In the mid-80s, a young lad from Hastings by the name of Michael Blann sat down on a balmy July’s eve, transfixed by the sights and sounds of Channel 4’s coverage of this strange and distant event. Blann stared in awe as Breton’s Badger, Monsieur Bernard Hinault, battled with America’s pretty boy Greg LeMond to the melodic, literary tones of Phil Liggett. A daily ritual for 21 stages.
Blann briefly dreamt of rubbing shoulders with the professionals, but those passed rapidly, like a tempest charging over Ventoux. However, the love of the Tour, in particular the vice-like grip of the mountains, proved immovable. Blann replaced clipless for a lens and, 30 years later and three years in the making, Blann’s pictorial homage to the climbs that moulded and defined a…
