The First Tour de France: Sixty Cyclists and Nineteen Days of Daring on the Road to Paris

by Peter Cossins

Overview

From its inception, the 1903 Tour de France was a colorful affair. Full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating, it was a race to be remembered.

Cyclists of the time weren't enthusiastic about participating in this "heroic" race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat. From Maurice "The White Bulldog" Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a round of cheese in order to smuggle him into France as a fourteen-year-old, to Hippolyte Aucouturier, who looked like a villain from a Buster Keaton movie with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, the cyclists were a remarkable bunch.

Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568589855
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	32 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling magazine. He has covered sixteen Tours de France, writing for the Guardian, Times, and Telegraph, and is the author of several previous books on cycling related subjects.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Introduction 1

1 'The Greatest Cycling Race in the Entire World' 5

2 'The Phantom Race' Takes Shape 31

3 'A Great Event Beyond Our Imaginations' 49

4 'Let Us Fight with the Same Weapons' 64

5 'These Riders Will Never Reach the Finish' 85

6 'A Beautiful but Terrible Battle' 104

7 'An Honest and Closely Checked Contest' 125

8 'I've Beaten Garin!' 137

9 'Are the Organisers Beginners or Just Incapable?' 162

10 'Everyone Who Finished This Stage Is a Marvellous Rider' 176

11 'Your Bicycle Is Your Salvation' 197

12 'Road Cycling Has Been Democratised' 215

13 'Colossal, Gigantic and Monstrous' 232

14 'Sickened by the Behaviour of My Rivals' 247

15 'An Outpouring of Local Chauvinism' 267

16 'Vive Garin! Vive le Tour!' 283

17 'The Most Abominably Hard Race Ever Imagined' 308

18 'A Tour That Had Everything' 321

Appendix: What Became of the 1903 Tour's Star Names 331

Bibliography 341

Acknowledgements 343

List of Illustrations 345

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

"A book that will entertain everyone - from those casually interested in an adventure tale to avid sports enthusiasts."—Galveston County Daily News

"Essential...The First Tour de France takes you back to the race itself. Cossins produces a deeply researched and detailed description of the race that toggles between background information on the race's organization and the individual stages, with long stretches of real-time-style stage reporting one chapter at a time.The effect of this, especially the latter, is soaring."—Chris Fontecchio, Podium Café

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2017
Longtime cycling journalist Cossins (Alpe D'Huez) adeptly sifts fiction from fact using contemporary news sources from the early 20th century to provide a historically accurate account of how a multistage bike race, held over the span of weeks and involving equal parts spectacle and marketing genius, evolved into the most famous race of all time: the Tour de France. Cossins's work is distinct in that it focuses on the events that led up to and took place over the course of the first Tour de France in 1903. This first race represented more than merely a contest of superhuman proportions; it also mirrored a time of great technological progress, illustrating how the power of communication via mass produced print media can help inform and influence readers (not to mention increase circulation sales and advertising revenues), and assisted in the process of overall nation building. The author's detailed yet not overwhelming technical style will make readers clamor for more; especially as the 104th edition of the Tour de France approaches. VERDICT Highly recommended for all sports fans.—John N. Jax, Univ. of Wisconsin Lib., La Crosse

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