I often rate Jean Bobet's "Tomorrow We Ride" as one of my favourite books so was interested to find this while randomly perusing a discounted books website. As a fan of Bobet's writing style and intrigued to be able to read about one of the early stars of our sport I was only too happy to purchase it. Before picking up this book I was only really aware that Lapize had been a Tour de France victor pre-World War One and like Faber had been killed during the conflict.
Due to the shortness of his life and the paucity of reliable sources, it is no surprise that this is a reasonably short book but I still emerged with a much better understanding of Lapize. The book itself has the feel of a self-published work (I'm not saying it actually is, but layout and artwork give this impression ). However the actual style of the text was a bit disconcerting, almost as if a French edition had been run through Google Translate and printed. Anyone who knows Bobet (brother of Louison) will be aware that aside from his riding career, he taught at university in Edinburgh and was fluent in English, and this is still apparent when he pops up in interviews and articles today. I don't want to be doing this a disservice- perhaps Jean did choose a more "chatty" approach to this work, but at times it is almost like an oul fella at a bar trying to be a raconteur. Tone aside however, this is still a worthwhile read particularly if you want to find out more about Lapize without the fanciful elements of journalism that shaped the myths of the early roadmen more to sell papers than to provide fully accurate historical copy.
