‘Oh, THAT tour!’

One day in Belgium forty years ago, New Zealand cyclist Paul Jesson was resting up after an amateur road race when the phone rang at his lodgings. (No cell phones back then.) For the past few seasons Paul had enjoyed quite some success on Belgium’s amateur racing circuit but still, it came with both surprise and delight when the voice on the other end asked if he would like to join Team Splendor-Euro-Soap and ‘ride a tour with us.’ His mind whirling, the quiet, Christchurch-born, 24-year-old Kiwi wondered how many days he might be away from his lodgings, so he asked, ‘How long is the tour?’ ‘Three weeks,’ the voice of the team manager replied. With realisation rapidly dawning that he had just been invited to turn professional and ride in the Tour de France, young Jesson said, ‘Oh, THAT tour!’ Only one other rider in the history of cycling, Lucien Van Impe of Belgium, a decade earlier in 1969 had known the privilege of riding THAT tour for his first professional race – a tour Lucien would eventually ride 12 times and win seven years later, in 1976. Some of the Paul Jesson Story is already history, as they say. The rest is revealed for the first time in the pages of this book.

(Written in association with Des Williams. Soft cover, 15cm x 23cm; contains 240 pages, 180 photographs, Career statistics.)