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Paris–Roubaix

Paris–Roubaix is a one-day professional bicycle road race in northern France, starting north of Paris and finishing in Roubaix, at the border with Belgium. It is one of cycling's oldest races, and is one of the 'Monuments' or classics of the European calendar, and contributes points towards the UCI World Ranking.

Paris–Roubaix is famous for rough terrain and cobblestones, or pavé (setts), being, with the Tour of Flanders, E3 Harelbeke and Gent–Wevelgem, one of the cobbled classics. It has been called the Hell of the North, a Sunday in Hell (also the title of a film about the 1976 race), the Queen of the Classics or la Pascale: the Easter race. Since 1977, the winner of Paris–Roubaix has received a sett (cobble stone) as part of his prize.

The terrain has led to the development of specialised frames, wheels and tyres. Punctures and other mechanical problems are common and often influence the result. Despite the esteem of the race, some cyclists dismiss it because of its difficult conditions. The race has also seen several controversies, with winners disqualified.

From its beginning in 1896 until 1967, it started in Paris and ended in Roubaix; in 1966 the start moved to Chantilly; and since 1977 it has started in Compiègne, about 85 km north-east of the centre of Paris. Since 1943, the finish has for the most part taken place in the Roubaix Velodrome. The race is organised by the media group Amaury Sport Organisation annually in mid-April.

The course is maintained by Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix, a group of fans of the race formed in 1983. The forçats du pavé seek to keep the course safe for riders while maintaining its difficulty. Other than during the world wars and, in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic (the April 2021 race was postponed to October), it has taken place every year from its inception.

History
Paris–Roubaix is one of the oldest races of professional road cycling. It was first run in 1896 and has stopped only for the two world wars and the COVID-19 pandemic. The race was created by two Roubaix textile manufacturers, Théodore Vienne (born 28 July 1864) and Maurice Perez. They had been behind the building of a velodrome on 46,000 square metres at the corner of the rue Verte and the route d'Hempempont, which opened on 9 June 1895.

Vienne and Perez held several meetings on the track, one including the first appearance in France by the American sprinter Major Taylor, and then looked for further ideas. In February 1896 they hit on the idea of holding a race from Paris to their track. This presented two problems. The first was that the biggest races started or ended in Paris and that Roubaix might be too provincial a destination. The second was that they could organize the start or finish but not both.

They spoke to Louis Minart, the editor of Le Vélo, the only French daily sports paper. Minart was enthusiastic but said the decision of whether the paper would organize the start and provide publicity belonged to the director, Paul Rousseau. Minart may also have suggested an indirect approach because the mill owners recommended their race not on its own merits, but as preparation for another. They wrote:

"Dear M. Rousseau, Bordeaux–Paris is approaching and this great annual event which has done so much to promote cycling has given us an idea. What would you think of a training race which preceded Bordeaux–Paris by four weeks? The distance between Paris and Roubaix is roughly 280 km, so it would be child's play for the future participants of Bordeaux–Paris. The finish would take place at the Roubaix vélodrome after several laps of the track. Everyone would be assured of an enthusiastic welcome as most of our citizens have never had the privilege of seeing the spectacle of a major road race and we count on enough friends to believe that Roubaix is truly a hospitable town. As prizes we already have subscribed to a first prize of 1,000 francs in the name of the Roubaix velodrome and we will be busy establishing a generous prize list which will be to the satisfaction of all. But for the moment, can we count on the patronage of Le Vélo and on your support for organising the start?"

The proposed first prize represented seven months' wages for a miner at the time.

Rousseau was enthusiastic and sent his cycling editor, Victor Breyer, to find a route. Breyer travelled to Amiens in a Panhard driven by his colleague, Paul Meyan. The following morning Breyer — later deputy organiser of the Tour de France and a leading official of the Union Cycliste Internationale – continued by bike. The wind blew, the rain fell and the temperature dropped. Breyer reached Roubaix filthy and exhausted after a day of riding on cobbles (setts). He swore he would send a telegram to Minart urging him to drop the idea, saying it was dangerous to send a race the way he had just ridden. But that evening a meal and drinks with the team from Roubaix changed his mind.

Easter mystery
Vienne and Perez scheduled their race for Easter Sunday. The Roman Catholic Church objected to it being held on the most sacred day of the liturgical year, suggesting that riders would not have time to attend mass and that spectators might not bother to attend either. Tracts were distributed in Roubaix decrying the venture.

What happened next is uncertain. Legend says that Vienne and Perez promised a mass would be said for the riders in a chapel 200m from the start, in the boulevard Maillot. This story is repeated by Pascal Sergent, the historian of the race, and by Pierre Chany, historian of the sport in general. Sergent goes as far as saying that Victor Breyer, who he says was there, said the service, scheduled for 4am, was cancelled because it was too early. Neither Chany nor Sergent mentions if the date of the race was subsequently changed; however, the first Paris–Roubaix (according to Sergent) was held on 19 April 1896, whereas Easter Sunday in 1896 occurred two weeks earlier, on 5 April.

The first Paris–Roubaix on Easter Sunday was the next year, 1897.

The first race
News of Breyer's ride to Roubaix may have spread. Half those who entered did not turn up at the Brassérie de l'Espérance, the race headquarters at the start. Those who dropped out before the race began included Henri Desgrange, a prominent track rider who went on to organize the Tour de France. The starters did include Maurice Garin, who went on to win Desgrange's first Tour and was the local hope in Roubaix because he and two brothers had opened a cycle shop in the boulevard de Paris the previous year.

Garin came third, 15 minutes behind Josef Fischer, the only German to have won the race until 2015. Only four finished within an hour of the winner. Garin would have come second had he not been knocked over by a crash between two tandems, one of them ridden by his pacers. Garin "finished exhausted and Dr Butrille was obliged to attend the man who had been run over by two machines", said Sergent.

The second race
Garin won the following year, beating Dutchman Mathieu Cordang in the last two kilometres of the velodrome at Roubaix. Sergent said:

"As the two champions appeared they were greeted by a frenzy of excitement and everyone was on their feet to acclaim the two heroes. It was difficult to recognise them. Garin was first, followed by the mud-soaked figure of Cordang. Suddenly, to the stupefaction of everyone, Cordang slipped and fell on the velodrome's cement surface. Garin could not believe his luck. By the time Cordang was back on his bike, he had lost 100 metres. There remained six laps to cover. Two miserable kilometres in which to catch Garin. The crowd held its breath as they watched the incredible pursuit match. The bell rang out. One lap, there remained one lap. 333 metres for Garin, who had a lead of 30 metres on the Batave."

"A classic victory was within his grasp but he could almost feel his adversary's breath on his neck. Somehow Garin held on to his lead of two metres, two little metres for a legendary victory. The stands exploded and the ovation united the two men. Garin exulted under the cheers of the crowd. Cordang cried bitter tears of disappointment."

Hell of the North
The race usually leaves riders caked in mud and grit, from the cobbled roads and rutted tracks of northern France's former coal-mining region. However, this is not how this race earned the name l'enfer du Nord, or Hell of the North. The term was used to describe the route of the race after World War I. Organisers and journalists set off from Paris in 1919 to see how much of the route had survived four years of shelling and trench warfare. Procycling reported:

"They knew little of the permanent effects of the war. Nine million had died and France lost more than any. But, as elsewhere, news was scant. Who even knew if there was still a road to Roubaix? If Roubaix was still there? The car of organisers and journalists made its way along the route those first riders had gone. And at first all looked well. There was destruction and there was poverty and there was a strange shortage of men. But France had survived. But then, as they neared the north, the air began to reek of broken drains, raw sewage and the stench of rotting cattle. Trees which had begun to look forward to spring became instead blackened, ragged stumps, their twisted branches pushed to the sky like the crippled arms of a dying man. Everywhere was mud. Nobody knows who first described it as 'hell', but there was no better word. And that's how it appeared next day in the papers: that little party had seen 'the hell of the north.'"

The words in L'Auto were:

"We enter into the centre of the battlefield. There's not a tree, everything is flattened! Not a square metre that has not been hurled upside down. There's one shell hole after another. The only things that stand out in this churned earth are the crosses with their ribbons in blue, white and red. It is hell! '"

"This wasn't a race. It was a pilgrimage."

History of the cobbles
Seeking the challenge of racing on cobbles is relatively recent. It began at the same time in Paris–Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, when widespread improvements to roads after the second world war brought realisation that the character of both races were changing. Until then the race had been over cobbles not because they were bad but because that was how roads were made. André Mahé, who won in 1949 (see below Controversies), said:

"After the war, of course, the roads were all bad. There were cobbles from the moment you left Paris, or Senlis where we started in those days. There'd be stretches of surfaced roads and often there'd be a cycle path or a pavement and sometimes a thin stretch of something smoother. But you never knew where was best to ride and you were for ever switching about. You could jump your bike up on to a pavement but that got harder the more tired you got. Then you'd get your front wheel up but not your back wheel. That happened to me. And then you'd go sprawling, of course, and you could bring other riders down. Or they'd fall off and bring you down with them. And the cycle paths were often just compressed cinders, which got soft in the rain and got churned up by so many riders using them and then you got stuck and you lost your balance. And come what may, you got covered in coal dust and other muck. No, it's all changed and you can't compare then and now."

The coming of live television prompted mayors along the route to surface their cobbled roads for fear the rest of France would see them as backward and not invested in the region. Albert Bouvet, the organiser, said: "If things don't change, we'll soon be calling it Paris–Valenciennes", reference to a flat race on good roads that often ends in a mass sprint. L'Équipe said: "The riders don't deserve that." Its editor, Jacques Goddet, called Paris–Roubaix "the last great madness of cycling." Bouvet and Jean-Claude Vallaeys formed Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix (see below). Its president, Alain Bernard, led enthusiasts to look for and sometimes maintain obscure cobbled paths. He said:

"Until the war, Paris–Roubaix was all on routes nationales. But many of those were cobbled, which was the spirit of the race, and the riders used to try to ride the cycle paths, if there were any. So Paris–Roubaix has always been on pavé, because pavé was what the roads were made of. Then in 1967 things began to change. There was less pavé than there had been. And so from 1967 the course started moving to the east to use the cobbles that remained there. And then those cobbles began to disappear as well and we feared that Bouvet's predictions were going to come true. That's when we started going out looking for old tracks and abandoned roads that didn't show up on our maps.

In the 1970s, the race only had to go through a village for the mayor to order the road to be surfaced. Pierre Mauroy, when he was mayor of Lille, said he wanted nothing to do with the race and that he'd do nothing to help it. A few years ago, there was barely a village or an area that wanted anything to do with us. If Paris–Roubaix came their way, they felt they were shamed because we were exposing their bad roads. They went out and surfaced them, did all they could to obstruct us. Now they can't get enough of us. I have mayors ringing me to say they've found another stretch of cobbles and would we like to use them."

