Henri Desgrange
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
bicycle
Bicycle
A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....
racer and sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
s journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. He set 12 world track cycling
Track cycling
Track cycling is a bicycle racing sport usually held on specially built banked tracks or velodromes using track bicycles....
records, including the hour record
Hour record
The hour record for bicycles is the record for the longest distance cycled in one hour on a bicycle. There are several records. The most famous is for upright bicycles meeting the requirements of the Union Cycliste Internationale . It is one of the most prestigious in cycling...
of 35.325 kilometres on 11 May 1893. He was the first organiser of the Tour de France
Tour de France
The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The...
.
Origins
Henri Desgrange was one of two brothers, twins. Georges Desgrange was described as having "the air of a defrocked monk" and as "totally devoid of all ambition." The two were 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
Place de Clichy
The Place de Clichy, also known as "Place Clichy", is situated in the northwestern quadrant of Paris. It is formed by the intersection of the Boulevard de Clichy, the Avenue Clichy, the Rue Clichy, the Boulevard des Batignolles, and the Rue d'Amsterdam....
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and may have qualified as a lawyer.The first edition of L'Auto described Henri Desgrange as "a former advocate at the Court of Appeal. Legend says he was fired from there either for cycling to work or for exposing the outline of his calves in tight socks as he did so. Preferring a life in sport to life in law, he began a dedication to sport that lasted the rest of his life. Desgrange saw his first bicycle race in 1891 when he went to the finish of Bordeaux–Paris. He began racing on the track but suffered by lacking a powerful acceleration. Endurance riding suited him better and he set the first recognised hour record when on 11 May 1893 he rode 35.325 km on the Buffalo velodrome
Velodrome
A velodrome is an arena for track cycling. Modern velodromes feature steeply banked oval tracks, consisting of two 180-degree circular bends connected by two straights...
in Paris.The previous 'hour record' had been set in 1876 when F. L. Dodds rode 26.508kmon a penny-farthing
Penny-farthing
Penny-farthing, high wheel, high wheeler, and ordinary are all terms used to describe a type of bicycle with a large front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel that was popular after the boneshaker, until the development of the safety bicycle, in the 1880s...
. The Vélodrome Buffalo was near the Porte Maillot, at Neuilly-sue-Seine. It was built in 1893 and operated from 1895 by Tristan Bernard, the man who initiated the fashion of ringing a bell to denote the last lap. The track disappeared when it was used to build an aircraft factory in the first world war. He also established records at 50 and 100 km and 100 miles and became a tricycle
Tricycle
A tricycle is a three-wheeled vehicle. While tricycles are often associated with the small three-wheeled vehicles used by pre-school-age children, they are also used by adults for a variety of purposes. In the United States and Canada, adult-sized tricycles are used primarily by older persons for...
champion in 1893.
He wrote a training book in 1894, La tête et les jambes, in which he conducted a conversation with an unnamed younger rider thought to be his younger self. The book 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
Parc des Princes
The Parc des Princes is an all-seater football stadium located in the southwest of Paris, France. The venue, with a seating capacity of 48,712 spectators, has been the home of French football club Paris Saint-Germain since 1974. The current Parc des Princes was inaugurated on 4 June 1972, endowed...
velodrome
Velodrome
A velodrome is an arena for track cycling. Modern velodromes feature steeply banked oval tracks, consisting of two 180-degree circular bends connected by two straights...
and then in December 1903 of France's first permanent indoor track, the Vélodrome d'Hiver
Vélodrome d'hiver
The Vélodrome d'Hiver , colloquially Vel' d'Hiv, was an indoor bicycle racing cycle track and stadium on rue Nélaton, not far from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As well as track cycling, it was used for ice hockey, wrestling, boxing, roller-skating, circuses, spectaculars, and demonstrations...
, near the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
.
L'Auto
FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
at the end of the 19th century was split over the guilt or innocence of a soldier, Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish background whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French and European history...
, who had been convicted of selling secrets to the Germans. The leading sports paper, Le Vélo
Le Vélo
-External links:*...
