History of Tour de France

The very first Tour de France back was back in 1903 - This first race became the creation of the greatest cycling race in the world we know today. Read on to find out about the tour de France's early beginnings...
The first Tour de France was designed as a publicity stunt for the French sports newspaper L’Auto, a race that was for the most gutsy and tough of professional cyclists of the time. The course was marked out to be a round France stage race, covering a distance of 2428 km, taking place over 19 days in six stages and rankings based on the cumulative time over the course of the tour.
At the very first tour de France sixty riders began that first race. The winner who dominated throughout the tour was Maurice Garin, who still today holds the record for a win by the greatest margin of 2 hours and 49 mins.
With over 20,000 people turning up to see Maurice Garin cross the finish line in Paris that year, the first tour de France was hailed as a great success. The next year, 1904, the tour de France became a must-win for every cyclist taking part. And this had disastrous results. The second tour was later billed as almost the last Tour de France, as riders would go to any lengths to try and win. Cheating was rife.
Riders were caught catching trains, taking cars and even dropping spikes trying to flatten their opponents’ tyres. Maurice Garin had won the race for the second time, but as reports of cheating surfaced, the top four riders were disqualified for their infractions, and it was to the 5th place little-known cyclist, Henri Cornet who became the tour de France 1904’s winner. After these major implications of the second Tour de France, the race officials then decided to implement many more rules on how the race was to be done.
The Tour de France was greatly limited during the First World War, but around this time it was the 1919 race that saw the now infamous yellow jersey or “maillot jaune” introduced. The leading cyclist wore the yellow jersey in order to show who was leading the race because previously no one could recognise who was winning.
Part way through the 1919 race, the organisers introduced the jersey into the race and it was France’s Eugene Christophe who adorned the yellow jersey for the first time. In the later stages of the race bad luck caught up with Eugene Christophe yet again just as in his previous racing years on the tour, this time he suffered various punctures and a broken fork that held him back and he later finished the 1919 tour 3rd place. By now the tour covered a distance of 5560km and it was Firmin Lambot who won that year, the Belgian was described as the first real contender of this new generation.
ref[cyclingnews]