It was Alain Bernard who found one of the race's most significant cobbled stretches, the Carrefour de l'Arbre. He was out on a Sunday ride, turned off the main road to see what was there and found the last bad cobbles before the finish. It is a bleak area with just a bar by the crossroads. Bernard said: "'Until then, it [the bar ('Cafe de l'Arbre')] was open only one day a year. In France, a bar has to open one day a year to keep its licence. That's all it did, because it's out in the middle of nowhere and nobody went there to drink any more. With the fame that the race brought it, it's now open all year and a busy restaurant as well.'"

The Amis de Paris–Roubaix spend €10–15,000 a year on restoring and rebuilding cobbles. The Amis supply the sand and other material and the repairs are made as training by students from horticulture schools at Dunkirk, Lomme, Raismes and Douai. Each section costs €4–6,000, paid for equally by the Amis, the organisers and the local commune. Bernard said:

"Alain Bernard, President of 'Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix', 2007."

Strategic places of historic races
The strategic places where earlier races could be won or lost include Doullens Hill, Arras, Carvin and the Wattignies bend. Some sections of cobbles have deteriorated beyond the point of safety and repair or have been resurfaced and lost their significance. Other sections are excluded because the route of the race has moved east.

Pacers
Early races were run behind pacers, as were many competitions of the era. The first pacers were other cyclists, on bicycles or tandems. Cars and motorcycles were allowed to pace from 1898. The historian Fer Schroeders says:

"In 1898, even cars and motorcycles were allowed to open the road for the competitors. In 1900, the race was within a hair's breadth of disappearing, with only 19 riders at the start. The following year, the organisation therefore decided to allow help only from pacers on bicycles. And in 1910, help from pacers were stopped for good. An option which lifted Paris–Roubaix out of the background and pushed it, in terms of interest, ahead of the prestigious Bordeaux–Paris."

Course

Originally, the race was from Paris to Roubaix, but in 1966 the start moved to Chantilly, 50 km north, then in 1977 to Compiègne, 80 km north. From Compiègne it now follows a 260 km winding route north to Roubaix, hitting the first cobbles after 100 km. During the last 150 km the cobbles extend more than 50 km. The race culminates with 750m on the smooth concrete of the large outdoor Vélodrome André-Pétrieux in Roubaix. The route is adjusted from year to year as older roads are resurfaced and the organisers seek more cobbles to maintain the character of the race — in 2005, for example, the race included 54.7 km of cobbles.

The start
The race has started at numerous places:

The opening kilometres (the départ fictif) have often been a rolling procession. Racing has started further into the ride (départ réel). The start of open racing has been at:

Main cobbled sectors
The organisers grade the cobbles by length, irregularity, the general condition and their position in the race.

Troisvilles to Inchy
This sector is now usually the first cobbled section, typically about 100 km into the race, and was first used 1987. It is the highest of all the cobbles at 136 m.

Wallers Haveluy
A 2.5 km sector named after Bernard Hinault, the 1981 winner, which also features frequently in the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque race. It starts at 31m and finishes at 34m. It begins with a gentle rise and finishes with a gentle fall.

Trouée d'Arenberg

The Trouée d'Arenberg, Tranchée d'Arenberg, (Trench of Arenberg), Trouee de Wallers Arenberg, has become the symbol of Paris–Roubaix. Officially 'La Drève des Boules d'Herin', the 2400m of cobbles were laid in the time of Napoleon I through the Raismes Forest-Saint-Amand-Wallers, close to Wallers and Valenciennes. (50.399°N, 3.4125°W) The road was proposed for Paris–Roubaix by former professional Jean Stablinski, who had worked in the mine under the woods of Arenberg. The mine closed in 1990 and the passage is now preserved. Although almost 100 km from Roubaix, the sector usually proves decisive and as Stablinski said, Paris–Roubaix is not won in Arenberg, but from there the group with the winners is selected.A memorial to Stablinski stands at one end of the road.

Introduced in 1968, the passage was closed from 1974 to 1983 by the Office National des Fôrets. Until 1998 the entry to the Arenberg pavé was slightly downhill, leading to a sprint for best position. The route was reversed in 1999 to reduce the speed. This was as a result of Johan Museeuw's crash in 1998 as World Cup leader, which resulted in gangrene so severe that amputation of his leg was considered. In 2005 the Trouée d'Arenberg was left out, organisers saying conditions had deteriorated beyond safety limits as abandoned mines had caused sections to subside. The regional and local councils spent €250,000 on adding 50 cm to restore the original width of three metres and the race continued using it. The Italian rider Filippo Pozzato said after trying the road after its repairs: "It's the true definition of hell. It's very dangerous, especially in the first kilometre when we enter it at more than 60kh. It's unbelievable. The bike goes in all directions. It will be a real spectacle but I don't know if it's really necessary to impose it on us."

In 2001 a French rider, Philippe Gaumont, broke his femur after falling at the start of the Trouée when leading the peloton. He said: "What I went through, only I will ever know. My knee cap completely turned to the right, a ball of blood forming on my leg and the bone that broke, without being able to move my body. And the pain, a pain that I wouldn't wish on anyone. The surgeon placed a big support [un gros matériel] in my leg, because the bone had moved so much. Breaking a femur is always serious in itself but an open break in an athlete of high level going flat out, that tears the muscles. At 180 beats [a minute of the heart], there was a colossal amount of blood being pumped, which meant my leg was full of blood. I'm just grateful that the artery was untouched."

Gaumont spent a month and a half in bed, unable to move, and was fitted with a 40 mm section fixed just above the knee and, to the head of the femur, with a 12 mm screw. So many fans have taken away cobbles as souvenirs that the Amis de Paris–Roubaix have had to replace them.

Mons-en-Pévèle
The second of three sectors usually graded as five star difficulty, this 3 km sector includes a 16m rise and 2 right-angled turns. It was first used in 1978 and, as of 2016, has been used every year since except 2001.

Carrefour de l'Arbre
Le Carrefour de l'Arbre (or Pavé de Luchin) is the last section of pavé of the hardest level of difficulty, five stars. The crossroads (carrefour) is on open land between Gruson and Camphin-en-Pévèle. The route departs westward from Camphin-en-Pévèle along the rue de Cysoing towards Camphin de l'Arbre. The first half is a series of corners, then along irregular pavé towards Luchin. The second half finishes at the Café de l'Arbre restaurant and has more even pavé. This 2.1 km sector has often proved decisive due to its proximity to Roubaix (15 km) and cumulative difficulty. In 2023, the Camphin-en-Pévèle sector was renamed after three time winner Eddy Merckx, who became the sixth rider to have a sector named after them.

Roubaix, Espace Charles Crupelandt
The final stretch of cobbles before the stadium is named after a local rider, Charles Crupelandt, who won in 1912 and 1914. The organiser of the Tour de France, Henri Desgrange, predicted he would win his race. Crupelandt then went to war and returned a hero, with the Croix de Guerre.

This 300 m sector was created for the centenary event in 1996 by laying a strip of smooth new cobbles down the centre of a wide street. Among the cobbles are plaques to every race winner, giving the road an official name of 'Chemin des Géants,' [Road of the Giants].

The finish
The finish until 1914 was on the original track at Croix, where the Parc clinic now stands. There were then various finish points:

 * 1896–1914: Rue Verte/route d'Hempempont, Croix, Roubaix
 * 1919: avenue de Jussieu, Roubaix, behind the dairy
 * 1920–1921: Stadium Jean Dubrulle, Roubaix
 * 1922–1928: avenue des Villas (now the avenue Gustave Delory), Roubaix
 * 1929: Stade Amédée Prouvost, Wattrelos
 * 1930–1934: avenue des Villas, Roubaix
 * 1935–1936: Flandres horse track, Marcq
 * 1937–1939: avenue Gustave Delory (former avenue des Villas), Roubaix
 * 1943–1985: Roubaix Velodrome
 * 1986–1988: avenue des Nations-Unies
 * 1989–present (April 2022): Roubaix Velodrome

The race moved to the current stadium in 1943, and there it has stayed with the exceptions of 1986, 1987 and 1988 when the finish was in the avenue des Nations-Unies, outside the offices of La Redoute, the mail-order company which sponsored the race.

The shower room inside the velodrome is distinctive for the open, three-sided, low-walled concrete stalls, each with a brass plaque to commemorate a winner. These include Peter Van Petegem, Eddy Merckx, Roger De Vlaeminck, Rik Van Looy and Fausto Coppi.

"When I stand in the showers in Roubaix, I actually start the preparation for next year."

A commemorative plaque at 37 avenue Gustave Delory honours Émile Masson Jr., the last to win there.

Bicycles
Paris–Roubaix presents a technical challenge to riders, team personnel, and equipment. Special frames and wheels are often used. In the past, developments to cope with the demands of Paris–Roubaix have included the use of wider tires, cantilever brakes, and dual brake levers. More recently, manufacturers such as Specialized have developed new types of bike which are designed to cope with the demands on the cobbled classics: the best known being the Specialized Roubaix series, which has a longer wheelbase and is designed to offer the rider a more forgiving ride. Many teams disperse personnel along the course with spare wheels, equipment and bicycles to help in locations not accessible to the team car.

André Mahé, winner in 1948, said such specialisation is recent:

... [In 1948] We rode the same bikes as the rest of the season. We didn't need to change them because they were much less rigid than modern bikes. The frames moved all over the place. When I attacked, I could feel the bottom bracket swaying underneath me. On the other hand, we had more cobbles. People talk of the amount of cobbles they have now, but when they've finished them they're back on surfaced roads.

Riders have experimented, however. After the Second World War many tried wooden rims of the sort used at the start of cycle racing. Francesco Moser wrapped his handlebars with strips of foam in the 1970s. Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle and Greg LeMond experimented with suspension in their front forks in the 1990s.

Some top riders receive special frames to give more stability and comfort. Different materials make the ride more comfortable. Tom Boonen, using a Time frame with longer wheelbase for the first time, won the race in 2005 and has since continued to use a bike with a longer wheelbase. George Hincapie had a frame featuring a 2 mm elastomer insert at the top of the seat stays. The manufacturers claimed this took nearly all the shock out of the cobbles. Hincapie's Trek bicycle fared less well in 2006: his aluminum steerer tube snapped with 46 km to go, the crash injuring his shoulder.

Canadian rider Steve Bauer had a frame built by Eddy Merckx Bicycles with extremely slack angles, to the extent of being semi-recumbent. It was not a success and was only used for one edition of the race.

The bicycle made for Peter Van Petegem in 2004 was a Time. The distance from bottom bracket to rear axle was 419 mm rather than his normal 403. The distance from the bottom bracket to the front hub was 605 mm instead of 600 mm. The depth of the front forks was 372 mm instead of 367.5 mm The forks were spaced to take 28 mm tyres. The sprockets were steel rather than alloy and the steerer column was cut 5 mm higher than usual to raise the handlebars if needed before the start.