- it sold 80,000 copies a day - mixed sports reporting with news and political comment and stood for Dreyfus's acquittal. Some of the paper's largest advertisers, notably Jules-Albert de Dion and Adolphe Clément
Adolphe Clément
Gustave Adolphe Clément-Bayard was a French entrepreneur...
the owners of the De Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton was a French automobile manufacturer and railcar manufacturer operating from 1883 to 1932. The company was founded by the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, Georges Bouton and his brother-in-law Charles Trépardoux....
car factory and the Clément tyre and bicycle works, believed Dreyfus to be guilty. A row between them and the editor, Pierre Giffard
Pierre Giffard
Pierre Giffard was a French journalist, a pioneer of modern political reporting, a newspaper publisher and a prolific sports organiser...
, led to the advertisers withdrawing their custom and planning a paper of their own. An alternative version has it that Giffard banished the advertisers.
Albert de Dion and Adolphe ClémentAdolphe Clément, always a keen cyclist, was one of France's greatest industrialists. He started with a bicycle repair works that he opened in Bordeaux at 21. He extended to manufacturing whole bicycles and opened a factory in Lyon, then in Paris, where he also ran a cycling school. In 1888 he negotiated the rights to sell Dunlop tyres in France. He bought a cycling track in Paris and then in 1900 sold it to concentrate on building cars. found other supporters in those who found Le Vélo
Le Vélo
-External links:*...
s advertising rates too high or those, like Desgrange, who had had his advertising rejected and little interest taken in his track editorially. The same went for the man who became Desgrange's business partner, Victor Goddet, another velodrome director. Desgrange's enthusiasm, his sporting ability, his writing and the press work he had done for Clément persuaded the group to appoint him as editor.
The writer Geoffrey Nicholson said of Desgrange:
- "He was outwardly flamboyant, privately cautious and well-connected in the cycle industry. But he was clearly no political die-hard, for as a writer he modelled himself on Émile ZolaÉmile ZolaÉmile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, who had been the most reviled of all defenders of Dreyfus."
Beyond that, and bringing in Goddet to look after the books and perhaps extend the potential for running cycle races, the industrialists knew nothing about newspapers and asked nothing except that they drive Giffard out of business. Desgrange gave the impression - correctly - that he wasn't a man to welcome consultation, let alone questioning. What Desgrange wanted, went. Only years later did he confess that he and Goddet had sat on a bench outside De Dion's luxurious house in the avénue de la Grande Armée and got themselves into such a state over whether to join his venture that they had to put the decision off to the next day.
The first issue of L'Auto-Vélo appeared on 16 October 1900. It 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.
The title was chosen to reflect the enthusiasm at the time for car racing as the sport of the future.
Writing style
Geoffrey Nicholson pointed out the way in which Desgrange modelled his writing on Zola. In launching the Tour de France (see below), for instance, he wrote:- "With the broad and powerful swing of the hand which Zola in The Earth gave to his ploughman, L'Auto, journal of ideas and action, is going to fling across France today those reckless and uncouth sowers of energy who are the great professional riders of the world... From Paris to the blue waves of the MediterraneanMediterranean SeaThe Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
, from MarseilleMarseilleMarseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
to BordeauxBordeauxBordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, passing along the roseate and dreaming roads sleeping under the sun, across the calm of the fields of the VendéeVendéeThe Vendée is a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west central France, on the Atlantic Ocean. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the south-eastern part of the department.-History:...
, following the LoireLoireLoire is an administrative department in the east-central part of France occupying the River Loire's upper reaches.-History:Loire was created in 1793 when after just 3½ years the young Rhône-et-Loire department was split into two. This was a response to counter-Revolutionary activities in Lyon...
, which flows on still and silent, our men are going to race madly, unflaggingly."
