“In big cities, in small towns, in villages and on the plains, you see – waiting impatiently at the side of the road – old ladies and little girls, school teachers and priests…”

The universal appeal of the Tour de France, as described by French writer Pierre Bost in the newspaper Marianne, July 1935

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Foreword by Mark Cavendish

Introduction by Ellis Bacon

How to use this book

Tour statistics

1903–1914, Editions 1–12

1919–1939, Editions 13–33

1947–1959, Editions 34–46

1960–1979, Editions 47–66

1980–1999, Editions 67–86

2000–2013, Editions 87–100

2014, Edition 101

The Tour’s most memorable places

Index

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword by Mark Cavendish MBE

The Tour de France is a special race for all professional cyclists. It is the biggest, the best, the toughest and the most competitive on the circuit. This year’s race, starting in Yorkshire, is even more special.

I can say from experience that just completing the Tour is an impressive achievement for even the best cyclists in the world. It was not until my third Tour that I had a chance to race down the Champs-Élysées and finish a Tour de France. Since it started, the race was intended to be sport’s ultimate physical challenge, a sentiment that comes across clearly in this book. Since that first completion, I’ve finished the race a further four times, and every year has offered a uniquely challenging experience.

One of the reasons we get drawn back to racing around France every year is that a different route, with new tests and problems to overcome, is picked for each edition. The route is just as much of a challenge in the Tour as the other riders, but it also gives us a chance to travel to new places each year, experiencing different areas of France with our team-mates.

The highlight of every race for me is definitely that sprint finish along the Champs-Élysées. When that also ends with winning the final stage in front of the Paris crowds it becomes the dream of any competitive cyclist. I feel privileged to have done it four times and I’m looking forward to doing it a few more!

After a hundred races across the fields and mountains of France and its neighbouring countries, it’s amazing to think of the history of the Tour, the legends it has made, and the tragedies that have happened. From the gentlemen disqualified in 1904 for taking the train to the latest issues that the sport has experienced, the route, rather than any individual rider, is always the star of the event. Perhaps this is why the Tour has survived and flourished despite all of its controversies.

This book is a detailed textual and visual biography of the Tour itself, and one which uniquely places the document we refer to the most, the map, at its core.

Each stage of the Tour has characteristics that cyclists all over the world can recognise and be inspired by. This can most easily be imagined through maps. I study the route map in detail, both before the first stage and throughout the Tour. It’s the key to planning my race strategy, and the team’s. Sometimes you have to pick your battles and know which stages to target to try to win, and in which ones you’re just going to have to fight it out for survival in the peloton while the climbers slog it out at the front. We get all this by studying the route map along with the stage profiles.

When I was young I followed the Tour de France, watching it avidly on television. It inspired me on my bike rides around the Isle of Man and led to dreams about competing in the race. It is great to see a book that captures the history of this incredible event and lets us look back at the Tour with fond memories, whether following or taking part in the race as it travels around France.

Introduction by Ellis Bacon

The Tour de France is all about mapping and geography – it is its very lifeblood. It seems fitting, then, that the Tour came about as a result of some geographical wranglings, of sorts: the so-called Dreyfus Affair.

In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, was accused of spying for Germany, although it later came to light that he had been framed by an anti-Semitic army colleague.

France was divided by the case, and the editor of sports newspaper Le Vélo, Pierre Giffard, was very much on Dreyfus’s side. That grated with the paper’s advertisers, such as bike and tyre manufacturers Adolphe Clément, Edouard Michelin and Count Jules-Albert de Dion, who were very much anti-Dreyfusards, and so began looking for somewhere else to advertise their wares. Feelings were such that Giffard certainly didn’t want them in his paper anymore, either.

Clément turned to his director of publicity, Henri Desgrange – a former racing cyclist who had already published a book about bike training called La Tête et les Jambes (‘The Head and the Legs’) – and on 16 October 1900, new newspaper L’Auto was first published, with Desgrange at the helm.

Despite the proliferation of anti-Dreyfusard advertisers, the new title struggled when it came to sales, and in November 1902 – over lunch, bien sûr – one of L’Auto’s writers, Géo Lefèvre, came to his ailing paper’s rescue by proposing a ‘Tour de France’ bicycle race. The rest is history.

Except it’s not that simple, as the 1904 edition of the race – as you can read in these pages – was almost its last, thanks to cheating.

