Henri Desgrange

Henri Desgrange was born into a comfortable middle-class Parisian family on 31 January 1865. He started his career as a clerk at a law office near the Place de Clichy, and may have qualified as a lawyer. A persistent story claims he was fired either for cycling to work or for the sight of his calves in tight socks. He attended his first bicycle race in 1891, watching the finish of Bordeaux–Paris.

He then took up track racing but found endurance events suited him better. On 11 May 1893, at the Buffalo velodrome in Paris, he set the first recognised hour record, covering 35.325 km. He also set records at 50 km, 100 km, and 100 miles, and became a tricycle champion in 1893. In 1894 he published a training book, La tête et les jambes, which advised that an ambitious rider needs a woman no more than he needs an unwashed pair of socks.

That same year he wrote another book, Alphonse Marcaux. In 1897 he became director of the Parc des Princes velodrome, and in December 1903 he took charge of France’s first permanent indoor track, the Vélodrome d’Hiver, near the Eiffel Tower.

Desgrange became editor of a new sports paper, L’Auto-Vélo, after tensions with the leading paper Le Vélo over attention to his track business, and with support from business magnates unhappy with Le Vélo’s advertising rates and its stance on the Dreyfus affair. The first issue appeared on 16 October 1900, printed on yellow paper to distinguish itself from Le Vélo’s green. A court case in January 1902 ruled the name too similar, and the consortium was ordered to drop “vélo” from the title.

The idea for the Tour de France came from his journalist Géo Lefèvre, but Desgrange is credited with founding the race. L’Auto announced it on 19 January 1903. The race boosted the newspaper’s circulation from 25,000 before the Tour to 65,000 after it. By 1908 circulation passed a quarter of a million; during the 1923 Tour it reached 500,000 copies a day. Desgrange claimed a record circulation of 854,000 during the 1933 Tour.

Desgrange saw his race as capable of standing up to the French cycling authority, the Union Vélocipédique Française (UVF). In 1904 the UVF disqualified the first four riders, imposing penalties beyond those Desgrange had already given. The winner, Maurice Garin, had been fined 500 francs for taking food where it was not allowed. Desgrange was annoyed that the UVF waited until 30 November to act, to avoid public passion, and that it withheld the details.

He wrote in L’Auto that it was difficult to judge the punishments without seeing the documents, and that public opinion would demand an explanation. He added that the UVF had made a big mistake by sanctioning a race of the magnitude of the Tour de France. He then declared the Tour finished, saying it had died of its success and the blind passions it unleashed. He soon changed his mind and ran the race for another three decades.

He drew up the rules and imposed them strictly. In 1920 the French favourite Henri Pélissier walked off after being penalised two minutes for leaving a flat tyre by the roadside. In 1924 Pélissier and two others quit in Coutances after a dispute about removing clothing as the day grew hotter. Desgrange called Pélissier “a pigheaded, arrogant champion.”

Rider and later French team manager Marcel Bidot called Desgrange “a driven man and a boss who tolerated no disagreement.”

At the start of the First World War, Desgrange created a committee for physical education and trained several thousand soldiers. Despite being over 50, he enlisted as an ordinary soldier, presenting himself at an assembly centre at Autan with grey hair and the Légion d’honneur on his chest. He won the Croix de Guerre in combat and continued to serve. He died on 16 August 1940.