Maurice Garin won the first Tour de France

On 1 July 1903, sixty riders rolled out of a cafe outside Paris to begin a race dreamed up by the newspaper L’Auto to boost its circulation. Eighteen days later, on 19 July 1903, the inaugural Tour de France reached its finish, and Maurice Garin stood as its first champion.

Garin was an Italian-born, naturalised French rider nicknamed “le Petit Ramoneur” (the Little Chimney Sweep), a nod to his earlier trade. The course covered roughly 2,428 kilometres across just six brutally long stages, and Garin took three of them. Of the sixty starters, only 21 finished the punishing route.

Garin’s winning margin of nearly three hours remains the largest in Tour de France history.

The gamble paid off spectacularly for L’Auto, whose readership surged on the back of the race. More than a century later, the Tour has grown into one of the world’s biggest annual sporting events, all tracing back to that summer when a former chimney sweep pedalled into the history books.