by Eric Reed
ian father fi gure who demanded strict physical and spiritual discipline of his young charge. Desgrange insisted that his disciple live an ascetic lifestyle, ab-stain from smoking, drinking, and any form of self- adulation, and avoid sex
and even contact with women, whom he argued sapped the physical strength
and will to win from male athletes.3
L’Auto and the Tour de France were born of the turn- of- the- century
drama surrounding the Dreyfus Affair, a series of political crises and judicial scandals that divided the French Left and Right for more than a decade following the erroneous conviction of Jewish army offi cer Alfred Dreyfus for
treason in 1894. L’Auto and the Tour modeled themselves after the cycling-related press ventures of the 1890s. Although police reports characterized him
as politically neutral,4 Desgrange entered into publishing with the backing of
right- wing agitators and businessmen who supported the Dreyfus convic-
tion. The Count de Dion, an automobile industrialist who was jailed briefl y
g r e a t e s t o f t h e t u r n - o f - t h e - c e n t u r y b i c y c l e r a c e s 25
because of his Dreyfus- related political activities, and Adolphe Clément, a bicycle manufacturer and Desgrange’s former employer, contributed start- up
capital to L’Auto. They hoped the new sports daily, at fi rst called L’Auto- Vélo, would undermine Pierre Giffard’s market leader, Le Vélo, as retribution for Giffard’s pointed and public criticism of de Dion and others over their support of the Dreyfus conviction.5
L’Auto- Vélo debuted on October 16, 1900. In the fi rst issue, Desgrange underlined the commercial raison d’être of his newspaper: to promote
the popularization of the bicycle and the automobile and to support their
manufacturers: “The bicycle . . . owes it to herself to penetrate everywhere,
even into modest homes. . . . Each day [ L’Auto- Vélo] will toast the glory of the athletes and the victories of the Industry.”6 Desgrange’s fl edgling paper
fared badly against Giffard’s Le Vélo. Circulation of the new daily, which was printed on yellow paper, hovered around 50,000 copies per day during its
fi rst year of existence.7 A vicious battle between the two dailies continued for almost four years, with each undermining the other at every turn. In 1902,
for example, Desgrange staged a Bordeaux – Paris bicycle race the day after
Giffard’s, on the exact course followed by cyclists in Giffard’s competition, to steal Le Vélo’s thunder. Giffard, piqued by Desgrange’s choice of title for his newspaper, sued Desgrange for plagiarism. A judge forced Desgrange to drop
the second half of L’Auto- Vélo’s title in January 1903. Despite Desgrange’s best efforts, L’Auto’s circulation dropped to approximately 30,000 in June 1902, the height of the outdoor cycling season, and to 20,000 by the beginning of
1903.8 Desgrange feared that the Count de Dion and his other backers would
pull the fi nancial plug on the newspaper.9
During the course of a meeting with his editors in L’Auto’s Paris offi ces at 10, rue Montmartre, a frustrated Desgrange demanded that his colleagues
come up with ideas that would fi nally give them an advantage in the war
with Giffard. Desgrange’s twenty- fi ve- year- old cycling editor, Géo Lef èvre, suggested that L’Auto stage a race around France, fashioned after the existing Six Days of Paris event, but held on France’s roads instead of in a cycling velodrome. Lef èvre described Desgrange’s reaction the moment he suggested
staging the race:
A Tour of France? You must want to kill everyone brave enough to ride it. . . .
[But] In principle, your idea isn’t stupid. . . . Giffard will be so angry! . . . That’ll cause a huge splash, and I’m all for creating huge splashes.10
On January 19, 1903, several days after losing the plagiarism suit to Giffard,
Desgrange announced the creation of the Tour de France. The sheer audac-
26
c h a p t e r t w o
ity of Desgrange’s proposed event — 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) in length,
divided into six stages to be raced over several weeks — raised considerably
the bar by which subsequent cycling races would be measured.
