The First Race 1903 - Tour de France - YouTube The First Race 1903 - Tour de France Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Jul 17, 2012 The tour de France is over 100 years old, and believe you me, the great tour has evolved since its beginnings. This is what the first tour looked like. In January 1903, Henri Desgrange, editor in chief of the newspaper "auto",a sports newspaper specialized in bike racing, announced the creation of the "greatest cycling event ever organized" that would take place between the 1st of june all the way through to the 5th of july. Unfortunately, the conditions were far too strenuous and the prizes too meagre and so on the eve of the start only 15 participants were signed up.

This beign a little short of the "greatest cycling event ever organized", Henri Desgrange, decided to postpone the date of the start and to considerably increase the prize money. In the end, 60 cyclists shot off the starting line on july 1st in Montgeron in the southern districts of Paris in front of the now famous "reveil matin". The start was held in a suburb rather than paris, seeing as the police prefect for the seine, Louis Lepine had forbidden races in the capital city. While the race is far shorter today and contains no mountain stages, the conditions of the first tour were far more difficult. Participants had to finish a tour of 2 428 km in only 6 stages linking the main cities of france : paris, lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and nantes. The Frenchman Maurice garin covered the distance between paris and lyon , over 467 km, in only 17 hours, 45 minutes and 44 seconds. The stages were so long and so difficult that racers were given a 3-days rest in between stages; Out of the 60 racers that began the race, only 21 of them finished it.

On july 18th Muarice garin, having already won 2 stages, won the 6th and final stage of the race that linked nantes to paris, with a 3 hour lead against the racer in second place. The final sprint took place in Afray, a Parisian suburb and Maurice Garin beat out fernand Augereau and julien "Samson" lootens by a mere second. Maurice Garin finally won the Tour with 2 hours 49 minutes and 21 seconds ahead of the second place, Lucien Pothier. Nowadays, he still holds the record for largest gap between the first and second place; Arsene Millocheau would finish the race nearly 65 hours after the Maurice Garin. At the end of the race, the cyclists would go to the parc de princes for a ceremonial lap and to receive their prize. While the race was organized by a newspaper, the « auto », the journalist sent in order to cover the event Geo Lefebvre who incidentally was the one who came up with the idea for the race, only briefly covered the start and finish of the race, traveling between the cities where the stages occured.

He even missed out on the arrival of Maurice garin, the winner of the first stage, in Lyon; This did not prevent the "auto" from bumping up its prints to over 40 000 copies The tour de france was actually a great success among the public and it is estimated that roughly 100 000 spectators were present during the arrival of the racers in the country side and around 20 000 spectators in Paris. Straight off its succes, the tour de France would be held again the following year and the winner would be once again Maurice garin. It wasn't until the third edition fo the tour that henri desgrange would shorten the stages so that the race would be less difficult. The history of the tour de france is vast and rich in detail, if you would like to find out more, click on the links down below for more videos.

Find this and many other videos at 1903 Tour de France Sign up for our Email Newsletter 1903 Tour de France July 1 to July 19 Results, stages with running GC, startlist, photos and history 2,428 km raced at an average speed of 25.68 km/hr. 60 starters and 21 classified finishers Henri Desgrange , editor of L'Auto (ancestor to today's l'Equipe), was desperate to find a way to win a circulation war with competing sports newspaper Le Vélo. The Tour de France was suggested to Desgrange as a sales promotion. It was to be like a Six-Day race, only on the road. The race was an instant hit. L'Auto's circulation soared and Desgrange went down in history as the father of the greatest sporting event in the world. Note that in the first edition the stages are staggeringly long. The races would have to start in the dark in order to finish stages that could take over 17 hours to complete. A few of notes about the early Tours. Distances are approximate.

Riders could abandon a stage and still start the next stage and compete for stage prizes but they were out of the race for the General Classification. 1903 Tour de France final complete General Classification Rider's nationality is listed if his sponsor is not known 1 1903 Tour stage results and running General Classification Stage 1: Wednesday, July 1, Paris - Lyon, 467 km 1. Maurice Garin: 17hr 45min 13sec 2. Emile Pagie @ 55sec 3. Leon Georget @ 34min 59sec 4. Fernand Augereau @ 1hr 2min 50sec 5. Jean Fischer @ 1hr 4min 55sec 6. Marcel Kerff @ 1hr 42min 55sec 7. Alois Catteau @ 1hr 48min57sec 8. Ernest Piven @ 1hr 49min 49sec 9. Leon Habets @ 2hr 8min 16sec 10.

François Beaugendre @ 2hr 8min 27sec GC after Stage 1: GC times and places same as stage 1 results Stage 2: Sunday, July 5, Lyon - Marseille, 374 km Major Ascent: Col de la Républic 1. Hyppolyte Aucouturier : 14hr 28min 53sec 2. Leon Georget s.t. 3. Eugene Brange @ 26min 6sec 4. Maurice Garin @ 26min 7sec 5. Rodolphe Muller s.t. 7. Marcel Kerff @ 39min 37sec 8. Fernand Augereau @ 57min 17sec 9. Georges Pasquier @ 1hr 32min 10sec 10. François Beaugendre s.t. 2. Leon Georget @ 8min 52sec 3. Fernand Augereau @ 1hr 34min Stage 3: Wednesday, July 8, Marseille - Toulouse, 423 km 1.

Hippolyte Aucouturier: 17hr 55min 4sec 2. Eugene Brange @ 32min 22sec 3. Julien Lootens "Samson" s.t. 4. Maurice Garin s.t. 7. Jean Fischer @ 1hr 35min 18sec 8. Rodolphe Muller @ 1hr 35min 19sec 9. Alois Catteau s.t. 2. Leon Georget @ 1hr 58min 53sec 3. Lucien Pothier @ 2hr 58min 1sec Stage 4: Sunday, July 12, Toulouse - Bordeaux, 268 km 1. Charles Laeser: 8hr 46min 2. Julien Lootens "Samson" @ 4min 3sec 3. Rodolphe Muller s.t. 8. Eugene Brange @ 7min 41sec 9. Alois Catteau s.t. 2.

Leon Georget @ 1hr 58min 53sec 3. Fernand Augereau @ 2hr 58min 1sec Stage 5: Monday, July 13, Bordeaux - Nantes, 425 km 1. Maurice Garin: 16hr 26min 31sec 2. Georges Pasquier s.t. 4. Fernand Augereau @ 10min 35sec 5. Ambroise Garin @ 33min 34sec 6. Rodolphe Muller @ 36min 33sec 7. Jean Fischer @ 1hr 4min 3sec 8. Marcel Kerff s.t. 9. Jean Dargassies @ 1hr 21min 9sec 10. Ferdinand Payan @ 1hr 33min 24sec GC after Stage 5: 2. Lucien Pothier @ 2hr 58min 1sec 3.

Fernand Augereau @ 4hr 29min 14sec 6th and Final Stage: Saturday, July 18, Nantes - Paris, 471 km 1. Maurice Garin: 18hr 9min 2. Fernand Augereau @ 10sec 3. Julien Lootens "Samson" s.t. 4. Jean Fischer @ 1min 20sec 5. Lucien Pothier @ 1min 30sec 6. Rodolphe Muller @ 2min 7. Alexandre Foureaux @ 2min 30sec 8. Julien Girbe @ 2min 35sec 9. François Beaugendre @ 21min Julien Lootens (Belgium) raced as "Samson". Some results use only this name. Paul Mercier (Switzerland) Edouard Wattelier (France) The Story of the 1903 Tour de France This excerpt is from "The Story of the Tour de France", Volume 1 If you enjoy it we hope you will consider purchasing the book, either print or electronic.

The Amazon link here will make either purchase easy. 1903. Just days after it lost the lawsuit, on Jan 19, 1903, L'Auto announced the first Tour de France. It was to be "the greatest cycling trial in the entire world. A race more than a month long: Paris to Lyon to Marseille to Toulouse to Bordeaux to Nantes to Paris." The first schedule was for a 5-week race with a May 31 start and a finish in Paris on July 5. The winner would be the racer with the lowest elapsed time racing after the 6 stages. This total time was and still is called the "General Classification". With a week to go before the start only 15 riders were signed up. As a sign of the adaptability and willingness to change that has always characterized the Tour, Desgrange shortened and re-scheduled the race to a July 1 start and July 18 finish. There would be 2 to 4 rest days between each of the stages except for stage 4, which would be held the day after the 268-kilometer third stage.

To attract more riders, expense money of 5 francs a day was promised to the first 50 racers who signed up and a 20,000 franc purse of prize money was dangled. Desgrange got his first peloton. 60 riders departed from the now famous Cafe au Réveil-Matin in Montgeron on the southern outskirts of Paris at 3:16 PM, July 1. Of these, 21 were sponsored or professional racers. In the pack, there were a few racers who competed under a pseudonym. Racing was a sketchy business and not always held in high repute. Julien Lootens raced the 1903 Tour as Samson. Later Lucien Mazan would compete in the Tour as Petit-Breton. Lefèvre, only 26 at the time, traveled with the race while Desgrange remained in Paris. Desgrange stationed men along the way, sometimes hidden, to make sure that the riders rode the entire route. They rode 6 stages totaling a staggering 2,428 kilometers.

Desgrange, from the very beginning, wanted his race to be a superhuman test of an individual's endurance and strength. He banned pacers from his race except for the final stage. At the time, racers employed lines of pacers to lead them, much as a protected professional rider uses his team today. At the time this was quite a change from the norm and many, including eventual winner Maurice Garin, doubted that it would work. The riders get ready to start. Note that what constitutes effective cycle clothing hadn't been settled. Desgrange's 60-man peloton riding together Maurice Garin, riding the red, white and blue tricolor bike of his sponsor, La Française, won the first stage of the first Tour, beating Émile Pagie by 55 seconds. The first stage, from Paris to Lyon, was 467 kilometers long, and it took a cruel 17 hours 45 minutes, riding both day and night, for Garin to finish. Only 37 riders were able to complete the day's racing. The 37th rider took more than 20 hours longer than Garin to get to Lyon.

Hippolyte Aucouturier, one of the favorites, had to drop out with stomach cramps. The first stage finish line in Lyon Leon Georget finishes third in the first stage, 34 minutes, 59 seconds behind stage winner Garin. Georget would drop out of the Tour in stage 5. Today, that abandonment would put an end to his Tour. Back then, a racer was allowed to race for stage wins even if he had failed to finish a previous stage, which Aucouturier did. A racer who failed to finish a stage was out of contention for the overall lead. Pagie, the victim of a crash in the second stage had to abandon the Tour. He never rode the Tour again. Maurice Garin, in his trademark white coat and flat cap racing in the '03 Tour This is the best action photo I have ever seen of Garin On the first stage, a racer was caught cheating. Jean Fischer was seen pacing behind a car. I haven't found any particular record of a sanction for this breach of the rules. If Desgrange could have known what 1904 was to bring, perhaps he would have made an example of Fischer.

Aucouturier, who was quite revived after dropping out of the first stage, won the second and third stages, from Lyon to Marseilles and Marseilles to Toulouse. Garin maintained his lead, by this time almost 2 hours over second place Léon Georget who would drop out of the race in stage 5. Garin won the penultimate stage, still in the lead. On July 19, 21 of the 60 finished. The 20,000 spectators at Paris' Parc de Princes velodrome saw Maurice Garin win the final stage and win the Tour. The final finisher came in over two days later. While the famed "Yellow Jersey" worn by the man leading the Tour would not be adopted until 1919, Garin was given a green armband to signify his lead during the 1903 Tour, and the Lanterne Rouge or Red Lantern was used to designate the rider in last place. Arsène Millocheau has the dubious fame of being the first Lanterne Rouge by coming in at 64 hours, 57 minutes, 8 seconds behind Garin in total time.

Garin, riding for the powerful La Française team, was nicknamed "the Chimney-Sweep" for his occupation before he became an accomplished professional bicycle racer. He won the first stage and held the lead throughout the Tour. His win was no accident. He was by far the finest and strongest racer in the Tour. He was already a two-time winner of Paris-Roubaix as well as a victor of Bordeaux-Paris and Paris-Brest-Paris. Garin is greeted by enthusiastic fans. Guys knew how to grow moustaches back then. 1903 Tour winner Maurice Garin having a smoke. Pictured with him are his son (on right with little bike) and his masseur. Garin's masseur won't be the last man working on a Tour team wearing the dress of a butcher. Antonin Magne, who ran the French National teams, was famous for wearing butcher's garb. Garin pocketed 6,125 francs for his exploit, enough to buy a gas station where he worked the rest of his life after retiring from racing. To this day, a gas station still stands on the spot of Garin's old station.

But as Les Woodland noted in The Unknown Tour de France, no one working there has any idea about the importance of the former owner of the site. Garin is quite forgotten. Adjusting for currency and inflation across a century is highly inaccurate, but those 6,000 francs Garin won should be something like $40,000 in U.S. dollars. Garin's winning margin of 2 hours and 49 minutes remains the largest in Tour history. The first Tour at 2,428 kilometers remains the second shortest ever. The 1904 Tour was shorter than the 1903 version by 8 kilometers. The average speed for this first Tour was 25.679 kilometers per hour. The 50th Anniversary Tour in 1953 averaged 34.593 kilometers per hour and the speed of the Centennial 2003 Tour was 40.94 kilometers per hour. There were dramatic changes in equipment, training, roads, diet, Tour rules and sometimes even doping over the next 100 years that made this increase possible.

Racers always needed to eat during long stages, but the feed zone has changed a bit since 1903. The Tour was a fantastic success. Circulation of L'Auto boomed. 130,000 copies were printed for the final stage (an increase of 100,000). Le Vélo went out of business and the Tour de France was born. Desgrange, knowing talent when he saw it, hired Giffard to write for L'Auto. Final 1903 Tour de France General Classification: 1. Maurice Garin: 94 hours 33 minutes 14 seconds 2. Lucien Pothier @ 2 hours 59 minutes 2 seconds 3. Fernand Augereau @ 4 hours 29 minutes 24 seconds 4. Rodolphe Muller @ 4 hours 39 minutes 30 seconds 5. Jean Fischer @ 4 hours 58 minutes 44 seconds Leon Georget signs in under the watchful eye of an official. To minimize cheating riders signed in a stops along each stage.

It has been noted by others that race officials used to dress much better than they do now. The Birth of the Tour de France, 110 Years Ago - History in the Headlines The Birth of the Tour de France, 110 Years Ago June 28, 2013 By Christopher Klein 2012 Tour de France The Birth of the Tour de France, 110 Years Ago Author The Birth of the Tour de France, 110 Years Ago URL Google Launched as a newspaper publicity stunt in 1903, the Tour de France instantly proved itself an epic test of endurance, with competitors in the first race pedaling through the night on grueling stages that lasted upwards of 24 hours. Cheating was also endemic from the very start. As the Tour de France embarks on its 100th edition—world wars canceled 11 races—take a look back at the birth of the world’s most famous cycling race. On July 1, 1903, 60 men mounted their bicycles outside the Café au Reveil Matin in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron.

The five-dozen riders were mostly French, with just a sprinkle of Belgians, Swiss, Germans and Italians. A third were professionals sponsored by bicycle manufacturers, the others simply devotees of the sport. All 60 wheelmen, however, were united by the challenge of embarking on an unprecedented test of endurance—not to mention the 20,000 francs in prize money—in the inaugural Tour de France. At 3:16 p.m., the cyclists turned the pedals of their bicycles and raced into the unknown. Nothing like the Tour de France had ever been attempted before. Journalist Geo Lefevre had dreamt up the fanciful race as a stunt to boost the circulation of his struggling daily sports newspaper, L’Auto. Henri Desgrange, the director-editor of L’Auto and a former champion cyclist himself, loved the idea of turning France into one giant velodrome. They developed a 1,500-mile clockwise loop of the country running from Paris to Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes before returning to the French capital.

There were no Alpine climbs and only six stages—as opposed to the 21 stages in the 2013 Tour— but the distances covered in each of them were monstrous, an average of 250 miles. (No single stage in the 2013 Tour tops 150 miles.) Between one and three rest days were scheduled between stages for recovery. The inaugural Tour de France, July 1903. The first stage of the epic race was particularly dastardly. The route from Paris to Lyon stretched nearly 300 miles. No doubt several of the riders who wheeled away from Paris worried not about winning the race—but surviving it. Unlike today’s riders, the cyclists in 1903 rode over unpaved roads without helmets. They rode as individuals, not team members. Riders could receive no help. They could not glide in the slipstream of fellow riders or vehicles of any kind. They rode without support cars. Cyclists were responsible for making their own repairs. They even rode with spare tires and tubes wrapped around their torsos in case they developed flats.

And unlike modern-day riders, the cyclists in the 1903 Tour de France, forced to cover enormous swathes of land, spent much of the race riding through the night with moonlight the only guide and stars the only spectators. During the early morning hours of the first stage, race officials came across many competitors “riding like sleepwalkers.” Hour after hour through the night, riders abandoned the race. One of the favorites, Hippolyte Aucouturier, quit after developing stomach cramps, perhaps from the swigs of red wine he took as an early 1900s version of a performance enhancer. Twenty-three riders abandoned the first stage of the race, but the one man who barreled through the night faster than anyone else was another pre-race favorite, 32-year-old professional Maurice Garin. The mustachioed French national worked as a chimney sweep as a teenager before becoming one of France’s leading cyclists. Caked in mud, the diminutive Garin crossed the finish line in Lyon a little more than 17 hours after the start outside Paris. In spite of the race’s length, he won by only one minute.

“The Little Chimney Sweep” built his lead as the race progressed. By the fifth stage, Garin had a two-hour advantage. When his nearest competitor suffered two flat tires and fell asleep while resting on the side of the road, Garin captured the stage and the Tour was all but won. The sixth and final stage, the race’s longest, began in Nantes at 9 p.m. on July 18, so that spectators could watch the riders arrive in Paris late the following afternoon. Garin strapped on a green armband to signify his position as race leader. (The famed yellow jersey worn by the race leader was not introduced until 1919.) A crowd of 20,000 in the Parc des Princes velodrome cheered as Garin won the stage and the first Tour de France. He bested butcher trainee Lucien Pothier by nearly three hours in what remains the greatest winning margin in the Tour’s history. Garin had spent more than 95 hours in the saddle and averaged 15 miles per hour. In all, 21 of the 60 riders completed the Tour, with the last-place rider more than 64 hours behind Garin.

For Desgrange, the race was an unqualified success. Newspaper circulation soared six-fold during the race. However, a chronic problem that would perpetually plague the Tour de France was already present in the inaugural race—cheating. The rule breaking started in the very first stage when Jean Fischer illegally used a car to pace him. Another rider was disqualified in a subsequent stage for riding in a car’s slipstream. That paled in comparison, however, to the nefarious activity the following year in the 1904 Tour de France. As Garin and a fellow rider pedaled through St. Etienne, fans of hometown rider Antoine Faure formed a human blockade and beat the men until Lefevre arrived and fired a pistol to break up the melee. Later in the race, fans protesting the disqualification of a local rider placed tacks and broken glass on the course. Riders acted little better. They hitched rides in cars during the dark and illegally took help from outsiders. Garin himself was accused of illegally obtaining food during a portion of one stage. The race was so plagued by scandal that four months later Desgrange disqualified Garin and the three other top finishers.

