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Maurice-François Garin (3 March 1871-19 February 1957) was an Italian-French road bicycle racer best known for winning the inaugural Tour de France in 1903, and for being stripped of his title in the second Tour in 1904 along with eight others, for cheating. He was of Italian origin but adopted French nationality on 21 December 1901.
Garin was born the son of Maurice-Clément Garin and Maria Teresa Ozello in Arvier, in the French-speaking Aosta Valley in north-west Italy, close to the French border. The name Garin was the most common in the native village of Maurice, called Chez-les-Garin, belonging to five of the seven families. They had four daughters and five sons, of whom Maurice was the first son.
In 1885 the family left Arvier to work on the other side of the Alps, almost to the Belgian border.
Garin worked as a chimney sweep. He later moved to France. By the age of 15, he was living in Reims as a chimney sweep. He moved to Charleroi in Belgium but by 1889 he was back in France, at Maubeuge.
Garin's younger brother, Joseph-Isidore, died in 1889. The father died shortly afterwards in Arvier. Garin's brothers François and César stayed in northern France and, with Maurice, opened a cycle shop in the lower end of the boulevard de Paris in Roubaix in 1895. Brothers César and Ambroise also competed as professional cyclists.
Garin moved to Lens, Pas-de-Calais in 1902 and lived there the rest of his life. He bought his first bicycle for 405 francs, twice what a forge worker would earn in a week of 12-hour days, in 1889. Racing did not interest him but he did ride round the town fast enough to be called a madman -le fou.
Until 2004, it was said that Garin had taken French nationality when he was 21, in 1892 but in 2004, the reporter Franco Cuaz found the naturalizing act and Garin took French nationality 21 December 1901.
He began racing in northern France in the same year when the secretary of the cycling club at Maubeuge persuaded him to enter a regional race, Maubeuge-Hirson-Maubeuge, over 200 km.
Garin became a professional by chance. He planned to ride a race at Avesnes-sur-Helpes, 25 km from where he lived. He arrived to find it was only for professionals. Not allowed to compete, he waited until the riders had left, raced after them and passed them all. He fell off twice but finished ahead of the racers. The crowd was enthusiastic but the organisers less so. They refused to pay him the 150 francs due to the real winner, so spectators raised 300 francs among themselves. Garin became a professional.
His first true professional win was in a 24-hour race in Paris in 1893. It was held on the Champ de Mars, site of the Eiffel Tower. The riders competed, as was the custom, behind a succession of pacers. The event took place in February and the cold drove out riders one after the other. Garin rode 701 km in 24 hours, beating the only other rider to finish by 49 km.
The first Paris–Roubaix was in 1896; Garin came third, 15 minutes behind Josef Fischer.
The Tour de France began to promote a new daily sports newspaper, L'Auto ahead of the largest paper in France, Le Vélo, which sold 80,000 copies a day. Some of Le Vélo's advertisers had disagreed with the paper's support for Alfred Dreyfus, a soldier found guilty on trumped up charges of selling secrets to the Germans but eventually acquitted after being sent to Devil's Island. The Tour was to promote their new rival paper, L'Auto.
The editor, Henri Desgrange, planned a five-week race from 31 May to 5 July. This proved too daunting and only 15 entered. Desgrange cut the length to 19 days and offered a daily allowance.
The race began at the Au Reveil Matin café at a crossroads in Montgeron, south of Paris, and ended in Ville-d'Avray, another suburb, having circuited France in six days of racing over 2,428 km. One stage, between Nantes and Paris, was 471 km. Sixty riders started at an entry fee of 10 francs and 21 finished. Garin won 3,000 francs for finishing first in 94h 33m 14s, or 6,125 francs in all with his other prizes. Lucien Pothier was second and Fernand Augereau third.
Garin retired from cycling and ran his garage in Lens until his death. The garage is still there, although wholly changed from Garin's era.
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Maurice Garin
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