Ali Neffati

Ali Neffati

Ali Neffati (1913)
To person
Date of birth	January 22, 1895
date of death	April 19, 1974
nation	Tunisia
discipline	Street
Last updated: May 27, 2017

Ali Neffati (born January 22, 1895 in Tunis , † April 19, 1974 in Paris ) was a Tunisian cyclist. He was the first cyclist from Africa to compete in the Tour de France .

Ali Neffati was a professional driver from 1913 to 1930; during this time he drove for teams in only two years. His sporting career began in his home country, where in 1913 he was two-time Tunisian champion on the track in the single pursuit and sprint . The following year he won the national title in the standing race .

The French cyclist Henri Pélissier brought Neffati to France. There he started in 1913 (at the age of 18 as the youngest participant) and in 1914 twice in the Tour de France , but did not reach the finish on both occasions. In 1913, settled Tunisian athletes got together in Paris and organized a gala for Neffati to raise money for him so that he could take part in the tour and buy suitable equipment. In 1914 he was hit by an organization car and had to give up in the eighth stage.

Tour Neffati was as common in road race in France, a Fez . When the tour organizer Henri Desgrange saw this, he drove next to him in his car and asked him if everything was okay, and Neffati replied: "Oh, Monsieur Desgrange, I'm freezing." Desgrande is said not to have been sure whether this was meant as a joke.

In 1919 Ali Neffati won the Circuit du Midi as well as a stage of the Volta Ciclista Provincia Tarragona , in which he also took second place in the overall standings. He also started at the Circuit des Champs de Bataille , a grueling bike race along the battlefields of the First World War . In 1925 he was together with the Italian amateur road champion from 1911, Giuseppe Azzini , fifth in the six-day race in New York . He was also the French runner-up in the standing race in 1925, behind the standing world champion of 1920 , Georges Sérès .

After finishing his cycling career, Neffati stayed in Paris, where he lived for some time opposite the Vélodrome d'Hiver , and worked as a chauffeur and driver attendant for the newspaper L'Auto and later for L'Équipe . He married a pianist of noble Polish origin; their daughter became a ballet dancer at the Paris Opera . He died in Paris in 1974 after an accident with a tram.

successes

1913

• Tunisian champion - sprint, one's pursuit

1914

• Tunisian champion - stalker race

1919

• Overall ranking and one stage Circuit du Midi
• one stage Volta Ciclista Provincia Tarragona

Teams

• 1919 IVE-Soly
• 1922 Bianchi-Laborda

Web links

• Ali Neffati in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Ali Neffati in the Tour de France database(French / English )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Jacques Augendre: Abécédaire insolite du tour. Place Des Editeurs, 2011, ISBN 978-2-263-05600-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
2. ^ ^{A b} Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France. Simon and Schuster, 2013, ISBN 978-1-471-12895-0 ( limited preview in Google book search).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Suze Clemitson: P Is For Peloton. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-472-91286-2 , p. 92 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
4. ↑ Ali Neffati (1895-1974). (No longer available online.) In: ronnydeschepper.com. January 22, 2015, formerly in the original ; Retrieved May 27, 2017 (Dutch).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.