L’Auto barely managed to get the fi rst Tour off the ground. Desgrange
decided that the Tour would start on the 1st of July outside Paris and pass
through Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes before fi nishing
outside Paris on July 19th. Initially, too few competitors signed up to make
staging the race plausible. Unlike many long races of the day, Desgrange
refused to allow riders to employ “pacers” ( entraineurs)— vehicles driven before a competitor to lessen wind resistance and set a pedaling rhythm —
except during the last stage of the Tour. Also, Desgrange forbade racing teams
from colluding with each other, which was a common practice. To encour-
age participation, Desgrange simplifi ed registration requirements by allow-
ing any cyclist who appeared in person at L’Auto and paid a ten- franc fee to enter. L’Auto offered prize money to the top eight fi nishers of each stage and a grand prize of 3,000 gold francs to the overall Tour winner. Participants could drop out of the Tour in one stage and rejoin it at a later stage,
although they would be ineligible for the overall title if they did not complete the entire course. On race day only sixty of the seventy- eight registered riders presented themselves for sign- in at “Le Réveil- Matin” (The Alarm Clock)
café in Montgeron, just outside Paris. Race participants included some of the
top professionals of the day, such as Maurice Garin, who moonlighted as a
chimney sweep in Lens. Others were complete unknowns or novices, such as
a white- bearded man named Dargassies, a former blacksmith from Grisolles
in southern France, who signed up because the person from whom he had
recently bought a grocery store commented that he seemed strong enough to
participate.11
The fi rst Tour was a disorganized affair. Although the fi nish of each stage
was to take place in a specifi ed café in each of the host towns, few of the race’s rules or arrangements had been determined by start time. The racers crossed
the starting line at 3:16 p.m. on July 1st. They rode until they reached the
fi rst- stage town, Lyon, 467 kilometers (290 miles) away. Competitors pedaled
all day and all night and stopped at cafés along the way to replenish their
strength with coffee and generous helpings of red meat. Some required more
than twenty- four hours to reach the fi nish line of the fi rst stage, which created enormous differences in aggregate times among the racers. Riders rested
and trained for several days between each leg of the Tour. The other stages
departed in the middle of the night to ensure that riders had as much daylight
as possible in which to ride.
To mark the Tour’s fi ftieth anniversary in 1953, Géo Lef èvre granted an
g r e a t e s t o f t h e t u r n - o f - t h e - c e n t u r y b i c y c l e r a c e s 27
interview in which he recounted his experiences during the fi rst Tour. Des-
grange dispatched his young cycling editor to work “all at once [as] race di-
rector, solitary referee, fi nish- line judge and special envoy” of L’Auto. To prevent riders from cheating or employing pacers, Lef èvre rode with the riders
on his bike and set up unannounced, nocturnal checkpoints in key stretches
of the itinerary. Lef èvre occasionally left the course, rode his bike to the nearest train station, caught an express train, and rejoined the itinerary farther
down the road to ke
ep riders on their toes. L’Auto colleagues Georges Abran and Fernand Mercier assisted Lef èvre so that Desgrange could truthfully assert that he had employed “three secret modes of extraordinary surveillance”
during the Tour. Abran waved a giant starting fl ag, of the same yellow tint as the pages of L’Auto, at the beginning of each stage and waited “with a very full glass of Pernod” at the fi nish café for the competitors to arrive and sign the offi cial registry at the end of the stage.12 Mercier traveled by car to each host town on the eve of the Tour’s arrival to make logistical preparations.