It, of course, wouldn’t be the last time a Tour winner was stripped of his title. Tags AI-AP | DART » The first Tour de France, 1903 The first Tour de France, 1903 By Peggy Roalf Friday July 11, 2014 The line between insanity and genius is said to be a fine one, and in early 20th century France, anyone envisaging a near-2,500-km-long cycle race across the country would have been widely viewed as unhinged. But that didn’t stop Géo Lefèvre, a journalist with L’Auto magazine at the time, from proceeding with his inspired plan. His editor, Henri Desgrange, an avid cyclist, was bold enough to believe in the idea and to throw his backing behind the Tour de France. The plan was a five-stage race from 31 May to 5 July, starting in Paris and stopping in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Nantes before returning to Paris. Toulouse was added later to break the long haul across southern France from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Stages would go through the night and finish next afternoon, with rest days before riders set off again.

But this proved too daunting and the costs too great for most and only 15 competitors had entered. The first kilometre of the first Tour de France, in 1903. Desgrange then cut the length to 19 days, changed the dates to 1 to 19 July, and offered a daily allowance to those who averaged at least 20 km/h on all the stages, equivalent to what a rider would have expected to earn each day had he worked in a factory. He also cut the entry fee from 20 to 10 francs and set the first prize at 12,000 francs and the prize for each day's winner at 3,000 francs. The winner would thereby win six times what most workers earned in a year. That attracted between 60 and 80 entrants, among them not just professionals but amateurs, some unemployed, some simply adventurous. The first Tour created such a frenzy in spectators and riders that Desgrange said the second would be the last.

Cheating was rife and riders were beaten up by rival fans as they neared the top of the col de la République, sometimes called the col du Grand Bois, outside St-Étienne. The leading riders, including the winner Maurice Garin, were disqualified, though it took the UnionVélocipèdique de France until 30 November to make the decision. Finish of the first Tour de France, outside of Paris. Having provoked a mixture of astonishment and admiration, le Tour soon won over the sporting public and the roadside crowds swelled. The French people took to their hearts this unusual event which placed their towns, their countryside and, since 1910, even their mountains, in the spotlight. Le Tour de France 2014 has just completed the fifth stage, in northern France. Follow the riders here . [source: letour.com/le-tour/2014/us/ and Wikipedia]. Photos courtesy the Library of Congress.

Tour de France 2014: The first Tour | Calendar - ITV News 7 April 2014 at 9:55am Tour de France 2014: The first Tour When the first Tour de France set off on July 1, 1903, it was by no means the first grand cycling race France had ever seen. Before it had come the 130 km Paris-Rouen, which took riders over 10 hours to compete, along with the Bordeaux-Paris and Paris-Brest-Paris races. These were all organised by publications, keen to boost their circulation along the route, as people wanted to find out how the riders were doing. There were even professional riders and bike sponsors. So just after the turn of the century, when struggling publication, L'Auto had upset its sponsors by increasing their advertising rates, a bicycle race as a publicity stunt was not too out of the ordinary. The magazine was printed on yellow paper, a colour which would become synonymous with the Tour.

Henri Desgrange, founder of the Tour de France Credit: Getty Images In fact, the magazine's editor, and former professional cyclist, Henri Desgrange, only began to become enamoured with the idea when young journalist, Geo Lefevre, suggested that they could turn the whole of France into a giant velodrome. Desgrange had already cemented himself into the cycling hall of fame, by setting the first World Hour Record in 1892. His time was swiftly beaten, but he was the first. His caution towards the Tour initially remained throughout his involvement with it, hesitating over introducing high mountain stages in 1910. The pair developed a 1,500 mile, clockwise loop of the country, running from Paris to Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes before returning to Paris. There were no Alpine climbs and only six stages - although the average distance for each stage was around 250 miles. However, the competitors did have at least one day of rest between each stage. For the 60 riders setting out on the bicycles in the Parisian suburb of Montegeron, they were in for a wild ride.

They were mostly French, with a few Belgians, Swiss, Germans and Italians. A third of them were professionals with sponsorship from bike manufacturers, but all were motivated by the 20,000 francs being offered up in prize money. The first stage - Paris to Lyon - was around 300 miles, over unpaved roads, without helmets, with no help from other team members. They all rode as individuals. Cyclists were responsible for making their own running repairs, with spare tyres and tubes wrapped around them in case the terrible roads resulted in a flat. Due to the incredible length of the stage, riders spent much of their time riding under the light of the moon - although spectators still were out in force. Reports came through of race officials encountering riders "like sleepwalkers". No wonder 23 of them abandoned. Maurice Garin, the winner of the first Tour de France Credit: Getty Images One of the favourites, a 32 year-old professional, Maurice Garin, won the stage, crossing the finish line in Lyon 17 hours after leaving Paris, but just one minute ahead of his closest rival.

The former chimney sweep built up his lead as as the race progressed, and by stage five, he had a two hour lead. This was helped no doubt by the fact that his nearest competitor had two flat tyres and fell asleep while taking a rest during the night. A 20,000 strong crowd gathered in the Parc des Princes, in Paris, to watch the riders come home. Garin won the stage, and took the honour of becoming the first man to win the Tour de France. Next over the line was trainee butcher, Lucien Pothier, nearly three hours later. This is still the biggest winning margin in the history of the Tour. Garin spent around 95 hours in the saddle, averaging around 15 miles per hour - no mean feat in the rudimental bikes compared to the works of engineering used by today's riders. 21 of the 60 riders finished the race, with the last place rider coming in 64 hours behind Garin. For the man who had initially been cautious about the Tour, it had been a huge success. Desgrange's struggling magazine had boosted its circulation six-fold and would remain strong until it was forced to shut down post World War II.

