The last Tour before war
‘T he great battle is on.’ That was the all-upper-case front page headline L’Auto went with on 28th June 1914. Underneath the splash was a montage of photographs of the 34 men considered by the paper most likely to vie for victory in the 12th edition of the Tour de France. Former winners Gustave Garrigou, Lucien Petit-Breton, Louis Trousselier, François Faber, Odile Defraye and Octave Lapize were all pictured, as was the solemn face of Peugeot’s Philippe Thys, the man who had won the previous year’s race.
By the time most Parisians had read that headline, the riders