The bad roads cause frequent punctures. A service fleet consisting of four motorcycles and four cars provides spares to riders regardless of team. Yves Hézard of Mavic the equipment company which provides the coverage, said:

"Every year we change fewer wheels, because the wheels and tyres are getting better and better. We changed about 20 wheels today. Five years ago, it was much worse — we'd be changing about a hundred. Tyres are becoming much better than before. So, yes, our job is easier — except that the race generally goes faster now, so we're under a bit more pressure. Every year, there's new types of gears, new aluminium frames, new titanium frames, so it's getting more complex for us to offer neutral service. We have a list in the car of who is riding Mavic or Shimano or Campagnolo; the moment someone gets a flat tyre we need to think of a lot of things at once. Is it a titanium frame or a carbon frame or a steel frame?"

1907 – The wrong gendarme
In 1907, Georges Passerieu broke away from a small leading group just before Douai because he knew he could not outsprint them if they all finished together. He was chased all the way to Roubaix by a Belgian, Cyrille van Hauwaert, and tension in the velodrome was high. The crowd heard that Passerieu had reached the stadium but nobody rode on to the track. The leader was just about to ride in when a gendarme stepped into his path to check if his bicycle had the obligatory tax plate attached to it. Passerieu had already had a hard day and a shouting match broke out before he was allowed to continue.

1930 – The wrong team
In 1930, Jean Maréchal finished 24 seconds ahead of Belgian Julien Vervaecke but was moved to second because, while Maréchal was trying to pass Vervaecke, the Belgian tumbled into a ditch. According to some, Maréchal hit the Belgian's shoulder, causing his fall. Jacques Augendre, historian of the Tour de France, said Maréchal, who was 20, "was riding as an individual for a little bike-maker, Colin, and he got to Roubaix alone. His happiness was short-lived. Arbitrarily accused of having provoked a fall by Julien Vervaecke, with whom he had broken away, he was disqualified without any sort of hearing. Important detail: Vervaecke belonged to the all-powerful Alcyon team, run by the no less powerful Ludovic Feuillet (fr: Ludovic Feuillet) ..."

1934 – The wrong bike
In 1934 Roger Lapébie was disqualified for changing bicycles. Second placed rider Gaston Rebry was awarded the victory once officials discovered that Lapébie's bike was missing a race sticker.

1936 – The wrong man
In 1936 the Belgian Romain Maes, appeared to win but judges declared Frenchman Georges Speicher the winner and Maes second. Shouting began in the stands and for a moment it looked as though fighting would start, but calm returned and the result was upheld. A Belgian may not have won but there were seven Belgians in the first ten.

1949 – The wrong route
The result in 1949 took several months and two international conferences to sort out. André Mahé was first but his win was challenged because he took the wrong course. Mahé was in a break of three that reached Roubaix velodrome in the lead, but he was misdirected by officials and entered the track by the wrong gate. Mahé was declared winner but a few minutes later other riders arrived using the correct route and Serse Coppi, brother of famous Fausto, won the sprint for what was assumed to be the minor placings. After a protest and several months, Serse Coppi was named joint winner with Mahé. Mahé said in 2007:

"C'est trop bête d'en parler (It's too stupid to talk about). There was a break. Coppi attacked. His brother Fausto gave him a push to get him away. He wanted his brother to win. I waited a bit and then I attacked and I caught him and the break. Then I went off by myself. I was going to win Paris–Roubaix. At the entrance to the vélodrome, there were crowds everywhere, blocking the way. I looked around for where to go and I was directed round the outside wall of the track, to where the team cars had to park. It wasn't like nowadays, when there's television and everything. Then it was more chaotic and the whole road was blocked. People said I should have known the way into the track. But how do you know a thing like that at the end of Paris–Roubaix, when you've raced all day over roads like that? A gendarme signalled the way to go and that's the way I went."

"It was a journalist on a motorbike who managed to get up to me. He was shouting 'Not that way! Not that way!' And I turned round in the road and I rode back beneath the outside wall of the grandstand and I saw a gateway that went into the track, a gateway for journalists. And that's the way I went, except that it came out on the other side of the track from the proper entrance. The bunch came in and Serse won the sprint. But then his brother told Serse to go to the judges to object. He told Serse that I hadn't ridden the entire and precise course and that therefore I should be déclassé. But that was below him. Coppi wanted his brother to have a big victory. He was a great champion, Coppi, but to do what he did, to protest like that to get a victory for his brother, that wasn't dignified for a champion. That was below him. A champion like that should never have stooped that low. I never spoke to him about it. Never did. Why should I?"

1981 – The wrong race
In 1981 Bernard Hinault said after winning the race: Paris–Roubaix est une connerie – "Paris–Roubaix is bullshit" or "Paris–Roubaix is plain stupid".

The only other times he rode it were in 1980, when he finished fourth, and in 1982, as the defending champion. When he was criticised, he said: "I don't go into offices and tell people to work harder, yet people ask me to be the strongest on the cobbles." Hinault fell seven times in that race, including 13 km from the finish when a small black dog called Gruson ran out in a bend and ran under his wheel. Hinault had been clear with Roger De Vlaeminck, Hennie Kuiper and Marc Demeyer. The incident made Hinault angry and he raced back to the others and won in Roubaix.

He was not the first star to refuse. Jacques Anquetil called it a lottery after puncturing 13 km from the end in 1958 and never took it seriously again.

In 2002 only two of the top 20 riders in the UCI table – Jens Voigt and Erik Zabel – were on the start line. The following year only Zabel was there. In 2004 he had stayed at home as well. Philippe Brunel wrote in L'Équipe:

"We won't go as far as say that the five-time winner of the Tour [Hinault] – who every year gives the winner his celebration cobble stone on behalf of the organisers — has contributed to the impoverishment [paupérisation] of the queen of classics, which would offend him, but his words have contributed to the snub, or the indifference, of those who stay away. The fact isn't new but the phenomenon is getting worse and is concerning. The peloton of stayaways has grown to the point where Paris–Roubaix is now only for a tight group of specialists... especially the Belgians, capable of maintaining high speed on the cobbles."

1988 – The wrong place and time
The 1988 race contained a rare spectacle, for the first time in 30 years an early morning breakaway group held on until the finish: 27 kilometres into the race a group of unknown riders broke away and the pack did nothing to chase them down throughout the race. It was on a section of cobblestones outside Roubaix that Thomas Wegmüller (SUI) and Dirk Demol (BEL) broke away from the lead group to try for the victory. Wegmüller was ranked 175th in the world, Demol was a factory worker, ranked just inside the top 500 cyclists. As if the success of the breakaway wasn't enough, Paris–Roubaix was about to deliver a cruel irony.

When the two entered Roubaix, Wegmüller ran over a plastic bag that flew out in front of him, which became jammed in his derailleur. Wegmüller was unable to change gears which was crucial for a sprint finish. Demol could have attacked at this moment and won the race with ease, but it was clear he did not want to win in this manner and drafted behind Wegmüller as he got assistance from his team car to remove the bag. They removed most of the bag, but some of it was still jammed and his gears still would not change. Knowing that a bicycle change would be suicidal to his chances, Wegmüller continued on his damaged bike; Demol continued to draft behind him. When it came down to the final sprint, Wegmüller could only watch as Demol easily sprinted ahead to take the victory.

Laurent Fignon finished third after a late breakaway from the chasing peloton. Sean Kelly, also part of the chase group containing the top riders in the world, crashed late in the race, after it was already decided the breakaway would not be caught and crossed the finish line with blood covering his face.

2006 – The wrong train
In 2006 Leif Hoste, Peter Van Petegem and Vladimir Gusev were disqualified for riding through a closed railway level crossing 10 km before the finish and just ahead of an approaching freight train. Fabian Cancellara won and Tom Boonen and Alessandro Ballan were given the remaining places on the podium. "I know the rules, yes, but I don't understand why nobody stopped us, and why nothing was said to us in the 10 km that followed. All that just to be told two minutes before going to the podium that we had been disqualified. Cancellara deserved his victory but for me, I will always be in second place even though I have been disqualified."

"'It's crazy. In Belgium they would have stopped the train.'"

Deaths
In the 2018 race, Michael Goolaerts (Vérandas Willems–Crelan) crashed after suffering a cardiac arrest 100 km into the race. A doctor attempted to resuscitate him on the spot. He was flown to hospital in Lille by helicopter for treatment. At 23:30 local time, his death was announced by his team.

Theo de Rooij
The American television channel CBS covered Paris–Roubaix in the 1980s. Theo de Rooij, a Dutchman, had been in a promising position to win the 1985 race but had then crashed, losing his chance of winning. Covered in mud, he offered his thoughts on the race to CBS' John Tesh after the race:

"'It's a bollocks, this race!' said de Rooij. 'You're working like an animal, you don't have time to piss, you wet your pants. You're riding in mud like this, you're slipping ... it's a pile of shit'."

When then asked if he would start the race again, de Rooij replied:

"Sure, it's the most beautiful race in the world!" Sean Kelly, a two-time winner of the event, one of the greatest Classics riders of all time, and a rider noted for his hardness and stoicism, referred on a number of occasions to his 'love-hate' relationship with 'the Hell of the North';

"A Paris–Roubaix without rain is not a true Paris–Roubaix. Throw in a little snow as well, it's not serious." – Sean Kelly

"Paris–Roubaix is a horrible race to ride but the most beautiful one to win." – Sean Kelly

Other observations

 * "Let me tell you, though — there's a huge difference between the Tour of Flanders and Paris–Roubaix. They're not even close to the same. In one, the cobbles are used every day by the cars, and kept up, and stuff like that. The other one — it's completely different ... The best I could do would be to describe it like this — they plowed a dirt road, flew over it with a helicopter, and then just dropped a bunch of rocks out of the helicopter! That's Paris–Roubaix. It's that bad — it's ridiculous." – Chris Horner

 * "This is a race that suits me when I'm having a good day. On the other hand, if you don't have the legs, this is the worst place you could possibly be." – Jo Planckaert, 2004
 * "It's a circus, and I don't want to be one of the clowns." – Chris Boardman (speaking before the start on British Eurosport).
 * "Everybody has his own story during the race. When I get back to the bus I will hear the stories of my teammates and some stories come together and I start to understand what happened. It's the beauty of the race." – Wout van Aert, 2022

Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix
Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix – the "friends" of the race – is an enthusiasts' group founded by Jean-Claude Vallaeys in 1983. It is based in France but open to members all over the world. It has its roots in the Paris–Roubaix Cyclo-Touriste of 1972. By 1982 there were 7,242 participants. There and at other events on the course, a petition calling for the cobbles to be saved gathered 10,000 signatures. Jean-Claude Valleys, Jean-François Pescheux and the Vélo-club de Roubaix, which Vallaeys founded in 1966, formed Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix in 1982 at a photo exhibition at the Maison du Nord-Pas de Calais in Paris.

Its aim was to find enough stretches of cobbled road to preserve the nature of the race. So many roads had been resurfaced that, as the organiser said, there was a risk that it would become a fast race on smooth roads won by sprinters rather than those who had fought through hell. Alain Bernard, who succeeded Vallaeys, says: "We have succeeded in that. Today, the association looks after the maintenance of these paths of legend, working with local administrations to preserve them. But alongside that, we also do other things to preserve the value of the race, building up an impressive collection of documents, holding exhibitions, honouring former winners, holding tours of the route."

