The day the Tour began, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, marking the start of the July Crisis which would lead to World War I.

On 3 August Germany invaded Belgium and declared war on France, making this Tour the last for five years, until 1919.

[2] Not much changed from the 1913 Tour de France, the most important novelty was the introduction of frame numbers.

[3] Philippe Thys, who had won the 1913 Tour de France, was returning in 1914 and considered favourite, together with his teammate Henri Pélissier.

[4] Apart from him six other previous Tour de France winners started the race: Louis Trousselier, Lucien Petit-Breton, Octave Lapize, François Faber, Odile Defraye and Gustave Garrigou.

Four more cyclists started the race that would later win a Tour de France: Firmin Lambot, Léon Scieur, Henri Pélissier and Lucien Buysse.

[4] In 1914, the first cyclists from Australia started the Tour de France, Don Kirkham and Iddo Munro.

[6] In the ninth stage, former winner Faber was penalised with 90 minutes, because he had been pushed and took drinks from a motor cyclist.

[5] In the end, Thys stayed less than two minutes ahead of Henri Pélissier, and managed to keep that margin until the finish in Paris.

This made the organization of a big cycling race impossible for the next four years, and the Tour de France would start again in 1919.

By that time, Tour de France champions Lucien Petit-Breton, François Faber and Octave Lapize had died in the first world war.