Le Tour

When Henri Desgrange began a new bicycle road race in 1903, he saw it as little more than a temporary publicity stunt to promote his newspaper. The sixty cyclists who left Paris to ride through the night to Lyons that first July had little idea they were pioneers of the most famous of all bike races, which would reach its centenary as one of the greatest sporting events on earth.The races of the early twentieth century -- as with the late -- were marred by cheating and chicanery,...
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When Henri Desgrange began a new bicycle road race in 1903, he saw it as little more than a temporary publicity stunt to promote his newspaper. The sixty cyclists who left Paris to ride through the night to Lyons that first July had little idea they were pioneers of the most famous of all bike races, which would reach its centenary as one of the greatest sporting events on earth.
The races of the early twentieth century -- as with the late -- were marred by cheating and chicanery, but before long the Tour became a national institution. Along the way the event opened a window both inwards upon French culture, inspiring a whole new kind of journalism, ruthless civic rivalries and any number of popular songs, and also outwards upon European politics.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft's masterful history of the Tour de France's first hundred years is not just a hugely entertaining canter through some great Tour stories; nor is it merely a homage to the riders whose names -- Coppi, Simpson, Mercx, Armstrong -- are synonymous with the event's folly and glory; focusing too on the race's role in French cultural life it provides a unique and fascinating insight into Europe's twentieth century.