When Tour de France went abroad before 1914

Defining historical events of the 20th century often left  their marks on road cycling history. Just think about, for istance, the impact of World War 1 on the mythology of some famous races, like Paris-Roubaix. The born of the famous phase of "Hell of the North" is a quite well known story among cycling fans.

On the other hand, even when someone is quite familiar with the history of Tour de France's early years, sometimes just bumps into something, which could raise so many questions. Like those few Tour de France editions, when the race visited Alsace -Lorraine, the territory occupied by the Germans in those days.

TOUR DE FRANCE CROSSING THE BORDER 

Although Tour de France started abroad for the first time in 1954, the race visited other countries during its early history already.

The first time the peloton crossed the border happened in 1906, when the race visited Italy, Germany (crossed Metz for the first time) and Spain for a short time. No foreign town were involved to host a start or a finish, only the route of the race crossed the border.

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A different situation occurred during the subsequent  edition,

when the 2nd stage finished in Metz, a town in the territories Germany annexed after the Franco-Prussian war in the  1870s.

Although German authorities allowed the cyclists to finish there, they didn't allow the French flag to be flown or the cars of the race officials to enter the city. The winner of the stage was presented to Count Zeppelin, the governor of Alsace-Lorraine. (Nevertheless, there was a little confusion, who was the real winner of the stage. First Louis Trousselier was declared the winner, but a few days later the jury corrected their decision, and Emile Georget was awarded too.)

The welcome of the race was a bit hostile by the spectators too: there were nails trown on the road. But this wasn't an uncommon thing in those days, placing dangerous obstacles on the road was a usual tactic of  overzelaous fans, who wanted to help their favourites by taking their rivals out that way. (See the story of Tour de France 1904)

Tour the France visited also Switzerland for the very first time in 1907.

Between 1907-1910 a stage to Metz seemed to be a permanent feature of the race, always the 2nd stage, a 398 km long route from Roubaix.  Then the race was banned from visit the town due to the increasing possibilities of French patriotic rallies during the event.

During the subsequent editions, they replaced Metz with Longwy, one of the few places in Alsace-Lorraine were not annected by Germany.

In 1913 and 1914 a mountain stage finished in Geneva (Switzerland), but there wasn't any other significant abroad trip of Tour de France before World War I kicked off.