Then in 1998 the race was rocked to its core once more thanks to the Festina doping affair. So serious was it, in fact, that then-race director Jean-Marie Leblanc feared that the ‘98 edition genuinely would be the race’s last. It has been shaken yet further by more recent events, too, but still it survives – simply ‘there’, year after year, it seems, as much a part of France as baguettes or the Eiffel Tower.

Compiling this book has been a true labour of love and, fittingly, a journey, as I delved as deeply into my own experiences and memories as I did into my collection of cycling books and magazines, and even my university dissertation.

It all came back to me: the reason why I, and millions like me, are so enamoured with the Tour de France and its history, and in particular the places it’s visited, the riders it’s created and the lives it’s touched. Hopefully ‘Mapping le Tour’ will convey all of that.

Did my love of all things French come before or after my awareness of the Tour? I don’t remember any more, but what I do know is that they have always been inextricably linked: it may be a cliché, but the Tour is truly a French institution.

This, though, is a book that focuses more on the geographical side of the race than simply the epic tales that make up the Tour’s history, although of course they, too, are inextricably linked.

In 2014, the race celebrates its 101st edition, having started in 1903 but having been interrupted by the two world wars. The first Tour I saw was the finish of the 1986 edition when it was shown on UK television by Channel 4. By the following year, I was hooked, and my next French project at school was about the Tour, and in particular about British rider Tom Simpson and his collapse on Mont Ventoux in 1967. I devoured the race’s history, its geography and its language – the latter then very much French; now increasingly, and a little disappointingly, English.

I studied French at university; my third year abroad was a toss-up between spending it in Avignon (close to Mont Ventoux) or in Chambéry – near to the legendary climb of Alpe d’Huez. Provence won out in the end – helped, a little, by Marcel Pagnol and Peter Mayle’s tales, sans doute – and I soon found out that the university hall of residence in which I was to live had been the old hospital in which Simpson had died.

My dissertation that year, written in French, could only be about the Tour, and I subtitled it La Grande Boucle – ‘The Big Loop’ – as it’s affectionately known in France.

That same year – 1998, which, thanks to the aforementioned Festina doping affair, was also memorable for all the wrong reasons – I managed to watch the race live for the first time on French soil, at Carpentras for the finish of stage 13, and again the next day for the start of the fourteenth stage in nearby Valréas. (I’d already skipped school in 1994 to watch the race come through Brighton when it came to the UK – with my parents’ blessing, of course.)

In 2001, when I was living in Denmark, I met up with my dad to watch the start of the Tour in Dunkirk. That night, after the prologue – won by Christophe Moreau – we slept in the car at some motorway services to save money, and then continued on to the start of stage 1 in St-Omer. Incidentally, my dad now always buys those small bottles of St-Omer lager, proving that the commercial side of the Tour definitely ‘works’.

After hours slumped on a metal crowd barrier at the finish of the stage in Boulogne-sur-Mer, waiting for the race to arrive, our trip was rounded off nicely by watching Erik Zabel show Romans Vainsteins a clean pair of heels to take the bunch sprint.

I’d enjoyed following the Tour as a fan and, just two years later in 2003, I would follow it for the first time as a journalist.

Since then, I’ve returned year after year, which strangely means that I haven’t really noticed the race’s rather swift evolution from French holiday to English-speaking-dominated sports event. That dominance looks set to continue, but the race remains fiercely French in its goal of showcasing the country’s stunning countryside and terrain.

Each October, the unveiling of the following year’s route in Paris is eagerly awaited by the world’s press, and by the Tour’s millions of fans at home. Once that familiar hexagonal shape of France with the race route laid out across it is beamed around the world, people begin to plan their holidays around it. The riders, meanwhile, get straight to work, scouting out the roads – and the climbs in particular – named on the following year’s itinerary. It is that hard work and attention to detail, across the winter and in the early part of the season, that marks out the true contenders from the also-rans come the summer.

The Tour has also gone beyond the confines of France, and over the years has enjoyed sojourns to Belgium, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, as well as seeking out new roads further afield, in the Netherlands, Ireland and Britain. The Pyrenees made their first appearance in 1910, while the Alps followed in 1911. It also makes regular visits to the Massif Central, and the Vosges mountains in eastern France, where the riders have tackled the Puy de Dôme and the Ballon d’Alsace, respectively.