Les Amis said in 2007 that it was too late to save the sector of Bersée, which was removed from the race because of its dangerous state in 2007, but restored two years later. The situation is becoming critical, it says, at the Pont Gibus at Wallers, at Mons-en-Pévèle, Pont Thibaut at Ennevelin, the pavé of the Duclos-Lassalle section at Cysoing, and at Camphin-en-Pévèle.

"Their disappearance would be a fatal blow to the Queen of Classics", says the association.

Les forçats du pavé
The weather is often bad for the riders; it is frequently worse for the forçats du pavé (literally 'convicts of the cobbles'), as they call themselves In March 2008, "Les Amis" published an account of their work thus:

Saturday 22 March: a cold wind sweeps the plain of Pévèle; alternating showers of hail, melted snow and cold rain. Not a day to venture outside... Nevertheless, at the foot of the Mons-en-Pévèle ridge, silhouettes busy themselves along the soaked cobble roadway. Backs bent against the gusts, they tirelessly scratch at the ground with primitive tools. Who are these dozen souls — A work-gang from a byegone era? Automatons? Treasure-hunters? No, these are members of the "Amis de Paris Roubaix", trying to clean off the mud and crusted earth left on the cobbles by farm work. They are on an important section of Paris–Roubaix and, without their intervention, the greatest of cycling classics, due to be held in only a few days, will not be able to come through... And without these cobbled routes, the Paris–Roubaix would disappear, depriving the whole world of one of sport's most intense and gripping events. This they know, and they'll be back again the two weekends before the race, far from the media and officials who will soon bustle here. The passion that drives them is much stronger than the bad weather. It has nothing to do with the current storms in the cycling world. These discreet servants of the "Queen of the Classics" have only one ambition — to clean the stones so that when the day comes for the champion to be crowned they can hold their cobbled trophy high.

Most individual victories

 * 4 wins
 * 🇧🇪 Roger De Vlaeminck (1972, 1974, 1975, 1977)
 * 🇧🇪 Tom Boonen (2005, 2008, 2009, 2012)

 * 3 wins

 * 🇫🇷 Octave Lapize (1909, 1910, 1911)
 * 🇧🇪 Gaston Rebry (1931, 1934, 1935)
 * 🇧🇪 Rik Van Looy (1961, 1962, 1965)
 * 🇧🇪 Eddy Merckx (1968, 1970, 1973)
 * 🇮🇹 Francesco Moser (1978, 1979, 1980)
 * 🇧🇪 Johan Museeuw (1996, 2000, 2002)
 * Fabian Cancellara (2006, 2010, 2013)

 * 2 wins (12)
 * 🇮🇹 Maurice Garin (1897, 1898)
 * 🇫🇷 Lucien Lesna (1901, 1902)
 * 🇫🇷 Hippolyte Aucouturier (1903, 1904)
 * 🇫🇷 Charles Crupelandt (1912, 1914)
 * 🇫🇷 Henri Pélissier (1919, 1921)
 * 🇧🇪 Georges Claes (1946, 1947)
 * 🇧🇪 Rik Van Steenbergen (1948, 1952)
 * 🇮🇪 Sean Kelly (1984, 1986)
 * 🇫🇷 Marc Madiot (1985, 1991)
 * 🇫🇷 Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle (1992, 1993)
 * 🇮🇹 Franco Ballerini (1995, 1998)

 * Mathieu van der Poel (2023, 2024)

Fastest editions

 * The record held by Peter Post, was set on the pre-1968 course, which contained far fewer cobbles.

Other records

 * Most races completed by a rider – 16, by Raymond Impanis (1947–1963), Servais Knaven (1995–2010), and Mathew Hayman (2000–2001, 2003, 2005–2006, 2008–2018). – 15, Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle,
 * Most races (completed and not completed) – 18, by Raymond Poulidor (1960–1977, best result: 5th in 1962)
 * Oldest winner – Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, 38 years and 8 months in 1993.
 * Largest winning margin (postwar) – 5 minutes and 21 seconds, when Eddy Merckx beat Roger De Vlaeminck in 1970.
 * Closest margin of victory – 1 cm, between Eddy Planckaert and Steve Bauer in 1990.
 * Slowest victory – 12 hours and 15 minutes, in 1919 when Henri Pélissier won on roads devastated by World War I.
 * Longest victorious break – 222 km, by Dirk Demol and Thomas Wegmüller in 1988.
 * Longest solo victorious break – 60 km, by Andrei Tchmil in 1994 and Mathieu van der Poel in 2024

Other cobbled races
Paris–Roubaix is sometimes compared to the other famous cobbled race, the Tour of Flanders in Belgium. Paris–Roubaix is flatter and has more difficult cobbles while the Tour of Flanders contains a series of hills, many on cobbles, like the Koppenberg or Kapelmuur.

In addition to Paris–Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, called the cobbled classics, other spring races like Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Gent–Wevelgem feature extensive cobbles.

Related events
The U23 Paris–Roubaix or Paris–Roubaix Espoirs is raced in the early summer.

The Paris–Roubaix Cyclo is organised by the Velo Club de Roubaix every other June. This allows amateurs to experience the cobbles, the finishing laps in the vélodrome, and the showers. There is a choice of three levels: 120 km, most of the cobbled sectors; 190 km all the cobbles; or the full 261 km. All finishers receive a small cobblestone on a wooden plinth. The Paris–Roubaix Skoda Classic Challenge is organised the day before the pro race in April.

From 2021, Paris–Roubaix Femmes – a professional women's race in the UCI Women's World Tour – has been held on Saturday, with the men's race taking place on the Sunday. It follows the same terrain as the men's race, albeit over a shorter distance.

In the United States, there are several examples of races or sportives over difficult or mixed terrain that are referred to by the name "Roubaix", for example the Barry-Roubaix (which rhymes with Paris-Roubaix in French), the Rouge Roubaix, and the Brandywine Valley Roubaix.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Paris–Roubaix


text:
Drugstore Cowboy

Drugstore Cowboy is a 1989 American crime drama film directed by the American filmmaker Gus Van Sant. Written by Van Sant and Daniel Yost and based on an autobiographical novel by James Fogle, the film stars Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, Heather Graham and William S. Burroughs. It was Van Sant's second film as director.

At the time the film was made, the source novel by Fogle was unpublished. It was later published in 1990, by which time Fogle had been released from prison. Fogle, like the characters in his story, was a long-time drug user and dealer.

The film was theatrically released in the United States on October 6, 1989, and received acclaim from critics.

Plot
In 1971, 26-year-old Bob Hughes leads a nomadic group of drug addicts—his wife Dianne, his best friend Rick, and Rick's teenage girlfriend Nadine—who travel across the Pacific Northwest robbing pharmacies and hospitals to support their habits.

After stealing from a Portland, Oregon, pharmacy, they drive home to get high, and are visited by David, a local low-life seeking hard-to-find Dilaudid. Bob claims they have none, but offers to trade him morphine for speed. Initially reluctant, David is persuaded to trade and leaves. Later, police officers led by Detective Gentry, who correctly assumes the group is responsible for the pharmacy robbery, raid and wreck their apartment in an unsuccessful search for the stolen drugs, which Dianne has buried outside.

After moving to another apartment, Bob realizes that Gentry has the group under surveillance. Bob proceeds to devise an elaborate ruse which results in one of the policemen, Trousinski, being mistaken for a peeper by a neighbor who shoots and injures him. The next day, a furious Gentry assaults Bob. Believing a hex has been brought upon them, the group goes "crossroading" and robs a drugstore via an open transom. They find their haul includes vials of pure powdered Dilaudid worth thousands of dollars each. Declaring that, "when you're hot, you're hot," Bob convinces Dianne that he should rob a hospital.

During the robbery, Bob is almost captured, and the group returns to their motel to find Nadine has fatally overdosed on a stolen bottle of Dilaudid. According to Bob, she has also put "the worst of all hexes" on them by leaving a hat on her bed. After temporarily storing Nadine's body in the motel's attic, they are alerted by the motel manager that their room was previously booked for a sheriffs' convention, and they must check out. Bob, suffering tremendous anxiety and stress-induced visions of handcuffs and prison, sneaks the body out of the motel in a garment bag. Before burying Nadine in a forest, Bob tells Dianne that he is going to get clean and begin a 21-day methadone treatment program. Shocked by Bob's decision, Dianne refuses to join him.

Bob moves into a long-stay motel in Portland and gets a low-level manufacturing job. At the methadone clinic, he encounters an elderly, drug-addicted priest named Tom, whom Bob remembers from his days as an altar boy. Gentry pays a visit to the motel and says that Trousinski has been making threats against Bob, whom Gentry encourages staying sober. Bob later witnesses David bullying a young man who supposedly owes him money. Bob intervenes and lets the man escape, much to David's frustration.

One night, Dianne arrives at the motel and reveals that she is now in a relationship with Rick, the group's new leader. Dianne asks Bob what happened on the road to make him change his life, and he answers that Nadine's death, the hex she put on them, and the possibility of serious prison time contributed to his decision. He reveals a deal he made with a higher power: if he could get Nadine's body out of the motel, past the cops, and into the ground, he would straighten out his life. Bob suggests Dianne stay the night with him, but she declines, and gives Bob a package of drugs before leaving. Bob gives the drugs to Tom (who rejects all of them except for a bottle of Dilaudid). Returning to his room, Bob is attacked by two masked figures, one of whom is David, who thinks he has drugs. Bob tells them that he is clean, but David does not believe this and shoots him. A neighbor phones for help, and Bob is loaded onto a stretcher. Asked who shot him, Bob tells Gentry it was "the hat."

While riding in the ambulance, Bob concludes via a voice-over that he has "paid his debt to the hat" and so can return to his former lifestyle without breaking his commitment. He is amused by the perceived irony of the police driving him to a hospital — "the fattest pharmacy in town."

Cast

 * Matt Dillon as Bob Hughes
 * Kelly Lynch as Dianne Hughes
 * James LeGros as Rick
 * Heather Graham as Nadine
 * Max Perlich as David
 * James Remar as Gentry
 * Grace Zabriskie as Mrs. Hughes
 * William S. Burroughs as Father Tom Murphy

Production
Tom Waits was Van Sant's first choice to play the lead, although the finance company would not support Van Sant if he had cast him. Officially the reason given was that Waits was appearing in another movie they were financing, although Van Sant has said he suspected the Oscar win of Kiss of the Spider Woman, a film they had also financed, had made them want a lead who could win an Oscar.

Filming locations
Drugstore Cowboy was filmed mainly around Portland, Oregon, including an area in the Pearl District that used to be a railyard, with a viaduct going over it. The Lovejoy Columns, which formerly held up the viaduct and feature outsider artwork, are featured in the movie. The initial drugstore scene was filmed at the Nob Hill Pharmacy on NW Glisan Street.

Music
The soundtrack includes songs that are contemporaneous with the film's setting, along with original music by Elliot Goldenthal. It is one of his earliest works; in it, he does not use an orchestra, but a whole range of instruments treated in a synthesizer. The score and soundtrack were also the first that Goldenthal worked on with Richard Martinez, a music producer whose "computer expertise and sound production assistance" became the basis for frequent subsequent collaborations. AllMusic rated this soundtrack three stars out of five.

