Henri Pépin (18 November 1864 – 31 December 1915)[1] 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[2] and spent the night in expensive hotels.

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.

Pierre Chany reports that Pépin was in conversation with a lady, occasionally raising his hat to other women and blowing kisses.

They took 12 hours and 20 minutes longer than Georget on the stage from Roubaix to Metz – they were far from last – and the judges were powerless because the race was decided not on time but points.

[3]Somewhere between Lyon and Grenoble on stage five – three times the direct distance the way the race went – Pépin pulled out the money he had promised his little team and set off for the train home.

The Danish writer and television commentator, Svend Novrup, imagined a scene in which Pépin called his assistants to see him: Two athletic young men entered the beautiful room of a castle near Toulouse.

He addressed his guests in a light tone ...Gentlemen, as I have hinted in my letter, the reason you are here is bicycle racing.

I have estates to run and attending to them and a large number of staff is very demanding...[8]The confusion arose because of the trunk of belongings that Pépin carried with him through the Tour.

A picture of Pépin on the cover of Le Cycle of October 1894 – he was a celebrity even then – shows the normal lean young man of the period, with intense eyes, a weak chin and the obligatory twizzled moustache.

More formal studio pictures show him in the slightly effete, Oscar Wilde-like, pose of gentlemen-displaying-their-calves.

Pépin was already vice-consul of the Union Vélocipédique de France when in 1897 he published a booklet about how he and a rider called Richard, possibly his son, rode a tandem from Paris to Agen in 57 hours and 45 minutes[9][10] They were joined by their trainer, Louis Lambert, on a bicycle.

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.

[10]It ends: The trees passed with an unseen speed, feverish enthusiasm filled our arteries, we lifted our machine with the effort of our pushing, the cyclists who accompanied us, although they were fresh, could not follow us, and it was with happiness that we waved to them from the top of the Petites Soeurs hill in that town of Agen so distant, so desired.

Henri Desgrange replied: Dear Mr Pépin, it is with great pleasure that, according to the desire you expressed in your last letter, instead of sending you cash for the allowances owed to you, L'Auto will provide you with a medal to the same value.

[11]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.