Vélodrome d'hiver

The Vélodrome d'Hiver (, ''Winter Velodrome''), colloquially Vel' d'Hiv', was an indoor bicycle racing cycle track and stadium (velodrome) on rue Nélaton, not far from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As well as a cycling track, it was used for ice hockey, basketball, wrestling, boxing, roller-skating, circuses, bullfighting, spectaculars, and demonstrations. It was the first permanent indoor track in France and the name persisted for other indoor tracks built subsequently.

In July 1942, French police, acting under orders from the German authorities in Occupied Paris, used the velodrome to hold thousands of Jews and others who were victims in a mass arrest. The Jews were held at the velodrome before they were moved to a concentration camp in the Parisian suburbs at Drancy and then to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. The incident became known as the " Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup" (''Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv).

Origins

The original track was housed in the Salles des Machines, the building used for the industrial display of the World's Fair, which ended in 1900. The building was unoccupied after the exhibition.

In 1902, the Salle des Machines was inspected by Henri Desgrange, who the following year inaugurated the Tour de France on behalf of the newspaper that he edited, '' L'Auto''. With him were Victor Goddet, the newspaper's treasurer, an engineer named Durand, and an architect, Gaston Lambert. It was Lambert who said he could turn the hall into a sports arena with a track 333 metres long and eight metres wide.Grunwald, Liliane, and Claude Cattaert, ''Le Vel' d'Hiv '': 1903–1959'' (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1979), . He finished it in 20 days.

The first meeting there, on 20 December 1903, had an audience of 20,000. They paid seven francs for the best view and a single franc to see hardly anything at all. The seating was primitive and there was no heating. The first event was not a cycle race but a walking competition over 250 metres. The first cycling competition was a race ridden behind pacing motorcycles. Only one rider—Cissac—managed to complete the , the others having crashed on the unaccustomed steepness of the track banking.

Change of name and track

In 1909 the Salle des Machines was listed for demolition to improve the view of the Eiffel Tower. Desgrange moved to another building nearby, at the corner of the boulevard de Grenelle and the rue Nélaton. The venue was named the Vélodrome d'Hiver. The new track, also designed by Lambert, was 253.16 m round at the base but exactly 250 m on the line ridden by the motor-paced riders (considered the stars of the day). Lambert built two tiers of seats, which towered above bankings so steep for their day that they were considered cliff-like. In the track centre, Lambert built a roller-skating rink of 2,700 square metres. He lit the whole lot with 1,253 hanging lamps.

There could be so many spectators jammed in the track centre for cycling events that they resembled passengers in the Paris métro in the rush hour.Chany, Pierre (1988) ''La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme'', Nathan, France The richer and more knowledgeable spectators bought track-side seats and the rest crowded into the upper balcony from which the track looked a distant bowl. A rivalry grew between those in the top row and those below them, to the extent that those on high sometimes threw sausages, bread rolls and even bottles onto those below or, if they could throw that far, onto the track. The hall's managers had to install a net to catch the larger missiles.

Six-days

Six-day cycle racing had started in London in the 19th century but became truly popular after changing to a race not for individuals but for teams of two. Created at Madison Square Garden (after New York prohibited . it became known in English as the madison and in French as ''l'américaine''. The first such six-day race at the Vel' d'Hiv' started on 13 January 1913.

The riders included the Tour de France winners Louis Trousselier and Octave Lapize and other prominent riders such as Émile Georget. The race began at 6 pm and by 9 pm all 20,000 seats were sold. Among those who watched was the millionaire Henri de Rothschild, who offered a prize of 600 Fr, and the dancer Mistinguett, who offered 100 Fr. The winners were Goulet and Fogler, an American-Australian pairing.

The Franco-American writer René de Latour said: "I have known the time when it was considered quite a feat to get into the Vel' d'Hiv' during a six-day race. There were mounted police all round the block, barriers were erected some way from the building, and if you did not have a ticket or a pass to show, you were not allowed anywhere near the place. You can guess that the disappointed fans often produced a near-riot."

A tradition started in 1926 of electing a Queen of the Six, whose job included starting the race. Among them were Édith Piaf, Annie Cordy and the accordionist Yvette Horner, who also played from the roof of a car while preceding the Tour de France.

