François Faber

Template:Short description Template:Infobox cyclist François Faber (Template:IPA; 26 January 1887 – 9 May 1915) was a Luxembourgish racing cyclist. He was born in France. He was the first foreigner to win the Tour de France in 1909, and his record of winning 5 consecutive stages still stands.<ref name="LeTour"/> He died in World War I while fighting for France.<ref name="Chany 1988 p155">Chany, Pierre (1988), La Fabuleuse Histoire du Tour de France, Nathan, France, p155</ref> Faber was known for his long solos; he is the only rider in Tour de France history to lead solo more than 1000 km.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Origins

Faber's father, Jean-François, was born in Wiltz, Luxembourg, which gave his son Luxembourgish nationality. His mother, Marie-Paule, was born in Lorraine. François Faber had a Luxembourgish passport but lived in France and considered himself French. His half-brother was another cyclist, Ernest Paul.<ref name="Chany 1988 p109">Chany, Pierre (1988), La Fabuleuse Histoire du Tour de France, Nathan, France, p109</ref>

Faber worked as a furniture-remover and as a docker when he raced as an amateur.

Racing career

Faber was a professional from 1906 to 1914. He won 27 races. His size—Template:Convert and Template:Convert—and his suburb of Paris gave him the nickname The Giant of Colombes. He rode for Labor in 1906 and 1907, moved to Peugeot in 1908, then Alcyon from 1909 to 1911. He joined Automoto for 1912 before returning to Peugeot in 1913 and 1914.

He rode the Tour de France for the first time in 1906 but didn't finish and the next year, he came seventh. In 1908 as part of the all-conquering Peugeot team, he finished second, winning four stages.

He dominated the 1909 Tour de France, winning five consecutive stages, which is still a record. The 1909 Tour had the worst weather the race had seen.<ref name="Augendre, Jacques 1996 p13">Augendre, Jacques (1996), Le Tour, Panorama d'un Siècle, Société du Tour de France, France, p13</ref> Fifty riders dropped out in six days when rain, snow, thick mud, frost and deeply rutted, unsurfaced roads dogged the race from 7 to 13 July. The worse things got, the better Faber rode. He led the race alone for 200 km to win the 398 km stage from Roubaix to Metz on the second day.

The third day started at three degrees above freezing and the weather became even worse. The race set off for Belfort and again Faber broke clear going over the Ballon d'Alsace and, after leading alone for 110 km, he finished covered in mud with his main challenger, Gustave Garrigou, 33 minutes behind.

Still the weather got worse as the next stage left at 2am to ride to Lyon. Faber's riding attracted a crowd of 3,000 to see him leave and what was said to be 20,000 to see him finish. He won again after riding the last 62 km alone after a day of potholes and knee-high water. He climbed the Col de Porte in a wind that twice blew him off his bike and being knocked down by a horse.<ref>McGann, Bill and Carol (2006), The Story of the Tour de France, Dog Ear, USA, p25</ref> His chain broke on the approach to Lyon and he ran a kilometre to the finish, pushing his bike.<ref>He was neither alone nor the least lucky; Henri Alavoine ran the last 10km of the final day with his bike on his shoulder, having damaged it in a fall.</ref> He won all five stages from Metz to Nice, all of them by himself,<ref name="Chany 1988 p109"/><ref name="Augendre, Jacques 1996 p13"/> the final one after attacking Garrigou when he stopped due to a puncture.

At the end of the race, the race official, Alphonse Steinès, asked Faber what he planned to do next. Faber said: Template:Quote

Lucien Petit-Breton said of him: Template:Quote

In the 1910 Tour, Faber was leading his Alcyon teammate Octave Lapize in the overall general classification when in Stage 7, a collision with a dog at the foot of the Pyrenees left him seriously injured. Despite winning the stage at Nîmes, the injury cost him the tour. Lapize attacked and took the tour with a last gasp attack from Faber on the final stage from Caen to Paris ending with a number of punctures.

He continued to compete in the Tour de France with moderate success until his cycling career, like many of his peers, was curtailed with the start of World War I.

Faber won 19 Tour de France stages,<ref name="LeTour">Tour de France, Official site, History archive, Francois FaberTemplate:Dead link</ref> Paris–Brussels, Bordeaux–Paris, Sedan-Brussels, Paris–Tours twice, Paris–Roubaix and the Giro di Lombardia.

Death

Faber joined the French Foreign Legion when the First World War broke out. He was assigned to the 2nd Marching Regiment of the 1st Foreign Regiment, at Bayonne on 22 August 1914. He was promoted to corporal. On 9 May 1915, the first day of the Battle of Artois at Carency near Arras he received a telegram saying his wife had given birth to a daughter. One story says that, cheering, he jumped out of the trench and was killed by a German bullet. Another, more commonly accepted, is that he was shot while carrying an injured colleague back from no-man's land during fighting between Carency and Mont-Saint-Éloi. His regiment lost 1,950 of 2,900 in their attack. Faber was posthumously awarded the Médaille militaire.<ref>Journal Officiel, France, 24 May 1922</ref>

The GP François Faber, a small race in Luxembourg, is named after him.

There is a plaque in his memory in the church of Notre Dame de Lorette in the French national war cemetery near Arras.

On 28 March 2015, a new plaque in his memory was unveiled in Mont-Saint-Éloi, close to where he died. It was unveiled by Faber's grandson, Jacques Pallut and the town's mayor, Jean-Pierre Bavière.

Career achievements

Major results

1908

1st Giro di Lombardia

2nd Overall Tour de France

1st Stages 3, 4, 8 & 12

1909

1st File:Jersey yellow.svg Overall Tour de France

1st Stages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 10

1st Paris–Tours

1st Paris–Brussels

1st Sedan-Brussels

1910

1st Paris–Tours

2nd Overall Tour de France

1st Stages 2, 4 & 7

1911

1st Bordeaux–Paris

Tour de France

1st Stages 3 & 6

1913

1st Paris–Roubaix

Tour de France

1st Stages 10 & 13

1st Stage 2 Tour of Belgium

1914

Tour de France

1st Stages 13 & 14

Grand Tour general classification results timeline

	1906	1907	1908	1909	1910	1911	1912	1913	1914
Giro d'Italia	N/A	N/A	N/A	DNE	DNE	DNE	DNE	DNE	DNE
Stages won				—	—	—	—	—	—
Tour de France	DNF-6	7	2	1	2	DNF-12	14	5	9
Stages won	0	0	4	6	3	2	0	2	2
Vuelta a España	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Stages won

External links

• Template:Cycling archives