The First Tour de France

Cycle racing was all the rage. The Paris-Brest-Paris race was launched in 1891. (Its inaugural edition saw a car take on the cyclists. The car lost.) The first Paris-Roubaix race, a triumph for its promoter, the daily sports paper Le Vélo, came in 1896.

In 1900 a rival paper, L’Auto, was founded. It struggled until a young journalist, Géo Lefèvre, came up with an idea to boost circulation: a race around France.

It began on 1 July 1903. ‘L’Auto … will from today send across France those unconscious and hardy sowers of energy, the professional road racers’, the paper boasted. It lasted 18 days, but its 1,500-odd miles were broken into just six stages, each lasting more than 24 hours. Some started at night: the Lyon to Marseilles stage began at 2.30am.

The Tour was won by the Italian-born Maurice Garin, who arrived at the finish in Paris nearly three hours ahead of his closest rival. Crowds of 100,000 greeted the riders’ entry into the city.

But the success of the race almost destroyed it. The following year, rampaging mobs attacked the riders. As for Garin, his fame was short-lived. He and three other riders were disqualified for, among other things, being fed at the wrong time. Rumours persisted that he had also taken a train.