Races at the Vel' d'Hiv' were sometimes doubted for their genuineness. While the spectacle drew large and even capacity crowds, the best riders were rumoured to control the race. The French journalist Pierre Chany wrote:

:

There was a lot of talk about the relative honesty of the results, and journalists sometimes asked themselves what importance they ought to place on victories in these six-day races. The best of the field combined between themselves, it was known, to fight against other teams and to get their own hands on the biggest prizes, which they then shared between them. This coalition, cruelly nicknamed the Blue Train fter a luxury rail service patronised by the richimposed its rule and sometimes even the times of the race, the length of the rest periods. The little teams fought back on certain days but, generally, the law belonged to the cracks, better equipped physically and often better organised.

1924 Summer Olympics

For the 1924 Summer Olympics, the velodrome hosted boxing, fencing, weightlifting, and wrestling events.

Ernest Hemingway

The American writer Ernest Hemingway was a regular fan of six-day and other races at the Vel' d'Hiv' while he lived in Paris. He wrote:

:

I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor and outdoor tracks and on the roads. But I will get the Vélodrome d’Hiver with the smoky light of the afternoon and the high-banked wooden track and the whirring sound the tires made on the wood as the riders passed, the effort and the tactics as the riders climbed and plunged, each one a part of his machine. ... I must write the strange world of the six-day races and the marvels of the road-racing in the mountains. French is the only language it has ever been written in properly and the terms are all French and that is what makes it hard to write.

Boxing

Boxing began at the Vel' d'Hiv' after a meeting between an American, Jeff Dickson, and Henri Desgrange, the track's main owner and leading promoter. Dickson arrived in France from Missouri in 1917 as a "sammie". Sammies, named after the owner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, were cameramen sent from the U.S. to film American soldiers in World War I.

Dickson stayed on in France after the war and began promoting boxing in the Wagram area of Paris. He and Desgrange got on and the two agreed he should organise a first boxing tournament at the Vel' d'Hiv' in 1929. The main match pitted Milou Pladner against Frankie Genaro, bringing in 920,110Fr.

The Lion Hunt and other spectacles

Dickson joined the management of the Vel' d'Hiv'. In 1931 he renovated the building to allow other uses in the centre of the cycling track: he removed several pillars that blocked the view of some spectators, took up the roller-skating rink, laid an ice rink of 60 m by 30 m, and constructed a cover for the rink to allow its use for other activities. The building was rechristened the “Palais des Sports de Grenelle”, though its former name remained in use.Tristan Alric, “Un siècle de hockey en France”, p. 23 Under Dickson, the Vel' d'Hiv' became home to the Français Volants ice hockey team. The rink also featured skating shows by Sonja Henie in 1953 and 1955 and Holiday on Ice (1950 to 1958).

His most spectacular venture was his greatest and most expensive flop. Dickson discovered from the newspaper '' Paris-Midi'' that the Schneider circus in Naples was auctioning 100 lions. Dickson bought the animals the same day, along with their cages and trailers, for 80,000 Fr. He constructed a stage set, acquired two sick camels abandoned by a circus at Maisons-Alfort, hired fire-eaters and employed 20 actors to dress as African explorers—all to stage a spectacle called The Lion Hunt.

The lions, however, arrived from Naples feeling tired and limp. Dickson assured reporters they needed only a meal and began importing dead animals from local abattoirs. Things didn't improve. On the first night of the show, all 100 lions were released into the arena but showed no signs of excitement, much less ferocity. Dickson ordered his "explorers" to fire into the air to wake them up. The air became bitter with cordite fumes but the lions did little more than stroll about and urinate on the scenery. Now convinced the animals were harmless, stagehands began beating them, at which children began to cry and parents shouted angry protests. The organizers withdrew the animals and moved to the next act of the show. Things went little better. The camels refused to walk in a line as in a desert caravan. And their attendants, who were unemployed black people recruited from the streets, stumbled in the sand under their unaccustomed stage clothing. The show's run was abandoned.

Dickson now had two camels and 100 lions that he no longer needed. An assistant tied the camels behind a car, led them to the Seine and abandoned them. There they were found by the police. Eventually Dickson rented the camels and lions to another circus for 10,000 Fr a week, only for the circus to fail and Dickson to be summoned to collect his animals. By now he was also being pursued by the for cruelty in abandoning the camels. The animals were finally sent to a zoo near Hamburg.

The venture ended with the loss of 700,000 Fr by the Vel' d'Hiv'.

Dickson returned to America in 1939 and died when his bomber was shot down at St-André-de-l'Eure on 14 July, France's national day, in 1943. He is buried in the American cemetery at Omaha Beach west of Caen

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