The Danish angle

A Moustache, Poison and Blue Glasses: Svend Novrup. Bromley Books. 190 pages paperback, ISBN 0-9531729-1-0

Svend Nordrup is a Dane who commentates on cycling for Eurosport, with that slightly different Scandinavian perspective on the Tour de France – a performance which a Frenchman may take for granted may look eccentric further north, where cycling traditions are different. Most of the stories are fairly well-known: the Tour's origins in the hands of an anti-Semitic newspaper owner (after World War II L'Auto was abolished for Nazi collaboration); the first, terrifying stages in the high mountains, and Lapize's cry of 'Murderers!'; Eugene Christophe in the blacksmith's forge; the remarkable life and bizarre death of Ottavio Bottechia; Coppi and Bartali; Anquetil and the aftermath of the barbecue in Andorra; Raphael Geminiani losing in 1958; Vietto's heroic sacrifices in 1934; Lemond's eight-second win; and Lance Armstrong's return to victory. Some are less well-known: the rich Count Pépin de Gontaud the first man (1907) to buy domestiques to help him finish the Tour, an offence Desgrange punished with disqualification (of the domestiques) in later years; Erich Bautz in the yellow jersey in 1937.

It's not difficult to see that the book's been compiled with an eye to the international market, with something for readers of most European nationalities, plus the Americans. But about Opperman's remarkable 1928 ride, or any other Australians. But Brian Robinson's huge stage win is there.

Some of the pieces are specifically Danish, so we have Riis in the polka-dot jersey. In others the star is not the centre, but his Danish domestique, as in the case of Leif Mortensen and Ocaña, and the story of how Mogens Frey successfully protested against the riding of his own team leader Agostinho. Frey got his stage win, the first by a Dane, and filled his countrymen with pride, but it did his career no good at all.

Translator Anne-Marie has successfully captured the flavour of Scandinavian style and humour – not easy because the pieces range widely in approach. One is told like a talk by a German professor, another is a bedtime story for a child.

There are errors, of course, some of which shouldn't have got this far. Not only did Bobet not win the 1958 Giro (he was 4th), he never won it. Vietto didn't make the podium in 1947 – he was 5th, not third. The Peyresourde is in the Pyrenees, not the Alps. The picture of Gaul in the mountain snow is from the Giro, not the Tour as is implied. Coppi's lead on Bartali in the 1949 Tour was 10, not 15 minutes: minor blemishes in an otherwise delightful and thoroughly enjoyable slant on the Great Race.

And the title? Gustave Garrigou, the 1911 winner, rode a stage in dark glasses and a false moustache to mislead the people of Rouen who had threatened to lynch him.

Ramin Minovi