Читать книгу Cycle Touring in France. Eight tours in Brittany, Picardy, Alsace, Auvergne/Languedoc, Provence, Dordogne/Lot, the Alps and the Pyrenees онлайн

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The Tour de France

The first Tour de France – the world's greatest bicycle race – took place in 1903. Created by Henri Desgrange, the editor of L'Auto, and George Lefèvre, the rugby and cycling reporter, to help publicise and improve circulation of this sports newspaper, the first event was a six-stage race covering 2428km. The riders left Paris for Lyon, then cycled on to Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, and finally back to Paris. The average stage distance was 405km, which meant the competitors had to cycle nights as well as days! They also had to carry out their own repairs if necessary.

Maurice Garin won that first Tour in front of 20,000 Parisiens, and L'Auto's circulation quadrupled, heralding the birth of something very special. Yet the following year's Tour was almost the last, with many riders cheating by catching trains on occasion and even sabotaging each other's bicycles. Fortunately the organisers decided to stage the race again in 1905 with more concrete rules and they introduced the first mountain stage, the Ballon d'Alsace. Desgrange added a stage through the Pyrénées in 1910, and one in the Alps a year later. By now the Tour had more than doubled in overall distance and number of stages, but the average stage distance was still frighteningly long at 356km.