide to focus on cycling?

“I think, initially, it was because of cycling’s secret code,” he told us. “I found that its complexity, rather than putting me off, drew me in. I loved the fact that English was a minority language in the peloton (it isn’t any more). The whole thing felt like an adventure.”

It’s a reaction shared by many who discover the sport later in life – including the writer, who would hazard a reasonably safe bet that most people reading this didn’t grow up in a house that ground to a halt each July when the Tour de France was on TV, and came to the sport later on.

And if you are one of those people, you’ll know there is a steep learning curve in getting to up to speed with issues such as the tactics, the rules, the roles of various riders in a team, the different types of stages, not to mention – as Boulting acknowledges in the title of his book – the ‘jumpers’.

So just how hard did he find it to get to grips with the sport?

“I still find it hard to understand,” he confessed. “Things happen in a race that are sometimes impossible to explain in any rational sense. Especially when Thomas de Gendt is attacking.”

This was before the final week of the Vuelta when the Belgian went full Thomas de Gendt to win the mountains jersey, by the way.

“I cannot think of any other sport with as much nuance,” he added. “Understanding the peloton is like trying to understand the movement of Atlantic weather systems crossing an ocean.”

Given the winds that have buffeted southern England today, the ones that didn’t get that much of a mention on the forecasts over the weekend, we have to agree.

What's changed since 2003?

Since Boulting first started covering the Tour in 2003 – the year Lance Armstrong took the fifth of the seven victories that would be taken away from him as he was banned from the sport for life – professional cycling has evolved beyond all recognition. What stands out for him?

“Sky are the biggest single change,” he said. “Their dominance, unimaginable a decade ago, has forced everyone to react.

“Arguably, they are a problem for the sport, of the Tour at least, because they seem impregnable, both in a sporting context and courtesy of their financial might.

“But,” he continued, “one should never underestimate the vast impact they have made on the popularity of the sport on these shores.”

"The rest of the world is completely sick of British domination”

We were speaking at the start of a week that would end with Simon Yates winning the Vuelta and thereby completing a unique treble as Great Britain became the first country ever to win all three Grand Tours with three separate riders in the same year.

Six of the past seven editions of the Tour de France have now been won by British riders – and the last five Grand Tours – something unimaginable a decade ago. But how do his colleagues on the Tour de France from other countries view that?

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the rest of the world is completely sick of British domination,” Boulting reflected.

“That is a remarkable thing to say, when you think about it. But outside of the British bubble, people yearn for a change of the script.

“A French winner would be good for example, and we seem to move further away from that prospect with each passing year,” he added.

Moving into commentating

Initially, Boulting was the ITV reporter who would grab interviews with riders at the start and finish of stages, as well as fronting features that figured within its coverage such as the memorable segments where, on a bike, he played domestique to Chris Boardman explaining the nuts and bolts of the sport.

Now, of course, he is in the commentary booth, calling the race. How hard was that transition, and how does he prepare for a race where any one of 180-odd riders could attack or crash at any time?

“Commentating on the Tour requires a level of preparation that dwarfs everything else,” Boulting said. "The research starts in January. I watch, and absorb as much racing as I can, all year long. Whole weeks can go missing.”

It’s hardly a secret that those of us working in the cycling media find Procyclingstats.com, among other sites, an invaluable resource in covering the Tour de France and other races.

“But,” Boulting said, “nothing replaces face to face contact with riders, to ask them directly about the kind of things that are not documented on any database.”

Live commentary of course brings its pitfalls, as Private Eye’s Colemanballs feature amply demonstrates. So does Boulting have any embarrassing moments that spring to mind? Of course he does.

“There was a truly awkward moment on this year’s Tour when Peter Sagan stopped in the convoy while a mechanic adjusted the straps on his helmet,” he explained.

“Sagan took the opportunity to have a wee, which prompted Chris Boardman to say, ‘Sagan, having some trouble with his helmet.’ I had to cut the mics. A good minute elapsed before I had composed myself enough to speak again.”

The odd gaffe aside, working on the race has also provided some moments that stick with Boulting well after the racing has finished.

“I think the most memorable stages I have commentated on tend to involve Julian Alaphillipe,” he said. “His attacks into Luchon, and Le Grand Bornand this year were thrilling. He’s the most exciting racer to watch in the current crop.”

Working with David Millar and Chris Boardman

David Millar now sits alongside Boulting in the commentary booth at the Tour de France, and is a much more recent retiree from the sport than some other pundits, and therefore perhaps more insightful about how the race is ridden nowadays as tactics have involved.

We asked Boulting how much working alongside Millar – whom he has admitted was a go-to rider for quotes back in his reporting days –  had increased his understanding of the race.

“Immeasurably,” he replied. “I owe my entire understanding of bike racing to David, warts and all.

“He was there as a racer in 2003, the first time I ever watched the Tour de France. And he’s still there with me now. It’s kind of mind-blowing.”

Some of Millar’s greatest successes – at the Tour de France, the Commonwealth Games, and in the World Championship he was subsequently stripped of as a result of his doping ban – came in the time trial.

Boulting himself rode a time trial a few years back on the closing stage of the Tour of Britain in London, with celebrities invited to have a go on the course ahead of the professionals tackling it.

How did it feel to be the other side of the barriers with the crowds cheering him on?

“It was an unforgettable experience,” he said. “Of course, I let the excitement get to me, as I knew I would. I went far too hard, far too quickly. Within a minute I had exploded.”

Millar is a more recent addition to the ITV commentary team, but one of his predecessors in the yellow jersey of Tour de France leader, Chris Boardman, has been one of the mainstays of the coverage since Boulting began working on the race .

The former world and Olympic champion – and father of six, as he mentions on his Twitter bio and Boulting alludes to once or twice in his book – has now covered the race for the final time for ITV4. How did Boulting find it working with him over the best part of two decades?

“It’s been a real pleasure and an honour to get to know Chris,” he said. “It took a long time. He’s naturally wary. But once he decides that he trusts you, he’s very loyal, and great fun. I will miss him.”

Cycling, away from the sport

Boardman is now focusing on his role as Greater Manchester Cycling & Walking Commissioner and has been a tireless and eloquent campaigner for everyday cycling.

As someone who himself used a bike to get around town, we asked Boulting what he thinks the most important thing is that could be done to make conditions safer for those of us on two wheels?

“It has to be segregation,” he replied. “The mix is not working, and everywhere they have been built (I can only talk for London) they are heavily, and increasingly used.

