He began racing professionally in 1911 and amassed important victories before the First World War, including the 1912 Milan–San Remo and three stages in the 1914 Tour de France.

After the war he resumed competition, winning Paris–Roubaix in 1919 and the second (and final) running of the Circuit des Champs de Bataille in 1920.

Henri Desgrange, organiser of the Tour de France, vowed that they would never again appear on the front page of his newspaper L'Auto, only to eat his words when Pélissier emerged the champion.

René de Latour wrote in Sporting Cyclist: Auvergnats are considered to be very tight with their money.

The two elder sons[2] had to work for their father on leaving school at the easy but very early-morning job of delivering the milk from a horse-drawn cart.

[4] Henri Pélissier was so thin as a young man that friends called him Ficelle, after France's thinnest loaf of bread.

In the next years, Henri Pélissier rode a few small road races, but it was not until 1908 when he started to ride seriously as an amateur.

[4] On 15 August 1911 he was walking near the Porte Maillot on the edge of Paris when he met one of the great cycling heroes of the day, Lucien Petit-Breton.

He returned to ride the Tour of Lombardy the following year as well, crashing at the entrance to the horse track in Milan with Costante Girardengo, the Italian star.

Pélissier got back on and passed the rest before the line and the crowd was so angry at how it perceived he had ruined Girardengo's chances that they ran onto the circuit and began pushing and punching Pélissier so much that he had scramble into the judges' watchtower and wait for 80 policemen to quieten the angry spectators three metres below him.

[5] He argued repeatedly with Desgrange, who in 1920 penalised Pélissier two minutes for leaving a flat tyre by the roadside.

Oscar Egg said: In 1914, I held the world record for the hour and I won three stages of the Tour.

He had an instinct for racing but if he'd been able to master his reflexes, keep control of the way he reacted, he would have been a phenomenal champion thanks to the extraordinary talent that he had.

He fought Desgrange's plan that riders in the Tour de France should be limited to equal amounts of food.

"Henri Pélissier is saturated with class but he does not know how to suffer," Desgrange wrote in L'Auto.

They were met in the station café by the journalist Albert Londres, who normally wrote about social and international affairs but was following the Tour for Le Petit Parisien.

Londres' piece, reproduced largely as a dialogue, appeared under the headline Les Forçats de la Route.

[5] He remained bitter about those he believed treated cyclists as little better than slaves, said the broadcaster Jean-Paul Brouchon, while forgetting that cycling had made him rich.

Next day, Paris-Soir's headline was: THE TRAGIC END OF HENRI PÉLISSIER surprises no-one at Dampierre'If I'd had the money I would have left him long ago' the murderess said yesterdayAlbert Baker d'Isy wrote: "He had few friendships because of his absolute opinions, and the way he expressed them cost him many friends...

But they all bowed to the great quality of a champion that they considered the greatest French rider since the [first world] war.

"[5] Léo Breton, president of the UVF, the French federation, called Pélissier the greatest rider of all time.Camille's trial opened a year later, almost to the day.

[5] Fans at the Parc des Princes bought a bas-relief memorial to Henri, Francis and Charles Pélissier and put it up at the velodrome.