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The Tour de France was originally staged in 1903 as a publicity event by the French sports newspaper L'Auto. Let's go back and look at a slice of history. The most popular sports newspaper in France just after the turn of the 20th century was Le Vélo. At the time, France was awash in nation debate over the innocence or guilt of a soldier (Alfred Dreyfus) who was accused of selling secrets to the Germans. The general stance of the paper was that Lieutenant-colonel Dreyfus was innocent, but a number of advertisers loudly differed. These advertisers banded together to form their own magazine, L'Auto (which later became L'Équipe). A popular cycling even of the time was the Paris-Brest et retour, which was promoted by Pierre Giffard, editor of Le Vélo. In an effort to compete with that event and promote themselves and L'Auto, the idea of the Tour de France arose. The story is that Albert de Dion, the point man among the advertisers who formed the paper, came up with the idea of with Henri Desgrange, the editor, following lunch on the 20th of November in 1902. L'Auto announced and began promoting the race on the 19th of January in 1903, and history records the rest.
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Le Tour de France (la Tour de France means "the Tower of France," but it's a common mistake so don't worry!) was "invented" by Geo Lefevre in 1902.

In those days, sporting events were often organised to boost sales of magazines and other publications. Lefevre had been persuaded to work with a newspaper called L'Auto by its owner as a Rugby and cycling journalist. However, L'Auto'scirculation was poor and a meeting was held on 20th November to come up with ideas to promote it. Lefevre, who spoke last at the meeting, proposed the idea of organising the Tour and staging it the following year, 1903. He later claimed that he had only suggested it because he couldn't think of anything else to say.
Henri Desgrange

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Henri Desgrange

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because

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Q: Who was the founder of the tour de France?
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