Boulting on bikes: Ned Boulting in conversation
麻豆原创 alumnus Ned Boulting discussed his career and all things cycling at a talk co-hosted by the Intellectual Forum and the on 24 September.
In late 2020, Ned Boulting won a mysterious roll of film containing cycling footage in an online auction. A few days later, when a jiffy bag containing the film arrived, Ned held it up to the light to look at the still frames. As he described: "It didn't take me long to realize that this precious little roll of film was probably going to take over my life".
The footage turned out to be 2.5 minutes from the fourth stage of the 1923 Tour de France. For the next two years, Ned investigated everything about everybody in the film, every building in the film, and every event in the film - an experience that formed the core of his most recent book, 1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession.
During his talk at the Intellectual Forum, Ned played the short film for an in-person and online audience of over 200 people, pointing out key moments, including when a member of the public tried to keep up with the stage leader as they went across a bridge (unsurprisingly, the amateur cyclist was quickly left far behind).
From this film, the conversation turned to more modern Tours, and to Ned's long career as a mainstay of British cycling commentating. With twenty years of commentating behind him, Ned has been the voice accompanying some incredible physical feats. He recalled a special moment in the most recent Tour de France, when British cyclist Mark Cavendish broke cycling great Eddy Merckx's longstanding record for the most stage wins. "It means a lot to people who follow the Tour de France, whose skin it has really got under, when you're confronted with a live moment like that", he said. As the voice of those moments: "You're holding something special for people, actually. And it's a very big responsibility, because that footage will live online and in people's memories for a long time".
Beyond professional cycling, Ned is an active proponent of cycling as a form of active travel, which he discusses on the podcast he cohosts with Adam Tranter and Laura Laker, . Though he cycled as a child and teenager, it wasn't until he commentated his first Tour de France in 2003 that Ned suddenly thought: "I need a bike in my life". He bought what he calls "a totally inappropriate" bike and began to cycle as a form of active travel - first cycling two miles to the nearest Tube station, then eventually cycling the full seven miles to work in London. Today, he says, he gets everywhere he needs to by bike.
Though the 1923 film demonstrated physically the gap between amateur and professional riders, Ned emphasised the Tour de France's enduring power to inspire the millions who watch each year to pick up a bike and cycle, just as it inspired him. As he described it, the Tour de France is "the single biggest shop window for this slightly magical 150-year-old invention called the bicycle, that still has the power to do so much good in the world, and whose power we are only beginning to unlock".