“The experience of using them is a game-changer. Unconsciously, you relax, when you are no longer shoulder to shoulder with buses and taxis.

“But beyond that, I think, we need to de-Lycrafy and normalise the experience.

“Winning the helmet compulsion debate, and returning utilitarian cycling to realm of normal clothing worn by normal people doing a normal thing would be a start.”

Après-Tour relaxation

Back to the race itself that is the raison d’être behind the Tour de Ned. By our reckoning, Boulting has covered 18 editions of the race that is the world’s largest annual sporting event. So when he emerges each year from the bubble around the Tour de France, how does he decompress?

The answer may surprise you, given that he has just spent four weeks or so in the country, covering thousands of miles.

“I tend to hang around in France, to experience the country without the madness and clamour of the race to contend with,” he told us. “I switch the phone off, and read a book.”

If you go watch the show, you’ll find out which book that was this year – and from what he said, we’re quite keen to track down a copy ourselves.

Back to the bubble next year

In the meantime, the Tour de France will be back next year, and at some point during the Tour de Ned – hopefully, when he’s having some of those rest days – next year’s route will be presented in Paris.

While riders and team management in the auditorium scrutinise the parcours for stages they may target, or ones that may prove decisive for the overall, what does a broadcaster such as Boulting look for?

“The first thing I look at is the final transfer to Paris, which, over the last two years have been truly obscene,” he replied.

“After that I look to see if the race is passing through my favourite parts of the country, which include Brittany, the Massif Central and the Vosges mountains. The Alps, I dread. But I like the Pyrenees. They’re more real, somehow. Less phony.”

Phony is a word that could be used to describe much of the Tour de France during Boulting’s time covering the race, and by pure coincidence is a near homophone of Phonak.

The Tour de Ned demonstrates his particular knack, though, of turning it into something funny.

Check the dates of the Tour de Ned and book tickets here .

Picture courtesy Holbeck Ghyll

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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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Ned Boulting's Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That

Ned Boulting returns again! But this time he’s 101 years too late for the 1923 Tour de France.

In his latest celebration of the greatest race on earth, Ned delves into the hidden mysteries of a roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France that fell into his possession during the Covid pandemic, and inspired his bestselling book 1923!

Part detective story, part murder mystery, part costume drama, part French farce, Ned weaves his own typically ridiculous story into the astonishing discoveries he makes about the hidden world of the 1923 Tour de France, its characters and tragedies, and ties it all together with the wild upheavals of Europe in-between the wars.

Along the way, in an evening’s odyssey, he draws a connection between the heroes of yesteryear and the champions of today, from Cavendish to Pogačar and beyond! It’s a touching, hilarious, fascinating journey that bounces between the centuries, but always has Le Tour at its very heart.

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Ned Boulting's Tour of Britain 2022 favourites

Pidcock and Teuns headline broadcaster's favourites for the overall win at this year's race

This year’s Tour of Britain breaks a few rules. It has an uphill finish, arguably the Queen Stage, on day one, with the drag up to the Glenshee Ski Centre, finishing with a steep-enough 3km climb. 

That might kill the race stone dead on day one, or provoke the need to attack thereafter; it could go either way. And it finishes with another short sharp effort to the Needles on the Isle of Wight.

Along the way between the two points (and making a refreshing foray into Yorkshire), the race serves up its usual mix of nailed-on sprints, and finishes for puncheurs. 

The start-list has been stronger in recent years. The upcoming Road World Championships in Australia might have forced a bit of a re-think for some. But those teams and riders who will be pinning a number on and starting the race will see a massive opportunity to pick up a victory on what has grown over recent years to become a race only the very best in the world win.

Here's my pick of the favourites in the field this year.

★★★★★

Tom pidcock (ineos grenadiers).

One name towers above the rest, in terms of how eagerly we anticipate his ride. For Tom Pidcock, this coming week could be another significant milestone in a career which is plotting so many courses, it's hard to keep track of where it’s heading. Is it X-Cross, MTB, the Classics, stage wins or GC? Has he ruled out BMX?

The course suits him, the team around him looks strong. He must surely go into the race as favourite, and yet, at senior level he is fully unproven in terms of his GC potential. U-23 victories at Tour Alsace and the Baby Giro suggest that Pidcock can willingly apply himself to the sometimes sterile seeming disciplines of riding GC.

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But to win the Tour of Britain, following on from Mathieu van der Poel , Julian Alaphilippe and Wout van Aert would seem like the next logical step.

Dylan Teuns (Israel-Premier Tech)

The prolific Belgian is very suited to the Tour of Britain, its wild and wet conditions, its punchy climbs and unrelenting nature. 

No longer in the red of Bahrain Victorious, Teuns has joined the Israel-Premier Tech team on a mid-season two and a half year contract. This is his race debut for his new team. His form is good, if not stellar. He was a little muted at the Tour de France, perhaps. But prior to that he had picked up a win at the Tour de Romandie on very 'Tour of Britain' terrain, and he won La Flèche Wallonne. All good indications that his form isn’t far off and his class is permanent. 

There is a slight question about the strength and relative lack of experience in his team, but he will be motivated to get off to the best possible start with his new team, and to prove to the Belgian national selectors that they have made a mistake in overlooking him for the upcoming World Championships.

The Tour of Britain is among the few week-long stage races that a rider like Teuns can seriously target on GC. But he’s done it before, in Wallonie, Poland and Norway.

Touring from early October. (Sound on).https://t.co/LaURquV5qd pic.twitter.com/99JnQBb2Q9 August 30, 2022

★★★★☆

Felix großschartner (bora–hansgrohe).

The Austrian national champion was in action at the recent Deutschland Tour, in support of the largely unimpressive local hero Emmanuel Buchmann. I couldn’t help but think that this loyalty to the German rider was misplaced, and that Großschartner might have been the man to ride for. 

The 28-year-old has won the Tour of Turkey before now, when it was still a WorldTour race, claiming the GC with victory over a still teenage Remco Evenepoel on the snowy climb to Kartepe. But he also sprinted to second place behind his teammate Sam Bennett on a rolling finish.

He is a very versatile proposition, which is what you need to be in this race. Not only that, but his team is arguably the strongest in the race, featuring the likes of fellow GC contender Max Schachmann , Lukas Pöstlberger, the indefatigable Nils Politt and Marco Haller (who recently beat Wout van Aert in the Bemer Cyclassics sprint). 

★★★☆☆

Anthon charmig (uno-x pro cycling team).

