Geo Lefevre Biography

Birth of Geo Lefevre

LAuto announces the 1st Tour de France

This record states: All the major towns are begging for cycle races, and they are bound to go along with the idea."

This record states: Henri Desgrange then discussed it after lunch at what is now the TGI Friday bar in Montmartre in Paris.

This record states: Suggests "a several-day race, longer than anything now going on, something more on the order of a track six day race, only this time on the road.

This record states: The idea for a round stage race came from LAutos chief cycling journalist, 26-year-old George's Lefevre, he and the editor.

Follows the race as best he could, sometimes riding in the bunch on his bicycle, then catching a train to go ahead to see to the next checkpoint - a one-man, roving commissaire, organiser and reporter.

Promotion of the Tour de France proved a great success for the LAuto newspaper. Circulation leapt from 25,000 before the Tour to 65,000 after it.

Suggests the idea for the Tour de France at a meeting with Henri Desgrange, editor of the daily newspaper LAuto as a way to boost circulation. Desgrange recruited Lefevre from the rival daily sports paper, Le Velo, to work as his rugby and cycling correspondent

Geo Lefevre surveys the 1st Tour de France route and on 19 January 1903, just four days after losing the plagiarism suit to Giffard, Desgrange announced the race on the pages of the newly-christened L'Auto.

The Tour de France is announced for the 1st time.

The race was advertised as "the greatest cycling trial in the entire world.."

The route would last more than a month and run from Paris through Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes before returning to Paris.

Promotion of the Tour de France proved a great success for the LAuto newspaper. Circulation leapt from 25,000 before the Tour to 65,000 after it. Follows the race as best he could, sometimes riding in the bunch on his bicycle, then catching a train to go ahead to see to the next checkpoint - a one-man, roving commissaire, organiser and reporter

Death of Geo Lefevre