The episode in detail
From rue Lepic in 1926 to the 2024 Olympics: the same climb, the same passion
Clément Dusong, a researcher specialising in cycling use in Île-de-France, has a passion for historical parallels. At the Paris 2024 Olympics, the cycling road race took in rue Lepic in Montmartre, with its cobblestones and bends. The press presented this as new, a departure from the traditional Champs-Élysées route. Yet as early as 1926, the newspaper carriers’ race used exactly the same hill as its finish point. Press delivery workers, keen amateur cyclists, rode up the hill with a tray of newspapers loaded on the front of their bike.
“We may be rediscovering things we’ve already done, without even realising it.”
Almost 100 years separate the two events. The contexts are radically different, but the road, the cobblestones and the sporting appeal of this climb remain the same.
Conflicts over road use: as old as the bicycle itself
Tensions between cyclists and other road users did not start with the car. As early as the end of the 19th century, bourgeois cyclists clashed with horse-drawn cab drivers, who were losing customers to the bicycle. In towns, friction arose with shopkeepers, pedestrians and handcarts. The street was then a multi-use space: for trade, conversation and stray animals.
“Conflicts over road use involving cyclists are almost as old as the invention of the draisine and the pedal velocipede.”
In the countryside, the situation was even more tense. Farmers saw city dwellers arrive at speed in the middle of their herds. Dogs were set on cyclists. Cycle touring magazines of the time advised cyclists to carry firearms for self-defence, evidence of a society where violence was far more present than today.
The debate over cycling infrastructure: already under way in the 1920s and 1930s
The question of separate cycle paths emerged as early as the 1920s and 1930s, alongside the spread of the car. Before that, the issue was road surfacing: cyclists were calling for smooth roads instead of uncomfortable, coarse cobblestones, an interest they shared with early motorists.
When the idea of separating traffic flows emerged, the opposition came from an unexpected quarter: some cyclists themselves. Cycling associations of the late 19th century had funded and championed the construction of the road network, in France as in the United States. Accepting separate infrastructure meant giving up the roads they had helped to build.
“There’s no question of starting from scratch. We built these roads.”
In the Netherlands, it was in the 1970s that the doctrine of separate cycling infrastructure gradually took hold. It took nearly 50 years to reach the dense network we know today, coexisting with a road network still very much in use.
Energy resilience: cycling as a response to crises
The energy argument for cycling is nothing new. The 1970s saw the first mass return of cycling after the Second World War, driven by the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. But it was during the Second World War itself that cycling became essential: from the invasion of May-June 1940, the motor transport system collapsed within weeks. There was no petrol, travel was controlled and vehicles could not be repaired. From September 1940 onwards, the bicycle again became the dominant mode of transport.
The question of decarbonisation, meanwhile, only really entered the cycling debate from the 2010s onwards. In the 1990s, cycling policies were mainly aimed at improving air quality and addressing the hole in the ozone layer.
Health, an argument since the 1920s
The health benefits of cycling were raised very early on. After the First World War, men came back from the trenches exhausted. Motorisation accelerated partly out of a desire for less physical effort. Even then, voices warned of the need to maintain a minimum level of physical activity.
“People will take up cycling again, because it’s a good way to get physical activity, once all our work is mechanised.”
James Édouard Ruffier, an observer of cycling, predicted as early as the 1950s that cycling would decline and then return for reasons of mental and physical health. His estimates of 20 to 40 years turned out to be remarkably accurate. Bike theft, secure station parking, hire services: all these “new” subjects have already been dealt with in earlier periods. The huge bike park opened at the Gare du Nord? Paris already had one, it had simply been forgotten.
