26 Facts About Henri Desgrange

Henri Desgrange set twelve world track cycling records, including the hour record of 35.325 kilometres on 11 May 1893.

Henri Desgrange was the first organiser of the Tour de France.

Henri Desgrange was born into a comfortably prosperous middle-class family living in Paris.

Henri Desgrange 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 on the Buffalo velodrome in Paris.

Henri Desgrange wrote a training book in 1894, La tete et les jambes, which included the advice that an ambitious rider has no more need of a woman than an unwashed pair of socks.

Henri Desgrange is credited with founding the Tour de France in 1903 but the idea came from one of his journalists, Geo Lefevre.

The record circulation claimed by Henri Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933 Tour.

Henri Desgrange rejected advice, certain of his authority and decisions, powerful in a world where his word had the force of law.

Henri Desgrange saw his race, and himself, as more than capable of standing up to the Union Velocipedique Francaise, the French authority.

The UVF disqualified the first four riders in the 1904 Tour de France, imposing penalties which went beyond those Henri Desgrange had already imposed and which he thought excessive.

Henri Desgrange soon thought otherwise and ran his Tour de France for another three decades.

Marcel Bidot, another rider and later manager of the French team in the Tour de France, called Henri Desgrange"a driven man and a boss who tolerated no disagreement".

Henri 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.

Henri Desgrange presented himself at an assembly centre at Autan, distinctive for his grey hair and the Legion d'honneur pinned to his chest, and went to war as a poilu, an ordinary soldier.

Henri Desgrange won the Croix de Guerre in combat and continued to write for L'Auto but under the name "Desgrenier".

Henri 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.

Henri Desgrange 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.

Henri Desgrange set a personal example by running for a couple of hours a day all through his life.

Henri 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.

Henri Desgrange sought not just the best cyclist but a supreme athlete.

Henri Desgrange had a wife - they divorced - and a daughter.

Henri Desgrange spent most of his life with the avant-garde artist Jeanne Deley but never married her.

The Tour de France was planned between two necessary operations, and Henri Desgrange was determined to attend it, despite warnings that he should not.

Henri Desgrange ordered his car to be heavily packed with cushions.

Aged 75, Henri Desgrange died at home on the Mediterranean coast on 16 August 1940.

The Souvenir Henri Desgrange 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.