However, a theme which would forever dog the Tour was prevalent from this very first outing - cheating. From the first stage, Jean Fischer illegally slip streamed a car, and another rider was subsequently disqualified for the same. These misdemeanours paled in comparison to the second Tour in 1904. Garin, the hero of the inaugural outing was attacked in St. Etienne, illegally took food during a stage and was eventually disqualified after winning, along with the other top three finishers. The Tour was awarded to 19 year-old, Henri Cornet who remains the youngest ever winner. This was, of course, not the last time a winner and hero of the Tour de France would be stripped of his title... Tour de France - Credo Reference Topic Page: Tour de France Definition: Tour de France from The Macquarie Dictionary a long-distance cycling race held annually in France; covers approximately 4800 km; commenced in 1903. Summary Article: Tour de France from Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary Image from: Cyclists, as any other outdoor enthusiasts, may...

in Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society The Tour de France is the world's greatest bicycle race and also the annual sports event with the most viewers—an estimated one billion who watch television coverage beamed around the world and 14.6 million who stand by the roadside. The tour, started in 1903, takes place mostly in France and Belgium, but also visits Spain, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. It is divided into 21 timed stages, or legs, over three weeks, and has become a French national obsession. The newspaper sports columnist Red Smith once wrote that “an army from Mars could invade France, the government could fall, and even the recipe for sauce Bearnaise be lost, but if it happened during the Tour de France nobody would notice.” The route and distance of the tour is different each year, averaging 3,500 kilometers (about 2,100 miles, or the distance from Chicago to Los Angeles). It always includes strenuous mountain passes and a finale in Paris. The number of riders is limited to 180, and the rider with the lowest cumulative time for all stages is the winner.

There have been four five-time winners: Jacques Anquetil (1957, 1961-64), Eddy Mer-ckx (1969-72, 1974), Bernard Hinault (1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985), and Miguel Indurain from Spain (1991-95). Merckx, a Belgian who seemed almost immune to pain, is considered the all-time greatest cycler. He competed in 1,800 races and won 525 of them. In 1986, Greg LeMond was the first American to win the tour. He was nearly killed in a 1987 hunting accident, and endured accidents and operations during the next two years, but came back to win the tour in 1989 and again in 1990. American and former Olympian Lance Armstrong narrowly survived cancer diagnosed in 1996 and went on to win the Tour from 1999 to 2005—the first person to win seven times.

In 2012, however, in response to a report of the United States Anti-Doping Agency indicating that Armstrong engaged in widespread use of banned substances and practices, the Union Cycliste Internationale formally stripped him of his seven Tour de France victories. The first tour in 1903 was organized as a publicity stunt by Henri Desgranges, bicyclist and publisher of the cycling magazine L'Auto. On July 1, 1903, 60 bikers started from the Alarm Clock Cafe on the outskirts of Paris, and three weeks later Maurice Garin was the winner, and the tour was born. In 1984, the Tour Feminin, a special women's race, was added to the tour, and is now a stage race of about 1,000 kilometers, run concurrently with the final two weeks of the men's tour. The first winner was an American, Marianne Martin. CONTACTS: MLA Tour de France. (2015). In H. Henderson (Ed.), Holidays, festivals & celebrations of the world dictionary: detailing more than 3,300 observances from all 50 states and more than 100 nations.

Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, Inc. Retrieved from "Tour de France." In Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary, edited by Helene Henderson. Omnigraphics, Inc., 2015. Tour de France. (2015). In H. Henderson (Ed.), Holidays, festivals & celebrations of the world dictionary: detailing more than 3,300 observances from all 50 states and more than 100 nations. [Online]. Detroit: Omnigraphics, Inc. Available from: [Accessed 20 January 2017]. "Tour de France." Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary, edited by Helene Henderson, Omnigraphics, Inc., 2015. Credo Reference, Accessed 20 Jan 2017.

Images History - Great moments, archives - Tour de France 2015 2007 Great moments in the history of the Tour The line between insanity and genius is said to be a fine one, and in early 20thcentury France, anyone envisaging a near-2,500-km-long cycle race across the country would have been widely viewed as unhinged. But that didn’t stop Géo Lefèvre, a journalist with L’Auto magazine at the time, from proceeding with his inspired plan. His editor, Henri Desgrange, was bold enough to believe in the idea and to throw his backing behind the Tour de France. And so it was that, on 1 July 1903, sixty pioneers set out on their bicycles from Montgeron. After six mammoth stages (Nantes - Paris, 471 km!), only 21 “routiers”, led by Maurice Garin, arrived at the end of this first epic. Having provoked a mixture of astonishment and admiration, le Tour soon won over the sporting public and the roadside crowds swelled.

The French people took to their hearts this unusual event which placed their towns, their countryside and, since 1910, even their mountains, in the spotlight. Le Tour has always moved with the times. Like France as a whole, it benefited from the introduction of paid holidays from 1936; it has lived through wars, and then savoured the “trente glorieuses” period of economic prosperity while enjoying the heydays of Coppi, Bobet, Anquetil, Poulidor and it has opened itself up to foreign countries with the onset of globalisation. Search The history of the Tour de France since 1903 By rider © Presse Sports Bernard Hinault The French cyclist who has won the most races won his first Tour de France in 1978 while he was still a rookie in the Grande Boucle. Hinault won the Tour four times (79, 81, 82 and 85). Nicknamed “The Badger”, this fierce rider retired after the 1986 Tour, during which he supported his team mate Greg LeMond, the first American rider to win the event.

View results All about the tour View the history of a stage departure or arrival town or, learn about the various Alps’ summits on the road of the Tour, discover all kinds of records set on the Tour, check if you know the different winners of the various classifications… Discover all the stats of the Tour. Henri Desgrange Henri Desgrange Henri Desgrange Henri Desgrange (31 January 1865, Paris – 16 August 1940, Beauvallon) was a French bicycle racer and sports journalist. He set 12 world track cycling records, including the hour record of 35.325 kilometres on 11 May 1893. He was the first organiser of the Tour de France. ! Origins Henri Desgrange was one of two brothers, twins. Georges Desgrange was described as having "the air of a defrocked monk" and as "totally devoid of all ambition." The two were born into a comfortably prosperous middle-class family living in Paris. Desgrange worked as a clerk at the Depeux-Dumesnil law office near the Place de Clichy in Paris and may have qualified as a lawyer.

Legend says he was fired from there either for cycling to work or for exposing the outline of his calves in tight socks as he did so. Preferring a life in sport to life in law, he began a dedication to sport that lasted the rest of his life. Desgrange saw his first bicycle race in 1891 when he went to the finish of Bordeaux–Paris. He began racing on the track but suffered by lacking a powerful acceleration. Endurance riding suited him better and he set the first recognised hour record when on 11 May 1893 he rode 35.325 km on the Buffalo velodrome in Paris. He also established records at 50 and 100 km and 100 miles and became a tricycle champion in 1893. He wrote a training book in 1894, La tête et les jambes, in which he conducted a conversation with an unnamed younger rider thought to be his younger self. The book included the advice that an ambitious rider has no more need of a woman than an unwashed pair of socks. In 1894 he wrote another book, Alphonse Marcaux.

