Descriptions of MarseilleParis and each of the six stages of the 1903 Tour de France are based on details, comments and quotes reported in contemporary newspapers and magazines.
VILLENEUVESAINT-GEORGES, 1 JULY 1903
The keen and the curious begin to congregate from midday. By one oclock, when the riders start to emerge from the roadside barn that has been set aside as their dressing room, allowing them some privacy as they change and have a final massage, the heat is oppressive, almost unbearable. Theres hardly a breath of wind. Dust billowing up from the construction work on the ParisCorbeil railway line hangs in the still air.
The race organisers had been praying for a good crowd, certainly more than the few hundred who are milling about in and around the Auberge du Rveil-Matin. Thats more than enough to keep the proprietor, Monsieur Renard, and his staff far busier than they would normally be on a Wednesday lunchtime, but it hardly bodes well for the inaugural Tour de France. Henri Desgrange and his editorial team have been building the new race up for weeks in the pages of LAuto, and necessarily so. If it doesnt succeed, there wont be a second, and LAuto wont survive for much longer either.
The race officials have set up the control point for the start inside the cafe. Riders must register here over the next 90 minutes in order to compete. The first to sign in is 20-year-old Parisian Henri Ellinamour, who is handed a green armband bearing the number 64 by official starter Alphonse Steins. He is closely followed by another rider from the capital, Lon Pernette, who walks away with his armband and square of red cloth with the number 44, which he secures to the top tube and seat tube of his bike with rubber straps.
As more riders arrive, the smell of embrocation becomes impossible to ignore. After signing in, they carry out their final preparations for the start, pressing spare parts into the square leather bags hanging from their handlebars, wrapping replacement tubes and tyres around their shoulders, always keeping their machines within eyesight to prevent sabotage, which is not unknown. This done, most flop down on their backs to rest. Two gendarmes survey them from their horses. They are almost redundant as the spectators who have been tempted out by the greatest race the world has ever seen are hardly in a frenzy as they take shelter from the sun in the shade offered by the twin line of poplars lining the Avenue de Paris as it heads away from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges towards Montgeron.
Many of those gathered beneath the trees are amateur cyclists who have turned up on their bikes with the intention of following the professionals for as long as possible. Among them is a young man who has been making a name for himself in amateur races around Paris. Eugne Christophe is currently an apprentice locksmith on the Rue Chaton, but will go on to have a very illustrious future on the bike and will eventually be remembered for repairing his forks in a forge at the foot of the Col du Tourmalet in the 1913 Tour and, in 1919, for being the first rider ever to wear the races yellow jersey.
In his diary later that evening, Christophe will write dismissively: The greatest bike race the world has ever seen? It was more like a fourth-category race. There was hardly anyone there. Where were all the cars? It looked more like the start of an amateur race to me. These guys may be among the biggest names we know but they looked like riders who had won their first inter-club race
A meeting between two friends in a cell at the Prison de la Sant in Pariss 14th arrondissement provided the surprising impetus for the foundation of the Tour de France. It took place in June 1899, a few days after the city witnessed a series of events that had almost cost the nations president his life, had threatened the survival of the Third Republic, and provoked headlines across the world.
The man brought up from one of La Sants 500 cells was a most unlikely prisoner. Jules Flix Philippe Albert de Dion de Wandonne was better known as Count de Dion, a French noble and co-founder in 1883 of the De Dion-Bouton automobile company that had become the worlds biggest manufacturer by the end of the nineteenth century, producing the sum total of 400 cars a year. A tall, solidly built and very imposing figure with a thick moustache waxed to perfect horizontal tips, de Dion was serving a 15-day sentence for attempting to assault the president of the French Republic, mile Loubet, during a demonstration at the Auteuil racecourse in Paris.
The counts visitor was journalist Pierre Giffard, a columnist on the best-selling Le Petit Journal newspaper and editor of Le Vlo, the leading sports title of the era. Giffard, who favoured an upward tweak on his equally luxuriant moustache, wanted to explain why he had written an opinion piece condemning de Dions behaviour for Le Petit Journal and subsequently rerun it within the green-coloured pages of his own paper.
Brought together by their love of automobiles, these two prominent men were very vocal proponents of radically opposed camps on the main political issue of the moment, the Dreyfus Affair. This stemmed from the conviction in 1894 of French artillery officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus on a charge of treason after military secrets had been passed to the German embassy in Paris. Although evidence of the Jewish officers innocence subsequently came to light, high-ranking officers suppressed it, leading to widespread accusations of anti-Semitism, as well as demands for a retrial and Dreyfuss release.
The accession of Dreyfusard Loubet to the presidency in February 1899 following the death of Flix Faure proved the turning point in the affair. The new president instigated a review of the case, which led to Dreyfuss release from the notorious Devils Island penal colony after four years of hard labour. But his actions also infuriated de Dion and the ardent nationalists in the self-styled League of Patriots who believed that the army must be backed in every eventuality and that France was under threat from people they regarded as subversives. Loubets appearance at the Auteuil racecourse provided them with a chance to voice their dismay.