The Birth of a Legend

The Tour de France was born from a combination of commercial necessity and journalistic audacity. In 1903, the sports newspaper L'Auto was locked in a circulation war with its rival, Le Vélo. The paper's editor, Henri Desgrange, and cycling journalist Géo Lefèvre conceived of a race so ambitious, so audacious, that it would capture the public imagination and boost circulation. Their vision was a race that would circle France, connecting its major cities and regions in an epic test of endurance that would prove irresistible to readers.

The early Tours were adventures as much as races. Riders navigated dirt roads and mountain passes on heavy, single-speed bicycles, often riding through the night with only the moon and stars for illumination. They stopped at checkpoints to have their route cards stamped, repaired their own punctures, and sometimes had to fight off sabotage attempts from rivals or their supporters. The stages were impossibly long by modern standards - the longest in that first Tour stretched 471 kilometers from Nantes to Paris, requiring riders to pedal for over seventeen hours.

Maurice Garin's victory in that inaugural Tour established patterns that would persist for decades. He was a working-class hero, a man who had risen from poverty through strength and determination. His triumph resonated with a French public that saw in cycling a democratic sport where success depended on individual effort rather than social privilege. The yellow press coverage - so called for the distinctive yellow paper L'Auto used - created a new form of sports journalism that blended race reporting with literary storytelling, transforming cyclists into mythic heroes undertaking Homeric journeys.

The race grew rapidly in popularity and ambition. By 1905, the Tour had expanded to eleven stages, and by 1910, it had ventured into the high mountains, adding the Pyrenees to the route. The inclusion of the Col du Tourmalet that year introduced what would become one of the Tour's defining features: the epic mountain stages that separate champions from mere competitors. Octave Lapize's famous cry of "Assassins!" as he crested the Tourmalet captures the mixture of suffering and theater that would become central to the Tour's appeal.