It was the Dreyfus spy scandal of the 1890s which indirectly led to the birth of the world's greatest sporting spectacle, the Tour de France, which started on Saturday and will end in Paris on July 25th.
The ultra-nationalist Compte de Dion withdrew his support from France's main cycling magazine, le Velo, after it criticised his anti-Dreyfus activities. He founded a new paper, l'Auto, and editor Henri Desgrange immediately set out to publicise it.
Cycling had already attracted a huge following in France. The artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a racing fan, Renoir and George Moore were keen cyclists (until each broke an arm in falls). Mirroring Gordon Bennett's motor racing sponsorship, Henri Desgrange came up with the idea of a cycle race around France to trumpet his new magazine. He wrote in a launch article: "With the grand and powerful gesture that Zola gave his working man in La Terre, the Auto - newspaper of ideas and action - will from today send across France those unconscious and hardy sowers of energy, the professional road racers."
Desgrange saw the race as uniting all France: "From Paris to the blue waves of the Mediterranean, from Marseille to Bordeaux, passing along the roseate and dreaming roads, sleeping under the sun, across the calm of the fields of the Vendée, following the Loire which flows on still and silent, our men are going to race madly, unflaggingly." Despite widespread derision, 60 riders signed on for the inaugural 2,400-kilometres event, which was divided into six stages ending at Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and Paris. Thirty-one riders survived the opening 460-kilometre stage from Paris to Lyon, which was won by a 32-year old chimney sweep, Maurice Garin, who took almost 27 hours on his fixed-gear machine. News of the cyclists' all-night epic spread and increasing numbers of spectators lined the route.
Over 100,000 gathered in Paris to see Garin win the Tour by three hours from Louis Pothier, a butcher's boy. The future of both the Tour and l'Auto were established and towns soon clamoured to be included on the route. The identification of the race leader by a yellow jersey, the same colour as the l'Auto paper, was another publicity stroke.
The modern Tour is an independent state on the move. Preceded by an immense publicity cavalcade, it is escorted by a specially trained squad of motorcycle gendarmerie past an estimated audience of 15 million spectators. The route is closed to all but emergency vehicles. It has its own judiciary of commissars and a specialised mobile medical team. Unlike most sports, it brings its participants to the front door and to café terraces, as it passes through both remote villages and packed towns and cities.
Tour winners now average 25 m.p.h. over both flat plains and dizzy climbs over 7,000-foot mountain peaks. Team tactics play a major role, with domestiques helping a team's top rider, sheltering him during the attacks of rivals and leading him out at the sprint finishes. But it is usually the mountain stages which provide the most memorable experiences, with lone riders dropping their rivals as they head to majestic victory against equally dramatic backdrops in the Alps or Pyrenees. It was on such stages that Fausto Coppi, Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong and Charly Gaul - the Angel of the Mountains - gained cycling immortality.
Accidents are frequent, particularly in sprint finishes and 60 m.p.h. descents. Frederico Cepeda was killed in the 1935 Tour and Olympic champion Fabio Casartelli in 1995. Record-breaker Roger Rivière broke his back in the 1960 race, André Darrigade crashed during a 1967 sprint finish and killed an official. Sean Kelly's 1987 hopes were dashed when he broke his collarbone. He commented: "On the descent, you think of winning, not of hospital." Irish riders have distinguished themselves in the Tour. Trail-blazer Shay Elliott wore the yellow jersey for four days in 1963, followed by Sean Kelly in 1983 and Stephen Roche in 1987, when he became the first and only Irish winner of the Tour. Sean Kelly finished fifth overall in 1984 and fourth the following year. Martin Earley was a stage winner in 1988, while Paul Kimmage and Laurence Roche also completed the three-week marathon.
Tour expert Geoffrey Wheatcroft insists that what distinguishes the top riders is not stature but internal organs. Previous winner Miguel Indurain's lungs could inhale almost twice as much air in a breath as an ordinary person, while Lance Armstrong's heart is a third larger than those of most men of his height and weight.
Increasing commercialism led to elementary drug tests, which inventive riders learnt to sidestep. An early urine sample provided by one rider showed that he was drug-free but pregnant. The death of British rider Tom Simpson in the 500 C heat of the 1967 Tour was attributed to a combination of exhaustion and the use of amphetamines.
Drugs are again in the news, with Lance Armstrong currently launching court action against a journalist over drug-taking allegations. Having survived cancer to resume racing in 1998, the 31-year old American has won every Tour since 1999.
As the Dreyfus-like schism over the Iraq war divides the Western world, Armstrong will not have unanimous US support as he bids for a record sixth success: he is one of the few Texans publicly to criticise George Bush for waging war without UN approval.