The 1914 Tour de France was the 12th Tour de France, taking place June 28 to July 26, 1914. The total distance was 5,405 kilometres (3,359 mi) and the average speed of the riders was 26.835 kilometres per hour (16.674 mph). It was won by the Belgian cyclist Philippe Thys.
The day the Tour began, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, marking the start of World War I. On August 3, Germany invaded Belgium and declared war on France, making this Tour the last for five years, until 1919. The three men who won the Tour between 1907 and 1910 would die in the war.
Read more about 1914 Tour De France: Changes From The 1913 Tour De France, Race Details, Results, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the words tour and/or france:
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)