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33-606: Comœdia was a French literary and artistic paper founded by Henri Desgrange on 1 October 1907 (Desgrange had already founded L'Auto  [ fr ] ). It published a number of texts by important literary figures, including Antonin Artaud's first publication on theatre, L'évolution de décor [The Evolution of Decor] (1924) . According to Richard Abel , it provides one of the most complete sources of cultural history in France just prior to World War I . Comoedia Illustré

66-580: A tricycle champion in 1893. He wrote a training book in 1894, La tête et les jambes , which included the advice that an ambitious rider has no more need of a woman than an unwashed pair of socks. In 1894 he wrote another book, Alphonse Marcaux . In 1897 he became director of the Parc des Princes velodrome and then in December 1903 of France's first permanent indoor track, the Vélodrome d'Hiver , near

99-669: A branch of the Resistance , the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans , then joined an Algerian regiment. He was wounded three times and awarded the Croix de Guerre . The war ended his aspirations as a cyclist and he turned to sports reporting, having briefly tried the transport business in buying two army lorries with a friend, Jacques Michelon. Encourage by another friend, Stanilas Gara, he wrote his first pieces, in 1946, for an agency which sold articles to La Marseillaise among others. It

132-514: A cycle and a running race on the same day, winning two packets of Gauloises cigarettes. After that he joined the CV des Marchés club in Paris. He raced for five years and then, in 1942 when he was 20, went into hiding rather than be sent to Germany as a worker. He was arrested and jailed first at Puy-en-Velay and then Riom. He escaped - on his birthday - from a train taking him to Germany. He joined

165-503: A didactic journey by two children and not the race) had sold six million copies before the publishers thought it necessary, in 1905, to include a map of the country they were describing. While Desgrange is known outside cycling for his Tour de France, he made a further name inside it and within other sports by creating the Audax movement in 1904. Enthused by the way he saw long-distance cyclists challenging themselves to ride long distances in

198-455: A great success for the newspaper. Circulation leapt from 25,000 before the Tour to 65,000 after it. In 1908, the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour, it was selling 500,000 copies a day. The record circulation claimed by Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933 Tour. The reporter Pierre Chany wrote: "He knew the imperfections of his work, which

231-656: A group of cyclists breaking away from the main field. Chany received the Prix Martini in 1967 for the best sports article of the year and the Grand Prix of Sporting Literature in 1972 for his work on the Tour de France. Jacques Anquetil said of the insight of Chany's journalism: "Don't ask me to tell you what happened during the race. There's someone more competent than I am to do that... Even I will wait until tomorrow's article by Pierre Chany in L'Équipe to find what I did, why and how I did it. What gives him authority

264-405: A history of the Tour de France and then of the cycling classics and the world championships. He wrote a history of all cycle racing from the days of the first bicycle to his death in 1996. From 1974, he produced a roundup of each season, called L'Année du Cyclisme . He wrote biographies of Fausto Coppi and Jacques Anquetil and a novel called Une Longue Échappée - A Long Break, a reference to

297-523: A set time, he created Audax Français to encourage and regulate such events in France. That in turn led to long-distance rides across France. The first 200-kilometre (120 mi) ride under Audax rules was on 3 April 1904, followed by a 100-kilometre (62 mi) walking event on 26 June. The cycling distances extended to 300, 400, and 600 kilometres (190, 250, and 370 mi) and ultimately to Paris–Brest–Paris (1,200 kilometres (750 mi)) which

330-404: A shower. The column's title was Dirty Feet. For Desgrange, the Tour de France was not simply a long-distance and multi-day cycle race - an idea invented by Lefèvre - but close to what would now be called social engineering. He sought not just the best cyclist but a supreme athlete. To him, he said several times, the perfect Tour would have a perfect winner only if one man survived. Desgrange had

363-514: A wife - they divorced - and a daughter. Little is known of either. He spent most of his life with the avant-garde artist Jeanne (Jane) Deley but never married her. She and Desgrange met some time after World War I. In 1936 Henri Desgrange had a prostate operation. The Tour de France was planned between two necessary operations, and Desgrange was determined to attend it, despite warnings that he should not. Desgrange ordered his car to be heavily packed with cushions. A doctor would ride beside him, but

