Once upon a time a young Englishman rode around France in a bicycle race and came last.
 
Tony Hoar is a wonderful man with a full head of crisp white hair and an easy smile. Despite the passage of time he’s still very good-looking in a Gregory Peckish kind of way and you can’t help but wonder how many hearts he must have sent-a-fluttering back in the summer of 1955 when he cycled into Paris as one of the first two Brits to ever complete the Tour de France. Take a look at those pictures of the lean, sun-tanned Mr. H back in 1955 and you wonder why someone didn’t pluck him from the peloton and put him on the fast track for Hollywood or strap a guitar on his nimble frame and push him up the charts – somebody could have made a fortune.

Tony Hoar (on right) receives a paper lantern from next-to-last placed rider Henri Sitek on the final day of the Tour de France in 1955. (Photographer unknown)

I’ve just returned from a weekend with Tony in Vancouver Island with five hours of footage in my pocket and I sense that this film-making journey I have embarked upon could be a marvelous and wonderful thing. All I wanted from Tony was some time in front of the camera and some bon-mots about the Tour, how it was raced back then, and what it was like being last. What I got was a lesson in living and a vivid impression of a life well-lived that has taken him around the world and back a few times. For fools like me Tony, the first British Lanterne Rouge, is defined by that fateful day in Paris and the three tough weeks in the saddle that prefaced it. For Tony I suspect that those days in France are just memories from a long-distant summer that, for some reason, every-one else wants to talk about.

As I set up my camera in Tony’s workshop and as we talked, my admiration for his achievements grew. His casual assertion that he was a track rider who was tossed into the Tour with no real idea of what he was in for says more about his modesty than his Palmares which reveal a young athlete who competed in Paris-Nice, the Tour and the Vuelta and won stages in the Tour Of Britain, the Tour of Egypt and the Tour of Ireland. I suspect that if Tony had been riding today he wouldn’t have been allowed to slip so quietly away to Canada to follow his fortune - he’d have been snapped-up by a team and become quite the star of the peloton.

Hidden in a back room Tony pointed out for me the small aluminum suitcase that the TdF gave all riders to put their personal effects in and unfolded for me the original map of the ’55 Tour. He showed me the bikes and trailers he’s built and explained everything you need to know about Reynolds tubing, electric bikes and rotational mass and why contemporary pedals and cleats don’t cut it. He pulled open a drawer of press cuttings and pictures and revealed a singular lack of vanity: if I’d ridden a single stage of the Tour your visit to my house would reveal a shrine to my achievements in the race – Tony’s press cuttings are tucked away and quite obviously haven’t been touched since around the time Lance first laid eyes on l’Alpe d’Huez.

Tony Hoar today.

I suspect that Tony’s mythology will be preserved as I continue to make In Search Of The Lanterne Rouge but for me personally he’s no longer defined by the Summer of ’55 but by his actions as a friendly and wonderful man who made me coffee and a fine plate of scrambled eggs and then got up at 430 in the morning to make sure I made it to the ferry at the start of my long journey home.

It’s a cliché but its true what they say – nice guys do finish last.