Of riders in Paris–Brest–Paris (see reference to Audax Français below), he wrote:
- "There are four of them. Their legs, like giant levers, will power onwards for sixty hours, their muscles will grind up the kilometres, their broad chests will heave with the effort of the struggle, their hands will cling on to their handlebars; with their eyes they will observe each other ferociously; their backs will bend forward in unison for barbaric breakaways; their stomachs will fight against hunger, their brains against sleep. And at night a peasant waiting for them by a deserted road will see four demons passing by, and the noise of their desperate panting will freeze his heart and fill it with terror."
Desgrange wrote in the first issue of L'Auto that there would be "not a word" about politics, even though politics - the Dreyfus affair - had led to the paper's creation. On the eve of the first world war
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(see "Desgrange and war" below), however, he wrote:
- "My dear boys [
The Tour de France
Desgrange is credited with founding the Tour de FranceTour de France
The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The...
in 1903 but the idea came from one of his journalists, Géo Lefèvre
Géo Lefèvre
Géo Lefèvre was a French sports journalist and the originator of the idea for the Tour de France.He suggested the idea for the Tour at a meeting with Henri Desgrange, editor of the daily newspaper L'Auto as a way to boost circulation. Desgrange recruited Lefèvre from the rival daily sports paper,...
, who said he blurted out the idea because he felt under pressure to say something at a crisis meeting held at the newspaper's headquarters at 10 rue faubourg Montmartre to resolve its poor circulation. Desgrange looked at the third man present, Georges Prade, and then back to his young journalist. "If I understand you right, petit Géo, what you are proposing is a Tour de France", he said. The words had been used for other sporting events but never for cycling.
Desgrange was cautious and suggested that he and Lefèvre lunch at the Taverne Zimmer in the boulevard de Montmartre. The subject wasn't mentioned until coffee, Lefèvre recalled, and the most Desgrange would say is that he would discuss it with Victor Goddet, the L'Auto financial manager. Lefèvre said he was sure Desgrange was passing the buck.
Instead, Goddet was delighted and was said to have pointed at the safe and invited Desgrange to take all he needed. L'Auto announced the race on January 19, 1903.
Although Desgrange liked to be called "the father of the Tour", the idea was not only not his but he was so unsure of it that he stayed away from the first event in 1903 until it turned out, against his expectations, to be a success. He wasn't even at the start, when the riders were waved away from outside the Reveil Matin in Montgeron outside Paris. His uncertainty extended to taking the riders into the Pyrenees. That idea came from another colleague, Adolphe Steinès, who proposed it so persistently that Desgrange finally exploded and told him to do whatever he wished. He regretted the decision when riders began protesting they would be eaten by bears even assuming they reached the summits alive. Desgrange feigned illness and stayed away, leaving the race to his deputy, Victor Breyer.
Promotion of the Tour de France proved 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.
Lefèvre, whose idea it had been and who had reported the first race while travelling by bicycle and train, was switched from cycling to other sports.
Management style
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 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 GarinMaurice Garin
Maurice-Francois Garin was a road bicycle racer best known for winning the inaugural Tour de France in 1903, and for being stripped of his title in the second Tour in 1904 along with eight others, for cheating.-Origins:Garin was born the son of Maurice Clément Garin and Maria Teresa...
, for example, had already been fined 500 francs for taking food where taking food was not allowed.
What annoyed Desgrange more was that 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:
- "It is extremely difficult to establish whether the heavy punishments handed out by the UVF to the principle riders were motivated by serious reasons, when we are given only the results of these decisions while at the same time the documents which they used are withheld from us. It is no exaggeration to say that public opinion will demand from the Union Vélocipédique some explanation, which will no doubt be forthcoming.
A suggestion of how Desgrange already perceived his race came in the paragraph that followed:
- "We are convinced that the sporting commission has judged with its soul and with its conscience and that this conscience is entirely clear. I believe, however... I believe that it has made a big mistake by sanctioning in this way, a race of the magnitude of the Tour de France."
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:
- "The Tour de France is finished and the second edition will, I fear, also be the last. It has died of its success, of the blind passions that it unleashed, the abuse and the dirty suspicions... We will therefore leave it to others to take the chance of taking on an adventure on the scale of the Tour de France."
