BEFORE BREAD & WATER

Early bike racers shunned bread and water in favour of steak and booze. Chris Sidwells pulls up a seat at the retro banquet Riders sit down to digest stage 14 of the 1933 Tour de France over steak and wine.

- Chris Sidwells

Salty dried herrings, rare steak, red wine with sugar, pigeons, weird fruit and vegetable concoctions, even tobacco and hard liquor – they’ve all been part of the diet of a pro cyclist. There were things that had to be avoided, too: tap water, chips, the middle bit of baguettes and oranges after 6 pm. These nutritional guidelines were part of the professional cyclist’s code ‘Le Métier’, handed down the generations and known only by insiders. It was a very different world.

When cycling emerged as a sport, towards the end of the 19th century, long-distance races soon began to catch the public’s attention – events such as the 360-mile Bordeaux-Paris and the 750-mile Paris-Brest-Paris, both ridden in one go rather than in stages, unlike the later Tour de France. Long races required lots of fuel, but competitors ate normal meals. Even during races, there were sit-down feeds, although some innovators, usually the best riders, soon began to do things differently.

Take the British winner of the first Bordeaux-Paris in 1891, George Pilkington Mills, a long-distance record holder, who was invited to take part with three of his club-mates. The foursome broke away from the start, and sat down to bowls of soup at the first feed. Come the next stop, however, Mills was determined not to waste time, stopping long enough only to “swallow a dog-mouthful of finely chopped meat and drink a bottle of specially-prepared stimulant” – according to reports. The rest of Mills’s food was handed to him by his pacers, and a trend was started. By the first Tour de France in 1903, the leaders hardly stopped at all, carrying food in pockets and bags. It was still normal food, though – cheese and ham baguettes and cake.

Steak for breakfast