Henri Pépin

Henri Pépin (18 November 1864 – 31 December 1915) was an affluent French racing cyclist who once hired two riders to escort him leisurely through the Tour de France, in which they ate at good restaurants and spent the night in expensive hotels. When he had enough, he paid his assistants – the first domestiques in cycle racing – what they would have earned had they won the Tour and went home by train.

Tour de France The Tour which made Pépin celebrated started at the Porte Bineau in Paris on 8 July 1907. Pépin, whom reporters quickly turned into a count or a baron (see below) was rider number 59 in a peloton of 112. He had hired two riders, Jean Dargassies and Henri Gauban to ride with him. Far from competing with the favourites, Gustave Garrigou, Émile Georget and Lucien Petit-Breton, Pépin planned to treat the race as a pleasure ride, stopping for lunch when they chose and spending the night in the best hotels they could find.

The race left the Porte Bineau at 5.30am but without Pépin, Gauban and Dargassies. Pierre Chany reports that Pépin was in conversation with a lady, occasionally raising his hat to other women and blowing kisses. The bunch had already left for its eight-hour ride to Roubaix, but only when Pepin was ready did he say:

The confusion arose because of the trunk of belongings that Pépin carried with him through the Tour. On it was stenciled "Henri Pépin de Gontaud". The "de" gave the impression of aristocracy and that was what journalists concluded when they were intrigued by his dilettante manners. The truth was more prosaic: Henri Pépin was simply from a village called Gontaud-de-Nogaret, not near Toulouse but on the Toulouse side of Bordeaux. Far from being his name, it was his address.

The house is still there, in the main street. Pépin was described as a propriétaire, or house-owner. The house is substantial but not a château and there are no extensive grounds. They were joined by their trainer, Louis Lambert, on a bicycle.

Their account starts: Set off from Paris on Friday 21 June 1895 at 5.25am from the Porte Maillot, where Monsieur Haufert, timekeeper of the Union, gave us the starting signal, we crossed the Bois de Boulogne towards Versailles. The weather was cold, that damp coldness of some mornings in June which makes you search for a light jacket and freezes your hands; but we were full of ardour, replete with good advice and lots of energy and it was happily that Richard and I on the tandem and our trainer Lambert on a bicycle started our long journey for the record from Paris to Agen.

Pépin also toured Europe by bicycle and amassed a collection of photographs, many of them made by heavy glass negatives which he carried with him.

Death Pépin died in Bordeaux in 1915 of "athleticism", which could mean a coronary attributed to a heart enlarged by sport. He had started his third Tour de France that summer.