Cycling 12 July, 1911

Giants of the road start Le Tour

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“Allez mes enfants!” comes the call from Pere Abran to start the Tour de France (a George Abran is also referred to as the starter). Having distributed numbers to the riders at the Place de la Concorde, Abran is charged with getting the show on the road. Cycling’s Paris correspondent spent the first half of his one-page Tour de France preview painting a dreamy and quite drunken picture of Paris by night before getting on to Abran “...who alone has the right to bully everybody, and give instructions to the ‘giants of the road’ as he forms the procession up the ChampsElysées.” He reports huge crowds waiting in the suburbs to cheer on the ninth Tour.