After the season we’ve had, you can’t have a list of favourites without including a Dane. I’ve gone for Anthon Charmig partly because of his nationality, partly because of his form and a lot because of his team.

Races like the Tour of Britain, with a relatively weakened World Tour presence, present a huge opportunity for a team like Uno-X, still smarting from their non-selection at the Tour. 

They are extremely ambitious, very well drilled and organised. And in Charmig they have a rider knocking on the door of still greater things. The nature of the climbs in the Tour of Britain will suit him to a tee.

And in 2022, he tasted victory for the first time at the Tour of Oman, where he outsprinted Jan Hirt, and out climbed both Fausto Masnada and Rui Costa to take victory on an uphill finish. He could be very dangerous, if his form is good.

★★☆☆☆

Thomas gloag (trinity racing).

Tom Gloag is signing off for Trinity Racing, and heading to Jumbo-Visma next year. They know a good rider when they see one. Another Londoner (watch out too for Oscar Nilsson-Julien), like Fred Wright and Ethan Hayter, he is decidedly his own man. 

Stranded on Gran Canaria when the pandemic hit in 2020, and unable to head home, he flew instead to Colombia where he stayed, aged just 18, for months training with Esteban Chaves. He returned a changed rider. 

He’s a climber, though his recent win at the Tour de l’Avenir came in a two-up sprint on a flat/rolling stage. It will be interesting to see how he approaches this year’s race, having raced aggressively, if a little impetuously, in last year’s edition.

Ned Boulting is on tour this Oct/Nov with his one-man stage show Re-Tour de Ned. Tickets are available here

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Ned Boulting has covered the Tour de France for UK broadcaster ITV since 2003 and is now the channel's lead commentator for the race. He's the editor of The Road Book Cycling Almanack, the author of several non-fiction books about professional cycling and co-host of the Never Strays Far cycling podcast with former pro rider David Millar.

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• Print Edition
• 2600 - 08 July 2023
• INTERVIEW: All my world’s a stage – author Ned Boulting on his Tour de France book inspired by an auction buy

All my world’s a stage – author Ned Boulting on his Tour de France book inspired by an auction buy

A chance purchase at auction during lockdown inspired a whole book on a single day of the Tour de France 100 years ago

• Tom Derbyshire
• 03 Jul 2023

Still image from the Pathé news film of the fourth stage of the 1923 Tour de France which inspired the new book by Ned Boulting.

Image copyright:1923/Ned Boulting.

If it wasn’t learning a new language or back-to-back Netflix series, for many people lockdown in the winter of 2020 meant catching up on lots of books.

For Ned Boulting, however, the enforced period at home meant actually writing a book.

1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession by Ned Boulting is published by Bloomsbury (£18.99). Available to buy now.

That work is now out, called 1923: the Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession . And as the name suggests, it had its origin in another activity many people took to in lockdown, with time and unspent money to hand: bidding online at auctions.

The book covers a single day – June 30, 1923 – that marked a single stage in the arduous cycling marathon that is the Tour.

Cycling knowledge

Ned Boulting.

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.

He chatted to ATG about his ‘lockdown project’ just before heading off to commentate for ITV’s coverage of this year’s Tour, which started on July 1 (100 years and a day after the stage featured in this new book, his seventh overall).

It all started with that chance purchase at sport specialist Graham Budd’s auction in November 2020. Boulting had been tipped off to the opportunity to make an online bid by a mate who works as MC of the Professional Darts Corporation and also spends a lot of time buying sports memorabilia. Boulting is also known for darts and football coverage.

Fourth stage map from the Pathé news film of the fourth stage of the 1923 Tour de France which inspired the new book by Ned Boulting.

The lot estimated at £140-180 – actually numbered lot 222, however – was described partly as a ‘Tour de France b&w 35mm film reel, of fourth stage, Brest to Les Sable d’Olonne, circa 1930, first section of film includes fourth stage map’.

The description cautioned: ‘Not viewed at time of cataloguing, this lot is on a reel without a box, hence it has possibly been exposed to light, there is obvious cracking and broken areas on the first section of the film edges, we have not looked at the whole film as we have not taken it off the reel or have not looked at it through a projector.’

Boulting guessed it would prove to be a Pathé news reel and his hunch proved right. His maximum bid of £140 was enough to secure the reel and after then contacting the saleroom he gleaned it had been bought from a German auction after having previously been acquired by a French sporting memorabilia collector.

He was immediately fascinated by the two-and-a-half minute film. “The first thing you face is a very rudimentary map of the stage you are about to see, with starting and finishing point and distance, but it doesn’t say a year, just stage 4, 412km from Brest to Les Sables D’Olonne.

“I entered that into Google and it gave the simple response 1923, stage 4, but that wasn’t the end of the story. I didn’t know this at the time but for five years after the end of the First World War the Tour de France route was identical – of course now it changes every year. So my next confusion was that the film could have been from any one of five years and I had to figure out which one – that was hard work.”

He adds: “What I just found remarkable really is that they would have printed about a dozen of these projected news reels, shown possibly for only one or two nights in the cinemas of Paris and the major cities in France and then would have been destroyed. That’s when I realised this was worthy of deep investigation.”

‘Escape hatch’

Not that he wished to be under such a pandemic-forced restriction, but the timing was just right.

“I knew straightaway I wanted to dive into every single corner of this film. It was a perfect lockdown project. The world was shutting down again outside and so I needed an escape hatch and the film presented me with exactly that. Day after day I disappeared upstairs and dived into the world of June 30, 1923.”

Having established the exact event shown, Boulting had another pressing difficulty to tackle, however. A rare survivor in itself given that most such reels would have been chucked in bin, the film needed tender care of a different kind: the need to be digitised.

“That was in itself not a foregone conclusion at all,” says Boulting. “The film from that era predates celluloid so it was made of nitrate. Not only is it very brittle with the passing of age but also highly combustible, something I didn’t realise at the time but subsequently was pointed out to me – that even having it in my house would have invalidated my buildings insurance. It has been known in a raised temperature to spontaneously combust.”

The film’s condition meant two to three months of sourcing the right specialist help but a facility in east London proved up to the task.

Boulting was also in a strange situation of possessing what turned out to be the only copy of this news reel in existence but with intellectual rights belonging to Pathé Cinema France. A sensible trade-off was reached with Boulting taking on the rights but Pathé then having a copy for its archives.

“I was very concerned they would look in their archives and say it turns out we’ve got five copies of this film already so don’t worry, but not a bit of it, this is definitely the only copy,” says an obviously relieved Boulting.

