LAPIZE ... NOW THERE WAS AN ACE

Just in time for this year's Tour de France we have published Jean Bobet's LAPIZE: now there was an ace, his biography of Octave Lapize, winner of the Tour in1910, and famous for his re- mark "Your are murderers" as he passed over the top of the Col du Tourmalet, controversially incorporated into the Tour route for the first time that year. For Lapize himself, this was his only Tour victory, but he was an outstanding one-day classics rider and also a fine track cyclist, winning a bronze medal at the 1908 Olympics. During the First World War Lapize, a fighter pilot in the French army, was shot down in June, 1917, and died in a hospital the following month. For all his initial misgivings, Desgrange had no hesita- tion in calling the Pyrenean venture a great success and those high cols immediately became an indispensable part of any Tour route. In the 100 years since Octave Lapize's first epic ascent the Tourmalet has figured 73 times.

Author, Jean Bobet, writes:
"I spent fifty years thinking about Octave Lapize. Then, one day, I decided to follow his tracks and tell his story. Thanks to him, I experienced the golden age of cycling at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Lapize years."