Sheldon Brown wrote:
>
(snip)
> Marcel Berthet was a great French racer. I believe he was the
> protagonist of the famous story of the broken fork repaired in a
> blacksmith's shop in the middle of the Tour de France.
Nope... Eugene Christophe
"In such conditions legends quickly sprang to life. One concerns perhaps the unluckiest of all Tour riders, Eugene Christophe. He was challenging for the lead in the Pyrenees when his fork broke. In those days Desgrange saw the race as a test of man and machine. There were no following cars with extra bikes as there are today. So poor Christophe had to walk 14 km down a mountain to the little village of Sainte Marie-de-Campan where he went to the village blacksmith and beat out a makeshift repair. So strict were the rules that he was fined for having a boy pump the bellows! Under the circumstances his final seventh place at the Paris finish was something of a miracle. (Some idea of the esteem France holds for the Tour can be gained by visiting Ste. Marie-de-Campan. The little stone blacksmith shop where Christophe hammered his fork back into one piece is today a national historic site.)
All through the war Eugene Christophe plotted his revenge. Come 1919 he was ready. Midway through the race he went into the lead. It was on the stage to Grenoble that Desgrange got yet another promotional brainstorm. The next morning Christophe left town wearing the first "maillot jaune", the famous yellow jersey signifying the race leader. Why yellow? Simply because that was the color of the pages of Desgrange's newspaper. (The successor to the paper, today's race sponsor "L'Equipe", is still printed in yellow.) Christophe rode an inspired race; nothing could stop his now. Nothing, that is, until another broken fork two days from Paris. Once again there was the walk to the forge and the catastrophic drop in placings. It was the last time he would ever be a contender. --Owen Mulholland"
Chuck Schmidt
South Pasadena, Southern California