Host cities such as Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux have appeared regularly on the route since the Tour’s first edition in 1903, and as cities in countries other than France were added, so, too, grew the breadth of contenders. As well as ever-increasing numbers of riders from neighbouring countries like Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy and Spain, ‘international milestones’ include the first participation by an African rider, Tunisian Ali Neffati, at the 1913 Tour, and the first riders from Australia – Snowy Munro and Don Kirkham – a year later in 1914. In 1937 came the first British riders – Bill Burl and Charles Holland – although neither finished; it wasn’t until 1955 that Brian Robinson and Tony Hoar became the first Brits to complete the Tour. Greg LeMond became the first American stage winner in 1985 and, after the Colombia-Varta team’s appearance at the Tour in 1983, Victor Hugo Peña becoming the first Colombian to wear the yellow jersey, albeit for only three days, in 2003.

Today, the Tour organisation is faced with the task of ensuring that the enduring image of riders toiling up fan-filled mountain sides and streaming past sunflower-filled fields does indeed endure … To paraphrase Tour boss Christian Prudhomme’s message, which he is at pains to get across: the Tour exists to allow people to dream.

The scenery and routes used allow people in far-flung corners of the world to see France in a justly flattering light: laid bare in all its glory for the riders to fight against and the spectators – both roadside and televisual – to appreciate. It is an event that has made national and international heroes of previously local heroes, and has brought life to corners of France, and the globe, that needed it…

Long may it continue.

How to use this book

Map symbols |
| Race start
| Race finish
| Race start/finish
| Stage start
| Stage finish
| Stage start/finish
| Stage town
| General race direction
| Non-race route
| Memorable place location
| Flat stage number
| Hilly stage number
| Mountain stage number
| Individual time trial (ITT) stage number
| Team time trial (TTT) stage number
| Mountain ITT stage number
| Mountain TTT stage number
| Flat stage distance
| Hilly stage distance
| Mountain stage distance
| Individual time trial (ITT) stage distance
| Team time trial (TTT) stage distance
Statistics symbols |
| Start/finish town
| Distance
| Mountains
| Riders
| Winning time and speed
| Podium
| Jerseys
| Stage numbers (2014 route)

The Route

The Climbs

“I had one of the hardest moments ever on the Col du Glandon in 1977. I was at the end of my career, and what I had was gone by then.”

Eddy Merckx

Top 10 highest climbs

Climb | Range | Highest point
Cime de la Bonette | Alps | 2802 m
Col de l’Iseran | Alps | 2770 m
Col Agnel | Alps | 2744 m
Col du Galibier | Alps | 2645 m
Col du Grand St-Bernard | Alps | 2473 m
Col du Granon | Alps | 2413 m
Col d’Izoard | Alps | 2360 m
Col de la Lombarde | Alps | 2351 m
Col de la Cayolle | Alps | 2326 m
Val-Thorens | Alps | 2275 m

Many battles have been won and lost over the Tour’s mountain stages. Whether it is in the Alps, Pyrenees or the Massif Central, riders need grit, determintaion and extraordinary fitness to overcome the punishing ascents of these now famous climbs.

The Winners

Tour wins by country

Riders make their way from Lyon to Marseille during stage 2 of the first Tour de France. Only twenty-one competitors would complete the race, covering 2428 km (1509 miles) in six days.

1903

1st Edition

“The ideal Tour would be one that only one rider was capable of finishing.”

Henri Desgrange, founder of the Tour de France

| Start: Paris, France, on 1 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 19 July
| Total distance: 2428 km (1509 miles)Longest stage: 471 km (293 miles)
| Highest point:Col de la République: 1161 m (3809 ft)Mountain stages: 1
| Starters: 60Finishers: 21
| Winning time: 94 h 33’ 14”Average speed: 25.679 kph (15.956 mph)
| 1. Maurice Garin (Fra)2. Lucien Pothier (Fra) at 2 h 59’ 02”3. Fernand Augereau (Fra) at 4 h 29’ 24”

Just six stages made up the route of the first Tour de France in 1903. Rather than the race being easy by today’s standards, however, the shortest stage – between Toulouse and Bordeaux – was still 268 km (167 miles), while most of the rest were well over 400 km (250 miles).

