The 1909 Tour de France was the seventh edition of the Tour de France, taking place from 5 July to 1 August. It consisted of 14 stages over , ridden at an average 28.658 km/h. The results were computed by points accorded finishing positions on each stage, the rider with fewest points at the end of the race winning the race. The stages were approximately the same as in the 1907 and 1908 Tour de France. Because Lucien Petit-Breton, the winner of the Tour de France in 1907 and 1908, did not enter, the runner-up of 1908, François Faber, was the favourite. Faber went on to win six of the 14 stages and won the race easily. Innovations and changes The 1909 Tour de France was again decided by the point system: the winner of a stage received one point, the second placed cyclist two points, and so on. The cyclist with the fewest points at the end of the race was the winner. After the eighth stage, the classification was cleaned up, by removing the cyclists from the result of the previous stages and recalculating the points of the remaining cyclists. This happened again after the thirteenth stage. In 1908, the cyclists had to use Tour-supplied frames; this rule was abandoned in 1909. The bicycles were still marked with a stamp, to ensure that the riders only used one bicycle. For the first time, cyclists could enter the race in teams, although technically they were still considered sponsored individuals. In the previous Tours, the Tour organisation had become embarrassed by cyclists urinating in front of spectators, so at the check points obligatory bathrooms were installed. Teams The winner of the previous two editions, Lucien Petit-Breton, was not competing in 1909. Petit-Breton expected his former teammate François Faber, who had become second in 1908, to win the race. Faber had transferred from the Peugeot team, that had dominated the 1908 edition, to the Alcyon team. A new record of 150 cyclists started the race. The previous Tours had been successful, and similar races were initiated in other countries (most notably the Tour of Belgium, which started in 1908 and the Giro d'Italia, which started in 1909). The Tour de France was still the major race where the best cyclists came, and it was the first large-scale invasion of foreign stars. In total, 19 Italians, 5 Belgians, 4 Swiss, 1 German