412km in one day

Many of the details of that stage in 1923 are astonishing to the modern reader. For a start, it was 412km long when today 220km or so is commonplace. The cyclists raced on gravel roads with, of course, far more rudimentary bikes and refreshments.

Even changing gear meant dismounting and using a spanner to take off the rear wheel, flip it round and put it back in again and the chain back on – and you had only two gears anyway, one for the flat and one for a mountain.

Despite concentrating on this single day of the stage, the book is much more than a simple cycling history, however, or just a memoir of his own research obsession.

Boutling says: “Once I mined the actual cycling content in the film of all I possibly could, establishing which identifiable characters are in it, reading around their biographies, then my eye got distracted and I started to see what was going on in France and Europe on that day and over that summer and that’s when the project started to balloon out of all proportion.

“It started to take on the elephantine proportions that it has done because the political and cultural landscape of June 30, 1923, was absolutely fascinating. I am not a historian but I started to behave like a historian and tentatively started to reach a loose conclusion that actually that summer was the ‘end’ of the First World War, the afterglow of that conflict.

“It was being consigned to history and the starting pistol for the Second World War was being fired, a pivotal moment in European history for all sorts of reasons. All playing out in the background of this day of racing that was caught on film.”

The film’s mention of Théo Beeckman, who became central to Ned Boulting’s book on the fourth stage of the Tour de France in 1923.

The story took on a very personal nature – one that became a central theme in fact – when Boulting looked closely at a part of the reel which namechecked a particular rider: Brusquement, Beckman s’echappe et passe seul au viaduct de Laroche-Bernard (‘Suddenly Beckman escapes and crosses the viaduct… alone’)

The obsession focused on this one rider, Théo Beeckman (research not helped by the fact that the name Beeckman had been spelt wrong).

Théo Beeckman.

Image copyright: Bibliothèque de France

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.

“Even in the cycling-fanatical town he lived all his life in east Flanders, which is the heart of professional road racing, no one has heard of him.”

The exhaustive research paid off and Boulting was able to not just uncover Beeckman himself but track down and meet the family and descendants – “Even among them there is almost nothing known about what their grandfather got up to… they knew vaguely he was a racing cyclist but didn’t even know he’d competed in the Tour de France.

“I ended up in the odd position of being the only person on the planet that knew about him. It felt like a curious responsibility to keep someone’s memory alive like that, becoming another big mission of mine that came randomly from this film.”

Boulting unearthed this remarkable newspaper report depicting Théo Beeckman and fellow riders relaxing on the beach after the stage.

Image copyright:1923/Ned Boulting

Gruelling challenge

Boulting’s attention now is on the 2023 edition of the Tour but his lockdown project which took on a life of its own has clearly given him a new perspective on this gruelling event.

Any chance of another book born out of an auction purchase (but not in another lockdown we hope)?

“I’d love to think so, but I can’t imagine unearthing anything of that mystery again, unique and wonderful. I don’t think an old jersey or a cycling cap from the 1950s would quite have that hefty resonance. I will keep an eye out for sure but I think it was a real one-off.”

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Ned Boulting’s 1923 And All That: From Film Discovery to Theatre Stage

Mathew Mitchell

• Published on April 24, 2024
• in Cycling Tips

ITV’s lead Tour de France commentator, Ned Boulting, is set to captivate audiences nationwide with his one-man stage show, “Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That.” Inspired by a roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France, which he discovered during the Covid pandemic, Boulting’s show will embark on a 21-date UK tour starting in Hertford on the 22nd of October and concluding in Bromley on the 20th of November.

The show promises an engaging blend of detective story, murder mystery, costume drama, and French farce, as Boulting shares his unique and humorous perspective on the historic 1923 Tour. This theatrical offering delves into the hidden world of that year’s Tour de France, exploring the lives of its participants and the dramatic context of Europe between the wars.

Boulting’s journey in creating the show began unexpectedly after a cycling accident left him housebound and in search of a project. The subsequent discovery of the old film not only led to the creation of his bestselling book “1923” but also inspired this theatrical adventure, mixing historical intrigue with the thrill of cycling.

Former professional cyclist and co-commentator David Millar praised Boulting’s unparalleled ability to bring such stories to life on stage, highlighting the show’s high production values and its appeal to both cycling fans and theatre-goers alike. Boulting himself expressed excitement about returning to theatres to share these fascinating historical tales, woven together with his signature narrative flair.

For tickets and further details on the tour schedule, audiences can visit here .

Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour Schedule

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Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That coming to Fareham

ITV’s Tour de France commentator Ned Boulting has announced he will be performing at Fareham Live on November 14, with his brand-new one-man stage show, Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That.

Ned Boulting, ITV’s lead Tour de France commentator, will be returning to theatres nationwide this Autumn with his brand-new one-man stage show, Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That.

In his latest celebration of the greatest race on earth, Ned delves into the hidden mysteries of a mysterious roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France that fell into his possession during the Covid pandemic and inspired his bestselling book "1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession!”

Part detective story, part murder mystery, part costume drama and part French farce. Ned weaves his own typically ridiculous story into the astonishing discoveries he makes about the hidden world of the 1923 Tour de France, its characters and tragedies, and ties it all together with the wild upheavals of Europe in-between the wars.

Along the way, in an evening's odyssey, he draws a connection between the heroes of yesteryear and the champions of today, from Cavendish to Pogačar and beyond! It’s a touching, hilarious, fascinating journey that bounces between the centuries, but always has Le Tour at its very heart.

Following the sell-out success of his 2022 tour, this year’s 21-date circuit will travel up and down the country, visiting Fareham Live on November 14.

Ned Boulting comments: “This story starts off with a bang, literally, as a bike crash left me helpless and looking for interesting projects to pass the time. The film led me on an adventure around France and Belgium trying to discover the riders and stories of the 1923 Tour de France, and following the success of the book, I’m excited to get head back to the theatres to bring this fascinating piece of history to life.”

David Millar, former pro cyclist, and Ned’s Tour de France co-commentator said : “There is no one quite like Ned at recreating a fascinating story for the stage. Expect high production values and a stellar one-man performance that is brilliantly written and executed, appealing to both cycling enthusiasts and keen theatre goers.”

