We Rode All Day

“Don’t look up Firmin, just ride. Fight the pain, but don’t look up.”

Under grey skies and through the ruins of war, two veterans battled for the Tour’s first yellow jersey. Firmin Lambot and Eugene Christophe had raced each other into the ground; the race had come down to what some riders were calling the hunger stage – 420km from Metz to Dunkirk.

We Rode All Day is the story of that fateful 1919 Tour de France; the Tour that very nearly never was. In the voices of the riders and race organisers, We Rode All Day throws you into the action – the dirt, the pain, the drugs, the cobbles, the mountains, the sheer madness of riding your bike for 5,500km around France. And two men who knew this could be their last Tour.

As Lambot makes his move, can Christophe’s bike and body hold?

We Rode All Day reveals the stories that made the 1919 Tour special. The slaying of Henri Pelissier, scourge of the peloton; the emergence of Honore Barthelemy, the climbing revelation, and the efforts of Henri Desgrange, organiser of the Tour since its inception in 1903. The book is finally an opportunity to hear the voices of the riders and organisers, bringing to life an era of cycling - and with it, a generation of cyclists - that had long been forgotten.