page_title: Henri Pélissier
section_title: Personality and trade union
hierarchical_section_title: Henri Pélissier / Personality and trade union
caption_attribution_description: Paris-Roubaix cycliste&#160;: Henri Pelissier
context_page_description: Henri Pélissier was a French racing cyclist from Paris and champion of the 1923 Tour de France. In addition to his 29 career victories, he was known for his long-standing feud with Tour founder Henri Desgrange and for protesting against the conditions endured by riders in the early years of the Tour. He was killed by his lover with the gun that his wife had used to commit suicide.
context_section_description: Pélissier's life was rarely happy. He was repeatedly at war with organisers, sponsors and the press. He niggled everyone with unhidden pleasure. The organiser of the Tour, Henri Desgrange, called him "this pigheadedly arrogant champion." When he went training, he urged his friends to take it easy — 'It's important not to wear yourself out' he advised — but never let on that he'd been out at dawn for 40 kilometres' speed training.
  He dismissed his rivals with a sneer. "The others are cart horses; I'm a thoroughbred," he said during the Tour de France. Next day Pélissier punctured and the whole field left him and his brother Francis 30 minutes behind.
  He argued repeatedly with Desgrange, who in 1920 penalised Pélissier two minutes for leaving a flat tyre by the roadside.  Pélissier left the race in protest. He then made a point of winning everywhere else for the rest of the season. Desgrange scoffed: "Pélissier can win any race except the Tour."
  His disagreements and walkouts fired the public — 'it excited the public more than the boring way the flahutes rode,' as one French writer puts it — but it enraged everyone else.
  Oscar Egg said: 
  In 1914, I held the world record for the hour and I won three stages of the Tour. In the results, Henri took second place behind Thys. At that time, he was an extraordinary rider, but I don't agree with those who said that he was a master tactician. He had an instinct for racing but if he'd been able to master his reflexes, keep control of the way he reacted, he would have been a phenomenal champion thanks to the extraordinary talent that he had."
  Pélissier saw himself as a campaigner for better conditions for cyclists, whom he considered were paid little better than a pittance by their sponsors. He fought Desgrange's plan that riders in the Tour de France should be limited to equal amounts of food. Pélissier objected to what he considered other petty restrictions. In 1919 he abandoned the Tour because Desgrange would not allow him an extra glass of wine at a reception after one stage. He pulled out in 1920 because of the weather. He left on the fifth stage but he would have quit on the third had he had enough money to take the train from Morlaix. He asked followers to lend him the price of the ticket but they refused.
  Pélissier rode beside Eugène Christophe to complain and Christophe persuaded him to keep riding. They rode hard — "only to keep warm', Pélissier said—and caught a group which turned out to be the leaders.
  "I thought to myself, now I may as well win," he said afterwards and he did. He won the stage the next day as well and then pulled out on the fifth.
  "Henri Pélissier is saturated with class but he does not know how to suffer," Desgrange wrote in L'Auto.
  Pélissier started a cyclists' trade union but it had only lukewarm support. Riders close to Pélissier joined it but other French riders and most foreigners stayed away, unsure they wanted to be led by a man already at war with sponsors and organisers across Europe.
caption: Henri Pelissier in 1919.
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