Desgrange soon thought otherwise and ran his Tour de France for another three decades. It was "his" Tour de France with rules that he drew up, rules that he imposed strictly - the French favourite Henri Pélissier
Henri Pélissier
Henri Pélissier was a French racing cyclist from Paris and champion of the 1923 Tour de France. In addition to his 29 career victories, he was known for his long-standing feud with Tour founder Henri Desgrange and for protesting against the conditions endured by riders in the early years of the Tour...
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
Coutances
Coutances is a commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France.-History:Capital of the Unelli, a Gaulish tribe, the town took the name of Constantia in 298 during the reign of Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus...
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
Marcel Bidot
Marcel Bidot was a French professional road bicycle racer who won two stages of the Tour de France and became manager of the French national team...
, another rider and later manager of the French team in the Tour de France, called Desgrange
"a driven man and a boss who tolerated no disagreement."
The Mercier row
There are many examples of Desgrange's self-belief but few as entertaining as the way he fell out with a provincial bike-maker called Mercier. André LeducqAndré Leducq
André Leducq was a French cyclist who won the 1930 and 1932 Tour de France.-Career:...
, one of France's top riders, had left the Alcyon
Alcyon
The Alcyon was a French bicycle, automobile and motorcycle manufacturer between 1890 and 1957.- Origins :Alcyon originated from about 1890 when Edmond Gentil started the manufacture of bicycles in Neuilly, Seine. In 1902, this was complemented by motorcycle production and in 1906, the first cars...
team to join Émile Mercier. Edmond Gentil, the head of Alcyon, asked Desgrange to leave Leducq out of the French team for the Tour de France, a team which as organiser Desgrange chose personally. That was Gentil's revenge and Mercier was annoyed. Desgrange, though, had taken a decision that, like all Desgrange's decisions, was correct, final and indisputable.
Mercier wrote complaint after complaint, then engaged lawyers. Desgrange ordered his staff never to mention Mercier's name again. Mercier, though, was a sponsor and bike-maker and sometimes had to have his complaints published. So L'Auto compromised by never spelling his name correctly. That drove Mercier into a deeper fury and more lawyers were engaged. L'Auto would again print corrections, only to get the name wrong once more. "Monsieur Gercier has let us known that his name is Monsieur Mervier", and then, "Monsieur Mervier asks us to say that, in reality, he is called Monsieur Cermier." When Mercier wrote once more, L'Auto printed: "Monsieur Cermier insists that in fact he is known as Monsieur Merdier" (Merde is French for "excrement").
Desgrange and war
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 the Légion d'honneurLégion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
pinned to his chest, and went to war as a poilu, an ordinary soldier. He won the Croix de guerre
Croix de guerre
The Croix de guerre is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was awarded during World War I, again in World War II, and in other conflicts...
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 the paper and to restore the Tour de France in a nation of death, ruin and shortage.
Desgrange and the flag
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 historyThe 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 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.
- "Those who conceived the Tour de France printed in
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
, (which the race has) never visited in a century nor figured on maps of the race. When, with the decolonialisation of the Fifties and Sixties, the national area contracted to essentially the contours of a hexagon... the Tour had largely - and for some decades - sensibilised opinion to the contraction of European and continental France into this hexagon."
Audax Français
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 AudaxAudax (cycling)
Audax is a cycling sport in which participants attempt to cycle long distances within a pre-defined time limit. Audax is a non-competitive sport: success in an event is measured by its completion. Audax has its origins in Italian endurance sports of the late nineteenth century, and the rules were...
movement in 1904. Enthused by the way he saw long-distance cyclists challenging themselves to ride long distances in a set time, he created Audax Français to encourage and regulate such events in France.
- "Desgrange, Géo Lefèvre and Charles Stourm founded Audax Français. Regularly, in 1903, L'Auto reported the activities of Audax riders in Italy. And their project, a ride from TurinTurinTurin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
to Paris planned for the summer of 1904. Géo Lefèvre, who was involved, suggested that French cyclists could go to meet them, under the administration of the newspaper. And that created the idea of a French organisation of the same sort. So much so that on 7 January 1904, Desgrange could announce the creation of Audax Français."
