For 112 years, in a tradition that has been disrupted only 11 times for two World Wars, bicyclists have come together every summer to ride a frenzied circuit. The Tour de France -- an event as French as Bastille Day -- pits men against themselves and each other: For three weeks, riders take to the Pyrenees and the Alps, riding clockwise or counterclockwise around the country -- the course alternates direction year to year -- for some 2,087 miles in daylong stages at altitudes as high as 8,600 feet, making it one of the most grueling events in sports.

But in recent years, the race has become known less for its athletes’ feats of endurance than for their rampant cheating. