Jean Dargaties, known as Jean Dargassies (born Grisolles, Tarn-et-Garonne, France, 15 July 1872, died Grisolles, 7 August 1965)[1] was a French racing cyclist who rode the first Tour de France because the man who sold him a bike told him he ought to.
[4] In a picture of the forge, he is posing beside a horse, a broad leather belt round his waist, a hammer in his hand.
[4] Legend says that Dargassies bought a bicycle so that he could ride 25 km to Montauban, as far to the north as Toulouse was to the south.
[4] The shop owner had heard of a new race, the Tour de France, to be promoted that summer.
There were few entrants from the south and Lefèvre, a Parisian, was entranced by Dargassie's country ways and his marked southern accent.
When he rode by, every voice shouted in encouragement, in a long avenue of people all the way to Montauban.
"[4] He rode the Tour again in 1904 and finished fourth, lifted from 10th by disqualifications of the best riders for cheating.
There he met another rider, Henri Pépin, a prosperous landowner from Gontaud-de-Nogaret, east of Bordeaux.
[9] The two made a deal that Dargassies and another rider, Henri Gauban, would pace Pépin round the 1907 event.
Instead of racing, they would take their time, stop at good restaurants, spend the night in the best hotels they could find.
As hired hands sacrificing their own hopes for their leader's, Dargassies and Gauban became cycling's first domestiques, although the word wasn't coined until later.
They took 12 hours and 20 minutes longer than Émile Georget on the stage from Roubaix to Metz and the judges were powerless because the race was decided not on time but points.
[7] Pépin pulled out between Lyon and Grenoble on stage five, paid the money he had promised and set off for the train home.