"Jeu Sonore des deux grandes courses cyclistes. Commenté par Robert Chapatte. Paris-Tours, Paris-Roubaix". This one includes an aleatory record, which is enough to make it one of my fetishes, even preferred to "Les 45 Tours de France" .

The game consists of two parts. The first part is played on the green part of the board, and it is a dice game. The sprint of the race is played on the  "velodrome" (blue) part of the board and uses the aleatory record.

 

 

Contents of the big box.

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

The game also featured collectible cards for the 14 cyclists. There were three cards for each rider, and they were supposed to be given as a prize to the player who won the game with that particular rider.

 

 

There are two editions of the game.  This is the smaller box (from Pierre et Bilou's collection).

Although the recordings do not change, the two versions of the game have a record with a slightly different label. This one with the red arrow is from the smaller box (compare with the picture above).

An aleatory record (also known as "multitrack record", "magic record" or "puzzle record") is one that has some separate tracks cut in exact step with each other, so that upon lowering the needle the track is selected at random. In this record the beginning of the narration is the same in all tracks, and just the result of the sprint changes. Each side has 10 different tracks with every cyclist having its chance to win, naturally. Everytime you play the record yoy get a different result, so you'd better listen carefully who won the race!. Aleatory records were invented in 1898 (!) and have been included in toys (talking dolls) and games  for many years. One of my favourites is the fantastic "They're At The Post", a horse-race game which includes 4 LPs.