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Philippe Thys (Thijs)

Thys in 1913
Personal information
Full name	Philippe Thijs
Nickname	Le basset (The Basset Hound)
Born	(1889-10-08)8 October 1889 Anderlecht, Belgium
Died	16 January 1971(1971-01-16) (aged 81) Anderlecht, Belgium
Team information
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Professional teams
1912–1914	Peugeot–Wolber
1917–1918	Peugeot–Wolber
1919–1921	La Sportive
1922–1924	Peugeot–Wolber
1925	Automoto–Hutchinson
1927	Opel–ZR III
Major wins
Cyclo-cross National Championships (1910) Road Grand Tours Tour de France General classification (1913, 1914, 1920) Mountains classification (1913) 13 individual stages (1913, 1914, 1920, 1922, 1924) Stage races Circuit Français Peugeot (1911) One-day races and Classics Giro di Lombardia (1917) Paris–Tours (1917) Tours–Paris (1918) Paris–Menen (1914) Limburgse Dageraad (1927) Critérium des As (1921)

Philippe Thys (pronounced [fi.lip tis]; Dutch: Philippe Thijs; 8 October 1889 – 16 January 1971) was a Belgian cyclist and three times winner of the Tour de France.

Professional career

In 1910, Thys won Belgium's first national cyclo-cross championship. The following year he won the Circuit Français Peugeot, followed by stage races from Paris to Toulouse and Paris to Turin. He then turned professional to ride the Tour de France.

Thys won the Tour in 1913 despite breaking his bicycle fork, and needing to find a bicycle shop to mend it. The repair induced a 10-minute penalty, but he won with a lead of just under nine minutes.

Thys took the stage and the race lead when Eugène Christophe broke his fork on the way to Luchon. Marcel Buysse overtook him in the results the following day. Another broken fork on the way to Nice gave Thys the lead again but drama continued when he fell on the penultimate stage from Longwy to Dunkirk. Despite being knocked out and being penalised for help from teammates to repair his bike, he won 8 minutes and 37 seconds ahead of Gustave Garrigou, with Buysse third.

In 1914, he took his first stage victory, to Le Havre, holding the race from start to finish despite a 30-minute penalty for an unauthorised wheel change on the penultimate stage. His victory looked uncertain, his lead cut to less than two minutes ahead of Henri Pélissier. Ironically, on the final stage from Dunkirk to Paris, the Frenchman's supporters along the route who were expecting victory over the Belgian were the reason he was prevented from launching a breakaway. He won the stage but Thys finished on his wheel to win the Tour.

In 1917, Thys won Paris–Tours and the Giro di Lombardia. In 1918, he also won the second and last Tours–Paris. After World War I, Thys won the Tour a third and final time in 1920. He led from the second stage, Henri Desgrange writing "France is not unaware that, without the war, the crack rider from Anderlecht would be celebrating not his third Tour, but his fifth or sixth".

Not until 1955 did Louison Bobet equal Thys's record, and not until 1963 did Jacques Anquetil break it with four wins. Thys also rode in the 1922 Tour, winning five stages, and in the 1924 Tour, winning two stages.

Thys was one of a generation of cyclists whose careers were disrupted by the First World War. After retiring, he recalled that he had been asked by his manager, Alphonse Baugé, to wear a yellow jersey as leader of the Tour, although that distinction is more commonly attributed to Eugène Christophe.

Career achievements

Major results

Amateur

1910

1st National Cyclo-cross Championships

1911

1st Overall Tour de France Independents

1st in 2 Stages

1st Overall Paris-Turin

1st in 2 Stages

1st Paris-Toulouse

1st Circuit Française Peugeot

Professional

1912

6th Overall Tour de France

1913

1st Overall Tour de France

1st Stage 6

1914

1st Overall Tour de France

1st Stage 1

1st Paris-Menin (fr)

3rd Paris–Tours

1917

1st Giro di Lombardia

1st Paris–Tours

1918

1st Tours-Paris

1919

1st Six Days of Brussels (with Marcel Dupuy)

2nd Paris–Roubaix

1920

1st Overall Tour de France

1st Stages 2, 9, 12 & 13

4th Road race, National Road Championships

4th Paris–Roubaix

4th Paris–Brussels

1921

1st Critérium des As

1st Paris–Lyon (with Jean Rossius)

1st Paris–Dijon (with Jean Rossius)

3rd Bordeaux–Paris

4th Giro della Provincia di Milano

10th Milan–San Remo

1922

Tour de France

1st Stages 4, 8, 9, 10 & 15

2nd Road race, National Road Championships

4th Bordeaux–Paris

5th Critérium des As

1923

1st Paris–Lyon (with Jean Alavoine)

2nd Circuit du Languedoc

8th Paris–Tours

1924

Tour de France

1st Stages 3 (tied with Théophile Beeckman) & 9

7th Paris–Roubaix

1925

3rd Six Days of Brussels (with Maurice De Wolf)

1927

1st Limburgse Dageraad

9th Rund um Leipzig

Grand Tour results

Honours

• A velodrome, Piste Philippe Thys in La Robertsau, Strasbourg
• A street, Rue Philippe Thys in Strasbourg
• Introduced in the UCI Hall of Fame in 2002

Books

• Van Thys tot Nys by Luc Lamon, Mark van Hamme in 2011, Houtekiet, 227 p. ISBN 9789089241405
• Philippe Thys: de vergeten drievoudig tourwinnaar by Johan Van Win in 2014, Ronde Tafel, 248 p. ISBN 9789491545153

References

1. Vergne, Laurent (22 July 2015). "Cannibale, Chéri-pipi, Wookie, Andy torticolis… le Top 20 des surnoms mythiques du cyclisme" [Cannibal, Chéri-pipi, Wookie, Andy Torticollis... the Top 20 mythical nicknames of cycling]. Eurosport (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2016.
2. "Philippe Thys". FirstCycling.com. 2023.
3. "11ème Tour de France 1913" (in French). Memoire du cyclisme. Archived from the original on 31 January 2009. Retrieved 12 May 2009.
4. "Dagboek van een Tourwinnaar. Philippe Thys tijdens de Tour van 1914" (in Dutch). servicekoers.be. 28 June 2021.
5. "Palmarès de Philippe Thys (Bel)". Memoire-du-cyclisme.eu (in French). Retrieved 31 December 2021.
6. Maurice Moszberger (dir.), Dictionnaire historique des rues de Strasbourg, Le Verger, Barr, 2012 (nouvelle éd. révisée), p. 441 ISBN 9782845741393.

External links

• Philippe Thys at Cycling Archives (archived)
• Official Tour de France results for Philippe Thys.

• Belgian male cyclists
• Tour de France winners
• Belgian Tour de France stage winners
• Belgian cyclo-cross cyclists
• 1889 births
• 1971 deaths
• People from Anderlecht
• Belgian cyclo-cross champions
• Cyclists from Brussels
• 20th-century Belgian sportsmen