July 19, 1903: The 1st Tour de France

Maurice Garin

July 19, 1903: The 1st Tour de France bicycle race concludes, sponsored by L'Auto, the newspaper that will eventually develop into the all-sports paper L'Equipe. 

With the Dreyfus Affair ongoing, France needed to boost its image before the world. The World's Fair of 1900, and the accompanying Olympic Games, didn't help much. The Tour, which became the world's leading bicycle race, helped.

The 1903 Tour de France was run in six stages. Compared to modern stage races, the stages were extraordinarily long, with an average distance of over 250 miles, compared to the 106-mile average stage length of the modern era. Cyclists had 1 to 3 rest days between each stage, and the route was largely flat, with only one stage featuring a significant mountain. The cyclists were not grouped in teams, but raced as individuals, and paid a fee of ten francs to compete in the race for general classification, or five francs to enter a single stage. As the stages were so long, all but the first started before dawn.

To ensure that the cyclists rode the entire route, stewards were stationed at various points around the course. The leader was identified by a green armband. This was replaced by a yellow jersey in 1919.

There were 6 stages: Montgeron to Lyon, to Marseille, to Toulouse, to Bordeau, to Nantes, to Paris. Maurice Garin was the winner. He won the race again the next year, but was stripped of his title for having accepted food during the race, which was against the rules of the time. So cheating is not a new thing in the Tour de France. Garin lived until 1957.

The race was not run between 1916 and 1918, due to World War I; or between 1940 and 1946, due to World War II. Traditionally, the final stage is down the Champs-Élysées in Paris. 

In 1909, François Faber of Luxembourg became the 1st non-Frenchman to win. Jacques Anquetil of France won it 5 times between 1958 and 1964. Eddy Merckx of Belgium won it 5 times between 1969 and 1974. Bernard Hinault of France won it 5 times between 1978 and 1983. In 1986, American Greg LeMond became the 1st non-European to win it, also winning it in 1989 and 1990. Miguel Induráin of Spain won it 5 straight times from 1991 to 1995.

Officially, there was no winner from 1999 to 2005. Those 7 straight races were won by American racer Lance Armstrong, but he was stripped of the title due to doping, casting a shadow over the race from which it has not yet emerged.

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July 19, 1903 was a Sunday. The only major professional sport in America at the time was baseball, and there were still States that prohibited professional sports on Sundays. These 4 games were played:

* The Cincinnati Reds swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-5 and 7-4 at the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-5 at the West Side Grounds in Chicago. Honus Wagner went 1-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Brooklyn Superbas (forerunners of the Dodgers), 5-4 in 10 innings at Robison Field in St. Louis.