In July of every year, over the course of three weeks, the world's best road cyclists

assemble in France to compete in the world's premier bicycling race, the Tour de France.

The competition is one of the most grueling in all of sports, and cyclists often have to endure levels of pain and exhaustion

which are seldom seen elsewhere. Since the inception of the race in 1903,

it has seen its share of drama and controversy, sometimes due to competition and sometimes due to politics.

Learn more about the Tour de France and its 120-year history on this episode of Everything Everywhere

Daily. The The origins of the Tour de France are not what you might think they are.

It wasn't created by some cycling governing body in France to crown a champion.

It was created to sell newspapers.

Actually, the origin of the race is even more convoluted than that.

It actually begins with a late 19th century French scandal known as the Dreyfus affair.

Alfred Dreyfus was an officer in the French army who was accused and convicted of

selling secrets to the Germans in 1894. This occurred in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War in which France lost a little more than 20 years earlier.

Dreyfus was Jewish, and the evidence against him was very shady, and the whole affair dramatically split French society into two camps.

In one camp were the Dreyfussards who supported Dreyfuss and were pro-Republican, and the other were

the anti-Dreyfussards who supported the army and the church.

Dreyfuss was eventually exonerated and the Dreyfuss affair will be a future episode.

But for the purposes of this episode, that scandal that split the French society made its way into sports and media.

The biggest French sports newspaper at the time was LeVello.

It was a combination of sports and politics that reached about 80,000 people a day.

And it was a Dreyfussard newspaper. politics that reached about 80,000 people a day.

And it was a Dreyfussard newspaper.

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