1924 Tour de France
Route of the 1924 Tour de France
Followed counterclockwise, starting in Paris |
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| Race details | |||||||||||||
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| Dates | 22 June – 20 July | ||||||||||||
| Stages | 15 | ||||||||||||
| Distance | 5,425 km (3,371 mi) | ||||||||||||
| Winning time | 222h 15' 30" | ||||||||||||
| Results | |||||||||||||
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Winner |
 Ottavio Bottecchia (ITA)
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(1st class) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Second |
 Nicolas Frantz (LUX)
|
(1st class) | |
| Third |
 Lucien Buysse (BEL)
|
(1st class) |
The 1924 Tour de France was the 18th edition of the Tour de France and was won by Ottavio Bottecchia. He was the first Italian cyclist to win the Tour and the first rider to hold the yellow jersey the entire event. The race was held over 5,425 km with an average speed of 23.972 km/h (14.896 mph). 60 riders finished the race from the original 157 cyclists.
Entrants of the 1924 Tour included several past and future winners including defending champion Henri Pélissier (1923), Philippe Thys (1913, 1914, 1920), Lucien Buysse (1926) and Nicolas Frantz (1927, 1928).
The event saw the increase of the time bonus for stage wins move from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. In addition, it was the final year of the 15-stage format that had started in 1910. One of the most important events of the race occurred on the third stage, when defending champion Pélissier quit the race because of a new fight with tour organiser Henri Desgrange.
In 1923, a time bonus of two minutes for each stage winner had been introduced. This was considered successful, and the time bonus was increased to three minutes for the 1924 Tour de France.
After the 1923 Tour de France, the winner Henri Pélissier had said that the runner-up Bottecchia would go on to win the race.
In 1924, there was a rule that the cyclists had to finish with everything they started with, and the officials suspected that Pélissier would start in the cold morning with many jerseys, and remove them once the day warmed up. The rule had been introduced in 1920, when all the cyclists were sponsored by the combined sponsor La Sportive, to prevent waste of material. Pélissier objected to the rule, on the ground that the jerseys that he wore were his own, and had not been provided by the sponsor.
At the start of the third stage, a tour official checked how many jerseys Henri Pélissier was wearing. Pélissier was angry, and declared that he would not start the race. He did so anyway, but retired at Coutances, together with his brother Francis Pélissier and team mate Maurice Ville. The three cyclists met journalist Albert Londres of Petit Parisien, to whom they complained about the circumstances in which the cyclists had to race. In that third stage, that ended on a circuit, Theophile Beeckman crossed the finish line first. However, the bell indicating the last lap was not rung, and Philippe Thys was placed ex aequo on the first place by the officials.
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