How the Grand Tours began.

The Tour de France (1903)

A newspaper war

The Tour was created by L'Auto, a Paris sports paper. EBSCO says the paper began as L'Auto-Velo, and that its rival Le Velo, edited by Pierre Giffard, won a trademark case in January 1903 that forced it to drop "Velo" from its name. The UCI's own history adds that the Tour was created in a Paris brasserie near the paper's offices, three years after the UCI was founded.

Universalis says Geo Lefevre, L'Auto's cycling editor, proposed the race in November 1902. EBSCO describes him pitching it to the editor, Henri Desgrange, over lunch. Both sources say the paper announced the race on 19 January 1903.

What the paper was called at that moment is not quite agreed. Universalis says it was still L'Auto-Velo when it announced the race. EBSCO says the January court case made it L'Auto. The Encyclopedia.com compilation notes that two of its own entries differ, one naming Velo-Auto as the Tour's sponsor and the other L'Auto. The paper that ran the 1903 race is best described as L'Auto, formerly L'Auto-Velo.

The first race

The original announcement planned a start on 1 June and a finish on 5 July at the Parc des Princes, but Universalis says the race was moved to 1 to 19 July. Sixty riders set off at 15:16 on 1 July 1903 from the Reveil-Matin inn at Montgeron, near Paris. EBSCO gives six stages over about 2,428 km and describes the field as a mix of professional racers, tradesmen and unemployed labourers.

The first stage, Paris to Lyon, was 467 km according to Universalis and 476 km according to EBSCO. Maurice Garin won it in 17 hours 45 minutes 44 seconds, less than a minute ahead of Hippolyte Pagie, and went on to win the Tour, 2 hours 59 minutes 21 seconds ahead of Lucien Pothier.

Universalis says Garin was born on 3 March 1871 at Arvier in the Aosta Valley, and became a French citizen in 1892, although it notes that other sources give a much later date.

The 1904 disqualifications

The second Tour ended in a ruling by the French federation, the Union Velocipedique de France. Universalis records that it disqualified the first four finishers, Maurice Garin, Lucien Pothier, Cesar Garin and Hippolyte Aucouturier, gave the victory to Henri Cornet, and suspended Maurice Garin for two years. EBSCO says the offences included accepting food from spectators and taking a train for part of the course. This was a ruling on race irregularities, not on doping.

The date of the ruling differs: Universalis gives 2 December 1904, while Wikipedia, seen only as a search summary, gives 30 November 1904. Guinness World Records lists Cornet as the youngest Tour winner, aged 19 years and 355 days on 24 July 1904, having crossed the line fifth before the four ahead of him were disqualified.

The yellow jersey

The usual story is that the leader's yellow jersey was first worn by Eugene Christophe at Grenoble on 19 July 1919, that yellow was chosen because L'Auto was printed on yellow paper, replacing a green armband that crowds could not see, and that Firmin Lambot won the 1919 Tour in yellow in Paris on 27 July. We could only see these details in search summaries of Ohio State University's eHistory and of Rouleur, so they are unconfirmed. The same summaries record a rival claim: Philippe Thys said in a 1956 interview that he had been offered a yellow jersey in 1913. That is unconfirmed too.

The Giro d'Italia (1909)

Fabio Tavelli's account in Il Foglio (13 May 2024) says La Gazzetta dello Sport, under its director Armando Cougnet, announced the first Giro in a special edition on 24 August 1908, for the spring of 1909. The rival Corriere della Sera had also tried to organise such a race.

The race started in Milan, at Rondo Loreto, at 2:53 in the morning on Thursday 13 May 1909, and covered about 3,000 km by way of Bologna, Chieti, Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa and Turin before returning to Milan. Il Foglio says 166 riders registered, 102 of them without a team.

The first Giro was decided on points, not time. A stage winner got one point, second place two, and so on, and the lowest total won. Luigi Ganna won by two points from Galetti, with Giovanni Rossignoli third. Search summaries of Wikipedia add that the race ran from 13 to 30 May over eight stages and that Ganna rode for Atala, and that the pink leader's jersey, the maglia rosa, was introduced in 1931 in the colour of the Gazzetta's pages. Those details are unconfirmed.

The Vuelta a Espana (1935)

Toni Padilla, writing in Ara on 26 August 2025, says the first Vuelta was organised by the Madrid daily Informaciones, directed by Juan Pujol, after the journalist and former cyclist Clemente Lopez-Doriga proposed it. It started on 29 April 1935 from Atocha station in Madrid and finished in Madrid on 15 May. Fifty riders started and 29 finished. The Belgian Gustaaf Deloor won, with Mariano Canardo second, and the leader wore orange, the colour of Informaciones. Wikipedia's general account of the Vuelta's jerseys gives the early leader's colour differently, as yellow and later gold, before the red jersey of 2010.

The format is described two ways. Ara describes ten stages, each of more than 250 km. Search summaries of Wikipedia and Bikeraceinfo give 14 stages over 3,425 km or 3,411 km; those figures are unconfirmed.

Ara says 2025 was the race's 80th edition in 90 years, and that after the Spanish Civil War other newspapers took over the organisation from 1945.

Three races, one pattern

How the Tour came to permit derailleurs in 1937 is on the derailleur, the women's Tours on women's racing history, and results changed by later rulings on doping and official decisions. Recent editions are covered in the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana.