Henri Desgrange

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Lore & Background

Desgrange wrote a training book in 1894, La tête et les jambes, which included the advice that an ambitious rider has no more need of a woman than an unwashed pair of socks. In 1897 he became director of the Parc des Princes velodrome and then in December 1903 of France's first permanent indoor track, the Vélodrome d'Hiver, near the Eiffel Tower. Unease with the attention paid to his track business by the leading sports paper, Le Vélo, and support from business magnates like Jules-Albert de Dion and Adolphe Clément-Bayard, who were displeased with the paper's advertising rates and their political stance on the Dreyfus affair, led Desgrange to become the editor of a newly-founded competing sports paper, L'Auto-Vélo, later renamed L'Auto. The first issue of L'Auto-Vélo appeared on 16 October 1900. It was printed on yellow paper to distinguish itself from the green of Le Vélo but a court case brought by the original paper agreed on 16 January 1903 that the name was too similar and the consortium was ordered to drop 'vélo' from the title. Desgrange is credited with founding the Tour de France in 1903 but the idea came from one of his journalists, Géo Lefèvre. L'Auto announced the race on 19 January 1903. Promotion of the Tour de France proved a great success for the newspaper. Circulation leapt from 25,000 before the Tour to 65,000 after it. In 1908, the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour, it was selling 500,000 copies a day. The record circulation claimed by Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933 Tour. The UVF disqualified the first four riders in the 1904 Tour de France, imposing penalties which went beyond those Desgrange had already imposed and which he thought excessive. The winner, Maurice Garin, for example, had already been fined 500 francs for taking food where taking food was not allowed. Desgrange wrote in L'Auto: 'It is extremely difficult to establish whether the heavy punishments handed out by the UVF to the principle riders were motivated by serious reasons...' He also wrote: 'The Tour de France is finished and the second edition will, I fear, also be the last. It has died of its success...' Desgrange soon thought otherwise and ran his Tour de France for another three decades.

In Their Own Story

The French favourite Henri Pélissier stalked off in 1920 after Desgrange penalised him two minutes for leaving a flat tyre by the roadside. In 1924 he and two other riders walked out of the race in Coutances after a row about whether riders were allowed to take off clothing as the day grew hotter. Desgrange dismissed Pélissier as 'a pigheaded, arrogant champion.' Marcel Bidot, another rider and later manager of the French team in the Tour de France, called Desgrange 'a driven man and a boss who tolerated no disagreement.' Desgrange created a committee for physical education at the start of the first world war and trained several thousand soldiers to prepare them for the Front. Despite his age - he was already more than 50 - Desgrange then enrolled as a soldier himself. He presented himself at an assembly centre at Autan, distinctive for his grey hair and the Légion d'honneur pinned to his chest, and went to war as a poilu, an ordinary soldier. He won the Croix de Guerre in combat and continued to write for L'Auto but under the name 'Desgrenier'. Desgrange was made an officer in May 1919 and that summer returned to L'Auto to edit the paper and to restore the Tour de France in a nation of death, ruin and shortage.

Reader's Guide

It is because of Desgrange and the Tour de France that the people of France first recognised the shape of their country, say two academics who have studied the role of the race in French social history. The French had little idea of their geography at the start of the 20th century, say Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Léonard. The popular 1877 children's schoolbook Le Tour de France par deux enfants had sold six million copies before the publishers thought it necessary, in 1905, to include a map of the country they were describing. 'Those who conceived the Tour de France printed in L'Auto general maps which traced the route of the race and therefore showed the hexagon shape of France, because of the way the race followed the country's frontiers... By the cartography of France that it helped make known, the Tour acted as a teacher in showing a map printed with the contours of the country - which was rare at least until the Great War - and as avant-gardiste in very quickly popularising the notion of France as more or less hexagonal.'

While Desgrange is known outside cycling for his Tour de France, he made a further name inside it and within other sports by creating the Audax movement in 1904. Enthused by the way he saw long-distance cyclists challenging themselves to ride long distances in a set time, he created Audax Français to encourage and regulate such events in France. 'Desgrange, Géo Lefèvre and Charles Stourm founded Audax Français. Regularly, in 1903, L'Auto reported the activities of Audax riders in Italy... So much so that on 7 January 1904, Desgrange could announce the creation of Audax Français.' That in turn led to long-distance rides across France. The first 200-kilometre (120 mi) ride under Audax rules was on 3 April 1904, followed by a 100-kilometre (62 mi) walking event on 26 June. The cycling distances extended to 300, 400, and 600 kilometres (190, 250, and 370 mi) and ultimately to Paris–Brest–Paris (1,200 kilometres (750 mi)) which was originally a race but became an international Audax ride. The Audax movement extends to swimming, with Audax brevets created over six kilometres (3.7 mi) on 27 June 1913, then to rowing over 80 kilometres (50 mi) and finally, in 1985, to skiing.

Did You Know?

• Desgrange set the first recognised hour record of 35.325 km on 11 May 1893 at the Buffalo velodrome in Paris, riding a bicycle, not a tricycle.