Maurice Garin won the fi rst stage of the Tour’s six stages with a time ad-
vantage of more than nine hours over the last- place fi nisher. The race pro-
ceeded pell- mell. Several instances of forbidden collusion among riders —
some competitors in contention for the lead convinced those far behind in
the standings to pace- set for them — forced Desgrange and Lef èvre to change
the rules after the second stage so that competitors ineligible for the overall Tour crown would start each stage an hour after the eligible riders. On July
14th, Desgrange almost canceled the remainder of the Tour when the mayor
of La Rochelle attempted to block the passage of the riders through his town
because traffi c was forbidden to circulate on Bastille Day. Only loud protests and threats of violence by La Rochelle’s inhabitants in front of town hall
prevented the mayor from carrying out his promise. When the riders fi nally
reached Paris on July 19th, Garin handily won the fi rst- ever Tour with a time advantage of almost three hours over his closest rival.
The 1904 race resembled the fi rst — it included eighty- eight competitors
and followed the same six- stage itinerary, but cyclists who quit one stage
were not allowed to rejoin the race later. Large crowds lined the streets to
watch the Tour, but despite the race’s growing popularity, Desgrange con-
sidered canceling the race for good. Several highly embarrassing and even
violent episodes of cheating plagued the race. Some riders, perhaps inspired
by race judge Lef èvre’s tactics, hopped trains. Others were towed with cables
by friends and coaches. Several riders’ supporters became violent. Four un-
known men in an automobile attempted to force Maurice Garin, the 1903
Tour champion, into a ditch and run him over. During the night of the sec-
ond stage, near Nîmes, the supporters of a local man participating in the
28
c h a p t e r t w o
Tour physically assaulted their hero’s rivals. Only several warning shots from
Géo Lef èvre’s starter’s pistol fi nally ended the ensuing melee. Following the Tour’s arrival in Paris, the Union Vélocipédique de France, French cycling’s
governing body, disqualifi ed Maurice Garin and the next three fi nishers for
unspecifi ed offenses — Garin may have taken a train during one stage, and
may have received food and other forbidden support from his sponsor, but
the truth about his misdeeds is unknown — and named the unknown fi fth-
place fi nisher, nineteen- year- old Henri Cornet, champion of the 1904 Tour.
Desgrange lamented that “the Tour has been killed by its own success. . . . The second edition of the Tour . . . was its last.”13
Despite the debacle, the commercial boost the Tour gave to L’Auto was
unmistakable and Desgrange convinced himself to continue staging the race.
During the 1903 Tour, L’Auto’s circulation rose to 65,000 copies per day and averaged 45,000 copies per day for the year, and by 1904 Desgrange’s paper
averaged nearly 50,000 copies per day. Desgrange won the circulation battle
with Giffard. Le Vélo closed its doors in the summer of 1904, leaving L’Auto as the only sports daily in Paris. By 1912, Desgrange’s paper had grown to the
seventh- largest daily newspaper in France.14 Between 1913 and 1924, L’Auto’s f i g u r e 3 . Pellos, “Visions, Dreams, and Nightmares of the Rider” (detail). The cartoon depicts nature punishing a Tour rider in the mountains. The popular artist penned hundreds of images of the Tour, many of which anthropomorphized the event’s natural settings. Match, July 25, 1933. Courtesy of BN.
g r e a t e s t o f t h e t u r n - o f - t h e - c e n t u r y b i c y c l e r a c e s 29
f i g u r e 4 . Pellos, “Before the Smiling Pyrenees: The Dream of a Good Climber.” Match, July 14, 1938.
Courtesy of BN.
average daily circulation rose from 120,000 to 277,000, and from 284,000 to
495,000 during the Tour. The fame accorded to the paper by the Tour became
the backbone of L’Auto’s circulation.
2. Spectatorship and the Literary Tour
In 1905, as part of his attempt to enlarge the Tour’s audience and spectator-
ship, Desgrange began the tradition of altering the race’s itinerary every year.
