Cycling/ Tour/ Map/ Heroic. Exceptional official... - Lot 102 - Vermot et Associés

Cycling/ Tour/ Map/ Heroic. Exceptional official map of the 1914 Tour de France. Published by the "L'Auto" newspaper, organizer of the race. Under its green cover (16x12.5), with the two separate flaps, the official card, in used, green condition, here the 4th offers an advertisement for "L'Auto", the most interesting, the best informed, the only literary daily, on sale everywhere for 5 centimes. On the first double (traces of repair-preservation adhesives), details of the 15 stages (mileage, controls, etc.). Then at the opening, on a double, details of the riders and constructors. We discover the importance of the Peugeot-Wolber armada, or Automoto (Petit-Breton de Boulogne). But Gladiator, Delage, Allelulia, La Française (with Lapize), Phébus (with the Australians), Clément, Armor, Labor, Thomann (Sieur), which closes the list, and Alcyon which opens it (with Defraye, and the two Buysse, Marcel. Alongside the 71 grouped, the Isolés share the numbers from 101 to 197 (Pratesi), here we find the marvellous second knives Bonino from Marseille, Alpini from Nice, the eternal Stéphanois Panel, Van Waesberghe (xxx), Botte from Binche, Marcel from Colombes, Deloffre, Pépin, and Mathieu from Béziers.The unfolded map in its usual stage, with the red flags of the stages and the words 12th year, 1914, is still chilling in retrospect... The next one will be in 1919! Small gap at top left. This time in the center, the pilot rider is facing the Tourmalet, "gare, chute", and not Mantes...30x24. The Tour (5,400 km), which begins in the Pyrenees, ends on July 26, just before the declaration of war. Above all, don't count the riders, who won't be coming back...