Romain Maes is young in yellow
There was no clear favourite going into the 1935 Tour, but nobody expected an unheralded 22-year-old to dominate the race from start to finish
Maes suffered three punctures on Stage 2 and at one point trailed the stage leaders by seven minutes. Only support from his Belgian team salvaged the situation
On the eve of the 1935 Tour, the French weekly Sport ran its front-page pre-race preview. Under portrait sketches of 11 ‘stars of the next Tour de France’, Martial Chevreau wrote damningly on the race’s increasing ‘commercial appetites’ before concluding: ‘In the past, we risked a winner’s name. But as there are 4,000km of road, flint, cobblestones, tracks, climbs, the whole procession of miseries both great and small, as well as accidents [to consider], well it is better to keep quiet about one’s favourites.’
Even if Chevreau had written about who he thought might win, it’s highly unlikely his eye would have been caught by a 22-year-old from a village just outside Bruges.
Romain Maes was in his third season as a pro and had only started the Tour once, crashing out on the tenth stage in 1934. As the peloton assembled in Paris ready for the first stage to Lille, his was not a name that featured on many people’s lists of potential winners. Nor did he feature in those front-page portraits published by Sport. Soon, however, the name of Romain Maes would be on everyone’s lips.
Two months before the start of the Tour, Maes had won the Paris-lille one-day race. Now, the opening stage of the Tour took him on the same roads north of Paris. The Belgian stayed with the race leaders until the village of Labuissière, where he launched his attack. After gaining a handful of seconds Maes, now pursued by four riders including the previous year’s winner, Antonin Magne, reached a level crossing just as a freight train was approaching. While Maes quickly skipped across, his four pursuers had no choice but to wait for the train to pass. The result was that a ten-second lead ballooned to nearly two minutes. Maes later rode into Lille 53 seconds ahead of second-placed Edgard De Caluwé, claiming the biggest win of his career so far and the yellow jersey. ‘As soon as I started [riding] I felt I would win,’ Maes said later while enjoying a post-stage massage. ‘I wasn’t pushing on the pedals; I was playing with them.tomorrow, I will wear the yellow jersey. Will I keep it for a long time? I hope so.’
Twenty-five days in yellow
Described by Tour founder Henri Desgrange as a ‘compact ball of muscle’, Maes set to defending the jersey. On only the second stage he survived a scare when thousands of nails were poured onto the road, causing carnage as multiple tyres punctured. Belgium’s Jean Aerts was one casualty, finishing the stage with a black eye, cracked forehead and cut nose.
‘Seven punctures, one crash and one broken wheel,’ Aerts later said at the dinner table. ‘At 40kmh my front tyre went crazy and I went over the handlebars to fall right on my nose. I was knocked out.… farewell to the general classification. All my efforts will be for Romain Maes and his yellow jersey.’
Maes suffered three punctures that day and at one point trailed the stage leaders by seven minutes. Only support from his Belgian team, working tirelessly to pace him back into the race, salvaged the situation.
‘Believe me, I thought often that my beautiful dream was over,’ Maes said. ‘I imagined my good old mother in her bar in Zerkegem and everyone’s grief, our friends in the village learning of our defeat. It gave me extra energy and, as all my teammates were riding furiously, we were able to rejoin… I wonder how I could thank them for their magnificent dedication.’
By the time the race reached Geneva, Maes had a 5min 29sec lead over Magne, yet he was a sprinter and most observers expected the Belgian to falter in the mountains. As it turned out, he emerged the other side of the Alps with a 4min 31sec advantage, his chances of victory further boosted when Magne abandoned after a pile-up of vehicles in which the Frenchman’s ankle was sliced open to the tendon.
After a rest day in Nice, Maes won his second stage, sprinting into Cannes 35 seconds ahead of his compatriot and namesake (but no relation) Sylvère Maes, having managed to contend with relentless attacks from the Italian team on the climbs of the Riviera. In the Pyrenees Maes came under more sustained
pressure, his lead at one point cut to 2min 30sec, before the Belgian landed a knockout blow in a chaotic climax in Rochefort, finishing in an eight-rider final sprint more than ten minutes ahead of the now second-placed rider Ambrogio Morelli. The race was all but done.
To crown his extraordinary achievement, Maes claimed the final stage in Paris, extending his overall margin to 17min 52sec and becoming only the fifth rider to lead the race from start to finish (the others being Maurice Garin in 1903, Phillipe Thys in 1914, Ottavio Bottecchia in 1924 and Nicolas Frantz in 1928). He was pictured with his head resting on the railings of Parc des Princes in front of his mother, who had left her bar to go to Paris and watch the finish.
‘The young Belgian rushed to the stands where his mother was waiting for the arrival of her glorious son,’ reported Miroir des Sports. ‘Emotion embraced the champion who, with his head on his arms, cried tears of joy.’
The 1935 Tour was by far the highlight of Maes’ career. He rode just two more
Tours, winning a stage in 1939 but never again reaching Paris. In 1936 he was robbed of a Paris-roubaix win when commissaires erroneously judged France’s Georges Speicher to have crossed the line first. Maes retired from cycling in 1939 and later opened a cafe called Le Maillot Jaune. He died in 1983, aged 70.
Giles Belbin is the author of Tour de France Champions: an A to Z (thehistorypress.co.uk)