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The following year he started the Tour de France and twice finished stages in second place.
The following year he started the Tour de France and twice finished stages in second place.
Maes was the 13th child in his family. He started racing when he was 17. He then crashed on the day from Digne to Nice and left the race in an ambulance.
He became a hero in Belgium.
In 1938 he was well on the way to winning Paris-Brussels, leading the race by 100m with only 500m to go. He rode into the velodrome on which the race finished, crossed the line and stopped.
The chasers, who had remembered that there was a further lap to ride, swept by him. lieutenant gave him the lead.
Then he crashed on the eighth stage and abandoned the race.
Maes rode on the track for several years with his namesake, Sylvère Maes, to whom he wasn"t related. Romain Maes stopped racing in 1944 and opened a bar, "In de Gele Trui" (In The Yellow Jersey), near the North station in Brussels. Grand Tour results timeline.