In 1897 he became director of the Parc des Princes velodrome and then in December 1903 of France's first permanent indoor track, the Vélodrome d'Hiver, near the Eiffel Tower. L'Auto France at the end of the 19th century was split over the guilt or innocence of a soldier, Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of selling secrets to the Germans. The leading sports paper, Le Vélo - it sold 80,000 copies a day - mixed sports reporting with news and political comment and stood for Dreyfus's acquittal. Some of the paper's largest advertisers, notably Jules-Albert de Dion and Adolphe Clément the owners of the De Dion-Bouton car factory and the Clément tyre and bicycle works, believed Dreyfus to be guilty. A row between them and the editor, Pierre Giffard, led to the advertisers withdrawing their custom and planning a paper of their own. An alternative version has it that Giffard banished the advertisers.

Albert de Dion and Adolphe Clément found other supporters in those who found Le Vélo's advertising rates too high or those, like Desgrange, who had had his advertising rejected and little interest taken in his track editorially. The same went for the man who became Desgrange's business partner, Victor Goddet, another velodrome director. Desgrange's enthusiasm, his sporting ability, his writing and the press work he had done for Clément persuaded the group to appoint him as editor. The writer Geoffrey Nicholson said of Desgrange: "He was outwardly flamboyant, privately cautious and well-connected in the cycle industry. But he was clearly no political die-hard, for as a writer he modelled himself on Émile Zola, who had been the most reviled of all defenders of Dreyfus." Beyond that, and bringing in Goddet to look after the books and perhaps extend the potential for running cycle races, the industrialists knew nothing about newspapers and asked nothing except that they drive Giffard out of business. Desgrange gave the impression - correctly - that he wasn't a man to welcome consultation, let alone questioning. What Desgrange wanted, went.

Only years later did he confess that he and Goddet had sat on a bench outside De Dion's luxurious house in the avénue de la Grande Armée and got themselves into such a state over whether to join his venture that they had to put the decision off to the next day. The first issue of L'Auto-Vélo appeared on 16 October 1900. It was printed on yellow paper to distinguish itself from the green of Le Vélo but a court case brought by the original paper agreed in January 1902 that the name was too similar and the consortium was ordered to drop "vélo" from the title. The title was chosen to reflect the enthusiasm at the time for car racing as the sport of the future. Writing style Geoffrey Nicholson pointed out the way in which Desgrange modelled his writing on Zola. In launching the Tour de France (see below), for instance, he wrote: "With the broad and powerful swing of the hand which Zola in The Earth gave to his ploughman, L'Auto, journal of ideas and action, is going to fling across France today those reckless and uncouth sowers of energy who are the great professional riders of the world...

From Paris to the blue waves of the Mediterranean, from Marseille to Bordeaux, passing along the roseate and dreaming roads sleeping under the sun, across the calm of the fields of the Vendée, following the Loire, which flows on still and silent, our men are going to race madly, unflaggingly." Of riders in Paris–Brest–Paris (see reference to Audax Français below), he wrote: "There are four of them. Their legs, like giant levers, will power onwards for sixty hours, their muscles will grind up the kilometres, their broad chests will heave with the effort of the struggle, their hands will cling on to their handlebars; with their eyes they will observe each other ferociously; their backs will bend forward in unison for barbaric breakaways; their stomachs will fight against hunger, their brains against sleep.

And at night a peasant waiting for them by a deserted road will see four demons passing by, and the noise of their desperate panting will freeze his heart and fill it with terror." Desgrange wrote in the first issue of L'Auto that there would be "not a word" about politics, even though politics - the Dreyfus affair - had led to the paper's creation. On the eve of the first world war (see "Desgrange and war" below), however, he wrote: "My dear boys [mes p'tits gars chéris]! My dear French boys! Listen to me! In the 14 years that L'Auto has appeared every day, it has never given you bad advice, has it? Well! Listen to me! The Prussians are bastards (salauds]. I don't use the word to be vulgar but because it is exactly what I mean... When your rifle is aimed at their chests, they will beg for mercy. Don't give it to them.

Shoot them down without mercy!" The Tour de France Desgrange is credited with founding the Tour de France in 1903 but the idea came from one of his journalists, Géo Lefèvre, who said he blurted out the idea because he felt under pressure to say something at a crisis meeting held at the newspaper's headquarters at 10 rue faubourg Montmartre to resolve its poor circulation. Desgrange looked at the third man present, Georges Prade, and then back to his young journalist. "If I understand you right, petit Géo, what you are proposing is a Tour de France", he said. The words had been used for other sporting events but never for cycling. Desgrange was cautious and suggested that he and Lefèvre lunch at the Taverne Zimmer in the boulevard de Montmartre. The subject wasn't mentioned until coffee, Lefèvre recalled, and the most Desgrange would say is that he would discuss it with Victor Goddet, the L'Auto financial manager. Lefèvre said he was sure Desgrange was passing the buck.

Instead, Goddet was delighted and was said to have pointed at the safe and invited Desgrange to take all he needed. L'Auto announced the race on January 19, 1903. Although Desgrange liked to be called "the father of the Tour", the idea was not only not his but he was so unsure of it that he stayed away from the first event in 1903 until it turned out, against his expectations, to be a success. He wasn't even at the start, when the riders were waved away from outside the Reveil Matin in Montgeron outside Paris. His uncertainty extended to taking the riders into the Pyrenees. That idea came from another colleague, Adolphe Steinès, who proposed it so persistently that Desgrange finally exploded and told him to do whatever he wished. He regretted the decision when riders began protesting they would be eaten by bears even assuming they reached the summits alive. Desgrange feigned illness and stayed away, leaving the race to his deputy, Victor Breyer. Promotion of the Tour de France proved a great success for the newspaper.

Circulation leapt from 25,000 before the Tour to 65,000 after it. In 1908, the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour, it was selling 500,000 copies a day. The record circulation claimed by Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933 Tour. Lefèvre, whose idea it had been and who had reported the first race while travelling by bicycle and train, was switched from cycling to other sports. Management style The sport of cycle racing grew faster than the national and international associations established to administer it. Henri Desgrange saw his race, and himself, as more than capable of standing up to the Union Vélocipédique Française (UVF), the French authority. The UVF disqualified the first four riders in the 1904 Tour de France, imposing penalties which went beyond those Desgrange had already imposed and which he thought excessive. The winner, Maurice Garin, for example, had already been fined 500 francs for taking food where taking food was not allowed.

