Only when Christophe could drop the peloton did he finish ahead of eventual winner Odile Defraye.

Christophe won three consecutive stages using this method (including the Tour's longest successful solo break of 315 km to Grenoble).

Had the race been decided on time, the result would have been closer – Christophe would have led until the final stage, when he sat up in disgust allowing a group to ride away.

[1] He was in second place when the race stopped in Bayonne on the night before the first day in the mountains, when the course featured a succession of cols: the Osquich, Aubisque, Soulor, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde.

Christophe rode for Peugeot and his team attacked from the start to demoralise the rival Alcyon riders and, in particular, Defraye.

Lecomte offered to weld the broken forks back together but a race official and managers of rival teams would not allow it.

It took three hours and the race judge penalised him 10 minutes – reduced later to three – because Christophe had allowed a seven-year-old boy, Corni, to pump the bellows for him.

[1] Filling his pockets with bread, Christophe set off over two more mountains and eventually finished the tour in seventh place.

The historian and author, Bill McGann, says: Christophe became a soldier when France declared war in 1914.

His fork broke again, this time on the cobbles of Valenciennes and, although being within a kilometre of the nearest forge, he lost more than two and a half hours and the race while he made repairs.

His story captured the public imagination and he was awarded the same prize money as winner Firmin Lambot.

[1] Placed in the top three and still in with a chance of overall victory, another broken fork on the descent of the Galibier in the Alps forced Christophe to once more walk out of the mountain on foot.

[1] The French cycling federation in 1951 placed a plaque on the wall of the building that stands now where the forge once stood at Ste-Marie-de-Campan.

By the time Christophe reached the studio, he was in a cortège of 100 cycling fans, among them the former world champion, Georges Speicher.

Christophe is most famous for the broken forks of the Tour de France, but his suffering was far greater in the 1910 edition of Milan–San Remo which was run in dreadful weather with glacial temperatures.

Only three riders finished and the result is still uncertain because some reports say van Hauwaert came fourth and others that he was disqualified for hanging on to a car.

[18] Christophe said that every night in the race hotel he laid out his kit like a fireman, "so that the moment I was called in the morning I didn't waste time looking for my clothes and equipment.

Christophe (like René Vietto and Raymond Poulidor after him) is celebrated as an eternal second, more famous for his near-misses than his more successful rivals.