From its inception, the 1903 Tour de France was a colorful affair. Full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating, it was a race to be remembered. Cyclists of the time weren't enthusiastic about participating in this "heroic" race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs...

If you complete a bike race of over 3,000 miles in last place, overcoming mountain ranges and merciless weather, all while enduring physical and psychological agony, should you be branded the loser? What if your loss helped a teammate win? What if others lacked the determination to finish? What if you were trying to come in last? Froome, Wiggins, Mercks-we know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational...

"On June 29, 1919, one day after the Treaty of Versailles brought about the end of World War I, nearly seventy cyclists embarked on the thirteenth Tour de France. From Paris, the war-weary men rode down the western coast on a race that would trace the country's border, through seaside towns and mountains to the ghostly western front. Traversing a cratered postwar landscape, the cyclists faced near-impossible odds and the psychological scars of war....