Top 100 momentsNo. 25
The first Tour de France
A newspaper stunt becomes a three-week national epic. Road cycling gets its myth: mountains, yellow jerseys, and a country watching from the ditch.
L’Auto, a French newspaper, needs a circulation stunt. The editor, Henri Desgrange, sends riders around France in 1903. Six stages. More than 2,000 kilometers. Maurice Garin wins. The paper sells copies. The riders sleep in ditches and eat in farmhouses.
The Tour becomes the template for endurance as national theater: mountains, yellow jerseys (from 1919), cheating, glory, and millions on the roadside who will never buy a ticket. Road cycling without the Tour is a niche. With it, it is July.
Every stage race since is a copy with different hills. The original was a newspaper idea that accidentally invented a myth the country still stops for.