Tickets are available to purchase exclusively through this link HERE

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Pez Bookshelf: “1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession”

The story behind a book can originate in many ways but perhaps the most intriguing recent publication dealing with a cycling theme is Ned Boulting’s “1923,” with its somewhat ponderous but wholly accurate subtitle. A brief e-mail from a friend about an auction lot turns the author’s enforced home stay, necessitated by a serious bicycle crash and then the Covid-19 pandemic, into a remarkable bit of time travel to the world of a century ago. Focused on a single moment of a single stage of the 1923 Tour de France, the book goes down the rabbit hole of memory as it takes the reader through sports, politics, war, culture, and not a little autobiography.

Ned Boulting is UK broadcaster ITV’s cycling commentator and has covered every edition of the Tour de France since 2003. In the Autumn of 2020 he received an e-mail from a colleague about that auction lot. It was described as a “rare film reel from the Tour de France in the 1930s? Condition unknown,” not a confidence-inspiring bit of salesmanship. This might have explained the lack of interest by other bidders as Boulting’s bid of 120 GBP was the highest of only two submitted. Soon thereafter a bag arrived with the reel of very flammable cellulose nitrate film (all 2 minutes 30 seconds of it) and after a gentle look at some of the frames of the fragile object, it is sent off to specialists to attempt restoration. They return it as a digital file which you can see on YouTube, while retaining the original in cold storage. (Apparently keeping this kind of film sitting around will void your homeowner’s fire insurance policy!)

Now with the ability to examine the film minutely, the author displays impressive research skills as he launches into what is a truly obsessive pursuit. In a world so narrowed by the pandemic, his desk becomes the nerve centre of this project as he goes through the film second-by-second.

The larger questions are obvious—what does the film show? What happened? Where does it fit into greater world of that moment? Looking at the map that begins the footage, it is indeed Stage 4 of the Tour de France, a whacking big 412 km (but not unusual length of the Tour stages then) effort from the port city of Brest to the seaside resort of Les Sables-d’Olonne. But as it transpires this same Stage 4 was used in multiple Tours of the era but delving deeper satisfies the author that it is the 1923 edition. As a newspaper-sponsored event, there is a lot of documentation related to the Tour and its riders over the years and it was already well-established as a sporting (and newsworthy) event since the first edition two decades earlier. We know who the top riders were in 1923 and who won Stage 4 and who won the overall race but at this early point Boulting’s focus is on each of those old frames and from those 150 seconds builds an entire world that draws us in.

The film, which could only be shot when there was enough light for those early movie cameras to capture an image, shows five distinct scenes. A map of the stage is followed by the race going through the Lorient control point, then the peloton moving along a flat dusty road to Vannes before some action as a rider named Beckmann attacks on a bridge and then leads the race alone in front, passing crowds of spectators, before the film goes white and blank.

The author goes into minute detail of what he sees. There is a hotel/cafe in Lorient that occupies the background of the scene. He wonders about the woman in front of it (the owner?) and the man looking down at the race from the second floor balcony, the crowd gathered around as the racers get through the checkpoint. His curiosity is insatiable and armed plenty of time and with a computer and the ability to search the digital world, a portrait of June 30, 1923 emerges.

Of course, the main focus is the Tour de France and its origins, personalities, history. The winner of the race in 1923 was Henri Pélissier. A rather brutal character, he was noteworthy for the strike he led with his brother and another rider in the 1924 race, dropping out on Stage 4 and giving an interview to journalist Albert Londres that became the infamous “Convicts of the Road” story about pro bike racers. Wearing the Yellow Jersey on this stage in 1923 was his teammate, Italian Ottavio Bottechia, who would go on to win the Tour in 1924 and 1925 before dying in mysterious circumstances. There are mini biographies of Tour riders, who would be made immortal for a few moments because of their Tour participation and then vanish from history.

Who was Beckmann? He was, in fact, Théophile Beeckman, a quite good Belgian rider who would ride in the Tour de France a total of six times between 1920 and 1926, winning two stages and placing 4th overall as his best result at the finish. Born in Meerbeke in Flanders in 1896, he ran a car dealership and garage after his retirement from racing. He died, aged 59, in Meerbeke and is an obscure figure today, both in sporting terms and in his hometown. However, Ned Boulting has brought him back to life as he imagines what the serious Belgian is thinking about as he launches his attack on the bridge, so far from the finish line. Beyond this, the author builds an entire post-1923 Beeckman family tree, with some false starts and dead ends, ultimately meeting with Théo’s descendants in Belgium. Along the way, he meets people who become taken up with the manifold stories unfolding and offer their help. Sometimes relying on the kindness of strangers does work…

Besides Beeckman, who is clearly identified (even if his name is incorrectly spelled), the author’s focus allows him to identify the other riders in the film. Henri Pélissier and his hulking brother Francis are there, and off to the left side one can make out Ottavio Bottechia as the riders on the road to Vannes wave away the camera car, which is blowing up dust. Jean Alavoine takes a moment to clown around for the movies. Have we ever seen any of these people in action before? And nine seconds into the film the author identifies Henri Desgrange himself. The founder of the Tour de France and the man who dictated it for forty years, is standing with his back to the camera as his colleague, the very tall man known as “le Grand Bob,” waves the riders through the control point at Lorient.

With access to vast digital archives, as well as fluency in French and German, the author goes into fascinating digressions about what else was happening on that day. World War I was fresh in mind in 1923 and its effects are felt in the landscape but also in politics as the French and Belgians have occupied the Ruhr industrial region of Germany, with consequences both on June 30 and to follow. We are taken on a cultural tour that leads us to the Symbolists and the Dada movement, as well as the prizefight between Georges Carpentier and the Battling Siki. There is the Lost Generation of Americans in Paris (Hemingway scraping by with dispatches to the Toronto Daily Star) and so much else that makes up history in the 20th Century. The book reaches backwards to actress Sarah Bernhardt providing aid to wounded soldiers in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and forwards to the ominous rise of Hitler with the Beerhall Putsch in 1923, moving to present day France and Belgium. The fragile film he bought triggers not only these stories as Boulting makes connections to connections but also memories of his own life and time in post-Berlin Wall Germany as well as his travels covering the modern Tour de France. He sees parallels in the Spanish Flu epidemic and Covid-19, as well as the pain of war, whether on the Western Front or in Ukraine.

“1923” is an exceptional book, with a story that seems to have no boundaries as it expands from that short film clip of something that happened a century ago to our modern world. A unique approach, thoughtfully and sympathetically written, and highly recommended.

