Smoking cyclists (Tour de France 1927)
The golden age of sharing valuable content on social media (mostly during the mid 2010s) on such topics like road cycling history, turned many forgotten cyclists to internet sensation. Plenty of images from the early decades of the 20th century were digitalized, pictures sometimes depicting strange, shocking, unbelievable, or just funny situations. Photographs, telling lessons about the difference between Present and Past. One of them was the infamous
smoking cyclists at Tour de France 1927
photo.
It’s very easy to understand why. While smoking is considered an unhealthy habit nowadays, even more, it’s banned in public places in many countries, here is a picture, where athletes are smoking during a competition, as it would be the most normal behaviour ever. Also, they look having fun, which creates more tension (and excitiment) between those days and our lifetime.
One of the reasons of the excitiment and fascination was that these pictures were rare and unique, therefore someting really precious. Digging out interesting images, researching about the stories behind the pictures was a real journey both to bloggers/content creators and their audiences.
This uniquness will disappear forever in the brave new world of endless amount of AI-generated images.
The idea of creating artifical images, or even videos about stories and situatios there are only written sources avaible is not entirely from the evil. Why not? It can be fun too.
But it will be a different type of fun.
It will be our modern day imaginations (the imagination of the creator writes the instruction for the AI program) and not a genuine greetings from the past.
Who are the cyclists on the famous
SMOKING CYCLISTS TOUR DE FRANCE 1927
photo?
Julien Vervaecke (1899-1940)
Belgian rider, professional cyclist between 1924 and 1936. He won Paris-Roubaix in 1930 and finished third in the GC of Tour de France 1927. (He also won two TDF stages in 1927 and 1929)
At the beginning of the World War 2, when a detachment of the retreating British army (apparenly some exiled Polish officers including) tried to ransack his restaurant for supplies, he refused it and was shot possibly. His body was found weeks later, thus the exact date of his death is unknown.
Maurice Geldhof (1905-1970)
Belgian professional cyclist between 1927 and 1929. He won the 19th stage of Tour de Frace 1927.
Gustaaf Van Slembrouck (1902-1968)
Belgian rider, professional cyclinst between 1926 and 1934. He wore the yellow jersey for six days in 1926. Between 1926 and 1929 he won four TDF stages. He had top3 results at several important one-day races.