1923 Tour de France
cycling race
The 1923 Tour de France was the 17th edition of the Tour de France, taking place 24 June to 22 July. It consisted of 15 stages over 5386 km, ridden at an average speed of 24.233 km/h. The race was won by Henri Pélissier with a convincing half-hour lead to his next opponent, Italian Ottavio Bottecchia. In total, 139 cyclists entered the race, of which 48 finished. Pélissier's victory was the first French victory since 1911, as the Tour de France had been dominated by Belgian cyclists since then.
Innovations and changes
The French cyclists Henri and Francis Pélissier had quit the 1920 Tour de France after Henri received a penalty from the Tour organisation for throwing away a tire. This had caused a fight between the Pélissier brothers and tour organiser Henri Desgrange, and because of this fight, the Pélissier brother had been absent in the 1921 and 1922 Tours de France. In 1921, Henri Desgrange wrote in his newspaper: "Pélissier doesn't know how to suffer. He will never win the Tour" Still, Henri Pélissier was the most talented French racer of his period, and in 1923 had won every major race except the Tour de France. The Tour de France had been dominated by Belgian cyclists in the last years, which was not good for the popularity of the race in France.
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This entry incorporates text from “1923 Tour de France” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.