The Tour de France is much more than a cycling race. There are lots of facts beyond the cycling that are worth knowing. This is my top 10 historical facts in the Tour de France that you should know: The first Tour de France took place in 1903 and started on July 1st. The winner was Maurice Garin. The tour has been disputed every year since then, except in the years 1916 to 1919 (First World War) and 1941 to 1947 (Second World War). This way, in 2019 took place the 106 edition. In 1910 happened the first big mountain stage in the Pyrenees, including the Col du Tourmalet. Octave Lapize was the first cyclist at the top after cycling but also walking some parts of the climb. When he arrived at the finish he said the famous sentence to organizers “Vous êtes des assassins! Oui, des assassins! “You are murderers!”. Eugene Christophe broke his fork in the descent of Tourmalet in Tour de France 1913, and he had to fix it himself after walking more than 14 km to Sainte Marie de Campan. There is a statue dedicated to Cristophe at St Marie de Campan to remember it. Curious, that this odd fact of breaking the fork happened to Cristophe still twice more in later TdF 1919 and 1922. In 1919, for the first time the leader is wearing the yellow jersey in the Tour de France (not from the very beginning, but from stage 11). Yellow color is due to the color of the newspaper L'Auto, which was the organizer of the tour by that time. Tour de France was a great way to explain the adventures of the cycling heroes and sell more newspapers. The pink leader jersey of Giro d'Italia is the same, being La Gazzetta dello
The Tour de France is much more than a cycling race. There are lots of facts beyond the cycling that are worth knowing. This is my top 10 historical facts in the Tour de France that you should know: The first Tour de France took place in 1903 and started on July 1st. The winner was
