This is a strange game. A few copies appeared on eBay sometime in the first decade of the XXIst century. It was sold as an old game, but there was much doubt about whether it really was. I was not convinced at all. The games were never complete; nobody had ever seen a box for this game (or the rules for that matter), and there were too many variations appearing at once.

A couple of times, I had even seen the game sold with notices like "the seller guarantees the authenticity of this game", which of course means "the seller doubts that this game is authentic" or, at least, "the seller knows that this game does not look authentic in the pictures but believes that you might change your mind once you have it in your hands."

The fact that the only time I tried to buy a game from these series it was lost in the mail did not help either. While it is not the only game that I have not received after paying for it (shit happens sometimes, though fortunately seldom enough), since I had already acquired it reluctantly, the fact that I did not receive the game reinforced my belief that this game might be a fake.

However, later findings have convinced me that this is not the case, that these are legitimate (though weird) games produced in the 1930s.
 

 

The board of the game is protected with plastic, which at first sight does not match its supposed age.

 

The back is made of some wood-looking plastic. While this does not say much about the game being a fake or not, it reinforces the impression of something not being just quite right.

Furthermore, the fact that there are many variations of the game was not exactly reassuring. All of them are apparently similar (a track cycling game, though "Criterium des As" is not a track cycling name), except for the Tour de France board. Later I learned that Le Petit Velodrome, as its name implies, is smaller than the others.

 

There is even an uncoloured Tour de France version!

 

 

However, as I said above, later findings have convinced me that these games were really produced in the 1930s.

On the one hand, my friend Didier Maria has found not only different boards but also different scoring pads, the rules of the Tour de France game, and a leaflet by SPORLUX featuring three of the four known cycling games, plus two other sport games. By the way, part of the pictures featured on this page are Didier's.

 

By the way, this 4-page leaflet is the only instance of the word SPORLUX appearing. Everywhere else we just find the logo with the letters "SLJDS" or "SLDJS", depending on how you want to read them, or nothing at all (the boards are unbranded)

 

 

On the other hand, Loïc P recently contacted me saying he had unearthed a trove consisting of some ten "le Petit Vélodrome" boards, still in their probably original plain brown cardboard boxes and paper wrapping, plus other boxes containing various scoring pads, dice, and cyclists (along with some parts belonging to the tennis game). He was kind enough to send me not only the pictures of his finding but also a sample of what he found. Unfortunately, he did not find any rules booklet.

Loïc believes that what he found was the unsold stock of some seller from the Loiret region. I think it is highly possible that this is the case, and this would prove that the game did not have an original box and that the components were delivered separately somehow. (There is no way they fit in the box).

 

So, once established that the game is a legitimate one, but one that is seldom complete, let's summarize what we know about it.

Le Petit Velodrome's board measures 38 x 27 cm. The other boards are quite bigger. Both the Criteriun des As and Le Vel d'Hiv boards measure 58 x 40 cm, while the Tour de France board is even bigger (around 55 x 55 cm).

 

 

We do not know how many riders you need to play the game, but since there are 12 cyclists featured on the corners of the board, and there are cyclists of different teams, with numbers 1 to 3 in each team (I do not have all the riders, but so it seems), my guess is that there must have been 12 riders in the game.

On the other hand, Le Petit Velodrome being the smaller (and probably) cheaper version of Criterium des As or Le Vel d'Hiv, it is possible that it had fewer riders. I have seen a picture of Le Vel d'Hiv with some 20 riders, but that does not prove much. On the SPORLUX leaflet, we see 8 riders both on the Tour de France and Criterium des As and only seven in Le Petit Velodrome. However, the problem with having seven or eight riders is that there is no way to have teams of three riders.

In the Sporlux leaflet we also see that the games are played with two dice.

 

 

The riders measure 4 cm and are made from a stiff plastic. I am not an expert in plastics, but it can be celluloid. They are not so different from the riders in this other game.

