number of participants in the 1903 tour de france
Sixty
title: 1903 Tour de France text: 1903 Tour de France The 1903 Tour de France was the first cycling race set up and sponsored by the newspaper ', ancestor of the current daily, '. It ran from 1 to 19 July in six stages over , and was won by Maurice Garin. The race was invented to boost the circulation of ', after its circulation started to plummet from competition with the long-standing '. Originally scheduled to start in June, the race was postponed one month, and the prize money was increased, after a disappointing level of applications from competitors. The 1903 Tour de France was title: 1903 Tour de France text: station, where he worked for the rest of his life. 1903 Tour de France The 1903 Tour de France was the first cycling race set up and sponsored by the newspaper ', ancestor of the current daily, '. It ran from 1 to 19 July in six stages over , and was won by Maurice Garin. The race was invented to boost the circulation of ', after its circulation started to plummet from competition with the long-standing '. Originally scheduled to start in June, the race was postponed one month, and the prize money was increased, after a disappointing level title: 1903 Tour de France text: the track. Desgrange proposed the idea to the financial controller Victor Goddet, who gave his approval, and on 19 January 1903, the Tour de France was announced in ". It was to have been a five-week race, from 1 June to 5 July, with an entry fee of 20 francs. These conditions attracted very few cyclists: one week before the race was due to start, only 15 competitors had signed up. Desgrange then rescheduled the race from 1 to 19 July, increased the total prize money to 20,000 francs, reduced the entry fee to 10 francs and guaranteed at least title: 1903 Tour de France text: Parc des Princes, where they made several laps of honour before an adoring crowd, to the sound of a bugle. In 1903, there was no distinction in the rules between plain stages and mountain stages; the icons shown here indicate whether the stage included mountains. There were 21 cyclists who had completed all six stages. For these cyclists, the times taken for each stage were added up for the general classification. The cyclist with the least accumulated time was the winner. The cyclists officially were not grouped in teams; some cyclists had the same sponsor, even though they were not title: 1903 Tour de France text: Swiss, 2 German, and one Italian; 21 of them were sponsored by bicycle manufacturers, while 39 entered without commercial support. 24 other cyclists took advantage of the opportunity to enter specific stages: one rode in both the second and fourth stages, and additionally three cyclists took part in the second stage, one in the third stage, fifteen in the fourth stage only, and a further four only competed in the fifth stage. The pre-race favourites for the victory were Maurice Garin and Hippolyte Aucouturier. Garin dominated the race from the start by winning the first stage, a parcours from Paris