Maurice Garin - First Disqualified Tour Winner

People wring their hands today that Floyd Landis would be the first Tour winner to be stripped of the yellow jersey, but there's a qualifier to that statement: first to be stripped for doping. We have to go back to 1904 to find the only winner, so far, to be disqualified for cheating. In Maurice Garin's case, riding trains from town to town. Here's a quote from the Cycling News piece which bears special light, because he was disqualified for "probably" cheating:

Garin was disqualified from the 1904 Tour, probably for catching a train when he should have been cycling. Why 'probably'? Because the French federation had grown alarmed at the uproar, enthusiasm and even anger that the Tour had created. This was the race, after all, in which riders were knocked off their bikes and even beaten up. Officials weren't going to do anything to make things worse and that included not publishing the findings of their inquiry. Just like what may happen to Floyd Landis in 2006, he was disqualified after the Tour was over.

Maybe the officials intended to say much later about what had happened but in time the filing cabinet full of papers disappeared. The original French federation vanished with the First World War and so, incidentally, did all the Tour's own records. They were placed in a van to be sent south to escape the invading Germans and were never seen again.

Tour de France history is very "rich" with stories like this. The article goes on to tell how the riders had different sports drinks than they do these days, usually carrying bottles of wine because they couldn't trust the water purity at the places they had to stop, and then getting drunk on the road to deal with the pain. They even had to steal bottles of alcohol from bars to restock. Oh, what rascals! Read the whole the thing.