January 19, 1964
Professional cyclist Firmin Lambot died in the municipality of Borgerhout in northern Belgium at the age of 77. (Borgerhout became a district of the city of Antwerp in 1983.) Lambot had been born on March 14, 1886, in the municipality of Florennes in southwestern Belgium. He began working as a saddler, someone who makes and repairs saddles and other furnishings for horses, by the time he was a teenager. Lambot’s 12-hour workdays for this job routinely started at six o’clock in the morning.
At the age of 17, Lambot bought his first bicycle. He relied on this means of transportation to more easily travel the 31.1 miles (50 kilometers) to and from work. Lambot, however, eventually found another worthwhile use for this bicycle by taking part in a race in a local village. He finished first in that event and used the prize money to buy a racing bike.
Lambot’s professional cycling career began in 1908. The key achievements of that career included participating in the Tour de France. Lambot competed in the 1911-13 editions of that multipile-stage cycling race. Over the next few years, the Tour de France was suspended as a result of World War I.
The first post-war edition of the Tour de France was held in 1919, and Lambot was among those who took part in it. This edition proved to a challenging and even heartbreaking one, due to everything from the battle-torn roads that cyclists had to contend with to the sobering reality that several competitors from years past had died during the war.
Only 11 cyclists ultimately completed the race. Lambot was one of those individuals and, for most of the race, he was in second place. This changed after French cyclist Eugène Christophe (1885-1970), who had been in the lead, was temporarily sidelined when his bicycle’s fork (the part that holds the front wheel) broke apart. Lambot ended up winning the race, with Jean Alavoine (1888-1943) placing second and the hapless Christophe managing to finish third.
Lambot went on to compete in the next three editions of the Tour de France. He finished third in 1920 and ninth in 1921. In 1922, he won the Tour de France for the second time. A big reason for Lambot’s victory this time around was that his fellow Belgian cyclist Hector Heusghem (1890-1982), who had been in the lead, was given a one-hour penalty by Tour de France judges after his bicycle broke and he swapped it for a new one.
Lambot was 36 at the time of this victory and that made him the oldest winner of any of professional cycling’s Grand Tour races. This record remained unbroken until 2013, when American cyclist Chris Horner (born in 1971) won the long-distance bicycle stage race known as the Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain) at the age of 41.
Lambot’s cycling career came to an end in 1924. During the long retirement that followed, he resumed his previous work as a saddler.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on Firmin Lambot, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmin_Lambot
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