The 2020 Tour was originally scheduled to take place from 27 June to 19 July. To keep the flame of the race burning, letour.fr will relive every day a glorious or curious race event that happened two, fifteen or forty years ago. A trip down memory lane…
Pioneers — 1903
The concept was born at the table of a brasserie on one of the wide boulevards of Paris in the midst of a war between the newspapers Le Vélo and L'Auto. Géo Lefèvre suggested to Henri Desgrange challenging riders to a stage race around the whole country: the Tour de France. Desgrange, his boss, eventually warmed up to the idea… but not before calling it "insane". On 1 July 1903, sixty riders gathered in front of the café Le Réveil-Matin in Montgeron, in the outskirts of Paris, to start the 467 km inaugural stage to Lyon.
