BlueSun2600: Sports

Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Jack Johnson the “Galveston Giant” World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion (1908-1915)

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Posted by Bluesun2600

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Knockout

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Posted by Bluesun2600

Monday, July 11, 2011

Victor Fontan 1929 Tour de France

via lh4.googleusercontent.com

Distress of the maillot jaune

Victor Fontan wore the yellow jersey at the beginning for a stage of 323 km that started before sunrise. He rode seven kilometres and then disaster befell him. Some accounts say he rode into a gutter, others that he was knocked off by a dog. The fall broke his front forks and the rest of the race rode by. Fontan was entitled to ride a replacement bike but only if he could show the irreparable damage to judges.

The judges had passed and Fontan had no second bike. He reached a village and walked from house to house, knocking on doors before dawn to ask for one. When a villager obliged, Fontan set off through the Pyrenees with his broken bicycle on his back. Eventually it became too much and he gave up at 6am. He sat by a village fountain at Saint-Gaudens and sobbed. It was the first Tour to be covered by radio and he was found there by Jean Antoine and Alex Virot of L'Intransigeant, who were broadcasting for Radio Cité. The recording of Fontan's sobbing was broadcast a little less than two hours after it had happened and led Louis Delblat of Les Echos des Sports to write:

How can a man lose the Tour de France because of an accident to his bike? I can't understand it. The rule should be changed so that a rider with no chance of winning can give his bike to his leader, or there should be a a car with several spare bicycles. You lose the Tour de France when you find someone better than you are. You don't lose it through a stupid accident to your machine. Next year Desgrange modified the rules.

Posted by Bluesun2600