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Illustration: © Otto Von Beach 6/21/13 9:11 AM 1903 TOUR DE

18 JULY 1903 THE FIRST TOUR Stage 6: -Paris, 471km

It was to be the last – and longest – stage of the epic and epoch-making fi rst . After six days and 2,428km the ragtag remnants of the original peloton would return to where it all started – Paris

Writer: Isabel Best

he first ever Tour de France TOP 10 FINISHERS STAGE 6 was almost over and 1 Maurice Garin (Fra) 18:09:00 Maurice Garin, barring only 2 Fernand Augereau (Fra) +0:00:10 a dramatic accident, had 3 Julien Lootens (Bel) +0:00:10 T won it in crushing style, nearly three 4 Jean Fischer (Fra) +0:01:20 hours ahead of Lucien Pothier in 5 Lucien Pothier (Fra) +0:01:30 6 Rodolfo Muller (Ita) +0:02:00 second. Apart from stage 2, when he 7 Alexandre Foureaux (Fra) +0:02:30 lost half an hour following a crash 8 Julien Girbe (Fra) +0:02:35 and punctures, the former chimney 9 François Beaugendre (Fra) +0:21:00 sweep had dominated the front of the 10 Ferdinand Payan (Fra) +0:53:00 peloton on every stage. Not only was he the strongest rider but he seemed FINAL GENERAL CLASSIFICATION AFTER STAGE 6 immune to the bad luck that had assailed his closest rivals. Hippolyte 1 Maurice Garin (Fra) 94:33:14 Aucouturier and Léon Georget had 2 Lucien Pothier (Fra) +2:49:45 succumbed to stomach upsets, 3 Fernand Augereau (Fra) +4:29:38 4 Rodolfo Muller (Ita) +4:39:30 punctures and crashes and finally, 5 Jean Fischer (Fra) +4:58:44 in Georget’s case, total exhaustion. 6 Marcel Kerff (Bel) +5:52:24 He wasn’t the only one who’d found 7 Julien Lootens (Bel) +8:31:08 the Tour too much; of the 60 riders 8 Gustave Pasquier (Fra) +10:24:04 9 François Beaugendre (Fra) +10:52:14 who had turned up to the start Tour winner Maurice Garin, centre, with his masseur (in butcher’s apron) and young son 10 Aloïs Catteau (Bel) +12:44:57 outside Paris, only 21 remained.

butchers or barmen, they would now meals as if they were their last, and Augereau had made the mistake in also belong to a club of supermen joked about the final stage as if it were the previous stage of defying Garin, THE RIDERS WERE now given four who had completed the Tour de a last lap on the track, even suggesting who had wanted to set up a stage win days rest in Nantes but they grew France, the Odyssey of cycling, a to a race official that he ring a bell at for himself. So Garin, in a fit of pique, impatient, prey to a cocktail of Homeric test of courage and strength. the stage start. One afternoon, Emile had allegedly ambushed Augereau boredom and anxiety. Whose turn To ease the tension, many of the Ouzou, a photographer who had and destroyed his bike. Instead of would it be in the bad luck lottery? riders went sightseeing on their bikes, followed the entire race, took to the sprinting for first, Augereau finished While some were anxious about much to the astonishment of L’Auto’s piano and several riders burst into fourth on a borrowed bike, 10 their positions on GC, in some cases correspondent: “And here you have song, with the Italian rider Rodolfo minutes later. He was determined to separated by only a few minutes, men who have just ridden more than Muller concluding the concert by win in Paris and prove he was “a rider others such as lanterne rouge Arsène two thousand kilometres!” he gasped. dancing a hectic cakewalk. of quality”, as he had explained to Millocheau, nursing injuries, simply “It’s fantastic!” With the riders lodged But the 471km stage itself was to L’Auto’s rival, Le Vélo.

prayed they’d finish in one piece. No together in two hotels, there were be no cakewalk. There was plenty of Finally, the day of departure Offside/L’Équipe © matter how mundane the lives they plenty of high jinks. They lolled on suffering still to come and, in the case arrived. Late in the afternoon of would return to as blacksmiths, the veranda reading, tucked into of one rider, scores to settle. Fernand Saturday 18 July the riders set off Images:

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for the Café Continental in the main ALL ALONG THE ROUTE, EVEN IN THE square of Nantes, where police had to push back the crowds. A huge MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, THE FANS WERE roar of applause erupted as each rider OUT. AT 3AM IN TOURS, L’AU TO arrived and, inside, spectators stood REPORTED A CROWD OF 2,000 on tables and chairs in order to watch them sign in. “‘We’ll finally have some fun in for approximately another 19 hours,” de Seilleraye. Augereau was the first Paris,’ Dargassies declares, twiddling reported the local paper Le Populaire. to scale it, opening a gap of 50 metres. his moustache,” reported L’Auto. At the start line Augereau was Jean Fischer led the crumbling, “Then he adds: ‘But don’t write that surrounded by well-wishers who chasing peloton with Garin, Marcel in L’Auto, because they read it now considered him the moral victor of Kerff, Gustave Pasquier, Lucien in Grisolles and so my wife will be the previous stage; at one point a Pothier and Julien ‘Samson’ Lootens, concerned.’ Foureaux asks if they local club presented him with laurels. while Pierre Desvages struggled have prepared the soup he’d ordered Visibly moved, he fixed them to his on his own much further behind, the day before and is indignant when handlebar. Meanwhile Garin ducked already looking ready to abandon. it turns out they’ve forgotten… into a small café to change up from On the next climb only seven or eight Desvages is wearing an immaculate a 5.25m to a 6.1m gear. men could hold each other’s wheels, A rider has a smoke break during the stage white flannel shirt and begs Foureaux the others scattered behind over to not rub against him too much.” distances of 10, 20 or 30 metres. With bags bursting with bottles of “After that it’s action stations,” Muller “After signing, Julien Girbe takes Vichy water or tea and their pockets TIME FOR THE final ‘lap’. Just before later reported. “Without let-up, one off at high speed taking Garin with stuffed with sandwiches and oranges, 8pm, the race starter, Abran, fired his rider after another escapes into the him,” Muller reported. “So there’s the riders set off to the start. “There pistol and the peloton set off into a dark, because night has now fallen a frightful brawl; then I don’t know are many pedestrians, who look with cloud of dust, trailing optimistic local and it’s completely black.” what’s happened, I find I’m all alone curiosity on these men with thin, cyclists and wealthier fans in cars. The peloton was gradually whittled and everyone along the road shouts, bronzed faces, who have already Stiff legs notwithstanding, the down to a core of about 10, including ‘Go! Go! You’re the first!’ Garin had ridden so many kilometres, night and peloton was riding at 32kph and was Garin and Augereau. They reached taken a wrong turning. But the day, and who are getting ready to ride still intact when it reached the Côte Angers (89km) shortly after 11pm. peloton soon regrouped.” A little later, Samson “crashes into a cart, which, naturally, wasn’t lit up”. All along the route, even in the middle of the night, the fans were out. At 3am in Tours, after 203km, L’Auto reported a crowd of 2,000 crammed behind barriers to watch the Tour. Around the same time, two men on motorbikes collided on a crossing, where they lay for a long time unnoticed in the dark. They would both die of their injuries. As the leaders forced their way through the night, the winners of the bad luck lottery had already been assigned. Lechartier arrived in Tours an hour after the leaders, having punctured and ridden 40km on his rims. Pasquier arrived half an hour later to a standing ovation; having broken his chain he’d covered the last 10km on foot. Worse still, on leaving Tours he would crash and fall heavily, injuring his knees and forehead. Desvages, suffering an “indisposition”, as L’Auto put it, was the last to sign in, three hours behind Garin’s group. Ahead, the leaders remained glued Riders arrive at a control point during the Tour’s final stage. L’Auto’s publicity had ensured that large crowds appeared, night and day together, reaching Orléans after

