Charles Holland (cyclist) - Public Reaction

Public Reaction

Holland and Burl had become the first British competitors in the Tour and Gachon the first Canadian. Since he was in the race far longer, it was who Holland attracted much affection among French fans, one of whom wrote from Lacelle in the Corrèze region:

My dear Holland, I am a French girl who likes very much her bicycle and who is very fond of « Tour de France ». So, I read « L'Auto » and I listen to « Radio-Luxembourg ». I have been very pleased to learn we would have an English « équipe » this year. First, I congratulate you for this: to run the « Tour de France » because I know it is not very important in England, your people prefers tennis, golf and so on, and however not one other competition permits as well as this, to measure courage. I think you have come with your own will and I say it is very well indeed. Unhappily, your friends have no had luck, and it is very bad for you too, because it must be so hard to stay alone, in a so hard performance. So I admire your « war » and all my best thoughts on the « Tour de France » are for you. Don't be sorry if you are not the first, it is impossible when one is alone.

Cycling wrote:

So far as this country is concerned the race this year has had one outstanding justification; it has shown us the courage and the splendid riding ability of one of our own men, Charles Holland, and we can take pride in his glorious failure knowing that alone as he was, a complete stranger in his surroundings, the victor's laurels could never have been his had he been the greatest stayer, the fastest sprinter and the finest roadmen in the race. Holland is the product of his own determination to be the best Englishman at that class of riding. That he kept in the Tour for three-quarters of the distance, and was only them forced to abandon through ill luck demonstrates that no matter what the sphere of competitive cycling we have ambitions to contest, men can be developed, if we have the will, who can again rank with the world's best.

The rival paper, The Bicycle wrote:

"Goodbye, Holland. Do not be discouraged by your bad luck. You are the man of the Tour."

In the organising paper, L'Auto, Robert Perrier wrote:

Charles Holland did not arrive on the avenues of Etigny. We will no longer see his fine youthful silhouette on the road. We will no longer see his modest smile and his mischievous glances. We will no longer hear his reflections drawn from the source of the best humour of his country. Tomorrow we will give him the pyjamas he threw in our car after Lille along with his toothbrush and toothpaste which he never reclaimed. Charles Holland has abandoned the Tour without a fuss, with pride.

Outside specialist cycling interests, however, interest in the Tour and its first two British riders was minimal. The academics Hugh Dauncey and Geoff Hare wrote in their analysis of the absence of both British interest and marked success in the Tour de France since its start:

Coverage of the Tour by The Times, the newspaper of reference, teaches us much about English attitudes. In 1937, for instance, when Holland and Burl abandoned without The Times deigning to mention their suffering, two brief comments on the race were 'Discordant cycle race: pepper thrown at Belgian team' and a half-hearted announcement, as though only the people concerned might be interested: 'France wins Tour de France'.

Later Dauncey and Hare write:

Nobody (in France at least) remembers the amateurs Charles Holland and Bill Burl, who both had to drop out, physically exhausted, certainly, but above all stunned by the misery to which they had so innocently committed themselves. For Holland, the apparent variability with which the rules were applied was more discouraging than the mountain passes and the distances.