Five starts. One second place. Four abandons. So read Henri Pélissier’s record in the Tour de France as the 1923 edition of the race prepared to roll out from Paris. It was a mixed bag for sure, and so the question was which version of Pélissier would the Tour witness this time around? The 1914 vintage who had won three stages and finished second overall? Or the man who hadn’t gone beyond the sixth stage in any of the other Tours he had started?
Despite his chequered Tour history, Pélissier possessed a rare talent. He was one of four brothers born into relative comfort in Paris, and while one, Jean, would lose his
