• The 1899 black world (track) champion.
• The Tour racer who ran 6 miles carrying his broken bicycle toa blacksmith where he welded a new fork for it. This was at a time
(1913) when Tour rules prohibited having outside help.• The brilliant, self-educated engineer who is gay, attempted suicide,
imagined a better way to sit on a bike, built his own bike using
parts from his washing machine—and set the one-hour record
...only to have the UCI then change its rules in response to him.
• The only woman to race in a Grand Tour who entered the Giroin 1924 using a gender-neutral first name.• The racer who lost the Tour by 8 seconds and declined to blamethe winner's use of an illegal bike or his having had saddle sores.• The Tour racer who arrived atop a mountain before the peloton
and sat and ate an ice cream cone as he waited for his support car.
• The Grand Tour racer who carried a comb and a cologne-soakedsponge in his back pocket and would freshen himself and comb hishair while racing.
• The Tour racer who rode back up a mountain he had just riddenup and down to give his wheel to his team leader.• The Tour racer who, when his bike was wrecked, grabbed a
small girl's bike with lights and fenders and rode it.
• The Tour racer—a different one—who, after his bike was wrecked,went door-to-door asking for one, then rode the one he found.• The Tour racer who broke his arm and collar bone in a crash, yetcontinued that stage and all the following stages...even though he
was also blinded in one eye in that crash.• The youngest rider ever in the Tour (age 17) who was killed in WWI on
the Kemmelberg, the climb in the Gent-Wevelgem. He represents here
the 65—or more—Tour riders killed in that war to end all wars.
• The 5X winner of the Tour who had a child with his stepdaughter, then
a second child with his stepson's wife.
• The German track champion who refused to salute Hitler...and was murdered.
• The rider who tried to organize a union of Tour riders and call a workers'
strike over the bad conditions.
• The champion who was killed when he hit a dog that had run onto the road.
He represents here all bike riders, racers and non-racers, killed while riding.
t's not well known that among the former are Coppi's and Bartali's brothers.
• The Tour and Giro King of the Mountain who underwent a gender change after
s/he retired.
• The exceptionally humble 5X Tour winner who said,
"It's just a bicycle race after all." And, "What have you actually achieved?
You've climbed a mountain and then you've descended. That's all. You
haven't actually achieved anything concrete. You haven't, for instance,
made anything with your own hands like a piece of furniture."