Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep: The Tale of the First Tour de France Audiobook (Free)

Random Home presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook model of Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep by Peter Cossins, go through by Joseph Kloska.

Full of experience, mishaps and audacious attempts in cheating, the first Tour de France in 1903 was a colourful affair. Its riders included people like Maurice “The White Bulldog” Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents had been said to possess swapped him for the round of mozzarella cheese to be able to smuggle him into France as a 14 season aged, Hippolyte about Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep: The Story from the First Tour de France Aucouturier, who with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache looked like the villain from a Buster Keaton film and amateurs like Jean Dargassies, a blacksmith who acquired no idea what he was letting himself in for.

Dreamed up to revive a battling newspaper, cyclists of the time weren’t thinking about this ‘heroic’ race through roads more suitable for hooves than wheels, with bicycles weighing up to twenty kilos, about the same fixed tools, for three full weeks. Assembling more than enough riders for the race meant spending unemployed amateurs through the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat.

There was no indication that ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France’s rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did, and all because of a marketing ruse, cycling would never end up being the same again. Acclaimed cycling writer Peter Cossins requires us through the inaugural Tour de France stage by stage to see where the very best sporting event of most began.