| When Henri Desgrange founded
the Tour de France in 1903 to promote his sports newspaper, L'Auto, he
couldn't possibly have foreseen what an iconic event the race would
become. Eleven years
after the historic first Tour, Iddo "Snowy" Munro - father of Vingt Cinq's
second-oldest member, Alan - was in the first Australian team to compete
in the race.
It was in 1914 that Snowy rode in
the Tour with his close mate, Jack Kirkham, and two other Aussie riders in
a field of 200.
Alan told Vingt Cinq that his
father was christened Iddo in keeping with an old family policy of
adopting biblical names. Snowy - as Aussie a nickname as you can get -
followed naturally, given Iddo's blond locks.
Snowy was a brilliant rider in the
early 1900s, winning many prestigious races (among them the 1909
Melbourne-Warrnambool classic, when he set a record time that stood for 22
years) before tackling the Tour de France.
His cycling career, then truncated by circumstances well beyond
his
control -(make that WWII), Snowy subsequently went into the
taxi business back home with great success. As most Vingt Cinqers are
aware, Alan continued what Snowy started and the enterprise grew beyond
anything Snowy could have imagined.
Vingt Cinq's second-oldest member (he turns 88 this month and just trails
Larry Maddison), Alan achieved plenty of success in cycling, as well as in
a totally non-related discipline - water skiing.
Alan became a professional cyclist in 1944. He won the Goulburn to Sydney
race off 36 minutes in 1945 - then, for a second time, off scratch - as
well as the 100-mile Australian championship.
In 1949, Alan went to England and France, where he rode in numerous races,
including the hellish Paris-Roubaix, and the following year completed a
six-day race in the US.
Back in Australia, Alan found himself attracted to water skiing. Showing
his versatility, he won championship titles at national and State level
and later served as president of the Victorian Water Ski Association for
25 years - including a long stint as organising chairman of the Moomba
Masters
tournament. He's a life member of both the Australian and Victorian water
ski associations.
As if all that wasn't enough, Alan also took to the skies, obtaining his
student pilot's licence" in 1979 and going on to become a highly-competent
pilot.
Alan, who still holds a pilot's licence, has owned several types of
aircraft and flown from one end of Africa to the other - as well as in
Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States, where ' he flew the length of
the Mississippi and "buzzed" the Statue of Liberty.
In Australia, Alan has notched-up
more than 3,000 hours and seen much of
the country, including some of the farthest reaches of the Outback.
"The ideal Tour would he one in which only one rider survives the
ordeal."
Henri Desgrange
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