He increased the number of stages from six to eleven and the length of the
event to almost 3,000 kilometers. Desgrange sent the Tour to the towns of
Nancy, Besançon, Grenoble, Toulon, La Rochelle, Rennes, and Caen for the
fi rst time. By 1910, the race covered 4,734 kilometers over fi fteen stages. Between 1903 and 1914, L’Auto organized stage starts or fi nishes in thirty- one different provincial towns. During the same period the race passed through
several hundred different cities, towns, and villages at least once. The Tour
30
c h a p t e r t w o
was not run during the Great War. Desgrange continued to expand the Tour’s
itinerary after the First World War. The Tour comprised eighteen stages in
1925 and twenty- two stages in 1929. Between 1919 and 1929, the Tour stopped
in twelve new provincial towns for the fi rst time. The number of spectators
was enormous. Richard Holt estimates that by 1919 between a quarter and a
third of the French populace took in the race on the roadside.15
Yet only a small number of people, mainly the handful of journalists who
covered the race, watched the entire Tour. Most French men and women
could only take in a stage or two of the race in person. Because the riders
passed by in a matter of seconds when one stood on the roadside, most fans
followed the Tour’s spectacle in its entirety by reading about it in their newspapers. The race became a literary as well as a sporting event. Journalists who covered the race developed the sense of drama that characterized the Tour in
the popular imagination. Desgrange continually revised the race’s format to
maximize and draw out the narrative tension and to offer more interesting
stories that would captivate spectators and readers. L’Auto was by no means the fi rst mass publication to develop literary linkages among bicycling, the
nation, athletic heroes, and nature.16 Nevertheless, Desgrange and his col-
leagues were masterful and artistic writers. Their efforts to develop a literary melodrama to serve as the Tour’s background illustrate how the press gave
meaning to new spectacles in French mass society.
Desgrange sought to enhance the event’s “gigantism” by challenging the
riders in new ways. In 1905, he added the fi rst mountain, the Ballon d’Alsace, to the Tour’s itinerary. In 1907, the Tour visited the Alps for the fi rst time and in 1910 the Pyrenees. The mountains served two important purposes: to captivate
the reading audience and to draw out for as long as possible the competition
for the Tour’s overall crown. Prior to the 1905 Tour, no cycling competition
had included any sizable hills at all; to climb the Ballon d’Alsace wa
s consid-
ered “crazy” because only automobiles had raced on it before the Tour’s visit.17
L’Auto’s journalists discovered ever more exhausting climbs for the Tour cyclists to conquer. One cyclist even called the organizers “murderers” when
they forced the riders to traverse four Pyrenean peaks of 1,500 meters or more
on the same day during the 1910 Tour. The climbs through the Alps and the
Pyrenees determined the victors of the race because leads were forged and de-
stroyed in these mountain ranges. After 1910, Desgrange had fi xed the general
outlines of the itinerary that was to endure until the 1930s. Riders crossed the Pyrenees by the end of the fi rst or beginning of the second week of the Tour and the Alps during the second or the beginning of the third week. Thus, the outcome of the contest, which had been determined during the fi rst stages of the
early Tours, could never be defi nitively known until the last days of the race.
g r e a t e s t o f t h e t u r n - o f - t h e - c e n t u r y b i c y c l e r a c e s 31
Desgrange also experimented with technical facets of the race formula
and rules to make the contest more exciting. Between 1905 and 1912, he in-
stituted a system whereby each racer gained points toward the overall crown
according to his placement in each stage, in the belief that such a system
would make the riders vie more ferociously to win each stage. When that
system stagnated, Desgrange reinstituted the aggregate time standard of vic-
tory, which remains the competitive model today. To pit the more talented
professional riders directly against each other, organizers separated the com-
petitors into two categories, groupés (professionals) and isolés (amateurs or semiprofessionals). During the 1920s, the organizers instituted a number of
innovations. After 1923, stage winners received time bonuses. In an attempt
to circumvent collusion among the corporate teams, the 1927 Tour featured
several team time trials. During the 1929 Tour, Desgrange even penalized the
professional riders when the overall average speed of the race dropped to
below thirty kilometers per hour by forcing them to race directly against the