Answer Wiki. This happens to be an interesting story - with a trial, two newspapers and their events leading to the first race. The Tour de France was created in 1903. The roots of the Tour de France trace to the Dreyfus Affair, a cause célèbre that divided France at the end of the 19th century over the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, a soldier convicted—though later exonerated—of selling military secrets to the Germans.