“1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession” by Ned Boulting 284 pp., illus., hardbound Bloomsbury Sport, London, 2023 ISBN 978-1-399-40154-8 Suggested price: US$26/18.99 GBP/C$33.61

# You can buy “1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession” by Ned Boulting from AMAZON.COM HERE . #

Growing up in the two-wheel desert that was Canada decades ago, Leslie Reissner discovered the joys of cycling when he and a friend rode from London to Munich one summer after high school. Since then, he has done some long distance riding in Europe, including the Camino de Santiago (which apparently entitles him to reduced time in Purgatory), dragged himself over major climbs in the Alps, Pyrenees, Dolomites, Vosges and Appalachians, and even done some racing. In spite of owning 11 bicycles and a cool sports car, Leslie still stays indoors for six months of the year due to the lousy weather and terrible roads in Ottawa but at least he has time to listen to classical music and read a lot of cycling books.

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1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession Hardcover – August 22, 2023

Purchase options and add-ons.

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. In the autumn of 2020 Ned Boulting (ITV head cycling commentator and Tour de France obsessive) bought a length of Pathé news film from a London auction house. All he knew was it was film from the Tour de France, a long time ago. Once restored it became clear it was a short sequence of shots from stage 4 of the 1923 Tour de France. No longer than 2.5 minutes long, it featured half a dozen sequences, including a lone rider crossing a bridge. Ned set about learning everything he could about the sequence – studying each frame, face and building – until he had squeezed the meaning from 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. 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 wife's lover. And Theophile Beeckman – the lone rider on the bridge.

• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bloomsbury Sport
• Publication date August 22, 2023
• Dimensions 6.35 x 1 x 9.45 inches
• ISBN-10 1399401548
• ISBN-13 978-1399401548
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

“[a] fascinating and often touching book… Wonderful” ― The Times “An absorbing mix of historical sleuthing and travel writing” ― The Telegraph “Spellbinding” ― Daily Mail “A captivating journey of discovery into a lost world. A real joy to read.” ― Tom McTague “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 “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 “Ned has created a rich tapestry from the finest of threads ... I felt transported back with him to the very origins of bike racing and the world that created it” ― David Millar “one of the most intelligent sporting books i have come across…the writing is compulsive, eloquently conveying the twists and turns of the story as it unfolds…excellent” ―thewashingmachinepost “There has never been a cycling book quite like this one. A scrap of newsreel film, a century old and two and a half minutes long, sweeps Ned Boulting back not just into the world of a forgotten hero of the Tour de France but into the forces that shaped that world: a collision of sport, war, family and destiny. And as he searches for the tiniest clues among the faded celluloid shadows, he carries us along with him, making us his companions on a remarkable mission of rediscovery” ― Richard Williams, music and sports journalist “Delightful” ―Dara Ó Briain, Twitter “ utterly captivating…an amazing concept and a truly fascinating adventure into cycling, history and people… a truly addictive read. ” ― Cyclist “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 writer “This is a wonderful piece of writing that transcends sport.” ―New European “Boulting's enthusiasm for the footage is catching. [He] is a sympathetic writer and an extremely knowledgeable historian.” ―Times Literary Supplement “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 “An engaging melange of sports writing, history, travelogue and detective story... Fascinating” ― Waterstones “An exceptional book” ― Pez Cycling News “A great example of what constitutes the best longform writing about sport” ―The New European “A reminder that bike racing is inextricably bound to the history, characters and contours of its surroundings.” ― Cyclist “Such a poignant book. Ned Boulting is conjuring ghosts. I don't know of many things more thrilling than this” ― Philippe Auclair

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Sport (August 22, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1399401548
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1399401548
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.26 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.35 x 1 x 9.45 inches
• #138 in Cycling Travel Guides
• #624 in Sports History (Books)
• #673 in French History (Books)

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Ned boulting.

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1923, by Ned Boulting

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Title: 1923 – The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession Author: Ned Boulting Publisher: Bloomsbury Year: 2023 Pages: 284 Order: Bloomsbury What it is: The clown prince of cycling commentary wipes off the greasepaint after acquiring a Pathé newsreel from the 1923 Tour and sets off on a voyage of discovery Strengths: There’s something about bike racing in these years Weaknesses: Boulting doesn’t even attempt to offer an argument for why his piece of Pathé history is important

Cycling is full of half-remembered forgotten heroes. Take my good friend Teddy Hale, the Irishman who wasn’t . I and others have tried to research and write about his story, have buried ourselves in the archives and spoken to his descendants and still we know little about this Englishman who won the 1896 Madison Square Garden International Six Day Race while pretending to be an Irishman.

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.

Resurrecting the forgotten, remembering the overlooked, reinstating those airbrushed from history, it’s what keeps the publishing industry alive. Ned Boulting’s 1923 – The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession concerns itself with bringing back to life Théophile Beeckman, whose palmarès includes two Tour stage wins and some close-calls in the Tour and other races.

Yes, you may well be able to find Beeckman’s name in Christopher Thompson’s Tour de France . And it goes without saying that he appears in Bill and Carol McGann’s two-volume Story of the Tour de France , and all the other blow-by-blow Tour histories too: winning a Tour stage gives you a certain immortality. But like many other immortalised Tour stage winners, Beeckman doesn’t really feature anywhere. In the big picture of the sport, he was never all that important. Which is true of 99% of those who have contributed to the history of the sport. ( And the ghost of Homer whispered... )

Beeckman fell into Boulting’s life when the ITV commentator-come author – How I Won the Yellow Jumper (2011), How Cav Won the Green Jersey (2012), 101 Damnations (2014), On the Road Bike (2014) , Boulting’s Velosaurus (2016), Heart of Dart-ness (2018), Square Peg, Round Ball (2022) – acquired at auction a portion of a Pathé newsreel from the 1923 Tour and then set about turning its two-and-a-half-minutes of celluloid into a book and a TV programme.

Other Pathé newsreels from this era exist and you can see many of the same people in them, including the likes of Henri Desgrange, Ottavio Bottecchia and Henri Pélissier. You’ve probably seen some if you’ve ever watched any of the French TV programmes celebrating the Tour’s history. But this one is a fresh discovery.

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.

The film cuts to the riders on the road to Vannes, riding behind Pathé’s camera-carrying car. Then it cuts to just before La Roche Bernard, 250 or so kilometres into the stage and getting on for noon, as Beeckman launches a solo attack. We see him riding through the town before the film abruptly ends before he reaches the exit.

