Riding through the ruins on the Circuit des Champs de Bataille
In this talk Tom Issit describes how, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, a mad sporting event took place across the battlefields in 1919 to celebrate the return of peace. This presentation was given to a live, online audience.
The 'Circuit des Champs de Bataille' became known as the hardest bicycle race ever held, and it crossed the battlefields of Flanders, Artois, the Somme, the Marne, the Argonne, Verdun, St Mihiel and the Vosges in appalling weather. The riders, many of whom had only recently been demobbed from the army, raced an average of 300km a day over mud and cobbled roads in the snow, and the race was so tough it was never held again.
100 years later Tom Isitt rode his bike along the race route, visiting those same battlefields and paying his respects to the fallen.
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