Henri Desgrange - Death

Death

In 1936 Henri Desgrange had a prostate operation. At the time, two operations were needed; the Tour de France was due to fall between them. Desgrange's dominant character persuaded his surgeon to give him permission to follow the race despite warnings that he should not. Desgrange ordered his car to be heavily packed with cushions. A doctor would ride beside him. Desgrange let his deputy and chief cycling writer, Jacques Goddet, into the secret but demanded he say nothing of his suffering. Goddet in fact told Desgrange's deputy on the Tour, Louis Cazalis.

It became clear on the first stage that things were not going to go well. Desgrange was in agony from the jolting and the repeated acceleration and slowing of his car. The second day proved too much and, in a fever at Charleville, he left the race and retired to his château at Beauvallon. His daily column, considered of great importance, was taken over by the writer Charles Faurous.

Desgrange died at home on the Mediterranean coast on 16 August 1940.

L'Auto wrote, under the headline Le Patron:

"Those who called Henri Desgrange by that title will now painfully find the true value of that title. We are mourning a father. A father who presided over the birth, then the formation, then the development, then the health of his child. He loved all those who loved L'Auto. His joy was to mix with the youngest of his collaborators. We'll no longer find him in the sports hall where he was as vigorous at 75 as he was in his fifties, which is as vigorous as others are in their forties. He will no longer be... But, then, what are we saying? His memory, his example and his lesson will still be here, there, everywhere, in our beloved house, still and for ever full of his dynamism and his visionary and precise decisions."

A monument to his memory, paid for by subscription, stands at the Col du Galibier. A prize is offered in his name to the first rider over the col in each Tour de France.