Mapping Le Tour: The unofficial history of all 100 Tour de France races. Ellis Bacon

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       1925

       19th Edition

	Start: Paris, France, on 21 JuneFinish: Paris, France, on 19 July
	Total distance: 5430 km (3374 miles)Longest stage: 433 km (269 miles)
	Highest point:Col du Galibier: 2556 m (8386 ft) Mountain stages: 6
	Starters: 130Finishers: 49
	Winning time: 219 h 10’ 18”Average speed: 24.820 kph (15.422 mph)
	1. Ottavio Bottecchia (Ita)2. Lucien Buysse (Bel) at 54’ 20” 3. Bartolomeo Aimo (Ita) at 56’ 37”

      While Ottavio Bottecchia again won the Tour de France in 1925, fundamental changes were made by organiser Henri Desgrange to help push his race forward. The Tour increased its number of stages – up to eighteen from the fifteen it had been run over for so long – and the time bonuses for stage wins were done away with, for the time being. Desgrange even went as far as proposing that every rider was to eat the same amount of food, but that idea was dropped after the riders threatened to strike.

      The race also started a little further outside Paris, in the suburb of Le Vésinet, while new stage start/finish towns included Mulhouse, near the Swiss border and, a little further south, spa town Évian.

      Bottecchia started where he had left off, winning the first stage to Le Havre before losing the jersey two days later to unheralded Belgian Adelin Benoît. There was to be no repeat of the Italian’s 1923 Tour win when he wore the famous golden tunic from start to finish, but Bottecchia was back in yellow after winning the flat stage 7 between Bordeaux and Bayonne.

      Benoît then showed the race his climbing legs, winning the tough first day in the Pyrenees and reclaiming the race lead before Bottecchia took control once more the next day – and this time retained yellow all the way to Paris.

      It was also Eugène Christophe’s last Tour – the unlucky Frenchman whose dreams of winning the race were dashed by broken forks, but who nonetheless would always be remembered as the first ever wearer of the yellow jersey in 1919. Christophe finished a lowly eighteenth overall, almost seven hours down on the Italian winner. In fact, no French rider was even to finish in the top ten; Romain Bellenger was the highest-placed home rider in eleventh.

      A weary Bartolomeo Aimo struggles up to the Col d’Izoard

       1926

       20th Edition

	Start: Évian, France, on 20 JuneFinish: Paris, France, on 18 July
	Total distance: 5745 km (3570 miles)Longest stage: 433 km (269 miles)
	Highest point:Col du Galibier: 2556 m (8386 ft) Mountain stages: 6
	Starters: 126Finishers: 41
	Winning time: 238 h 44’ 25”Average speed: 24.273 kph (15.082 mph)
	1. Lucien Buysse (Bel)2. Nicolas Frantz (Lux) at 1 h 22’ 25” 3. Bartolomeo Aimo (Ita) at 1 h 22’ 51”

      Radical changes the year previously turned yet more radical as the Tour started outside Paris for the first time. Évian, a town that had featured in the race for the first time only the year before – and best known today for its bottled water – was truly put on the map thanks to being used for the race’s Grand Départ. The race returned to its Paris start in 1927, however, where it remained until 1951, and a start in Metz. Only then did the race start in a different town or city each year, until 2003 when, for one year only, it started again in Paris, on the site of the Au Réveil Matin café, where it had started in 1903, to celebrate 100 years of the race. In a sad footnote, the building was gutted by fire in late 2003, barely two months after the Tour start.

      At 5745 km (3570 miles), the 1926 edition was, and remains, the longest-ever Tour de France, although Desgrange dropped the total number of stages down to seventeen from eighteen the year before. He preferred longer, more epic stages, and judged the distances of the 1925 stages to be too short.

      Thirty-three-year-old Belgian Lucien Buysse, second to Bottecchia in 1925, won overall in 1926, despite receiving the shocking news on stage 3 that his daughter had died. He only continued in the race after being encouraged to do so by his family.

      His younger brother, 24-year-old Jules, had won the opening stage between Évian and Mulhouse by a massive 13-minute margin, and held yellow until stage 3. They became – and remain – the only brothers to wear the yellow jersey in the same edition of the race.

      The Tour’s globalisation continued, too, when Kisso Kawamura became the first Japanese rider to take part – although he abandoned during the first stage.

      Lucien Buysse powers to victory despite personal tragedy

       1927

       21st Edition

	Start: Paris, France, on 19 JuneFinish: Paris, France, on 17 July
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