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1923 the mystery of lot 212 and a tour de france obsession. ned boulting. bloomsbury sport hardback. 283pp illus. £18.99

the life of a cycling commentator is an onerous one. it's bad enough having to identify select riders within the peloton from the helicopter shots, while viewing the action on a monitor considerably smaller than the average flat-screen tv. but it doesn't end there. the contemporary world is data-driven, and it's simply insufficient to name the rider; today's cycling aficionados are remarkably well-informed, and we demand to know more. for instance, the lad who came third in the intermediate sprint - didn't he make the first break on the cipressa during last year's milan-sanremo? while we might not know the answer, we do expect the commentators to know.

and then there's twitter.

so aside from possessing the ability to talk intelligently and continuously for several hours, during either a grand tour stage or a lengthy one day classic, information is key. and nor should we take the ability to actually commentate for granted. select any cycle race highlights you want, turn off the volume and attempt your own commentary. and while you're at it, record what you're saying. if, when you listen back to your own words, you can manage more than five minutes without inserting incessant 'ands', 'errs' or 'ums', then eurosport or itv might be interested in your giving them a call.

but the difference between average and excellent is probably research before the fact. aside from being able to identify a colourful set of smudged pixels on a monitor, knowing everything there is to know about that smudge is paramount. just ask ned boulting, for his impeccable ability to conduct research based on remarkably little has produced one of the finest books it has been my privilege to read.

"This is the story of an obsession. Actually, and mor specifically, it's the story of an obsession within a pandemic after which there is a war."

in 2020, itv4's well-respected tour de france commentator, ned boulting and the entire production team were forced by covid restrictions to remain on british shores. but prior to that particular lockdown, the author crashed into a ditch on his bike, breaking his arm. "there began a period of my life which layered confinement upon rehabilitation, upon self-isolation. fortunate, therefore, that a friend of mr boulting alerted him to lot 212 in an online auction, a rare film reel from the tour de france from the 1930s (condition unknown).

there's a pretty good chance that many of us might have been keen to bid on such an apparently rare artifact, but had we been successful, that's more than likely where the story would have ended. ned, however, eventually acquired this mysterious reel of film for only £120 "Lot 212 had generated very little interest."

the author's initial viewing of what transpired to be two minutes and thirty seconds of black and white footage from an early edition of the tour de france was through holding it up to the window and gently unravelling the footage from the reel. he subsequently had this short snippet digitised: "Over an internet link, I downloaded a 5.68gb mp4 file." [...] "I watched it through once, my heart racing. I don't think I blinked."

ned's research utimately brought the revelation that, despite the auction site's contention that the footage originated from the 1930s, the footage before him was from the 1923 tour de france. pinning down the precise year was harder than you'd imagine, for apparently, father of the tour, henri desgrange, used an identical parcours for the tours of 1920, 21, 22, 23 and 24, making the author's research a tad more of a challenge than it would have been had the footage featured tours of later years.

"I checked the weather reports from the various years in question. In the film it is clearly dry and fairly sunny in every shot."

through repeated watching, research, educated reasoning and conjecture, mr boulting began to occupy the hours, days and weeks of lockdown to identify the riders featured in the silent, monochrome footage, the first stage of which indeed indisputably showed the 412km stage four of the 1923 tour de france, reaching from brest to les sables d'olonne. but had the author been satisfied with simply learning the date of those two minutes and thirty seconds, 1923 would have proved to be a rather compact and bijou volume.

it turns out, however, that mr boulting is possessed not only of an insatiable degree of curiosity, but a practiced ability to undertake research into the minutest of details. in one scene from the film, a lone rider is seen advancing across an iron bridge, his name spelled in the caption as 'beckman'. "I had to arrive at the key realisation that the filmakers had misspelt his name." the rider in question turned out to be of flemish origin: théophile beeckman. having pinpointed the rider's name, the author was able to place a definitive date on this section of film: 30 june 2023.

further investigation appeared to identify one of the men present in the stage start as that of henri desgrange. the author believes this to be the only occasion on which the tour's organiser ever appeared on film. continued research identified the rider in the leader's jersey as ottavia bottecchia. had the book ended at that particular point, ned boulting would have fully deserved a thunderous round of applause for his tenacity alone. but at this point, he was already down the rabbit hole.

but it is théophile beeckman who subsequently forms the backbone of what follows. the rider had finished fifth, sixth and fourth overall in consecutive years at le tour, but "Search as I did, I could initially find precious little else about him". yet finding out more is exactly what ned boulting brings to the table, framed by parallel happenings in europe. france was fiercely imposing rigid curtailments upon germany by way of reparation for that nation's grave impositions during the recently ended first world war. nazism in defeated germany was on the rise at the behest of adolf hitler. the tour de france was not an event that existed in isolation.

this is one of the most intelligent sporting books i have come across in many years of reviewing cycling books. ned boulting's intensive research abilities are accompanied by an admirable sense of perspective and, given his well-earned stature within the sport and broadcast, a remarkable sense of humility. the writing is compulsive, eloquently conveying the twists and turns of the story as it unfolds. it would be insidious of me to recount each and every aspect of mr boulting's tour de france obsession; he can do so far better than i could achieve in a review. and, of course, the author allows the reader the necessitous luxury of viewing the film via an included q/r code on page 15 (and on the back cover). my only criticism would be the absence of a published web address for those of us bereft of a device capable of scanning that q/r code.

i cannot confidently underline just how excellent this book is. in my humble opinion, should the publisher be of a mind, it ought to win the 'sports book of the year' by some considerable margin. mr boulting, you have my undying admiration for having written this book.

the author also describes how he successfully donated lot 212 to france's pathé news archive, originators of the film, in return for permission to allow readers of the book to view the footage.

tuesday 15 august 2023