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396-547: Is a cash prize awarded in his honour each year in the Tour De France to the first rider who crosses the race's highest point. Pierre Chany Chany was born in Langeac , Haute-Loire , the son of a near-illiterate father who worked in the horse industry. The family then moved to Paris, to run a small bar in the rue Guillaume Bertrand, in the 11th arrondissement . Chany grew up there and, in his teens, escaped from

429-728: Is held in Chany's name in Haute-Loirehim . Pierre Chany sat through a succession of interviews with the writer Christophe Penot, who planned to publish them under the title Pierre Chany, l'homme aux 50 Tours de France . Chany would have followed his 50th Tour in 1996. He attended the Classique des Alpes, won by Laurent Jalabert on 1 June and then next day went to the prologue of the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré . There he fell ill. He died of pleurisy on 18 June. By then production of

462-581: Is that he is competent, that he knows me and understands me. His version will be better than mine and it will become mine." The Prix Pierre Chany is now awarded each year to the writer of the season's best cycling work in French. It was established in 1989. It was awarded in 2008 to Philippe Bouvet for an article about the Carrefour de l'Arbre, a section of cobbles in Paris–Roubaix . A cyclo-sportive race

495-672: The Communist Party but which employed journalists of various opinions. It was when Ce Soir went out of business in 1953 that he joined L'Équipe . He was head of cycling there from 1953 to 1987. He also wrote under the pen name Jacques Périllat for ' Miroir Sprint and ' Miroir du Cyclisme '. Chany insisted that L'Équipe's editor, Jacques Goddet , knew Chany was doing it but chose to say nothing rather than lose his leading cycling writer. Pierre Chany wrote not only journalistic pieces but numerous other works, including books of cycling history which went to several new editions. He wrote

528-622: The Eiffel Tower . Unease with the attention paid to his track business by the leading sports paper, Le Vélo , and support from business magnates like Jules-Albert de Dion and Adolphe Clément-Bayard , who were displeased with the paper's advertising rates (and their political stance on the Dreyfus affair ), led Desgranges to become the editor of a newly-founded competing sports paper, L'Auto-Vélo , later renamed L'Équipe , The first issue of L'Auto-Vélo appeared on 16 October 1900. It

561-576: The Légion d'honneur pinned to his chest, and went to war as a poilu , an ordinary soldier. He won the Croix de Guerre in combat and continued to write for L'Auto but under the name "Desgrenier". Desgrenier is a play on words. Desgrange translates loosely as Barnes in English; the slight change turned his name into Lofts. Desgrange was made an officer in May 1919 and that summer returned to L'Auto to edit

594-651: The hour record of 35.325 kilometres (21.950 mi) on 11 May 1893. He was the first organiser of the Tour de France . Henri Desgrange was born into a comfortably prosperous middle-class family living in Paris. Desgrange worked as a clerk at the Depeux-Dumesnil law office near the Place de Clichy in Paris and may have qualified as a lawyer. Legend says he was fired from there either for cycling to work or for exposing

627-510: The French team in the Tour de France, called Desgrange "a driven man and a boss who tolerated no disagreement". Desgrange created a committee for physical education at the start of the first world war and trained several thousand soldiers to prepare them for the Front. Despite his age - he was already more than 50 - Desgrange then enrolled as a soldier himself. He presented himself at an assembly centre at Autan , distinctive for his grey hair and

660-542: The UVF had waited until the following 30 November before acting, to avoid igniting public passion. And that it hadn't explained the detail. He wrote in L'Auto : A suggestion of how Desgrange already perceived his race came in the paragraph that followed: The "magnitude of the Tour de France", by then only in its second year, came close to be ended there and then. Desgrange wrote in L'Auto : Desgrange soon thought otherwise and ran his Tour de France for another three decades. It

693-490: The Union Vélocipédique Française (UVF), the French authority. The UVF disqualified the first four riders in the 1904 Tour de France, imposing penalties which went beyond those Desgrange had already imposed and which he thought excessive. The winner, Maurice Garin , for example, had already been fined 500 francs for taking food where taking food was not allowed. What annoyed Desgrange more was that

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726-469: The city on his bicycle, sometimes riding as far as Melun . He became interested in cycle-racing after reading L'Auto , Paris-Soir and Match and looking at sepia pictures of riders such as André Leducq . He rode several races, including the Premier Pas Dunlop event which in other years showed the talent of young riders such as Louison Bobet and Raphaël Géminiani . In Chanaleilles, he won