The first six seconds of film Boulting describes in a couple of hundred words. Even with added adjectives you can see that a written description of two-and-a-half-minutes of film won’t fill a 300-page book. But nor will the life of Théo Beeckman, with the sum of Boulting’s knowledge of the man summarised thusly:

“I conduct an audit of what I know of Beeckman: that he was small, that he was normally quiet, that he was respected, strong, and that he grew up in modest circumstances. He won certain races, perhaps not as many as he should. He married, he had a daughter, he retired and ran a garage. He died in 1955, aged 59. “It’s not much, really.”

What’s a man to do when there’s a book and a TV programme at stake? Pad it.

“Théo Beeckman had been a month old when, in December 1896, there was a particularly riotous theatrical evening staged at the Nouveau-Théâtre on the Rue Blanche in Paris. It was a seminal night in the history of French theatre, which saw the premiere of an extraordinary ground-breaking play called Ubu Roi . The shock which emanated from its first performance would change theatre forever. In fact, it closed on its opening night, and it would be a long time before it was performed again, except by puppeteers. But it is often credited with being the inspiration for what would become the Dada movement.”

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!

Most of Boulting’s padding comes from the On This Day in History files, the story of the 1923 Tour augmented by stories from the same time but elsewhere.

There’s the Seznec affaire , in which someone gets murdered and that is somehow linked to the very day of the Pathé newsreel by virtue of some piece of paperwork or other being signed by someone on that day.

On the same day, there’s the bombing of the Duisburg-Hochfeld bridge spanning the Rhine, in which several people were killed.

Jump forward to July 8 and across France Boulting finds news of a four-year-old boy killed in Argenteuil, a plane crashing and killing its pilot in Le Havre, and a woman committing suicide in Nantes.

Two days later a cyclone hits Rostov-on-Don “slaughtering dozens of cattle and killing 23 people.”

Wherever Boulting looks, death is to be found. It’s almost like he’s living out a Fast Show sketch .

This manic on-this-day-in-history ‘Not The 1923 Tour’ strand takes up a large part of 1923 and when you join the dots – see the pattern! – I think it’s supposed to have something to do with the Second World War being a repeat of the First, Covid being the Spanish Flu, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being the German invasion of Belgium (which one I forget), all of this telling us how history repeats and we might as well just give up now. Which is actually quite funny in a way as the riders of the 1920s’ Tours were seen as sandwich-board men hawking the wares of the bicycle industry and Boulting does come off a bit like one of those men standing outside parliament with hand-made signs hanging on his chest and back, warning us of our impending doom.

Getting back to the cycling, Beeckman’s story being thin gruel we get brief portraits of Henri Pélissier, who was killed by his lover; of Ottavio Bottecchia, who died in mysterious circumstances; and of Jean Alavoine, who died following a crash (I know that this is history and in history everyone dies, but Boulting really does trowel it on thick, it’s like he’s adapting Horrible Histories ’ ‘ Stupid Death ’ sketches by removing the laughs).

When the story does get back to Beeckman, as it does occasionally, I am left wondering how reliable a narrator Boulting really is. From the off he’s told us he knew little of the history of the Tour in this era, how he had only vaguely heard of Henri Pélissier, who won the 1923 race. But at this stage I’m so used to the blind leading the blind in books like this that I didn’t really consider how limiting this might be. I’d even switched my brain off when it came to the various factual infelicities that invariably appear in books like this. Until, that is, I got to this passage, which follows a section in which Beeckman has been reported as moving from the Griffon team – where he rode in 1923 and 1924 – to Alcyon for the 1925 season:

“But, and this throws me off-kilter, Théophile Beeckman never made the move to Alcyon. Somewhere along the line, shortly before the racing season began, the transfer must have collapsed. For he is a Thomann-Dunlop rider the next time the Tour de France comes round in 1925. The reason for the move breaking down is lost to time, unreported and now unknowable. But it is further evidence that Beeckman may not have been the most straightforward man to manage, after all.”

Fun fact for you: as the French bicycle industry went from boom to bust, the surviving companies had a tendency to pick up the pieces left behind by their fallen comrades. And so – in the same way that, today, Bianchi and Peugeot and Gitane are owned by the same company – Alcyon had subsidiary brands in its portfolio. Brands like Armor. And Labor. And Thomann. So while Beeckman was riding in a Thomann jersey in 1925, he was still part of the Alcyon stable.

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). It’s that, just because Boulting doesn’t understand it, the explanation is “lost to time, unreported and now unknowable.”

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. The problem with using these as the basis of a portrait of the man is that they’re bullshit. As a now forgotten French author once wrote, the Tour is like an epic, the riders are archetypes. 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. Men of action, not men of words.

But Boulting does rely on Decoin, and others like him. And so when he finds something that doesn’t fit the romantic portrait he’s painted in his head – such as the news that in later life Beeckman may actually have been a bit of an arse – he isn’t able to do as Daniel Coyle did in Lance Armstrong’s War and show that our hero is actually more like us than we realise. He gets thrown off-kilter.

Sometimes he even throws himself off-kilter. Take these two pictures:

“A very few photographs of the Belgian rider are instantly searchable. It’s hard to discern much from them save for the fact that he was rather short and very slight. You can plunder Google Images for Beeckman and be finished within a minute or two. “And yet there are, as I later discovered, two quite captivating and detailed portraits of Beeckman stored on the French national archive. They took a bit of searching for. In both pictures the Belgian has the same disarmingly serious gaze, though in one he appears startled, perhaps from the elation of success. In this image, he holds a victor’s bouquet in one hand and his bike in the other, by the side of the track at what appears to be the Parc des Princes velodrome in Paris. The year of this photo is 1925, perhaps in the spring or even the late autumn as his bike is fitted with mudguards. It’s hard to know.”

Hard to know? Really?

Here’s how hard it is to know. Go to Gallica , the French national library’s website. Type Théo Beeckman’s name in the search box and hit return. Click images in the left sidebar. In among other images the two above will appear . Both captioned as having been taken in the summer of 1923, August.

The one Boulting says Beeckman looks startled in (or is that sadness in his eyes ?) and appears to have been taken in the Parc des Princes was actually taken in Luxembourg (the Vélodrome du Bel Air, a quick jaunt elsewhere tells us), at the end of the first stage of the Critérium des Aiglons. The victor’s bouquet is actually for having finished in third place on the stage.

That’s four-for-four, in case you’re counting the assumptions Boulting got wrong.