What annoyed Desgrange more was that the UVF had waited until the following 30 November before acting, to avoid igniting public passion. And that it hadn't explained the detail. He wrote in L'Auto: "It is extremely difficult to establish whether the heavy punishments handed out by the UVF to the principle riders were motivated by serious reasons, when we are given only the results of these decisions while at the same time the documents which they used are withheld from us. It is no exaggeration to say that public opinion will demand from the Union Vélocipédique some explanation, which will no doubt be forthcoming. A suggestion of how Desgrange already perceived his race came in the paragraph that followed: "We are convinced that the sporting commission has judged with its soul and with its conscience and that this conscience is entirely clear. I believe, however... I believe that it has made a big mistake by sanctioning in this way, a race of the magnitude of the Tour de France." The "magnitude of the Tour de France", by then only in its second year, came close to be ended there and then.

Desgrange wrote in L'Auto: "The Tour de France is finished and the second edition will, I fear, also be the last. It has died of its success, of the blind passions that it unleashed, the abuse and the dirty suspicions... We will therefore leave it to others to take the chance of taking on an adventure on the scale of the Tour de France." Desgrange soon thought otherwise and ran his Tour de France for another three decades. It was "his" Tour de France with rules that he drew up, rules that he imposed strictly - the French favourite Henri Pélissier stalked off in 1920 after Desgrange penalised him two minutes for leaving a flat tyre by the roadside. In 1924 he and two other riders walked out of the race in Coutances after a row about whether riders were allowed to take off clothing as the day grew hotter.

Desgrange dismissed Pélissier as "a pigheaded, arrogant champion." Marcel Bidot, another rider and later manager of the French team in the Tour de France, called Desgrange "a driven man and a boss who tolerated no disagreement." The Mercier row There are many examples of Desgrange's self-belief but few as entertaining as the way he fell out with a provincial bike-maker called Mercier. André Leducq, one of France's top riders, had left the Alcyon team to join Émile Mercier. Edmond Gentil, the head of Alcyon, asked Desgrange to leave Leducq out of the French team for the Tour de France, a team which as organiser Desgrange chose personally. That was Gentil's revenge and Mercier was annoyed. Desgrange, though, had taken a decision that, like all Desgrange's decisions, was correct, final and indisputable. Mercier wrote complaint after complaint, then engaged lawyers. Desgrange ordered his staff never to mention Mercier's name again. Mercier, though, was a sponsor and bike-maker and sometimes had to have his complaints published.

So L'Auto compromised by never spelling his name correctly. That drove Mercier into a deeper fury and more lawyers were engaged. L'Auto would again print corrections, only to get the name wrong once more. "Monsieur Gercier has let us known that his name is Monsieur Mervier", and then, "Monsieur Mervier asks us to say that, in reality, he is called Monsieur Cermier." When Mercier wrote once more, L'Auto printed: "Monsieur Cermier insists that in fact he is known as Monsieur Merdier" (Merde is French for "excrement"). Desgrange and war Desgrange created a committee for physical education at the start of the first world war and trained several thousand soldiers to prepare them for the Front. Despite his age - he was already more than 50 - Desgrange then enrolled as a soldier himself. He presented himself at an assembly centre at Autan, distinctive for his grey hair and the Légio d'honneur pinned to his chest, and went to war as a poilu, an ordinary soldier.

He won the Croix de guerre in combat and continued to write for L'Auto but under the name "Desgrenier". Desgrenier is a play on words. Desgrange translates loosely as Barnes in English; the slight change turned his name into Lofts. Desgrange was made an officer in May 1919 and that summer returned to L'Auto to edit the paper and to restore the Tour de France in a nation of death, ruin and shortage. Desgrange and the flag It is because of Desgrange and the Tour de France that the people of France first recognised the shape of their country, say two academics who have studied the role of the race in French social history The French had little idea of their geography at the start of the 20th century, say Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Léonard. The popular 1877 children's schoolbook Le Tour de France par deux enfants (the title referred to a didactic journey by two children and not the race) had sold six million copies before the publishers thought it necessary, in 1905, to include a map of the country they were describing.

"Those who conceived the Tour de France printed in L'Auto general maps which traced the route of the race and therefore showed the hexagon shape of France, because of the way the race followed the country's frontiers... By the cartography of France that it helped make known, the Tour acted as a teacher in showing a map printed with the contours of the country - which was rare at least until the Great War - and as avant-gardiste in very quickly popularising the notion of France as more or less hexagonal, a France amputated from 1903 not only of its "lost provinces" [ but also of possessions overseas and of Corsica, (which the race has) never visited in a century nor figured on maps of the race. When, with the decolonialisation of the Fifties and Sixties, the national area contracted to essentially the contours of a hexagon... the Tour had largely - and for some decades - sensibilised opinion to the contraction of European and continental France into this hexagon." Audax Français While Desgrange is known outside cycling for his Tour de France, he made a further name inside it and within other sports by creating the Audax movement in 1904.

Enthused by the way he saw long-distance cyclists challenging themselves to ride long distances in a set time, he created Audax Français to encourage and regulate such events in France. "Desgrange, Géo Lefèvre and Charles Stourm founded Audax Français. Regularly, in 1903, L'Auto reported the activities of Audax riders in Italy. And their project, a ride from Turin to Paris planned for the summer of 1904. Géo Lefèvre, who was involved, suggested that French cyclists could go to meet them, under the administration of the newspaper. And that created the idea of a French organisation of the same sort. So much so that on 7 January 1904, Desgrange could announce the creation of Audax Français." That in turn led to long-distance rides across France. The first 200 km ride under Audax rules was on 3 April 1904, followed by a 100 km walking event on 26 June.

The cycling distances extended to 300, 400 and 600 km and ultimately to Paris–Brest–Paris (1200 km) which was originally a race but became an international Audax ride. The Audax movement extends to swimming, with Audax brevets created over 6 km on 27 June 1913, then to rowing over 80 km and finally, in 1985, to skiing. The Union des Audax Parisien was created in 14 July 1921 to administer brevets across the world. It became the Union des Audax Français on 1 January 1956. Health campaigning Throughout his life, Desgrange was passionate about improving the health of the nation. He was concerned that so many Frenchmen had been rejected by the army because of their poor health that France had not been able to protect itself adequately in the Franco-Prussian war. He set a personal example by running for a couple of hours a day all through his life. Jacques Goddet (son of Victor Goddet) said: "Henri Desgrange... imposed on himself a life of submitting himself to daily physical exercises.

