lindnkev@scn.org wrote: "I have been paging through a great birthday gift, the Official Tour de France Centennial 1903-2003. It appears that the riders stopped carrying tires wrapped around their shoulders in 1956. Was there a rule change that year? Was assistance from support vehicles disallowed until then?
Put that book on your wish list, it is loaded with awesome photos!"
That's a very interesting observation. I don't know if there was a new rule in 1956 against tires around one's shoulders, but from the pictures it seems that no one was doing that any more. And yet in 1955 everyone seemed to be doing it. Whether there was a rule or not, by 1956 extra-sportif sponsors (Nivea cream, Carpano vermouth, St. Raphael aperitifs, Faema coffee-machines among them) had firmly established themselves in the sport. So I suppose that with the new source of sponsorship, support cars with spare wheels were now more available to riders in case of a flat tire. The cars may have been only Citroen 2CV's ("deux chevaux") that huffed and puffed up the mountains, but they were better than having to remove the wheel oneself and change the tire.
Here are two observations of mine. Collared jerseys in the pro peloton went out in 1960 or 1961. And when everyone else was still using handlebar bottle-cages in addition to the one on the down-tube, Anquetil, in all the pictures I've seen, didn't use them. One bottle was sufficient for him.
Mordecai Silver Jersey City, NJ (New York, NY in a few hours)