Paris, June 27: It is hard to believe that one of the world's biggest and most followed sports events emerged from an unexpected lunch date in a traditional Parisian brasserie. In effect, the Tour de France was borne from a newspaper editor's desire to sell more copies than his direct rival at 'le velo' (the bike), whose chief Pierre Giffard had held the monopoly in organising both the Paris-brest-Paris and the Paris-Roubaix. Henri Desgrange, the man generally credited with creating the Tour de France, was the chief of 'L'auto-velo' newspaper at the turn of the 20th century and something of an expert in cycling, one of the two sports, along with car racing, to attract the masses at the time. Although Desgrange would go on to run the tour de France for most of the pre-second world war period, it was an aspiring young journalist at his newspaper who came up with the idea.
"What if we organised a Tour de France over several stages", the 25-year-old Geo Lefevre asked Desgrange, in a bold bid to try and outdo Giffard's mass-selling paper.

Bureau Report