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greeted by a fanfare that drowned out the yells of the 2,000 cyclists following him. Still draped in the tricolore he circled the track at an easy pace, waving his dusty cap at the crowds, not bothering to compete for the final bonus. Behind him a young boy on a small bike had snuck out of the crowd and was struggling to keep up – it was his son. As he stopped, he was embraced by his wife and his mother. Ecstatic fans spilt over the barriers. Garin had won the first ever Tour de France, on stages lasting 17 hours and more, through black nights that seemed to never end, across unpaved Sash-wearing riders prepare for their honorary lap on Paris’s Parc des Princes velodrome after finishing the first Tour de France roads, on a heavy steel bike with only one gear and no freewheel, through the mistral, in temperatures that 316km of riding shortly before 8am. hurtled forward, a spectator crossed neck and behind, there was the sometimes touched 40˚C, through “Garin is having one of his good days,” the road right in his path. Both were tough Belgian stage winner, Samson. hunger and thirst and crushing L’Auto reported with wonder: “He sent flying. Dazed from the impact, Then, pfffft! A puncture. Augereau exhaustion, through billowing dust laughs and chats with his rivals, as if Fischer rolled on the ground, his knee continued to sprint on his rims. He thrown up by other riders and cars, he was still in the salons of Nantes.” injured, while the spectator lay would win this stage, dammit. At that at an average speed of 25.679kph. His They were now nearing the finish. unconscious, bleeding profusely. moment, a zealous photographer winning margin of 2:49:45 remains With ‘only’ 155km still to go, the Augereau, also confident of stepped into his path. Augereau rode the largest in Tour history. riders could start to imagine their winning, was the next to go. Now straight into his camera. The following day, visiting L’Auto’s arrival in Paris. At Chartres, after he would finally get his revenge on Garin flew past. He surged office, he handed over an account of 387km, Garin sprinted for the bonus Garin and prove his talent. He rode across the finish line first, somehow his race; the paper published it in full. and won. Now he notched things up with all he had, the noise of the crowd avoiding the spectators, who closed “I can certainly tell you, your race a level. With Augereau right on his mixing with the roar of blood in his around him like a mother embracing is the hardest, the most abominably tail, he reached Versailles (458km) at ears. There were just 200 metres to a long lost son. Augereau finished ten hard that one can imagine,” he wrote. 2pm. It would take two minutes for go. Garin was breathing down his seconds later, just ahead of Samson. “I look at it from all sides, I examine the next seven riders to arrive. Then, in quick succession, followed it in cold blood, I have no illusions Waiting at the stage finish in Ville Fischer covered in blood, Pothier, regarding what either I or my d’Avray, 4km further up the road, was Muller, Foureaux and Girbe. colleagues have achieved, but I tell “a human sea that even the insane LANTERNE The crowd was ecstatic. “The you without snobbery, just as much wouldn’t try to restrain. The road is ROUGE women brandish their umbrellas with regards to myself as the others, overrun. The stewards try to push and the men wave their hats,” wrote that we are all tough lads, and that people left and right but in vain”. The L’Auto. Many wept openly. there can’t be more than a dozen or riders had to make do with a gap of so chaps of our moral fibre.” just 60cm. “One doesn’t dare think In Ville-d’Avray, the checkpoint what could happen,” wrote L’Auto. remained open through the night. “Every second, the crowd grows and THE RIDERS NOW had to cover Shortly before 1am, Georges Borot becomes more compact. There are the remaining 9km to the Parc des and Millocheau arrived together. The people everywhere; at the windows, Princes velodrome where they last rider on the GC, Millocheau was on the roofs, in the trees, on bikes, in would ride a final one-kilometre separated from Garin by 49 hours cars, on horses, on foot… ” time trial. Garin asked race officials and 42 minutes. But he wasn’t the last Shortly after 2pm, a car arrived PIERRE DESVAGES if he could hitch a lift in a car, since to finish the stage. Finally, at 6.32am, at high speed, its driver shouting he “didn’t feel like getting killed by Desvages arrived. He must have The last man to finish the stage was 36 “They’re here! They’re here!” at the time but instead of subsequently an over-enthusiastic crowd”. The suffered hugely, yet here he was, The first to break away from the hanging up his wheels, after the Tour he commissars, of course, refused. And bathed in the early morning sunshine, group was Fischer, who had ridden tuned pro. He went on to ride in every so, draped in the French flag and the last of the 21 riders who had left aggressively throughout the Tour yet subsequent Tour until 1910, yet never flanked by policemen, Garin rode Nantes. He hadn’t abandoned. He had made it to the finish of any of them. He © Offside/L’Équipe © had not won a stage. He descended turned pro again in 1919 and 1920 when, through a tunnel of sound as he was missed the fanfares and celebrations the Côte de Picardie, just before the at the age of 53, he finished seventh in the cheered the entire way back to Paris. but no matter. Now Desvages, too,

stage finish, “like a bomb”. But as he 1,200km Bordeaux-Paris-Bordeaux. Approaching the velodrome he was could return home a hero. Images:

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