Tour de France 1904

|} The second Tour de France is held of the July 2nd with the July 24th 1904.

General information

  • the course counts 6 stages for 2.429 km.
  • the average of the winner (Henri Horn) is of 25,265 km/h.

The business

The second round of France failed well to be the last! The test is victim of its success: reactions of the spectators in favor of the members of certain teams of which the team “the Frenchwoman” (that of Garin) and various cheatings. Henri Desgranges thinks a time to give up the organization of the Turn. At the end of the Grande Boucle, the classification was not approved before the December 2nd. Eight runners, of which the four first of general classification then are downgraded and even suspended. Henri Horn, fifth of initial general classification, is thus crowned victorious. Maurice Garin inherits a two year old suspension, while Lucien Pothier, 2nd in Paris, is suspended in life (its sorrow will be finally reduced at three years of suspension and it will be able to take again the competition in 1907).

It is the sporting commission of the velocipedic Union of France which makes this decision of downgrading while being based on reports/ratios of the police chiefs of the Tour de France. The UVF called upon violations in articles 5,6,7 and 8 of the payment of the Turn to justify its decisions of the November 30th 1904. Henri Desgrange who had spread himself in bloody articles during the Turn for stigmantiser in particular the intolerable attitude of the spectators, used this time the columns of the Car to defend some runners, Maurice Garin, César Garin and Hippolyte Aucouturier in the highest degree. On the other hand, Desgrange was in agreement with the UVF concerning the suspensions with life of Knight and Lucien Pothier, taken in red-handed of cheating.

Stages

Following the marked downgradings on December 2nd, the winners of the stages (Garin, Pothier and Aucouturier) disappear from the classifications.

Sources

  • coll, Tour de France, 100 years , Paris, the Team, 2003, volume 1, p.34-39

External bonds

  • memory of cycling/Turn 1904

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