1930 Tour de France - Race Details

Race Details

In the first stage, Charles Pélissier won, and he became leader of the race, the third of the Pélissier brothers to do so. In the first stages, before the Pyrénées, the sprinters were battling for stage victories. The Italian Learco Guerra dominated the race. For the general classification, no big things happened, except for the fall of Alfredo Binda in the seventh stage, which caused him to lose one hour, and abandon his hopes for the Tour victory. Binda won the eighth and ninth stage, before he dropped out in the tenth stage. In the ninth stage, touriste-routier Benoît Fauré led the race over the first mountains, and dropped many cyclists. In the end, he was dropped by Binda, Leducq, Pierre Magne and Antonin Magne.

In the sixteenth stage, going down from the Galibier, the leader of the race André Leducq fell down. He lost consciousness, and when he woke up, Pierre Magne put him back on his bicycle, and his French team mates helped him to get back. Learco Guerra, second placed in the general classification with a margin of more than 16 minutes, saw an opportunity and was away as fast as he could, together with Jef Demuysere. Just before the climb of the Col du Télégraphe, Leducq's pedal broke. His team mate Marcel Bidot got a pedal from a spectator's bicycle. Leducq though of abandoning the race, but he was convinced by his team mates to get back on his bicycle. They had 60 km to go, and managed to get back to Guerra. In the end, Leducq even managed to win the sprint.

With no more mountain stages to come, Leducq had secured his victory. Charles Pélissier made the victory of the French team even more glorious, as he won the last four stages.