Phil Keoghan Le Ride

Phil Keoghan Le Ride

Cast: Phil Keoghan, John Keoghan, Ben Cornell, Greg Peart
Director: Phil Keoghan
Rated: PG
Running Time: 90 minutes

Synopsis: Le Ride follows Phil Keoghan and his friend Ben Cornell as they attempt to recreate the original route of the 1928 Tour de France. Averaging 240 kilometres a day for 26 days, Phil and Ben traverse both the unforgiving mountains of the Pyrenees and the Alps, on original vintage steel racing bikes with no gears and marginal brakes.

The documentary takes inspiration from the remarkable true story of Australians Sir Hubert Opperman, Ernie Bainbridge and Percy Osborne, and New Zealander Harry Watson as the first English speaking team to compete in the Tour de France. They arrived after six weeks at sea, under-trained and under-resourced, untested and completely written off by the French media.

The 1928 Tour was the toughest in history – a hell on wheels race of attrition. Only 41 finished out of 161 starters yet remarkably three were from the Australasian team. This extraordinary story of achievement against the odds has never been told on film – until now.

Le Ride
Release Date: January 26th, 2017

About Le Ride

1928 Tour de France

 

In 1928, a team from Down Under - Australians Sir Hubert Opperman, Ernie Bainbridge and Percy Osborne, and New Zealander Harry Watson - became the first English speaking team to compete in the Tour de France. The US didn't enter until 1980. Training at sea during their 6 week journey to Europe, these courageous Australasian underdogs took on the world's toughest race. Racing as a team of 4 against teams who had 10, the Australasian's entry was considered, by many, a joke. 15 of the 22 stages were Team Time Trials and one French journalist called their attempt 'nothing short of murder" with some stages taking 20 hours. Watson, who suffered severely from influenza for much of the race, said it was 'a veritable nightmare". 168 riders started the more than 3,500 mile race that year, and only 41 finished! Miraculously three of those riders were from the Australasian team with Opperman 18th and Watson finishing 28th. Surprisingly this remarkable achievement is forgotten history.

In 1928, Watson and his team won the hearts of the French media, Echo des Sports said their efforts were, 'Homeric and Sensational" and another publication called it 'superhuman". A crowd of 70,000 gave the team a standing ovation at the finish and years later Opperman was awarded a Gold Medal of the City of Paris for his efforts. If Harry Watson had been a New Zealand rugby player, his achievements would have made history but sadly he lived in anonymity, even his obituary made no mention of his historic achievements. For 85 years this story has never been celebrated ... until now.

2013 Recreation
Phil Keoghan and Ben Cornell ride the same course, and follow the same schedule as the 1928 Tour de France, and ride a vintage 1928 bike (no gears).
Phil Keoghan and Ben Cornell average 150 miles a day for 28 days traveling more than 3500 miles around France.
Le Ride is filmed in the summer of 2013, during the 100th Tour de France.

 

Director's Notes

'Le Ride was, without doubt, the toughest shoot I've ever attempted." - Phil Keoghan

I've always had a fascination with stories about underdogs. I found this great book about the history of cycling in New Zealand and they wrote about a guy called Harry Watson who was from my hometown of Christchurch. I'm a huge cycling fan and I thought how is it that I've never heard of this guy who was a New Zealand champion seven times and who was a phenomenal athlete? So I started reading and realised he was the first New Zealander to ride in the Tour de France and a member of the first English-speaking team to ride in the Tour.

I wanted to bring this story to life so I decided the best way to tell the story was to literally bring it back to life by pedalling every mile and retrace the exact route"the same mountains, the same towns. The more I started to think about it, I thought wouldn't it also be good if I actually rode the same kind of bicycle? That became the journey and we took me 3 years to find the exact kind of bicycle and about 5 years of research to work out the exact route.

In 2013, we retraced 3,338 miles over 22 stages, 150 miles a day average on an old single-speed bicycle with terrible brakes and literally retraced every mile. Seven stages were over 200 miles. The dreaded Death Stage took us 23 and a half hours ... with cameras rolling the entire time.

 

Le Ride
Release Date: January 26th, 2017