Tour de France route map & 35pg hand written cycling event results dossier c1946

[Tour de France route map and 35 page manuscript cycling events portfolio]

France / Cycling / Manuscript ephemera: a substantial manuscript Tour de France–style cycling road-race dossier of uncertain status and purpose, and unknown provenance, titled in part “Tour de France cycliste – organisé par ‘Sports’”. It comprises a hand-coloured schematic outline map of France with a continuous red stage route linking principal towns and cities, together with approximately 35 further loose leaves of neatly ruled, hand-written and highly detailed stage “roadbook” schedules (horaire-style intermediate place-names, kilometreages and timings), team sheets by nation/region (Belgique A/B etc.), and numerous classifications and results tables (general classification and subsidiary prizes including “Le Ruban Rouge – Prix du meilleur rouleur” and the climbers’ award “Trophée ‘Sports’ – offert au meilleur grimpeur”). Coloured-pencil headings and flag devices are used, including a German team indicated with a swastika emblem. Several of the sheets are on squared textbook-type paper; the map sheet bears an English-language watermark in calligraphic script, “Standard paper for typewriting”. Most leaves are A4, loose in portfolio. Likely compiled c. 1945–46, the strongest internal clue for which is the presentation of the enterprise as the “first Tour” organised by the newspaper Sports, a formulation that reads as a programmatic claim and fits the immediate post-Liberation contest over the Tour’s revival, when rival press groupings (notably Sports/Miroir Sprint versus L’Équipe/Le Parisien Libéré) promoted competing “candidate” stage races and sought legitimacy as inheritors of the Tour brand. The rider lists mix recognisable pre-war names with some who began their cycling careers during the war years (such as Belgian Théodore Desmedt), suggesting compilation from press material and subsequent revision rather than transcription from a single printed start list. The use of the swastika likely reflects its continued status in the immediate post war years as the national flag of Germany and the most obvious identifier for a German national team. The whole—squared-paper format, decorative headings, careful tabulation, crossings-out and recalculations—may be read either as a school/enthusiast project constructed in Tour style from newspaper coverage or, more intriguingly, as a working mock-up produced in the orbit of Sports’ bid to associate itself with a revived Tour. It is not known whether the events recorded here were ever staged, or—more likely— whether the dossier represents an imagined or promotional “Tour” created on paper. The route itself—which does not match to any single published Tour de France itinerary—may have been influenced by pre-war planning for the never-run 1940 Tour (or other projected routes circulating in the cycling press). The entire dossier can be viewed here