 * Side one
 * 1) "For All We Know" (4:58) – Abbey Lincoln
 * 2) "Little Things" (2:25) – Bobby Goldsboro
 * 3) "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" (2:38) – Jackie DeShannon
 * 4) "Psychotic Reaction" (3:06) – Count Five
 * 5) "Judy in Disguise" (2:56) – John Fred & His Playboy Band
 * 6) "The Israelites" (2:47) – Desmond Dekker & The Aces
 * Side two
 * 1) "Yesterday's Jones" (0:45)
 * 2) "Morpheus Ascending" (1:17)
 * 3) "Monkey Frenzy" (2:20)
 * 4) "Wonder Waltz" (1:19)
 * 5) "White Gardenia" (1:54)
 * 6) "The Floating Hex" (1:37)
 * 7) "Mr. F. Wadd" (1:02)
 * 8) "Elegy Mirror" (0:48)
 * 9) "Panda the Dog" (0:51)
 * 10) "Heist and Hat" (1:36)
 * 11) "Strategy Song" (2:04)
 * 12) "Bob's New Life" (2:48)
 * 13) "Clockworks" (0:32)
 * 14) "Cage Iron" (1:03)
 * 15) "Goodnight Nadine" (1:28)

Reception
The film was very well received critically and is listed on the Top Ten lists of both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, for films released in 1989. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 97% approval rating based on 29 reviews, with an average score of 8/10 and a consensus: "Drugstore Cowboy takes us into a violent, transient world with cool, contemplative style". Review aggregator Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 82 based on 15 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

In his print review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert gave the film 4 stars out of a possible 4. He described Dillon as offering "one of the great recent American movie performances" and highlighted how the film was successful by portraying the characters not as "bad people [but] sick people" who formed an unorthodox family to cope with "the desperation in their lives". Ebert also singled out Burroughs's cameo as "a guest appearance by Death."

Accolades
Drugstore Cowboy won the following awards:
 * L.A. Film Critics Association (1989) — Best Screenplay (Dan Yost, Gus Van Sant)
 * National Society of Film Critics (1989) — Best Film, Best Director
 * Independent Spirit Award (1989) — Best Male Lead (Matt Dillon), Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Male (Max Perlich)
 * New York Film Critics Circle (1989) — Best Screenplay

title: Drugstore Cowboy


text:
Fatou's lemma

In mathematics, Fatou's lemma establishes an inequality relating the Lebesgue integral of the limit inferior of a sequence of functions to the limit inferior of integrals of these functions. The lemma is named after Pierre Fatou.

Fatou's lemma can be used to prove the Fatou–Lebesgue theorem and Lebesgue's dominated convergence theorem.

Standard statement
In what follows, $$\operatorname{\mathcal B}_{\bar\R_{\geq 0}}$$ denotes the $$\sigma$$-algebra of Borel sets on $$[0,+\infty]$$.

$$

Fatou's lemma remains true if its assumptions hold $$\mu$$-almost everywhere. In other words, it is enough that there is a null set $$N$$ such that the values $$\{f_n(x)\}$$ are non-negative for every $${x\in X\setminus N}.$$ To see this, note that the integrals appearing in Fatou's lemma are unchanged if we change each function on $$N$$.

Proof
Fatou's lemma does not require the monotone convergence theorem, but the latter can be used to provide a quick and natural proof. A proof directly from the definitions of integrals is given further below.

Via the Monotone Convergence Theorem
let $$\textstyle g_n(x)=\inf_{k\geq n}f_k(x)$$. Then: Since
 * 1) the sequence $$\{g_n(x)\}_n$$ is pointwise non-decreasing at any $x$ and
 * 2) $$g_n\leq f_n$$, $$\forall n \in \N$$.
 * $$f(x) =\liminf_{n\to\infty} f_n(x) = \sup_n \inf_{k\geq n} f_k(x) = \sup_n g_n(x)$$,

and infima and suprema of measurable functions are measurable we see that $$f$$ is measurable.

By the Monotone Convergence Theorem and property (1), the sup and integral may be interchanged:
 * $$\begin{align}

\int_X f\,d\mu&= \int_X \sup_n g_n\,d\mu\\ &=\sup_n \int_X g_n\,d\mu\\ &=\liminf_{n\to \infty}\int_X g_n\,d\mu\\ &\leq \liminf_{n\to \infty}\int_X f_n\,d\mu, \end{align}$$ where the last step used property (2).

From "first principles"
To demonstrate that the monotone convergence theorem is not "hidden", the proof below does not use any properties of Lebesgue integral except those established here and the fact that the functions $$f$$ and $$g_n$$ are measurable.

Denote by $$\operatorname{SF}(f)$$ the set of simple $$(\mathcal{F}, \operatorname{\mathcal B}_{\R_{\geq 0}})$$-measurable functions $$s:X\to [0,\infty)$$ such that $$0\leq s\leq f$$ on $$X$$.

$$

$$

Now we turn to the main theorem

$$ $$ $$

$$ $$

$$

$$ $$ The proof is complete.

Examples for strict inequality
Equip the space $$S$$ with the Borel σ-algebra and the Lebesgue measure.
 * Example for a probability space: Let $$S=[0,1]$$ denote the unit interval. For every natural number $$n$$ define

f_n(x)=\begin{cases}n&\text{for }x\in (0,1/n),\\ 0&\text{otherwise.} \end{cases}$$
 * Example with uniform convergence: Let $$S$$ denote the set of all real numbers. Define

f_n(x)=\begin{cases}\frac1n&\text{for }x\in [0,n],\\ 0&\text{otherwise.} \end{cases}$$

These sequences $$(f_n)_{n\in\N}$$ converge on $$S$$ pointwise (respectively uniformly) to the zero function (with zero integral), but every $$f_n$$ has integral one.

The role of non-negativity
A suitable assumption concerning the negative parts of the sequence f1, f2,. . . of functions is necessary for Fatou's lemma, as the following example shows. Let S denote the half line [0,∞) with the Borel σ-algebra and the Lebesgue measure. For every natural number n define

f_n(x)=\begin{cases}-\frac1n&\text{for }x\in [n,2n],\\ 0&\text{otherwise.} \end{cases}$$ This sequence converges uniformly on S to the zero function and the limit, 0, is reached in a finite number of steps: for every x ≥ 0, if $S_{n}$, then fn(x) = 0. However, every function fn has integral −1. Contrary to Fatou's lemma, this value is strictly less than the integral of the limit (0).

As discussed in below, the problem is that there is no uniform integrable bound on the sequence from below, while 0 is the uniform bound from above.

Reverse Fatou lemma
Let f1, f2,. . . be a sequence of extended real-valued measurable functions defined on a measure space (S,Σ,μ). If there exists a non-negative integrable function g on S such that fn ≤ g for all n, then

\limsup_{n\to\infty}\int_S f_n\,d\mu\leq\int_S\limsup_{n\to\infty}f_n\,d\mu. $$

Note: Here g integrable means that g is measurable and that $$\textstyle\int_S g\,d\mu<\infty$$.

Sketch of proof
We apply linearity of Lebesgue integral and Fatou's lemma to the sequence $$g - f_n.$$ Since $$\textstyle\int_Sg\,d\mu < +\infty,$$ this sequence is defined $$\mu$$-almost everywhere and non-negative.

Integrable lower bound
Let f1, f2,. . . be a sequence of extended real-valued measurable functions defined on a measure space (S,Σ,μ). If there exists an integrable function g on S such that fn ≥ −g for all n, then

\int_S \liminf_{n\to\infty} f_n\,d\mu \le \liminf_{n\to\infty} \int_S f_n\,d\mu. $$

Proof
Apply Fatou's lemma to the non-negative sequence given by fn + g.

Pointwise convergence
If in the previous setting the sequence f1, f2,. . . converges pointwise to a function f μ-almost everywhere on S, then
 * $$\int_S f\,d\mu \le \liminf_{n\to\infty} \int_S f_n\,d\mu\,.$$

Proof
Note that f has to agree with the limit inferior of the functions fn almost everywhere, and that the values of the integrand on a set of measure zero have no influence on the value of the integral.

Convergence in measure
The last assertion also holds, if the sequence f1, f2,. . . converges in measure to a function f.

Proof
There exists a subsequence such that
 * $$\lim_{k\to\infty} \int_S f_{n_k}\,d\mu=\liminf_{n\to\infty} \int_S f_n\,d\mu.$$

Since this subsequence also converges in measure to f, there exists a further subsequence, which converges pointwise to f almost everywhere, hence the previous variation of Fatou's lemma is applicable to this subsubsequence.

Fatou's Lemma with Varying Measures
In all of the above statements of Fatou's Lemma, the integration was carried out with respect to a single fixed measure μ. Suppose that μn is a sequence of measures on the measurable space (S,Σ) such that (see Convergence of measures)
 * $$\forall E\in \mathcal{F} \colon\; \mu_n(E)\to \mu(E)$$.

Then, with fn non-negative integrable functions and f being their pointwise limit inferior, we have
 * $$ \int_S f\,d\mu \leq \liminf_{n\to \infty} \int_S f_n\, d\mu_n. $$

 * {| class="toccolours collapsible collapsed" width="90%" style="text-align:left"

!Proof
 * We will prove something a bit stronger here. Namely, we will allow fn to converge μ-almost everywhere on a subset E of S. We seek to show that
 * We will prove something a bit stronger here. Namely, we will allow fn to converge μ-almost everywhere on a subset E of S. We seek to show that

\int_E f\,d\mu \le \liminf_{n\to\infty} \int_E f_n\,d\mu_n\,. $$ Let
 * $$ K=\{x\in E|f_n(x)\rightarrow f(x)\} $$.

Then μ(E-K)=0 and
 * $$ \int_{E}f\,d\mu=\int_{E-K}f\,d\mu,\int_{E}f_n\,d\mu=\int_{E-K}f_n\,d\mu ~\forall n\in \N. $$

Thus, replacing E by E-K we may assume that fn converge to f pointwise on E. Next, note that for any simple function φ we have
 * $$ \int_{E}\phi\, d\mu=\lim_{n\to \infty} \int_{E} \phi\, d\mu_n. $$

Hence, by the definition of the Lebesgue Integral, it is enough to show that if φ is any non-negative simple function less than or equal to f, then

\int_{E}\phi \,d\mu\leq \liminf_{n\rightarrow \infty} \int_{E}f_n\,d\mu_n $$ Let a be the minimum non-negative value of φ. Define

A=\{x\in E |\phi(x)>a\} $$

We first consider the case when $$\int_{E}\phi\, d\mu=\infty$$. We must have that μ(A) is infinite since
 * $$\int_{E}\phi\, d\mu \leq M\mu(A),$$

where M is the (necessarily finite) maximum value of that φ attains.