Where the stages were easier compared to today’s, however, was in their relative lack of climbing, with a route that avoided both the Alps and the Pyrenees, instead focusing on featuring France’s major towns and cities.

While the Ballon d’Alsace, in the Vosges, is widely credited with being the first major climb to have been included on the Tour route, in 1905, the inaugural race did in fact include a number of climbs, although they were not noted as particular challenges to the riders.

Stage 1, between Montgeron, on the southeast edge of Paris, and Lyon featured both the Col des Echarmeaux and the Col du Pin-Bouchain – 712 m (2336 ft) and 759 m (2490 ft) high, respectively – while on the second stage riders had to tackle the Col de la République, near St-Étienne, with France’s Hippolyte Aucouturier the first rider to reach the top of the 1161-m (3809-ft)-high pass.

Named as one of the pre-race favourites, Aucouturier, riding as an ‘independent’, had failed to finish the Tour’s opening stage due to stomach cramps, but was allowed to start stage 2 under rules that said that he could no longer remain in the hunt for the overall prize. He went on to win the second stage in Marseille, and repeated the feat on stage 3.

The first Tour ended in front of an enthusiastic crowd at the Parc des Princes velodrome, where another pre-race favourite, Frenchman Maurice Garin, riding in the colours of bicycle manufacturer La Française, took his third stage win of the race, and with it the honour of being the first Tour de France winner, having held the lead since his victory on the opening stage in Lyon.

The Tour was born, but its second edition was to be a lot less celebrated.

Maurice Garin (in white) becomes the Tour’s first champion

1904

2nd Edition

“The Tour de France is over, although its second edition will have been, I fear, its last – a victim of its own success.”

Henri Desgrange, founder of the Tour de France, following the 1904 race

| Start: Paris, France, on 2 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 24 July
| Total distance: 2428 km (1509 miles)Longest stage: 471 km (293 miles)
| Highest point:Col de la République: 1161 m (3809 ft)Mountain stages: 1
| Starters: 88Finishers: 15
| Winning time: 96 h 05’ 55”Average speed: 25.265 kph (15.699 mph)
| 1. Henri Cornet (Fra)2. Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq (Fra) at 2 h 16’ 14”3. Aloïs Catteau (Bel) at 9 h 01’ 25”

It’s become somewhat of a cliché, but the second edition of the Tour de France, in 1904, was almost its last.

Geographically, the 1904 Tour followed the same route as the first edition the previous year, again starting in Paris and taking in the major cities of Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes, before finishing once more in the Parc des Princes, Paris.

However, the race was marred by interventions from a by-now feverish public, while following the race it was discovered that the first four in the overall classification, including defending champion Maurice Garin, had cheated, and were disqualified from the race, handing victory to 19-year-old Henri Cornet, who remains the race’s youngest-ever winner.

On the race’s second, hilliest stage, between Lyon and Marseille, local Lyon lad Antoine Fauré led the race over the Col de la Rébublique while behind him the race favourites, including Garin and his brother, César, were set upon by masked men, believed to be Fauré’s supporters.

That year was also the first recorded instance of tacks being thrown onto the road by partisan crowds – something that would happen intermittently throughout the Tour’s history, including as recently as the 2012 Tour when the race passed over the Mur de Péguère on stage 14.

It took some time for the organisers of the 1904 Tour to wade through all the accusations and rumours at the end of the race, but in November they came to the decision to ban the two Garin brothers – who had finished first and third – with the older Maurice having apparently illegally been given food by one of the race organisers themselves, as well as allegedly having covered part of the route by train.

Runner-up Lucien Pothier was handed a lifetime ban by French governing body the Union Vélocipédique Française (although he was later permitted to start the Tour again, in 1907), while fourth-placed Hippolyte Aucouturier, again one of the race favourites, having failed to finish the first stage of the 1903 race due to illness, was one of those believed to have cheated by gripping a cork in his mouth that was attached to a string tied to the back of a car.

Spectators use tacks and pebbles to sabotage the stage between Nantes and Paris

1905

3rd Edition

| Start: Paris, France, on 9 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 30 July
| Total distance: 3021 km (1877 miles)Longest stage: 348 km (216 miles)
| Highest point:Col Bayard: 1246 m (4088 ft)Mountain stages: 2
| Starters: 60Finishers: 24
| Winning time: 35 pointsAverage speed: 27.481 kph (17.075 mph)
| 1. Louis Trousselier (Fra) 35 points2. Hippolyte Aucouturier (Fra) 61 points3. Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq (Fra) 64 points

Despite the race having tackled the Col de la République in its previous two editions, the third Tour de France entered new territory in 1905 by introducing its first serious, leg-crunching, lung-busting climb in the shape of the Ballon d’Alsace. It was also made up of shorter stages, albeit with an increase in their number – up to eleven from six.

After his despair at the previous year’s mass cheating, race director Henri Desgrange almost cancelled the 1905 Tour as early as its first stage, during which tacks were again thrown onto the road. All the riders punctured apart from 1904 runner-up Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq, though eventual overall race winner, Louis Trousselier, was nevertheless able to recover and win stage 1 from Paris to Nancy.

For stage 2, between Nancy and Besançon, it was out with the Col de la République and in with the Ballon d’Alsace, in the Vosges mountains. Wrongly, the Ballon d’Alsace is considered the Tour’s first major climb, but it was recognised as such by the race organisers more for its steepness than its height: at 1178 m (3865 ft), it is just 17 m (56 ft) higher than the Col de la République. Indeed, the Col Bayard, climbed later, on stage 4 of the 1905 Tour, stands at 1246 m (4088 ft).

With an average grade of 6.9 per cent, climbed from the north from the town of St-Maurice-sur-Moselle, Desgrange predicted that none of his race’s participants would be able to ride over the Ballon d’Alsace. René Pottier, however, had other ideas, stomping on the pedals to become the first rider to the top of the climb, although he was overtaken later in the stage by Hippolyte Aucouturier.

Overall race winner Trousselier – victorious thanks to five stage wins and Desgrange’s newly introduced points, rather than time, system of determining the winner – was a deserving Tour champion, but gambled his winnings away in a single, celebratory evening after the finish in Paris.

Frenchman Louis Trousselier was the first rider to win the Tour de France on points

1906

4th Edition

| Start: Paris, France, on 4 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 29 July
| Total distance: 4546 km (2825 miles)Longest stage: 480 km (298 miles)
| Highest point:Col Bayard: 1246 m (4088 ft)Mountain stages: 2
| Starters: 76Finishers: 14
| Winning time: 31 pointsAverage speed: 24.463 kph (15.201 mph)
| 1. René Pottier (Fra) 31 points2. Georges Passerieu (Fra) 39 points3. Louis Trousselier (Fra) 59 points

The 1906 edition of the Tour was a true tour of France, increased to thirteen stages from eleven, and reaching further afield than ever before: up to Lille in the north, Nice in the southeast, Bayonne in the furthest southwest corner, close to the Spanish border, and Brest, in Brittany, to the northwest.

It was also the first time that a stage started in a different town to the finish the previous day, when Douai hosted the start of stage 2, some 40 km (25 miles) from the Lille finish of stage 1.

It was a real Tour of ‘firsts’: for the first time, too, the race ventured outside French territory, when the stage from Douai dipped into German-held Alsace-Lorraine, and the city of Metz (today inside the French border), on its way to Nancy.

When it came to the competition, René Pottier, the man who had stunned the cycling world the previous year by managing to ride up the supposedly unridable Ballon d’Alsace, did it again, making it first to the top of the same climb when it featured on stage 3, and this time holding his advantage all the way to the finish in Dijon.

Having already won stage 2, and by taking another four stage wins en route to Paris, including the tough fifth stage over the Côte de Laffrey and the Col Bayard, Pottier beat the always-consistent Georges Passerieu – a Frenchman who finished in the top ten in every stage, including winning two stages – on points, 31 to 39. It was the rider with the fewest points who won, stage winners being awarded one point, two points being awarded for second place, etc., and was a system race organiser Henri Desgrange was to retain until the 1913 Tour, which reverted to being contested on time.

Pottier, it seemed, had an illustrious career ahead of him, having proved himself at the Tour as the sport’s best climber.

René Pottier was unbeatable in the mountains

1907

5th Edition

| Start: Paris, France, on 8 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 4 August
| Total distance: 4488 km (2789 miles)Longest stage: 415 km (258 miles)
| Highest point:Col de Porte: 1326 m (4350 ft)Mountain stages: 4
| Starters: 93Finishers: 33
| Winning time: 47 pointsAverage speed: 28.470 kph (17.690 mph)
| 1. Lucien Petit-Breton (Fra) 47 points2. Gustave Garrigou (Fra) 66 points3. Émile Georget (Fra) 74 points

The 1907 Tour started on a sombre note as the 1906 champion, gifted 27-year-old climber René Pottier, had committed suicide in January.

