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The Tour de France started in 1903 as the
personal brainchild of Frenchman Henri Desgrange, as a stunt to
help promote his sports newspaper l‘Auto (ancestor of the
present l‘Équipe).
Originally riders competed as individual
athletes, with no one to help them prepare food or arrange
accommodation - they were even required to cycle through the
night. This is an incredible feat when you consider the original
race comprised of just 6 stages instead of today‘s around 20,
while still covering thousands of kilometres.
When the Tour de France began in 1903, men delicately waved
their hats and women waved their umbrellas in appreciation. The
winner, Maurice Garin, rode so fast on his fixed gear 15 kg
bike, he reached the finish before the judges!
Just over a century later, in the midst of an
extraordinary carnival atmosphere, that attracts up to two
billion television viewers worldwide and over 15 million
roadside spectators, men have been known to wave pink feather
boas at the riders or to bound along next to the peleton dressed
as the Devil. This is because, unlike any other sporting event
of its size, The Tour de France spills out onto the streets and
reaches out to embrace ordinary people. Everyone in the
communities it visits has the opportunity to rub shoulders with
some of the greatest athletes in the world.
Although riders today are much more
technically accomplished than they were one hundred years ago,
their character remains essentially the same - battling against
incredible hardship and suffering to secure victory. Indeed,
legendary Texan Lance Armstrong beat cancer to achieve an
astonishing seven straight victories from 1999 to 2005. At the
1989 Tour de France, with 40 shotgun pellets remaining in his
body from a hunting accident two years earlier (including some
in the lining of his heart), another American, Greg LeMond,
began the final stage, an individual time trial finishing in
Paris. LeMond attacked from the start to claim his second yellow
jersey with a final victory margin of 8 seconds — the closest in
the Tour's history.
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