Next, we define

A_n=\{x\in E |f_k(x)>a~\forall k\geq n \}. $$ We have that

A\subseteq \bigcup_n A_n \Rightarrow \mu(\bigcup_n A_n)=\infty. $$ But An is a nested increasing sequence of functions and hence, by the continuity from below μ,

\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \mu(A_n)=\infty. $$. Thus,

\lim_{n\to\infty}\mu_n(A_n)=\mu(A_n)=\infty. $$. At the same time,

\int_E f_n\, d\mu_n \geq a \mu_n(A_n) \Rightarrow \liminf_{n\to \infty}\int_E f_n \, d\mu_n = \infty = \int_E \phi\, d\mu, $$ proving the claim in this case.

The remaining case is when $$\int_{E}\phi\, d\mu<\infty$$. We must have that μ(A) is finite. Denote, as above, by M the maximum value of φ and fix ε>0. Define

A_n=\{x\in E|f_k(x)>(1-\epsilon)\phi(x)~\forall k\geq n\}. $$ Then An is a nested increasing sequence of sets whose union contains A. Thus, A-An is a decreasing sequence of sets with empty intersection. Since A has finite measure (this is why we needed to consider the two separate cases),

\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \mu(A-A_n)=0. $$ Thus, there exists n such that

\mu(A-A_k)<\epsilon ,~\forall k\geq n. $$ Therefore, since

\lim_{n\to \infty} \mu_n(A-A_k)=\mu(A-A_k), $$ there exists N such that

\mu_k(A-A_k)<\epsilon,~\forall k\geq N. $$ Hence, for $$k\geq N$$

\int_E f_k \, d\mu_k \geq \int_{A_k}f_k \, d\mu_k \geq (1-\epsilon)\int_{A_k}\phi\, d\mu_k. $$ At the same time,

\int_E \phi \, d\mu_k = \int_A \phi \, d\mu_k = \int_{A_k} \phi \, d\mu_k + \int_{A-A_k} \phi \, d\mu_k. $$ Hence,

(1-\epsilon)\int_{A_k} \phi \, d\mu_k \geq (1-\epsilon)\int_E \phi \, d\mu_k - \int_{A-A_k} \phi \, d\mu_k. $$ Combining these inequalities gives that

\int_{E} f_k \, d\mu_k \geq (1-\epsilon)\int_E \phi \, d\mu_k - \int_{A-A_k} \phi \, d\mu_k \geq \int_E \phi \, d\mu_k -  \epsilon\left(\int_{E} \phi \, d\mu_k+M\right). $$ Hence, sending ε to 0 and taking the liminf in n, we get that

\liminf_{n\rightarrow \infty} \int_{E} f_n \, d\mu_k \geq \int_E \phi \, d\mu, $$ completing the proof.
 * }

Fatou's lemma for conditional expectations
In probability theory, by a change of notation, the above versions of Fatou's lemma are applicable to sequences of random variables X1, X2,. . . defined on a probability space $$\scriptstyle(\Omega,\,\mathcal F,\,\mathbb P)$$; the integrals turn into expectations. In addition, there is also a version for conditional expectations.

Standard version
Let X1, X2,. . . be a sequence of non-negative random variables on a probability space $$\scriptstyle(\Omega,\mathcal F,\mathbb P)$$ and let $$\scriptstyle \mathcal G\,\subset\,\mathcal F$$ be a sub-σ-algebra. Then
 * $$\mathbb{E}\Bigl[\liminf_{n\to\infty}X_n\,\Big|\,\mathcal G\Bigr]\le\liminf_{n\to\infty}\,\mathbb{E}[X_n|\mathcal G]$$  almost surely.

Note: Conditional expectation for non-negative random variables is always well defined, finite expectation is not needed.

Proof
Besides a change of notation, the proof is very similar to the one for the standard version of Fatou's lemma above, however the monotone convergence theorem for conditional expectations has to be applied.

Let X denote the limit inferior of the Xn. For every natural number k define pointwise the random variable
 * $$Y_k=\inf_{n\ge k}X_n.$$

Then the sequence Y1, Y2,. . . is increasing and converges pointwise to X. For k ≤ n, we have Yk ≤ Xn, so that
 * $$\mathbb{E}[Y_k|\mathcal G]\le\mathbb{E}[X_n|\mathcal G]$$  almost surely

by the monotonicity of conditional expectation, hence
 * $$\mathbb{E}[Y_k|\mathcal G]\le\inf_{n\ge k}\mathbb{E}[X_n|\mathcal G]$$  almost surely,

because the countable union of the exceptional sets of probability zero is again a null set. Using the definition of X, its representation as pointwise limit of the Yk, the monotone convergence theorem for conditional expectations, the last inequality, and the definition of the limit inferior, it follows that almost surely

\begin{align} \mathbb{E}\Bigl[\liminf_{n\to\infty}X_n\,\Big|\,\mathcal G\Bigr] &=\mathbb{E}[X|\mathcal G] =\mathbb{E}\Bigl[\lim_{k\to\infty}Y_k\,\Big|\,\mathcal G\Bigr] =\lim_{k\to\infty}\mathbb{E}[Y_k|\mathcal G]\\ &\le\lim_{k\to\infty} \inf_{n\ge k}\mathbb{E}[X_n|\mathcal G] =\liminf_{n\to\infty}\,\mathbb{E}[X_n|\mathcal G]. \end{align} $$

Extension to uniformly integrable negative parts
Let X1, X2,. . . be a sequence of random variables on a probability space $$\scriptstyle(\Omega,\mathcal F,\mathbb P)$$ and let $$\scriptstyle \mathcal G\,\subset\,\mathcal F$$ be a sub-σ-algebra. If the negative parts

 * $$X_n^-:=\max\{-X_n,0\},\qquad n\in{\mathbb N},$$

are uniformly integrable with respect to the conditional expectation, in the sense that, for ε > 0 there exists a c > 0 such that

 * $$\mathbb{E}\bigl[X_n^-1_{\{X_n^->c\}}\,|\,\mathcal G\bigr]<\varepsilon,

\qquad\text{for all }n\in\mathbb{N},\,\text{almost surely}$$, then

 * $$\mathbb{E}\Bigl[\liminf_{n\to\infty}X_n\,\Big|\,\mathcal G\Bigr]\le\liminf_{n\to\infty}\,\mathbb{E}[X_n|\mathcal G]$$  almost surely.

Note: On the set where

 * $$X:=\liminf_{n\to\infty}X_n$$

satisfies

 * $$\mathbb{E}[\max\{X,0\}\,|\,\mathcal G]=\infty,$$

the left-hand side of the inequality is considered to be plus infinity. The conditional expectation of the limit inferior might not be well defined on this set, because the conditional expectation of the negative part might also be plus infinity.

Proof
Let ε > 0. Due to uniform integrability with respect to the conditional expectation, there exists a c > 0 such that

 * $$\mathbb{E}\bigl[X_n^-1_{\{X_n^->c\}}\,|\,\mathcal G\bigr]<\varepsilon

\qquad\text{for all }n\in\mathbb{N},\,\text{almost surely}.$$

Since

 * $$X+c\le\liminf_{n\to\infty}(X_n+c)^+,$$

where x+ := max{x,0} denotes the positive part of a real x, monotonicity of conditional expectation (or the above convention) and the standard version of Fatou's lemma for conditional expectations imply

 * $$\mathbb{E}[X\,|\,\mathcal G]+c

\le\mathbb{E}\Bigl[\liminf_{n\to\infty}(X_n+c)^+\,\Big|\,\mathcal G\Bigr] \le\liminf_{n\to\infty}\mathbb{E}[(X_n+c)^+\,|\,\mathcal G]$$  almost surely.

Since

 * $$(X_n+c)^+=(X_n+c)+(X_n+c)^-\le X_n+c+X_n^-1_{\{X_n^->c\}},$$

we have

 * $$\mathbb{E}[(X_n+c)^+\,|\,\mathcal G]

\le\mathbb{E}[X_n\,|\,\mathcal G]+c+\varepsilon$$  almost surely,

hence

 * $$\mathbb{E}[X\,|\,\mathcal G]\le

\liminf_{n\to\infty}\mathbb{E}[X_n\,|\,\mathcal G]+\varepsilon$$  almost surely.

This implies the assertion.

title: Fatou's lemma


text:
Cross compiler

A cross compiler is a compiler capable of creating executable code for a platform other than the one on which the compiler is running. For example, a compiler that runs on a PC but generates code that runs on Android devices is a cross compiler.

A cross compiler is useful to compile code for multiple platforms from one development host. Direct compilation on the target platform might be infeasible, for example on embedded systems with limited computing resources.

Cross compilers are distinct from source-to-source compilers. A cross compiler is for cross-platform software generation of machine code, while a source-to-source compiler translates from one coding language to another in text code. Both are programming tools.

Use
The fundamental use of a cross compiler is to separate the build environment from target environment. This is useful in several situations:
 * Embedded computers where a device has highly limited resources. For example, a microwave oven will have an extremely small computer to read its keypad and door sensor, provide output to a digital display and speaker, and to control the microwave for cooking food. This computer is generally not powerful enough to run a compiler, a file system, or a development environment.
 * Compiling for multiple machines. For example, a company may wish to support several different versions of an operating system or to support several different operating systems.  By using a cross compiler, a single build environment can be set up to compile for each of these targets.
 * Compiling on a server farm. Similar to compiling for multiple machines, a complicated build that involves many compile operations can be executed across any machine that is free, regardless of its underlying hardware or the operating system version that it is running.
 * Bootstrapping to a new platform. When developing software for a new platform, or the emulator of a future platform, one uses a cross compiler to compile necessary tools such as the operating system and a native compiler.
 * Compiling native code for emulators for older now-obsolete platforms like the Commodore 64 or Apple II by enthusiasts who use cross compilers that run on a current platform (such as Aztec C's MS-DOS 6502 cross compilers running under Windows XP).

Use of virtual machines (such as Java's JVM) resolves some of the reasons for which cross compilers were developed. The virtual machine paradigm allows the same compiler output to be used across multiple target systems, although this is not always ideal because virtual machines are often slower and the compiled program can only be run on computers with that virtual machine.

Typically the hardware architecture differs (e.g. coding a program destined for the MIPS architecture on an x86 computer) but cross-compilation is also usable when only the operating system environment differs, as when compiling a FreeBSD program under Linux, or even just the system library, as when compiling programs with uClibc on a glibc host.

Canadian Cross
The Canadian Cross is a technique for building cross compilers for other machines, where the original machine is much slower or less convenient than the target. Given three machines A, B, and C, one uses machine A (e.g. running Windows XP on an IA-32 processor) to build a cross compiler that runs on machine B (e.g. running macOS on an x86-64 processor) to create executables for machine C (e.g. running Android on an ARM processor). The practical advantage in this example is that Machine A is slow but has a proprietary compiler, while Machine B is fast but has no compiler at all, and Machine C is impractically slow to be used for compilation.