That in turn led to long-distance rides across France. The first 200 km ride under Audax rules was on 3 April 1904, followed by a 100 km walking event on 26 June. The cycling distances extended to 300, 400 and 600 km and ultimately to Paris–Brest–Paris (1200 km) which was originally a race but became an international Audax ride.
The Audax movement extends to swimming, with Audax brevets created over 6 km on 27 June 1913, then to rowing over 80 km and finally, in 1985, to skiing. The Union des Audax Parisien was created in 14 July 1921 to administer brevets across the world. It became the Union des Audax Français on 1 January 1956.
Health campaigning
Throughout his life, Desgrange 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
Jacques Goddet
Jacques Goddet was a French sports journalist and director of the Tour de France from 1936 to 1986....
(son of Victor Goddet) said:
- "Henri Desgrange... imposed on himself a life of submitting himself to daily physical exercises. They had to demand, according to his draconian theories, a violent effort, prolonged, repeated, sometimes going as far as pain, demanding tenacity and even a certain stoicism. He took on a crusade against Original Inertia, against the softening of the body in the face of a society keen to suppress physical effort. He appointed himself the apostle of the fight to safeguard character. Suffer and sweat! And that meant a permanent individual culture of cross-country, at least three times a week, in the parc de St-Cloud. Nor did he hold back: he ran for at least an hour, never missing out Jardies hill, the fierce slope in the centre of the park used by hardened runners."
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 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.
Private life
Desgrange had 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.Deley was born on 28 July 1878, in Creusot, Saône-et-Loire
Saône-et-Loire
Saône-et-Loire is a French department, named after the Saône and the Loire rivers between which it lies.-History:When it was formed during the French Revolution, as of March 4, 1790 in fulfillment of the law of December 22, 1789, the new department combined parts of the provinces of southern...
. She is listed in Le dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains by Edouard Joseph. She and Desgrange met some time after the 1914-1918 war. They were a contrast, Desgrange rather formal and preoccupied by publishing and physical activity, Deley a party-giver who liked to entertain at the home she shared with Desgrange. Among her guests were the former racing star Charles Pélissier
Charles Pélissier
Charles Pélissier was a French racing cyclist, professional between 1922 and 1939, who won 16 stages in the Tour de France. The number of eight stages won in the 1930 Tour de France is still a record, shared with Eddy Merckx and Freddy Maertens...
, a favourite of Desgrange's and who Jacques Goddet hints in his biography may have been romantically involved with Deley; Henry Decoin, a theatre director; Robert Perrier, a writer at L'Auto, Jeff Dickson, an American who promoted spectaculars at the Vélodrome d'Hiver; and a Serbian artist called Millovi Uzelac.
Jeanne Deley signed her work "Jane Deley" and showed it at the Salon des Indépendants as early as 1924, and at other salons
later. At her insistence, the couple bought a château near St-Maxime, on the Mediterranean. Deley died on 13 July 1949.
Death
In 1936 Henri Desgrange had a prostate operation. At the time, two operations were needed; the Tour de France was due to fall between them. Desgrange's dominant character persuaded his surgeon to give him permission to follow the race despite warnings that he should not. Desgrange ordered his car to be heavily packed with cushions. A doctor would ride beside him. Desgrange let his deputy and chief cycling writer, Jacques Goddet, into the secret but demanded he say nothing of his suffering. Goddet in fact told Desgrange's deputy on the Tour, Louis Cazalis.It became clear on the first stage that things were not going to go well. Desgrange was in agony from the jolting and the repeated acceleration and slowing of his car. The second day proved too much and, in a fever at Charleville
Charleville-Mézières
Charleville-Mézières is a commune in northern France, capital of the Ardennes department in the Champagne-Ardenne region. Charleville-Mézières is located on the banks of the Meuse River.-History:...