The other photograph, that one actually was taken in the Parc des Princes, where the Petit Tour de France was being held, a post-Tour track-meet Desgrange organised annually and which forms an early step on the road to today’s post-Tour critérium circuit . If Boulting even mentioned the Petit Tour in 1923 – or, for that matter, the Critérium des Aiglons – I must have missed it.

I have no idea how Boulting managed to get this so wrong, missed Gallica’s captions and somehow dated the pictures to 1925. But wrong he got it. And then he went and compounded the error by making a mystery out of it, with eagle-eyed Ned spotting something he thinks significant in the picture with the bouquet:

“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.”

Dun dun duuunn!!!

Another fun fact for you: the third finger, left hand thing, while it’s great to know when you’re looking for someone to hit on in a bar, it’s a cultural thing, not legal. It’s more a guideline than a rule. There are some of us who ignore it.

Faced with a cultural assumption and competing probable and improbable outcomes – Griffon jersey, saying the photo is either 1923 or 1924, and possible wedding ring, meaning the photo would have to be after 1925 when he should be wearing a different jersey – which razor do you think Mr Occam would suggest you choose to shave with? Boulting may reach for the one designed by Heath-Robinson but you should be going for the single-bladed Bic disposable.

When the facts contradict your assumptions, it really is a good idea to question your assumptions.

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.

In the land of the bland the one-eyed man may well be king. But he makes for a poor tour guide in things like this. With so little available to get right about Beeckman, getting any of it wrong is an issue. Boulting leading himself astray is one thing, but when he then tries to take his readers with him down some duff history cul-de-sac, that’s a problem.

One substitute for not knowing where to look is knowing who to ask about where to look. When reviewing the last book to land about Desgrange’s era, Adin Dobkin ’s book about the 1919 Tour, I mentioned some of the other books covering early cycling history, from Peter Cossins’ book about the 1903 Tour through David Coventry’s novel about the 1928 race, with stops for Dave Thomas (the 1911 Tour), Tim Moore (the 1914 Giro), Gareth Cartman and Ian Chester (both also covering the 1919 Tour), and Tom Isitt ( the 1919 Circuit des Champs de Bataille ). We now also have Michael Thompson ’s recent book about the 1935 Tour. There are people out there who can offer pointers to anyone researching pre-WWII racing, people who are often very accommodating when you ask if you can bounce ideas off them.

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 is a journey of personal discovery, with Boulting presenting himself as one man against a world indifferent to his inquiries, a man alone putting right what once went wrong by remembering the forgotten, uncovering the overlooked and painting in again a man who has been airbrushed from history, Beeckman somehow having acquired the full trifecta of historical annulments.

But how right has he put it when really all he does is see the interwar years as a “tense, troubled peace that had fallen like a shroud” which he feels impelled to pull back in order to show us death stalking the land? How right has he put it when he pushes his romantic, idealised image of Beeckman off into the background of the story and still manages to get basic facts like these wrong?

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Breaking news, connecticut gov. ned lamont had nearly 200 trees ‘illegally’ cut behind $7.5m home for ‘better view’ — infuriating neighbors: ‘chainsaw massacre’.

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Hypocrisy’s the root of the problem.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont had thousands of trees and bushes illegally chopped behind his sprawling Greenwich home — despite publicly championing a statewide effort to plant more conifers, according to angry neighbors and other sources.

The wealthy 70-year-old Democrat was hit with a citation for cutting down more than 180 trees in a protected wetland area to allegedly get a better view of a pond from his $7.6 million abode, CT Insider reported Tuesday .

“[It’s a] chainsaw massacre,” land use attorney John Tesei, who represents nearby property owners INCT LLC, said according to the outlet.

“I’ve never seen anything, overall, like this, ever.”

“Our clients are deeply disturbed and devastated,” he said at a March 25 wetlands meeting .

Lamont allegedly hired workers to axe the beloved sugar maples, beech trees and pignut hickories without permits on several acres behind his seven-bedroom manse in early November, sources from the city’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourse Agency told the paper.

Some of the trees were 40 feet tall — and a vital part of the delicate ecosystem on the wooded banks of a small river, the sources said.

Fred Jacobsen, a property manager for privately-owned forest lands in Greenwich’s Midcountry, heard a chainsaw buzzing near the governor’s home on Nov. 9 and called police, he said.

“It was a coordinated destruction of the entire ecosystem in that area,” Jacobsen said at the meeting.

The saw-wielding workers also crossed a property line, “trespassing” onto land owned by INCT LLC, a Delaware-based company, staffers with the wetland agency said in documents.

“The Lamonts appear to be the ones that hired the contractor,” Beth Evans, the town’s director of environmental affairs who advises the wetland agency, told CT Insider.

Lamont, his neighbors the Viks and the Ashton Drive Association were all hit with citations for wetland  violations in Greenwich, according to the paper.

“It’s no coincidence that the cutting opened up a very wide view of the lake for the personal aesthetic benefit and viewing enjoyment of two dwellings, Gov. Lamont and the Viks,” said Peter Thorén, an executive of INCT LLC said at the meeting.

He called the hacked trees an “illegal invasion.”

Greenwich’s wetland association ultimately issued a cease-and-correct order on Nov. 28, which was sent to the Lamonts, the Viks and the Ashton Drive Association. It wasn’t immediately clear if the politician would be charged a fine.

No criminal charges were filed over the alleged trespassing, the Greenwich Police told the paper.

But the conifer-slashing flies in the face of an environmentally friendly plan the governor announced last April to plant thousands of trees in dense urban parts of the state.

At the time, Lamont sought a slice of the $1 billion in federal funding for urban forestry programs allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act, commissioner for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Katie Dykes, said in April 2023 .

Locals now want the greenery-chopping governor to replace the dead trees and shrubs.

“The perpetrators should restore the entire area as closely as possible to the way it was,” Jacobsen said.

Lamont, a former cable television entrepreneur and Harvard University grad, raked in more than $54 million in annual income in 2021, according to the CT Mirror.

His 2.5-acre abode at 4 Ashton Drive is valued at $7.57 million, according to redfin.com .

“This is a dispute between the homeowners association and one of the neighbors,” a rep for Lamont told The Post Wednesday. She claims the HOA was given the citation, not the governor.

“The association and the neighbors are working it out,” Lamont told CT Insider.

A rep from the Inland Wetlands and Watercourse Agency declined to comment, saying the matter would be discussed at a public hearing Monday afternoon.

The conifer clash echos a similar battle that broke out in June over 32 chopped trees in New Jersey . In that case, the culprit was fined $13,000.

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