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Video trailer: Film following riders as they try and recreate toughest Tour de France ever hits UK cinemas next month

1928 edition saw the first ever participation of an English-speaking team – and covered

A film in which two cyclists attempt to recreate the route of the 1928 Tour de France – considered the toughest ever in the race’s 114-year history – will be screened at cinemas across the UK next month.

The race saw the participation of the first team made up of riders from English-speaking countries, two from Australia and one from New Zealand, and remarkably all three completed it.

The documentary, called Le Ride, follows two riders who were seeking to follow in their tyre tracks – and what’s more, they did so on steel framed bikes from the era.

The publicity material for the film, which will screen at cinemas across the UK at 6.30pm on 9 November (details here, click the green button to select your region) says:

Le Ride follows Phil Keoghan and his friend Ben Cornell as they attempt to recreate the original route of the 1928 Tour de France. Averaging 240 kilometres a day for 26 days, Phil and Ben traverse both the unforgiving mountains of the Pyrenees and the Alps, on original vintage steel racing bikes with no gears and marginal brakes. 

The documentary takes inspiration from the remarkable true story of Australians Sir Hubert Opperman, Ernie Bainbridge and Percy Osborne, and New Zealander Harry Watson as the first English speaking team to compete in the Tour de France. They arrived after six weeks at sea, under-trained and under-resourced, untested and completely written off by the French media.

The 1928 Tour was the toughest in history – a hell on wheels race of attrition. Only 41 finished out of 161 starters yet remarkably three were from the Australasian team. This extraordinary story of achievement against the odds has never been told on film – until now.

To followers of today’s Tour de France, the route of the 1928 race was, in a word, bonkers.

At almost 5,400 kilometres, it was getting around 2,000 kilometres longer than modern editions of the race.

All but seven of the 22 stages were ridden as team time trials (Stages 1-8 and 15-21), with the winner of those latter being the man who set the fastest time on the day.

The five mountain stages, with mass starts, all took place in the middle of the race, with a flat stage in between, Each of those five stages was preceded and followed by a rest day, giving a total of seven in all throughout the race.

The 22nd and final stage was also ridden with a bunch start, taking the surviving riders from Dieppe to Paris.

Nicolas Frantz from Luxembourg led the overall standings from start to finish, and two of his Alcyon-Dunlop team mates would complete the final podium in Paris – the only time one team has made a clean sweep.

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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6 comments

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BehindTheBikesheds | 6 years ago
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(Sir) Hubert Opperman was/is an Australian legend/hero, his obituary in the independant is worth a read.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sir-hubert-opperman-13...

I always presumed that there were no British entrants into the TdF in the early days because it was a professional race and the brits at the time were mostly amateurs. wasn't until 1937 that british riders entered the TdF and neither finished: bill Burl - Broken collarbone after collision with photographer (Stage 2) and Charlie Holland had a multitude of mechanicals and bailed on stage 17C, nothing much changes.

I wonder what coverage Brian Robinson got when he won his stage in 1957?

There have only being 67 british riders in the TdF, 18 of those in the 21st century.

pic of opperman in his glory.

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MrB123 | 6 years ago
2 likes

240km a day. Or roughly the distance anyone living in the North East will have to travel to see a screening of this it seems...

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CygnusX1 | 6 years ago
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road.cc wrote:

first team made up of riders from English-speaking countries, two from Australia and one from New Zealand, and remarkably all three completed it.

Le Ride publicity material wrote:

true story of Australians Sir Hubert Opperman, Ernie Bainbridge and Percy Osborne, and New Zealander Harry Watson as the first English speaking team

I count 3 Australians and 1 Kiwi (but one was a DNF) - results form Wikipedia:

No. // Name // Nationality // Pos. 

31 // Hubert Opperman // Australia // Ravat-Wonder-Dunlop // 18
32 // Harry Watson  // New Zealand // Ravat-Wonder-Dunlop // 28
33 // Percy Osborn // Australia // Ravat-Wonder-Dunlop // 38
34 // Ernest Bainbridge // Australia // Ravat-Wonder-Dunlop // DNF

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GerardR | 6 years ago
1 like

Great film.  Get out there and see it!

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janusz0 | 6 years ago
1 like

Hmm, the link comes up as: https://uk.demand.film/le-ride/?region=London#screenings
which returns: "Error establishing a database connection". There is a broken web server at that address.

Hint to readers: save time and just search for the year old trailer "Le Ride" on YouTube.

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BehindTheBikesheds | 6 years ago
2 likes

Epic adventure, puts modern day cycling into perspective and how comparatively 'easy' cycling is at all levels to attain the same speeds but with much more comfort.

The pros of days gone by were real hardmen with tenacity beyond how most of us can imagine.

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