Tumultuous Tours
1919 Out of the Ashes
The 1919 Tour de France not only had a flu pandemic to deal with, but also the aftermath of World War One…
In the spring of 1919 Henri Desgrange, editor of L’Auto newspaper and the man who ruled the Tour de France with an iron fist, faced a dilemma with his beloved race. Two of the worst catastrophes ever to befall Europe, World War One and the (misnamed) Spanish flu pandemic, had killed 1.7 million of his countrymen, and the chances of sport resuming anytime soon was remote.
France had suffered an appalling four years of war, losing 1.4 million soldiers, and more than 60 professional cyclists had been killed in action, including Tour winners Octave Lapize, Lucien Petit-Breton and François Faber. On top of this the national economy was in ruins, as was most of northeastern France, and approximately 250,000 civilians had died from the Spanish flu, which swept unchecked through France in three waves from April 1918 to March 1919. In those days there was no such thing as social distancing, so flu epidemics were relatively common and the papers were full of obituaries for those enlevé par la grippe (carried off by the flu). France, effectively, was on its knees, and pro cycling with it.
But Desgrange wasn’t about to give up on his Tour, because that’s the kind of man he was — he had newspapers to sell, and the Tour was integral