The fifth edition’s opening stage followed the route of the famous cobbled Classic, Paris-Roubaix, which had run since 1896, and although 1906 Tour runner-up – and now race favourite – Georges Passerieu had won the 1907 edition of the one-day race, it was 1905 Tour champ Louis Trousselier who took the victory in Roubaix in July.

The race followed a very similar route around the edge of France to that of 1906, again taking in the city of Metz, then still in Germany, and adding a second foreign sojourn by briefly drifting onto Swiss soil on stage 4 from Belfort to Lyon. The total number of stages ramped up to fourteen, and the race included its highest mountain pass yet by adding the 1326–m (4350–ft) Col de Porte, in the Chartreuse mountains of southeast France, to the route of stage 5 from Lyon to Grenoble.

There was a South American flavour added to the mix, too, in that Lucien Petit-Breton – a Frenchman born in Brittany who had moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a child with his family, only returning to France in 1902 to enlist in the French army – was a very real contender for overall victory, having finished fifth overall at the 1905 Tour and fourth in 1906. Winning the very first edition of the Italian one-day Classic, Milan-San Remo, earlier in the 1907 season hadn’t done his prospects much harm, either.

Petit-Breton – real name Lucien Mazan – had adopted the pseudonym while bike racing in Argentina, a moniker presumably given to him by Buenos Aires locals, to hide the fact that he raced from is disapproving father.

After taking control of the race on stage 10 to Bordeaux, the little Breton held on to the lead the rest of the way to the finish in Paris.

Overall winner Lucien Petit-Breton leads the stage between Toulouse and Bayonne

The Tour takes on the Ballon d’Alsace, in the Vosges mountains of eastern France, in 1908. The Ballon, the first ever genuine mountain climb in the Tour, first featured in the 1905 race, five years before the first appearance of the Pyrenees, and six years before the Alps.

1908

6th Edition

“It’s time to hand over the mantle. Next year’s Tour is for Faber.”

1908 Tour champion Lucien Petit-Breton following his second consecutive overall victory, suggesting that Luxembourg’s François Faber, his Peugeot team-mate, is the rightful heir to the Tour crown

| Start: Paris, France, on 13 JulyFinish: Paris, France, on 9 August
| Total distance: 4488 km (2789 miles)Longest stage: 415 km (258 miles)
| Highest point:Col de Porte: 1326 m (4350 ft)Mountain stages: 4
| Starters: 114Finishers: 36
| Winning time: 36 pointsAverage speed: 28.740 kph (17.858 mph)
| 1. Lucien Petit-Breton (Fra) 36 points2. François Faber (Lux) 68 points3. Georges Passerieu (Fra) 75 points

Lucien Petit-Breton arrived at the 1908 edition of the Tour in rude form, having already won that year’s Paris-Brussels – a one-day race still in existence, now held in September, but then held in April.

The 1908 Tour followed the exact route of the previous edition, both starting on Paris’s Ile de la Jatte and finishing at the Parc des Princes. The only real change was the number of starters – up to 114 from 93 the year before – and Petit-Breton’s absolute dominance of the race this time, becoming the first rider to win two Tours (winner of the inaugural Tour, Maurice Garin, having been disqualified after cheating to win the 1904 edition).

Although London-born Georges Passerieu – second at the 1906 Tour to the late René Pottier – put up a good fight, winning stages 1, 5 and 13, and standing out as the only rider capable of getting over the Col de Porte and ‘Pottier’s mountain’, the Ballon d’Alsace, without walking, his Peugeot-Wolber ‘team-mates’ (riders often simply shared the same sponsors rather than necessarily working as a team), Petit-Breton and François Faber, dominated the race with five and four stage victories apiece, respectively.

René Pottier’s younger brother, André, helped to keep the family name alive by leading the race over the Col Bayard and Côte de Laffrey, but simply wasn’t in the same league as his more famous sibling, and could only finish seventeenth overall in Paris.

François Faber struggles over the summit of the Ballon d’Alsace

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