The Beginning of the Tour De France
Have you ever wondered how and why Tour de France started? It began as a promotional event by a newspaper. Of sixty competitors from France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, including professional team riders and freelance amateurs, only 21 finished the race.
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The beginning
Have you ever wondered how and why Tour de France started? It began as a promotional event by a newspaper, L’Auto, whose editor Henri Desgranges, a champion cyclist, was engaged in a struggle with a rival journal, Le Velo. The concept was the brainchild of Desgranges’s assistant Henri Lefevre, who did most of the organization en route.
The first race
The first race began on July 1, 1903, outside a café called Le Reveille Matin in Paris. It covered a total of 1,500 miles (2,400 km) and took 19 days to complete in six stages, some of which involved all-night rides: from Paris to Lyon, no less than 290 miles (467 km), Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, and then back to Paris, with rest days between each stage.
The winner
Of sixty competitors from France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, including professional team riders and freelance amateurs, only 21 finished the race. Some 10,000 spectators saw Frenchman Maurice Garin, “the Little Chimney-Sweep”, who had led throughout, finish first in the Parc au Princes, Paris. His winning margin was 3 hours, averaging more than 15.5 miles per hour (25 kilometers per hour) for the course. Garin won the prize of 6,000 francs. The last finisher came in 2 days later.
With train
The celebratory issue of L’Auto sold hundreds of thousands – the following year Le Velo went out of business. The second race was marred by riots and bribery. Garin won again, but he and the next 3 finishers were disqualified for cheating – Garin was supposed to have taken a train part of the way.