They had to demand, according to his draconian theories, a violent effort, prolonged, repeated, sometimes going as far as pain, demanding tenacity and even a certain stoicism. He took on a crusade against Original Inertia, against the softening of the body in the face of a society keen to suppress physical effort. He appointed himself the apostle of the fight to safeguard character. Suffer and sweat! And that meant a permanent individual culture of cross-country, at least three times a week, in the parc de St-Cloud. Nor did he hold back: he ran for at least an hour, never missing out Jardies hill, the fierce slope in the centre of the park used by hardened runners."[ Desgrange used L'Auto to help his campaign, going as far as listing riders he had seen his Parc des Princes cycle track without having a shower. The column's title was Dirty Feet. Should be early 1930s. Desgrange (center) with two-time Tour winner André Leducq (left).

For Desgrange, the Tour de France was not simply a long-distance and multi-day cycle race - an idea invented by Lefèvre - but close to what would now be called social engineering. He sought not just the best cyclist but a supreme athlete. To him, he said several times, the perfect Tour would have a perfect winner only if one man survived. Private life Desgrange had a wife - they divorced - and a daughter. Little is known of either. He spent most of his life with the avant-garde artist Jeanne (Jane) Deley but never married her. Deley was born on 28 July 1878, in Creusot, Saône-et-Loire. She is listed in Le dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains by Edouard Joseph. She and Desgrange met some time after the 1914-1918 war. They were a contrast, Desgrange rather formal and preoccupied by publishing and physical activity, Deley a party-giver who liked to entertain at the home she shared with Desgrange.

Among her guests were the former racing star Charles Pélissier, a favourite of Desgrange's and who Jacques Goddet hints in his biography may have been romantically involved with Deley; Henry Decoin, a theatre director; Robert Perrier, a writer at L'Auto, Jeff Dickson, an American who promoted spectaculars at the Vélodrome d'Hiver; and a Serbian artist called Millovi Uzelac. Jeanne Deley signed her work "Jane Deley" and showed it at the Salon des Indépendants as early as 1924, and at other salons later. At her insistence, the couple bought a château near St-Maxime, on the Mediterranean. Deley died on 13 July 1949. Desgrange was a life-long devotee to fitness. Death In 1936 Henri Desgrange had a prostate operation. At the time, two operations were needed; the Tour de France was due to fall between them. Desgrange's dominant character persuaded his surgeon to give him permission to follow the race despite warnings that he should not. Desgrange ordered his car to be heavily packed with cushions.

A doctor would ride beside him. Desgrange let his deputy and chief cycling writer, Jacques Goddet, into the secret but demanded he say nothing of his suffering. Goddet in fact told Desgrange's deputy on the Tour, Louis Cazalis. It became clear on the first stage that things were not going to go well. Desgrange was in agony from the jolting and the repeated acceleration and slowing of his car. The second day proved too much and, in a fever at Charleville, he left the race and retired to his château at Beauvallon. His daily column, considered of great importance, was taken over by the writer Charles Faurous. Desgrange died at home on the Mediterranean coast on 16 August 1940. L'Auto wrote, under the headline Le Patron: "Those who called Henri Desgrange by that title will now painfully find the true value of that title. We are mourning a father. A father who presided over the birth, then the formation, then the development, then the health of his child. He loved all those who loved L'Auto. His joy was to mix with the youngest of his collaborators.

We'll no longer find him in the sports hall where he was as vigorous at 75 as he was in his fifties, which is as vigorous as others are in their forties. He will no longer be... But, then, what are we saying? His memory, his example and his lesson will still be here, there, everywhere, in our beloved [publishing] house, still and for ever full of his dynamism [pas rapide] and his visionary and precise decisions." A monument to his memory, paid for by subscription, stands at the Col du Galibier. A prize is offered in his name to the first rider over the col in each Tour de France. The end of L'Auto L'Auto continued without Desgrange during the war but with a controlling interest in its shares held by a group of German businessmen. Jacques Goddet, who was not responsible for the sale of the shares, said the paper had tried to improve its sales by adding general news coverage, which opened a way for the German owners to insist that that coverage favoured the Occupiers. The outcome was that L'Auto was closed down by the government when Paris was liberated and the doors were nailed shut.

The company's possessions were sequestrated. Jacques Goddet led a successful bid to open L'Équipe, although others planning rival papers judged his name an unfair advantage because he was too well known through his association with L'Auto'. Goddet was therefore not allowed to have his name in the paper nor to attend the paper's office."[ Ownership of the Tour de France had also been sequestrated by the government and was opened to offers. L'Équipe ran a demonstration race and a rival bidder ran another. L'Équipe was granted the right and Goddet returned to the organising role that he had inherited from Desgrange. He wasn't, however, allowed to print his new publication on yellow paper. That was seen as being too reminiscent of the shamed L'Auto and was specifically banned. Legacy Henri Desgrange was one of the few people in the world to have invented a sport: bicycle stage racing. Before him there had been cycle races that lasted more than one day but never a race composed of individual races adding up to a total.

His achievement is not only to have created the Tour de France but that that achievement has been copied across the world in a multitude of other stage races from a weekend to a month long. Desgrange grew up in an era when France had suffered humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War and when he believed the French were "tired, without muscle, without character and without willpower." Desgrange believed that sport and exercise would improve the nation physically and morally. It was a belief that he lived out in his own life, timing himself to walk across his bedroom even days before he died. He believed the Tour de France had to be gruelling, to the extent that the perfect race for him would be one that only one rider could finish, because he needed it to inspire, to extend the limits of human achievement. Many of his rules, which now seem arcane, were to that end. He forbade riders to cooperate with each other, banning tactics now taken for granted, such as sharing the pacemaking. He insisted competitors mend their own bicycles and accept no outside help because independence and self-sufficiency were everything to him. For the same reason, he stood out against variable gears long after they had become common elsewhere.

Desgrange was close to tyrannical in his behaviour, according to the historian and writer Pierre Chany. He brooked no interference in his race, from officialdom let alone individual riders, and imposed penalties arbitrarily. His penalties were at one time so erratic that the entire Belgian team went home in disgust. It is impossible to say whether the Tour and the sport of bicycle stage racing would have been different had they been invented by someone else or had Desgrange handed over control while he was a younger and fitter man. The only thing that is certain is that Desgrange, for all his faults, created not just one of the biggest sporting events in the world but the very version of the sport that made it possible. It is his unique personality and imprint on the race that has led the leader's yellow jersey to carry his initials, H.D., in the style in which he wrote them. !

Question: The first of what event, organised by journalist Henri Desgrange in 1903, was won by Maurice Garin?
Answer: Tour de France