759-546: The jolting and the repeated acceleration and slowing proved too much on the second day of the Tour already, and he left the race for good, retiring to his château at Beauvallon, Grimaud . Aged 75, Desgrange died at home on the Mediterranean coast on 16 August 1940. L'Auto wrote, under the headline Le Patron : A monument to his memory, paid for by subscription, stands at the Col du Galibier . The Souvenir Henri Desgrange

792-496: The outline of his calves in tight socks as he did so. Desgrange saw his first bicycle race in 1891 when he went to the finish of Bordeaux–Paris . He began racing on the track, but endurance riding suited him better, and he set the first recognised "hour record" when on 11 May 1893 he rode 35.325 kilometres (21.950 mi) on the Buffalo velodrome in Paris. He also established records at 50 and 100 km and 100 miles and became

825-510: The paper and to restore the Tour de France in a nation of death, ruin and shortage. It is because of Desgrange and the Tour de France that the people of France first recognised the shape of their country, say two academics who have studied the role of the race in French social history. The French had little idea of their geography at the start of the 20th century, say Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Léonard. The popular 1877 children's schoolbook Le Tour de France par deux enfants (the title referred to

858-413: The territory of France, and Desgrange later claimed that it encouraged a sense of national identity, establishing La Patrie in clear geographic terms". Jim McGurn , an historian., Desgrange is credited with founding the Tour de France in 1903 but the idea came from one of his journalists, Géo Lefèvre . L'Auto announced the race on 19 January 1903. Promotion of the Tour de France proved

891-449: Was Comœdia' s fortnight supplement which featured updates on current French fashion, music and theatre. This French newspaper-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Henri Desgrange Henri Desgrange ( French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi deɡʁɑ̃ʒ] ; 31 January 1865 – 16 August 1940) was a French bicycle racer and sports journalist . He set twelve world track cycling records, including

924-567: Was "his" Tour de France with rules that he drew up, rules that he imposed strictly - the French favourite Henri Pélissier stalked off in 1920 after Desgrange penalised him two minutes for leaving a flat tyre by the roadside. In 1924 he and two other riders walked out of the race in Coutances after a row about whether riders were allowed to take off clothing as the day grew hotter. Desgrange dismissed Pélissier as "a pigheaded, arrogant champion". Marcel Bidot , another rider and later manager of

957-540: Was in La Marseillaise that his first writing appeared. He then took a job with Front National , a Resistance publication edited by Jacques Debu-Bridel. He was to replace Albert Baker d'Isy (1906–1968), an author and one of France's best-known contemporary writers. Baker d'Isy was already Chany's hero and the move brought them together for the first time and led to a lifelong friendship. From there Chany moved to Sport and to Ce Soir , publications associated with

990-514: Was originally a race but became an international Audax ride. The Audax movement extends to swimming, with Audax brevets created over six kilometres (three point seven miles) on 27 June 1913, then to rowing over 80 kilometres (50 mi) and finally, in 1985, to skiing. The Union des Audax Parisien was created on 14 July 1921 to administer brevets across the world. It became the Union des Audax Français on 1 January 1956. Throughout his life, Desgrange

1023-579: Was passionate about improving the health of the nation. He was concerned that so many Frenchmen had been rejected by the army because of their poor health that France had not been able to protect itself adequately in the Franco-Prussian war. He set a personal example by running for a couple of hours a day all through his life. Jacques Goddet (son of Victor Goddet) said: Desgrange used L'Auto to help his campaign, going as far as listing riders he had seen his Parc des Princes cycle track without having

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1056-493: Was printed on yellow paper to distinguish itself from the green of Le Vélo but a court case brought by the original paper agreed in January 1902 that the name was too similar and the consortium was ordered to drop "vélo" from the title. "It was a magnificently imaginative invention, a form of odyssey in which the lonely heroism of unpaced riders was pitted against relentless competition and elemantal nature. The Tour encompassed

1089-529: Was still in progress, but it was as if he didn't see them. He rejected advice, certain of his authority and decisions, powerful in a world where his word had the force of law. He followed a narrow path between the interests of cycling in general and his own, a way of thinking that justified his reputation as a despot". The sport of cycle racing grew faster than the national and international associations established to administer it. Henri Desgrange saw his race, and himself, as more than capable of standing up to

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