1909 Tour de France
Route of the 1909 Tour de France
Followed clockwise, starting in Paris |
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| Race details | ||||||||||
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| Dates | 5 July – 1 August | |||||||||
| Stages | 14 | |||||||||
| Distance | 4,497 km (2,794 mi) | |||||||||
| Winning time | 37 points | |||||||||
| Results | ||||||||||
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| Winner |
 François Faber (LUX)
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| Second |
 Gustave Garrigou (FRA)
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| Third |
Jean Alavoine (FRA)
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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 4,497 kilometres (2,794 mi), 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.
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 least 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.
The winner of the previous two editions, Lucien Petit-Breton, was not competing in 1909. Petit-Breton expected his former team mate 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 and 1 Luxembourgian started the race. Because cyclists could enter the race as sponsored cyclists, there were two classes of cyclists: cyclists with sponsors and cyclists without sponsors. There were seven different sponsors in the race (Nil–Supra, Alcyon, Biguet–Dunlop, Le Globe, Atala, Legnano and Felsina), with three to six cyclists. The majority of the cyclists, 112 in total, were not sponsored but were in the Isolé class, the class for cyclists without a sponsor.
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