When using the Canadian Cross with GCC, and as in this example, there may be four compilers involved
 * The proprietary native Compiler for machine A (1) (e.g. compiler from Microsoft Visual Studio) is used to build the gcc native compiler for machine A (2).
 * The gcc native compiler for machine A (2) is used to build the gcc cross compiler from machine A to machine B (3)
 * The gcc cross compiler from machine A to machine B (3) is used to build the gcc cross compiler from machine B to machine C (4)

The end-result cross compiler (4) will not be able to run on build machine A; instead it would run on machine B to compile an application into executable code that would then be copied to machine C and executed on machine C.

For instance, NetBSD provides a POSIX Unix shell script named  which will first build its own toolchain with the host's compiler; this, in turn, will be used to build the cross compiler which will be used to build the whole system.

The term Canadian Cross came about because at the time that these issues were under discussion, Canada had three national political parties.

Timeline of early cross compilers

 * 1979 – ALGOL 68C generated ZCODE; this aided porting the compiler and other ALGOL 68 applications to alternate platforms. To compile the ALGOL 68C compiler required about 120 KB of memory. With Z80 its 64 KB memory is too small to actually compile the compiler. So for the Z80 the compiler itself had to be cross compiled from the larger CAP capability computer or an IBM System/370 mainframe.

GCC and cross compilation
GCC, a free software collection of compilers, can be set up to cross compile. It supports many platforms and languages.

GCC requires that a compiled copy of binutils is available for each targeted platform. Especially important is the GNU Assembler. Therefore, binutils first has to be compiled correctly with the switch  sent to the configure script. GCC also has to be configured with the same  option. GCC can then be run normally provided that the tools, which binutils creates, are available in the path, which can be done using the following (on UNIX-like operating systems with bash):

PATH=/path/to/binutils/bin:${PATH} make

Cross-compiling GCC requires that a portion of the target platform's C standard library be available on the host platform. The programmer may choose to compile the full C library, but this choice could be unreliable. The alternative is to use newlib, which is a small C library containing only the most essential components required to compile C source code.

The GNU Autotools packages (i.e. autoconf, automake, and libtool) use the notion of a build platform, a host platform, and a target platform. The build platform is where the compiler is actually compiled. In most cases, build should be left undefined (it will default from host). The host platform is always where the output artifacts from the compiler will be executed whether the output is another compiler or not. The target platform is used when cross-compiling cross compilers, it represents what type of object code the package will produce; otherwise the target platform setting is irrelevant. For example, consider cross-compiling a video game that will run on a Dreamcast. The machine where the game is compiled is the build platform while the Dreamcast is the host platform. The names host and target are relative to the compiler being used and shifted like son and grandson.

Another method popularly used by embedded Linux developers involves the combination of GCC compilers with specialized sandboxes like Scratchbox and Scratchbox 2, or PRoot. These tools create a "chrooted" sandbox where the programmer can build up necessary tools, libc, and libraries without having to set extra paths. Facilities are also provided to "deceive" the runtime so that it "believes" it is actually running on the intended target CPU (such as an ARM architecture); this allows configuration scripts and the like to run without error. Scratchbox runs more slowly by comparison to "non-chrooted" methods, and most tools that are on the host must be moved into Scratchbox to function.

Manx Aztec C cross compilers
Manx Software Systems, of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, produced C compilers beginning in the 1980s targeted at professional developers for a variety of platforms up to and including IBM PC compatibles and Macs.

Manx's Aztec C programming language was available for a variety of platforms including MS-DOS, Apple II, DOS 3.3 and ProDOS, Commodore 64, Mac 68k and Amiga.

From the 1980s and continuing throughout the 1990s until Manx Software Systems disappeared, the MS-DOS version of Aztec C was offered both as a native mode compiler or as a cross compiler for other platforms with different processors including the Commodore 64 and Apple II. Internet distributions still exist for Aztec C including their MS-DOS based cross compilers. They are still in use today.

Manx's Aztec C86, their native mode 8086 MS-DOS compiler, was also a cross compiler. Although it did not compile code for a different processor like their Aztec C65 6502 cross compilers for the Commodore 64 and Apple II, it created binary executables for then-legacy operating systems for the 16-bit 8086 family of processors.

When the IBM PC was first introduced it was available with a choice of operating systems, CP/M-86 and PC DOS being two of them. Aztec C86 was provided with link libraries for generating code for both IBM PC operating systems. Throughout the 1980s later versions of Aztec C86 (3.xx, 4.xx and 5.xx) added support for MS-DOS "transitory" versions 1 and 2 and which were less robust than the "baseline" MS-DOS version 3 and later which Aztec C86 targeted until its demise.

Finally, Aztec C86 provided C language developers with the ability to produce ROM-able "HEX" code which could then be transferred using a ROM burner directly to an 8086 based processor. Paravirtualization may be more common today but the practice of creating low-level ROM code was more common per-capita during those years when device driver development was often done by application programmers for individual applications, and new devices amounted to a cottage industry. It was not uncommon for application programmers to interface directly with hardware without support from the manufacturer. This practice was similar to Embedded Systems Development today.

Thomas Fenwick and James Goodnow II were the two principal developers of Aztec-C. Fenwick later became notable as the author of the Microsoft Windows CE kernel or NK ("New Kernel") as it was then called.

Early history – 1980s
Microsoft C (MSC) has a shorter history than others dating back to the 1980s. The first Microsoft C Compilers were made by the same company who made Lattice C and were rebranded by Microsoft as their own, until MSC 4 was released, which was the first version that Microsoft produced themselves.

In 1987, many developers started switching to Microsoft C, and many more would follow throughout the development of Microsoft Windows to its present state. Products like Clipper and later Clarion emerged that offered easy database application development by using cross language techniques, allowing part of their programs to be compiled with Microsoft C.

Borland C (California company) was available for purchase years before Microsoft released its first C product.

Long before Borland, BSD Unix (Berkeley University) had gotten C from the authors of the C language: Kernighan and Ritchie who wrote it in unison while working for AT&T (labs). K&R's original needs was not only elegant 2nd level parsed syntax to replace asm 1st level parsed syntax: it was designed so that a minimal amount of asm be written to support each platform (the original design of C was ability to cross compile using C with the least support code per platform, which they needed.). Also yesterdays C directly related to ASM code wherever not platform dependent. Today's C (more-so c++) is no longer C compatible and the asm code underlying can be extremely different than written on a given platform (in Linux: it sometimes replaces and detours library calls with distributor choices). Today's C is a 3rd or 4th level language which is used the old way like a 2nd level language.

1987
C programs had long been linked with modules written in assembly language. Most C compilers (even current compilers) offer an assembly language pass (that can be tweaked for efficiency then linked to the rest of the program after assembling).

Compilers like Aztec-C converted everything to assembly language as a distinct pass and then assembled the code in a distinct pass, and were noted for their very efficient and small code, but by 1987 the optimizer built into Microsoft C was very good, and only "mission critical" parts of a program were usually considered for rewriting. In fact, C language programming had taken over as the "lowest-level" language, with programming becoming a multi-disciplinary growth industry and projects becoming larger, with programmers writing user interfaces and database interfaces in higher-level languages, and a need had emerged for cross language development that continues to this day.

By 1987, with the release of MSC 5.1, Microsoft offered a cross language development environment for MS-DOS. 16-bit binary object code written in assembly language (MASM) and Microsoft's other languages including QuickBASIC, Pascal, and Fortran could be linked together into one program, in a process they called "Mixed Language Programming" and now "InterLanguage Calling". If BASIC was used in this mix, the main program needed to be in BASIC to support the internal runtime system that compiled BASIC required for garbage collection and its other managed operations that simulated a BASIC interpreter like QBasic in MS-DOS.

The calling convention for C code, in particular, was to pass parameters in "reverse order" on the stack and return values on the stack rather than in a processor register. There were other programming rules to make all the languages work together, but this particular rule persisted through the cross language development that continued throughout Windows 16- and 32-bit versions and in the development of programs for OS/2, and which persists to this day. It is known as the Pascal calling convention.

Another type of cross compilation that Microsoft C was used for during this time was in retail applications that require handheld devices like the Symbol Technologies PDT3100 (used to take inventory), which provided a link library targeted at an 8088 based barcode reader. The application was built on the host computer then transferred to the handheld device (via a serial cable) where it was run, similar to what is done today for that same market using Windows Mobile by companies like Motorola, who bought Symbol.

Early 1990s
Throughout the 1990s and beginning with MSC 6 (their first ANSI C compliant compiler) Microsoft re-focused their C compilers on the emerging Windows market, and also on OS/2 and in the development of GUI programs. Mixed language compatibility remained through MSC 6 on the MS-DOS side, but the API for Microsoft Windows 3.0 and 3.1 was written in MSC 6. MSC 6 was also extended to provide support for 32-bit assemblies and support for the emerging Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT which would form the foundation for Windows XP. A programming practice called a thunk was introduced to allow passing between 16- and 32-bit programs that took advantage of runtime binding (dynamic linking) rather than the static binding that was favoured in monolithic 16-bit MS-DOS applications. Static binding is still favoured by some native code developers but does not generally provide the degree of code reuse required by newer best practices like the Capability Maturity Model (CMM).

MS-DOS support was still provided with the release of Microsoft's first C++ Compiler, MSC 7, which was backwardly compatible with the C programming language and MS-DOS and supported both 16- and 32-bit code generation.

MSC took over where Aztec C86 left off. The market share for C compilers had turned to cross compilers which took advantage of the latest and greatest Windows features, offered C and C++ in a single bundle, and still supported MS-DOS systems that were already a decade old, and the smaller companies that produced compilers like Aztec C could no longer compete and either turned to niche markets like embedded systems or disappeared.

MS-DOS and 16-bit code generation support continued until MSC 8.00c which was bundled with Microsoft C++ and Microsoft Application Studio 1.5, the forerunner of Microsoft Visual Studio which is the cross development environment that Microsoft provide today.

Late 1990s
MSC 12 was released with Microsoft Visual Studio 6 and no longer provided support for MS-DOS 16-bit binaries, instead providing support for 32-bit console applications, but provided support for Windows 95 and Windows 98 code generation as well as for Windows NT. Link libraries were available for other processors that ran Microsoft Windows; a practice that Microsoft continues to this day.

MSC 13 was released with Visual Studio 2003, and MSC 14 was released with Visual Studio 2005, both of which still produce code for older systems like Windows 95, but which will produce code for several target platforms including the mobile market and the ARM architecture.

.NET and beyond
In 2001 Microsoft developed the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which formed the core for their .NET Framework compiler in the Visual Studio IDE. This layer on the operating system which is in the API allows the mixing of development languages compiled across platforms that run the Windows operating system.

The .NET Framework runtime and CLR provide a mapping layer to the core routines for the processor and the devices on the target computer. The command-line C compiler in Visual Studio will compile native code for a variety of processors and can be used to build the core routines themselves.

Microsoft .NET applications for target platforms like Windows Mobile on the ARM architecture cross-compile on Windows machines with a variety of processors and Microsoft also offer emulators and remote deployment environments that require very little configuration, unlike the cross compilers in days gone by or on other platforms.

Runtime libraries, such as Mono, provide compatibility for cross-compiled .NET programs to other operating systems, such as Linux.