   

To date this game, our best clue is the set of riders depicted on the corners of the board. Though they have their names written beside the pictures, some are quite hard to read (luckily, they are the same riders in the three velodrome games, and they are easier to read on the bigger boards). Furthermore, while all these riders could have been fairly well-known when the game was produced, most of them are quite forgotten by now. However, I believe I have identified them all.

Three of the riders (together in one of the corners of the board) are Tour de France racers Antonin Magne, René Vietto, and Roger Lapébie (unless it is his brother Guy Lapébie, it is hard to tell from the picture).

On another corner on the board, we find three specialists in motor-paced cycling races, Charles Lacquehay, Robert Grassin, and Georges Paillard. You can distinguish them by the helmets.

The six other cyclists featured are track cyclists of the thirties, some of whom have taken a while to identify, but, unless I am proven otherwise, they are Lucien Michard, Louis Gérardin, Jef Scherens, Maurice Richard, Jan Pijnenburg and Marcel Guimbretière.

The oldest rider of the lot is Lucien Michard, gold medalist in the 1924 Olympics, who was at the end of his career by the mid 1930s. However, the youngest rider is René Vietto, who was not really well-known before his famous "sacrifice" during the 1934 Tour de France. So, we can be sure the game was made after that Tour, and we can guess that it was not made too long after that Tour .

 

I will not use the Tour de France board to try to date Le Petit Vélodrome, as the riders featured are different, and I do not have a picture in which I could recognise them all. Suffice to say that the ones I do recognise are Tour de France riders from the 1930s. Among them is Federico Ezquerra, who also took part in the 1934 Tour, even leading the KOM classification for some stages, and who won a stage of the 1936 Tour with a Spanish Republican maillot.

This story is quite unknown outside Spain, but the Spanish team for the 1936 Tour (which was not big enough and formally was the "Spain-Luxembourg" team) started the race on July 7th under the colours of the Spanish Republic. However, the fascist coup that started a three-year-long Spanish civil war occurred on July 18th, during stage 10 of the race. The Spanish riders finished the Tour with the tricolor Republican maillot, and most of them did not return to Spain until some years later.

 

 

As is usual in track cycling games, different races can be played with it. For want of the rules, we will assume that the six aces stated on the Le Vel d'Hiv board are the ones included in the rules. These races are: elimination race, time trial, individual pursuit, team pursuit, motor-paced race ("demi-fond"), and Madison ("course à l'amériquaine). I guess there was a scoring pad for each of these races, but we only have three of them, and I have never seen the others. By the way, the three are marked "Criterium des As".

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, Didier has the rules for the Tour de France game, which also has six different races (most of them track races, and not so different from those included in the track game).  Of these six games, we only have the scoring pad for two of them.

 

 

As for the rules, I can only talk about those of the Tour de France game, but we can assume that those of the velodrome games are fairly similar. The rules are very simple. Basically, you throw two dice and advance your rider accordingly, but the count is as follows:

- a throw of 1-1 counts 10
- a throw involving a 2 counts the double of the other die (2-1 counts 2, 2-6 counts 12)
- any other throw counts as expected, i.e. the addition of both dice

As you can see on the board, there are the usual punctures and bonuses, and of course there are slight variations in the rules for the different races. All in all, nothing too interesting in these games.

 

 

 

In the boxes found by Loïc there were a few tennis players, scoring pads for the tennis game, and these strange 14-sided dice with only three faces inscribed (with letters "O, "D", and "L"). As far as I know, they do not belong to Le Petit Vélodrome but might well be part of the tennis game.

 

Three boards from Didier's collection for a size comparison.

 

 

A couple of riders in different colours, also from Didier's collection.

 

 

 

If someone has the rules for the "Petit Velodrome" or "Criterium des As" (or someone needs the complete rules for "Tour de France), please let me know.

Thanks to Didier and Loïc for sharing their findings.

Description rewritten in November 2024