page_title: 1928 Tour de France
section_title: Innovations and changes
hierarchical_section_title: 1928 Tour de France / Innovations and changes
caption_attribution_description: Spaarnestad Photo, SFA022004642 De Australiër Hubert Opperman ontvangt na de zesde etappe (Vannes-Les Sables d'Olonne, 204 km) bloemen en kussen van het mooiste meisje uit Sables, Frankrijk. Tour de France 1928. Collectie SPAARNESTAD PHOTO/Het Leven Kisses and flowers from the local beauty for Hubert Opperman after the 6th stage (Vannes-Les Sables d'Olonne, 204 km). France, Sables. Tour de France 1928. Voor meer informatie en voor meer foto’s uit de collectie van Spaarnestad Photo, bezoek onze Beeldbank: www.spaarnestadphoto.nl/ U kunt ons helpen onze kennis van de fotocollecties te verrijken door tags en commentaren toe te voegen. Herkent u mensen of locaties of heeft u een bijzonder verhaal te vertellen bij één van de foto’s, laat dan een reactie achter (als u ingelogd bent bij Flickr) of stuur een mailtje naar: hhamelink@spaarnestadphoto.nl You can help us gain more knowledge on the content of our collection by simply adding a comment with information. If you do not wish to log in, you can write an e-mail to: hhamelink@spaarnestadphoto.nl
context_page_description: The 1928 Tour de France was the 22nd edition of the Tour de France, taking place from 17 June to 15 July. It consisted of 22 stages over 5,376 km.
  The Tour was won by Nicolas Frantz, his second win. He held the yellow jersey from beginning to end, despite an incident three days before the end of the race. Frantz had a mechanical failure between Metz and Charleville and had to finish 100 km of the stage on an undersized women's bicycle, resulting in a loss of 28 minutes. Regardless, Frantz won the tour, with his Alcyon team winning the team trophy and having riders finish in second and third places.
  The 22nd tour featured the first appearance of an Australian/New Zealand team, indicating the beginning of a more international sporting field. Their experience was turned into a film by Phil Keoghan, Le Ride, released in July 2016.
  Tour director Henri Desgrange allowed teams to replace exhausted or injured cyclists with new riders, to give the weaker teams a fairer chance. However, the experiment backfired, having the opposite effect, so the concept was quickly abandoned.
context_section_description: In the 1927 Tour de France, the team time trial format had been introduced, where teams started 15 minutes apart. This was done to make the flat stages more competitive. Although in 1927 this had not been successful, the formula was repeated in 1928; this time the teams started 10 minutes after each other.
  The team time trial format had been an advantage to the strong teams; therefore the tour organisation invented a new rule, intended to help the weak teams: the teams were allowed to replace cyclists in the beginning of stage 12, halfway through the competition. They were not eligible for the general classification.
  Another new concept was regional teams. The riders were separated in three groups: there were eight trade teams, nine regional teams of five riders and the touriste-routiers, without teams. Between them, the eight trade teams formed five competing units for the race. Three of them - Alcyon, Armor and Thomann, all of which had sponsorship from Dunlop - combined to compete as a single unit of ten riders. Elvish and Fontan, with Wolber sponsorship, did the same. The formidable Alcyon-Armor-Thomann combination would go on to fill the top five places overall.
  In other years, the mountain stages, especially in the Pyrenees, had decided the race. To reduce the importance of these stages, the Tour organisation had changed the route of the first mountain stage, that had been the same since 1913. Two mountains, the Aspin and the Peyresourde, were left out of the stage.
  The tour also saw the introduction of the Australian/New Zealand team, sponsored by Ravat. It was headed by Hubert Opperman, who had been the Australian cycling champion for a few years. After The Melbourne Herald had a campaign to send Opperman to the Tour de France, a team was made. The plan was to add six experienced European cyclists to the team, but this did not happen. Opperman rode some races in Europe and could compete with the European top cyclists, but the rest of his team could not. Because a major part of the race was in the team time trial format, Opperman had no chance to win the Tour. The Kennett Brothers wrote a book about the New Zealander on the team—Harry Watson—that was read by cycling enthusiast and The Amazing Race-host Phil Keoghan, who was surprised that he had never heard of the fellow Cantabrian before. Keoghan decided to celebrate the team's achievement and with a friend, he rode the 1928 stages on period bicycles to the original 26-day schedule. Their experience was turned into a film, Le Ride, which premiered in July 2016 in Watson's home town Christchurch.
caption: Kisses and flowers from the local beauty for Hubert Opperman after the 6th stage
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