CARTAGIOCO DEL TOUR
 VITT (Settimanale dei Ragazzi), Italy, 1968

 

 


Just a few weeks after offering a Milano Sanremo game, VITT magazine offered this Tour de France game (Anno XXXII, nº 27, 4 luglio 1968). In this case, the game was mentioned on the cover of the magazine. That is how I was able to find it. As I said in the description of the Milano Sanremo game, unless there is a mention on the front cover, these games are very hard to detect, unless you are hinted (please!) by some magazine collector who happens to remember the game.

VITT is the follow-up to "Il Vittorioso", a kid's Catholic magazine that had featured at least one cycling game some years before.

 

 

As you can see, this is a simple map game that loosely follows the road of the 1968 Tour de France. As is the case with most such games, the rules are rather straightforward. The rule for the climbs, for instance, says that you advance with odd numbers and you go back if you throw a square number. These are hard climbs indeed! (Compare that rule to the one in the Milano Sanremo game: you only move with odd numbers, but you do not go back with even numbers).

 

 

If you fall on square 50, you go back one square to be interviewed by a certain Enzo Balboni. I have tried to find more about him, but I have not discovered much, except that he had written some cycling articles for Il Vittorioso before and that he wrote a cycling novel some years later. Maybe he was not that famous after all, and his presence in the game is just an internal joke. I wonder if my Italian friends can help me with that.

 

 

There are three time trials in the race, modelled after those on the 1968 Tour de France. They all have different rules, which is unusual, but the rules themselves are not so unusual. The first time trial is on square 1 (the Tour's prologue); you have to throw an odd number to advance (yes, the climbs use the same rule; was it an uphill prologue?). If you fall on the team time trial (square 8), you advance two further squares (which, incidentally, lead to square 10, Roubaix, which you can only get out of by throwing a two).

Nevertheless, the rule for the third time trial is quite surprising, or should I say prescient, especially in view of the 1968 Tour de France final outcome. While the Tour ended with a time trial, in the game we find this last time not on the final square (53) as you would expect, but on square 50. However, the rule for that time trial states that you only move if you throw 2 or 3. This means that you can win the game from that last time trial square if you happen to throw 3, while you can lose the Tour in the final time trial if you do not throw 2 or 3 for a few turns (and of course, the time trial square might be irrelevant if the winner of the race does not fall on that square).

Now let me quote from the Wikipedia: "The Tour ended with a time trial, and before the time trial, Herman Van Springel was leading, followed by San Miguel at 12 seconds, Janssen at 16 seconds and Bitossi at 58 seconds. Janssen won the final time trial, with Van Springel in second place, but the margin was large enough for Janssen to win the Tour."  Let me add that Gregorio San Miguel lost 3'21" in that last stage and did not even make the podium of the Tour (he finished 4th). He really got stuck on square 50.

 

 

Despite not having retired yet, Jacques Anquetil did not participate in the 1968 Tour de France (just as he had not the year before), which does not prevent him from appearing on the game. The rule for square 14 is: "Breakaway with Anquetil. Move five squares forward".

 

 

Description written in September 2024
 

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