On the 14 July, 1917, the French professional road racing and track cyclist , Octave Lapize (1887-1917) died aged 29. Lapize was most famous for winning the 1910 Tour de France and a bronze medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics in the men’s 100 kilometres, he was a three-time winner of the one-day classics, Paris-Roubaix and Paris-Brussels.

In the Tour De France in 1910 he went head-to-head with Alcyon  teammate Francois Faber who led comfortably until colliding with a dog at the foot of the Pyrenese. Lapize finally won by just 4 points helped by a number of punctures to Faber’s bike on the final stage from Caen to Paris. 

In a total of six starts in the Tour De France between 1909 and 1914, his victory was the only one he finished.

The  Fiirst World War ended his cycling career. As a fighter pilot in the French army, Octave Lapize was shot down near Flirey, Meurthe-et-Moselle on the 14 July 1917. Severely injured, he died in a hospital in Toul. 

On the 14 July, 1964,  the French rod racing cyclis Jacques Anquetil (1934-1987) was the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times, from 1961 to 1964.

The son of a builder in Mont-Saint-Aignan, north-west France,  before the 1961 Tour he said that he would gain the yellow jersey on day one and wear it all through the tour, and he did it. His victories in stage races such as the Tour were built on his exceptional ability to ride against the clock, in which earned him the name ‘Monsieur Chrono’.

In 1957 Anquetil won his first Tour de France, when the Tour was still ridden by national rather than commercial teams.

14 July, 2019