– a little girl of five made the draw. My father was the race favourite; second favourite was Castéra, who was second at St Cloud; third favourite was an English visitor, a student from Cambridge named Johnson, who had won races at home. My father was now considered so much a friend of France that he was being called 'The Flying Parisian'. Castéra and Johnson both drew even numbers, which meant they went off in the first group, 30 minutes before the odd numbers. My father drew number 187. When the signal was given for the second group to move off, my father went right to the front and was soon on his own. It was raining, and it remained wet all day. Right down the Avénue de la Grande Armée and the Avénue de Neuilly, over the bridges of the Seine, and on towards the first control at St Germain-en-Laye. As he pedalled hard up the steep hill near the town, he passed a group of stragglers from the first group who were pushing their machines. My father had gained 30 minutes on them in 12 miles! Moore caught Castéra and then Johnson. He won in 10 hours and 25 minutes, finishing in front of an enthusiastic crowd at 6.10 pm. The average of only can be attributed to poor roads, lack of tyres, weight of the machine and the low gears. It was nevertheless fast enough that the mayor of Rouen, who was to present the trophies, was only stepping out of his carriage as Moore arrived. The runners-up were Jean-Eugène-André Castéra, sometimes described as a count (comte) even though the title had vanished with the Revolution, and Jean Bobillier from Voiron, on a farm bicycle weighing 35 kg. They finished 15 minutes after Moore and asked to be judged equal second. The only woman to finish in the time limit was a British woman who called herself Miss America. She came in 22nd at dawn next day. There was a banquet in Rouen that night and Moore's bicycle was draped with the Union Jack. When he went back to collect it from where it had been left outside a café in the rue Notre Dame des Victoires, it had disappeared. The historian Derek Roberts wrote: What bicycle did Moore ride in the Paris–Rouen race in 1869? There are two candidates and three or four accounts. Bonneville said