Libraries like Qt and its predecessors including XVT provide source code level cross development capability with other platforms, while still using Microsoft C to build the Windows versions. Other compilers like MinGW have also become popular in this area since they are more directly compatible with the Unixes that comprise the non-Windows side of software development allowing those developers to target all platforms using a familiar build environment.

Free Pascal
Free Pascal was developed from the beginning as a cross compiler. The compiler executable (ppcXXX where XXX is a target architecture) is capable of producing executables (or just object files if no internal linker exists, or even just assembly files if no internal assembler exists) for all OS of the same architecture. For example, ppc386 is capable of producing executables for i386-linux, i386-win32, i386-go32v2 (DOS) and all other OSes (see ). For compiling to another architecture, however, a cross architecture version of the compiler must be built first. The resulting compiler executable would have additional 'ross' before the target architecture in its name. i.e. if the compiler is built to target x64, then the executable would be ppcrossx64.

To compile for a chosen architecture-OS, the compiler switch (for the compiler driver fpc) -P and -T can be used. This is also done when cross-compiling the compiler itself, but is set via make option CPU_TARGET and OS_TARGET. GNU assembler and linker for the target platform is required if Free Pascal does not yet have internal version of the tools for the target platform.

Clang
Clang is natively a cross compiler, at build time you can select which architectures you want Clang to be able to target.

title: Cross compiler


text:
His Majesty's Ship

His (or Her) Majesty's Ship, abbreviated HMS and H.M.S., is the ship prefix used for ships of the navy in some monarchies. Derivative terms such as HMAS and equivalents in other languages such as SMS are used.

United Kingdom
With regard to the separate English and Scottish navies of the medieval period and early modern era, historians usually use terms such as "English Ship" or "Scottish Ship".

During the late 17th century, following the Restoration, the name Royal Navy was officially adopted, as well as the prefix His Majesty's Ship, and later, Her Majesty's Ship. The first recorded use of the abbreviated form HMS was in 1789, in respect of HMS Phoenix. From 1707 to circa 1800 HBMS (for His Britannic Majesty's Ship) was also used. Submarines in His Majesty's service also use the prefix HMS, standing for His Majesty's Submarine, though this is sometimes rendered HMS/m. (See, for example, HMS/m Tireless, at IWM). The Royal Yacht Britannia, which was a commissioned ship in the Royal Navy, was known as HMY Britannia. Otherwise all ships in the Royal Navy are known as HM Ships, though formerly when a distinction was made between three-masted ship-rigged ships and smaller vessels they would be called HM Frigate X, or HM Sloop Y.

The prefix HMS is also used by shore establishments that are commissioned "stone frigates" in the Royal Navy. Examples include HMS Excellent, a training school located on an island in Portsmouth Harbour, and HMS Vulcan, in Caithness in the Highland area of Scotland, which is established to test the design of nuclear power systems for use in submarines.

The sample ship name used by the Royal Navy to signify a hypothetical vessel is HMS Nonsuch. This is a name that has been used by the Royal Navy in the past; on the eve of World War II the name was given to the Royal Canadian Navy. HMCS Nonsuch was the "stone frigate" of the Edmonton Division of the Canadian Naval Reserve.

Prefixing the name by "the", as in "the HMS Ark Royal", while common, is considered bad grammar.

British government ships not in the Royal Navy have other designations, such as RFA for ships in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

Use outside the United Kingdom
Historically, variants on HMS have been used by the navies of British colonies. The practice is maintained in several Commonwealth realms – states in which the monarch of the UK is head of state – as well as other Commonwealth countries and former members of the British Empire.

Current

 * Canada: His Majesty's Canadian Ship (HMCS) / (Navire canadien de Sa Majesté) (NCSM) – Royal Canadian Navy
 * Australia: His Majesty's Australian Ship (HMAS) – Royal Australian Navy
 * New Zealand: His Majesty's New Zealand Ship (HMNZS) – Royal New Zealand Navy
 * Bahamas: His Majesty's Bahamian Ship (HMBS) – Royal Bahamas Defence Force

 * Papua New Guinea: His Majesty's Papua New Guinean Ship (HMPNGS) - Papua New Guinea Defence Force
 * Jamaica: His Majesty's Jamaican Ship (HMJS) – Jamaica Defence Force
 * Tuvalu: His Majesty's Tuvalu State Ship (HMTSS)

Former

 * Colonial: Her Majesty's Colonial Ship (HMCS)
 * Australia: Commonwealth Naval Ship (CNS)
 * Burma: His Majesty's Burmese Ship (HMBS)
 * Barbados: Her Majesty's Barbadian Ship (HMBS) – Barbados Defence Force
 * South Africa: His Majesty's South African Ship (HMSAS) / (Sy Majesteit se Suid-Afrikaanse Skip) (SMSA) - South African Navy
 * Ceylon: Her Majesty's Ceylon Ship (HMCyS)
 * Fiji: Her Majesty's Fijian Ship (HMFS)
 * India: His Majesty's Indian Ship (HMIS)
 * Queensland (before the federation of Australia): Her Majesty's Queensland Ship (HMQS)
 * Victoria (before the federation of Australia): Her Majesty's Victorian Ship (HMVS)
 * Pakistan: His Majesty's Pakistan Ship (HMPS)

Denmark
All Danish Navy ships carry the ship prefix KDM (Kongelige Danske Marine) in Danish, but this is translated to HDMS (Her / His Danish Majesty's Ship) in English.

Germany
Seiner Majestät Schiff (German: His Majesty's Ship, abbreviated to S.M.S. or SMS) was the ship prefix used by the Prussian Maritime Enterprise (Seehandlung), the Prussian Navy, the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) and the Austro-Hungarian Navy (Kaiserliche und königliche Kriegsmarine). It was created by translating the British prefix into German.

It was sometimes also abbreviated to S.M. or SM (for Seiner Majestät) when a ship was mentioned by class, such as S.M. Kleiner Kreuzer Emden ("His Majesty's Light Cruiser Emden").

Special forms included
 * S.M.Y. (or SMY) = Seiner Majestät Yacht ("His Majesty's Yacht") for king's or emperor's yacht
 * I.M.Y. = Ihrer Majestät Yacht ("Her Majesty's Yacht") for the queen's or empress's yacht.
 * S.M.F. = Seiner Majestät Feuerschiff ("His Majesty's Lightvessel")
 * S.M.H. = Seiner Majestät Hilfsschiff ("His Majesty's Auxiliary Ship")
 * S.M.W. = Seiner Majestät Werkstattschiff ("His Majesty's Workshop Ship")
 * S.M.U. = Seiner Majestät Unterseeboot ("His Majesty's Submarine", prefixing a number not a name)

Netherlands
International prefixes for ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy is HNLMS (His/Her Netherlands Majesty's Ship). The Netherlands navy itself uses the prefixes Zr.Ms. (Zijner Majesteits, His Majesty's) when a king is on the throne, and Hr.Ms. (Harer Majesteits, Her Majesty's) when there is a queen. This happens automatically at the moment of coronation.

Norway
The Royal Norwegian Navy vessels have since 1946 been given the ship prefix KNM, short for Kongelig Norske Marine (Royal Norwegian Navy). In English, they are given the prefix HNoMS, short for "His/Her Norwegian Majesty's Ship" (HNMS could be also used for the Royal Netherlands Navy, for which HNLMS is used instead). Coast Guard vessels are given the prefix KV for KystVakt (Coast Guard) in Norwegian and NoCGV for Norwegian Coast Guard Vessel in English.

Romania
Prior to World War II, the subsequent ousting of the monarchy of Romania on 30 December 1947 and post-war Soviet occupation, all Royal Romanian Navy vessels were given the prefix NMS which stands for Nava Majestăţii Sale which translates to His/her Majesty’s Ship in English.

Sweden
In the Royal Swedish Navy, all vessels are given the prefix HMS (Hans or Hennes Majestäts Skepp, His or Her Majesty’s Ship). This is true for both surface and submarine vessels.

Abroad, Swedish navy ships are sometimes given the prefix HSwMS (for His Swedish Majesty's Ship), to avoid confusion with other uses of the HMS prefix.

Thailand
In the Royal Thai Navy, ships with a displacement of 150 tons or more use the prefix เรือหลวง ("Royal Ship"), abbreviated ร.ล. meaning ships belonging to the Thai King. In English, the abbreviation HTMS or H.T.M.S. comes from the word His Thai Majesty's Ship. For the name of the ship, it must be granted by the King.

title: His Majesty's Ship


text:
Pete Wendling

Pete Wendling (June 6, 1888 – April 7, 1974) was an American composer and pianist, born in New York City to German immigrants. He often collaborated with fellow QRS pianist and composer, Max Kortlander.

He started his working life as a carpenter, but gained fame during the mid-1910s as a popular music composer, with his name appearing on the "Soup and Fish Rag" in 1913. He worked on such hits as "Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula" (recorded by Al Jolson), "Take Me To The Land Of Jazz", "Take Your Girlie To The Movies", "Felix The Cat", and "Oh What A Pal Is Mary".

Wendling was also one of the top pianists of his era, and set a long-standing record when he appeared at the London Hippodrome for eight consecutive weeks. He joined the Rhythmodik Music Roll Company in 1914, and started to record his performances on paper rolls for player pianos. In 1916 he recorded for American Piano Company (Ampico). In 1918, he joined the largest piano roll company, QRS, and rapidly became one of their most popular artists, his distinctive yet always fresh performances constantly topping their best-selling lists.

He recorded two sides for Okeh Records in 1923, and in 1926, cut another four for Cameo. In 1927, QRS, who were tightening their belt due to declining sales, released Wendling, and he concentrated on his composing career until his retirement in the 1950s. In 1955, he co-wrote "I Wonder", which became a UK chart hit for both Jane Froman and Dickie Valentine. Wendling's last notable work was "Rich in Love" in 1956.

Married to Anna, he had no children. A resident of Manhattan, he died in New York City in April 1974, aged 85 after several strokes.

== Selected Discography ==

 * Al Jolson- Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula (1916), Columbia
 * Henry Burr- Oh How I Wish I Could Sleep (Until My Daddy Comes Home) (1918), Victor
 * Marion Harris- Take Me to the Land of Jazz (1919), Victor
 * Henry Burr- Oh, What a Pal Was Mary (1919), Victor
 * Irving Kaufman- Take Your Girlie to the Movies (When You Can't Make Love at Home) (1919), OKeh
 * Al Jolson- In Sweet September (1920), Columbia (as lyricist)
 * Billy Murray & Aileen Stanley- Whenever You're Lonesome (Just Telephone Me) (1922), Victor
 * Johnny Marvin & Aileen Stanley- Red Lips (Kiss My Blues Away) (1927), Victor
 * Paul Whiteman Orchestra- Felix the Cat (1928), Columbia
 * Paul Specht Orchestra- (That's What I Call) Sweet Music (1929), Columbia
 * Seger Ellis- There's Danger In Your Eyes, Chérie (1930), OKeh

title: Pete Wendling