, he left the race and retired to his château at Beauvallon. His daily column, considered of great importance, was taken over by the writer Charles Faurous.
Desgrange died at home on the Mediterranean coast on 16 August 1940.
L'Auto wrote, under the headline Le Patron:
- "Those who called Henri Desgrange by that title will now painfully find the true value of that title. We are mourning a father. A father who presided over the birth, then the formation, then the development, then the health of his child. He loved all those who loved
A monument to his memory, paid for by subscription, stands at the Col du Galibier
Col du Galibier
Col du Galibier is a mountain pass in the southern region of the French Dauphiné Alps near Grenoble. It is the ninth highest paved road in the Alps and the sixth highest mountain pass. It is often the highest point of the Tour de France....
. A prize is offered in his name to the first rider over the col in each Tour de France.
The end of L'Auto
L'Auto continued without Desgrange during the war but with a controlling interest in its shares held by a group of German businessmen. Jacques GoddetJacques Goddet
Jacques Goddet was a French sports journalist and director of the Tour de France from 1936 to 1986....
, who was not responsible for the sale of the shares, said the paper had tried to improve its sales by adding general news coverage, which opened a way for the German owners to insist that that coverage favoured the Occupiers. The outcome was that L'Auto was closed down by the government when Paris was liberated and the doors were nailed shut. The company's possessions were sequestrated.
Jacques Goddet led a successful bid to open L'Équipe
L'Équipe
L'Équipe is a French nationwide daily newspaper devoted to sports, owned by Éditions Philippe Amaury. The paper is noted for coverage of football , rugby, motorsports and cycling...
, although others planning rival papers judged his name an unfair advantage because he was too well known through his association with L'Auto. Goddet was therefore not allowed to have his name in the paper nor to attend the paper's office."
Ownership of the Tour de France had also been sequestrated by the government and was opened to offers. L'Équipe ran a demonstration race and a rival bidder ran another. L'Équipe was granted the right and Goddet returned to the organising role that he had inherited from Desgrange.
He wasn't, however, allowed to print his new publication on yellow paper. That was seen as being too reminiscent of the shamed L'Auto and was specifically banned.
Legacy
Henri Desgrange was one of the few people in the world to have invented a sport: bicycle stage racing. Before him there had been cycle races that lasted more than one day but never a race composed of individual races adding up to a total. His achievement is not only to have created the Tour de France but that that achievement has been copied across the world in a multitude of other stage races from a weekend to a month long.Desgrange grew up in an era when France had suffered humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
and when he believed the French were "tired, without muscle, without character and without willpower." Desgrange believed that sport and exercise would improve the nation physically and morally. It was a belief that he lived out in his own life, timing himself to walk across his bedroom even days before he died.
He believed the Tour de France had to be gruelling, to the extent that the perfect race for him would be one that only one rider could finish, because he needed it to inspire, to extend the limits of human achievement. Many of his rules, which now seem arcane, were to that end. He forbade riders to cooperate with each other, banning tactics now taken for granted, such as sharing the pacemaking. He insisted competitors mend their own bicycles and accept no outside help because independence and self-sufficiency were everything to him. For the same reason, he stood out against variable gears long after they had become common elsewhere.
Desgrange was close to tyrannical in his behaviour, according to the historian and writer Pierre Chany. He brooked no interference in his race, from officialdom let alone individual riders, and imposed penalties arbitrarily. His penalties were at one time so erratic that the entire Belgian team went home in disgust. It is impossible to say whether the Tour and the sport of bicycle stage racing would have been different had they been invented by someone else or had Desgrange handed over control while he was a younger and fitter man. The only thing that is certain is that Desgrange, for all his faults, created not just one of the biggest sporting events in the world but the very version of the sport that made it possible.
It is his unique personality and imprint on the race that has led the leader's yellow jersey
Yellow jersey
The general classification in the Tour de France is the most important classification, the one by which the winner of the Tour de France is determined. Since 1919, the leader of the general classification wears the yellow jersey .-History:...
to carry his initials, H.D., in the style in which he wrote them.