Sample extract 1:
PARISPORTH Jimmy, Tom and the Tour
The opening ‘Prologue’ stage of the 1989 Tour de France actually started at the Mining Heritage Museum, Trehafod and finished 2 ½ miles down the valley in Taff Street, Pontypridd just opposite what was at one time the site of Prothero’s Emporium.It was long overdue, the great race coming to South Wales, and by way of celebration the Committee decided that the entire three weeks and twenty-one stages of the event would be spent traversing the hills and valleys of the whole country. After all, it was a Welshman – one of the first great sportsmen from that country – Arthur Linton, who was responsible in no small way for the Tour’s invention. It was the sight of this particular, valiant hero absolutely pole-axed with the effect of his exertions in winning the 1896 Bordeaux – Paris race that inspired Henri Desgrange to think up an event so demanding that its ideal result would be to have only one survivor at its conclusion.
Arthur Linton made the ultimate sacrifice, dying of exhaustion-induced typhoid fever just eight weeks after his greatest triumph and being rewarded posthumously with what amounted to the first ‘State’ funeral in South Wales. The people of the Valleys turned out in their thousands with mourners travelling from faraway France to attend a solemn, but at the same time, glorious occasion.
Brother Tom and their friend from a few doors up on Cardiff Road, Jimmy Michael, were inspired to show the rest of the world that the Welsh really were the champion of cycling nations.
And now, after all this time, here they were, all the champions of the last ten years, all safely arrived in the first week of July, about to launch themselves – at speeds touching 40m.p.h. – down the ramp, onto the by-pass, hurtling through Hopkinstown, hard left by the station and plummeting down to the finish. The line itself, outside what was once the grandest store in Pontypridd, owned and managed by the family of Jimmy Michael, the first of many to be crossed in the stages ahead.
Result:
Won by Erik Breukink, just ahead of a three-way dead heat between Sean Kelly, Greg Lemond and Laurent Fignon. Last year’s winner, Pedro Delgado missed his start-time by more than two minutes and finished in last place, 2-54 behind the flying Dutchman.
The next day, two stages took place, both starting and finishing in the town square at Aberdare. Waved away under the statue of Caradog, famous conductor of male voice choirs, the morning’s road race passed through the upper reaches of the Cynon, Taff and Rhymney valleys.
In its most challenging section the route took the riders through New Tredegar, passing by the house on School Street which for many years provided home for Billy Michael, younger brother of Jimmy.
The Michael boys, known as the ‘mighty midgets’ (for they were both barely 5ft tall) to the cycling fans of New York, star attractions in the latter years of the 1890’s at Madison Square Garden and the Manhattan Beach tracks.
The boys’ family, on the mother’s side, originated in the settlement of Abergwesyn, Breconshire. A tiny hamlet as it survives today but in the 18th Century a busy staging post on the Drovers Road that led from deepest rural Wales into the heart of England…….
“Parisporth…….Porthparis” The extract is from the opening section of a construction in novel form dealing with the lives of Jimmy Michael and Tom Linton. The finished work should be available on July 1st. Enquiries to 01924 501928 Stuart Stanton for ‘Peatmoor’ email info@youthtourofwales.org
20 April 2010
Sample extract 2:
There are a lot of butchers in this story. The setting for it is mostly in the Nineteenth Century iron and coal producing area in the upper reaches of the Cynon and Rhymney Valleys of South Wales. The town of Merthyr Tydfil creeps in there as well, as does Cardiff and also Newport. London plays quite a role, just as it always seems to, with the really juicy bits occurring where else but Paris.One Saturday morning mid-December there were four of us sat drinking tea in the kitchen at Brian Walbeoff’s house. He had only recently stopped being a butcher, here in New Tredegar. The business had been founded by his grandfather round the time of Arthur Linton’s funeral. Everyone in this village had been served their chops and shanks here at one time. All the goings on down the decades had been related over the counter. Here we were talking mostly about Willy Michael, brother of Jimmy, the butchers boy of Aberaman who had been lent his first bike by his neighbour – the same Arthur Linton- and went on to the short life of a celebrity champion. As the mood between us, the other two being Mrs Walbeoff and a lady whose impish remarks belied her advanced years, lightened it was as if some kind of time blanket had draped the Rymney Valley. The air was thick with coal dust from Elliott’s colliery once more and Willy Michael could be heard shovelling in the coal for a neighbour younger then himself by 20 years.
This was most probably the most wonderful thing to have happened in the fifteen months it had taken to trawl through the records and the premises of a group of men long dead. A community without a sense of time, bound together by personal images of places, machines and achievements for which only tenuous reality still exists.
They were present at the most momentous of events, those people of Aberaman and Aberdare lining the route and following the cortege on that far-off July morning. In the kitchen of the house behind the butcher’s shop the funeral was still going on, really.
The first question people would ask when told that the first winner of a bona fide World Cycling Championship and the first man to be recognized as ‘World Champion’ by the citizens of another nation both came from one community in a remote valley at the very edge of Europe is “How?” “How did that come to be? Aberdare? Where’s that?”
Funeral notice
Arthur's preparation for Bordeaux-Paris included 4th place in the first-ever Paris-Roubaix (April 1896). The roads around Cysoing, 30km from the finish of the 'Hell of the North' haven't changed very much.
In the Cynon Valley, mid 1960's. a different kind of cycle racing 'Hell' near Mountain Ash. There were 10 sets of level crossings every lap!
The other Arthur - Gould and Linton two champions'
' reproduced from 'Une Journee en Enfer' (2006) Phillippe Bouvet et al.
Following Arthur's funeral, Tom Linton became contracted to race in New York, where his chief rival in a three year period was no less than Jimmy Michael. These two extracts from the New York Times give a measure of the excitement the Aberaman boys created. Click here
'More pictures of the original Ras De Cymru in its glory years (1965-75) have been suppiled by Bob Phillips'. Click here
The Milk Race made many passages through South Wales throughout its 35-year history, this clip details one of the most memorable. There is a connection to the story of Jimmy Michael, his family roots lie in the Irfon Valley, also home to Devil's Staircase.
More will follow concerning the Milk Race, no coherent written history is in print as yet.
DVD including this edition of the Milk Race and Paris-Roubaix History available for £5.99 via PayPal or by phone 01924 501928
Aberaman Cycling Club 23 August 1931, submitted by Haydn Williams of the Cynon Valley History Society. Not a hint of lycra or a plastic helmet to be seen.
For the first time, Arthur Linton's birth certificate.
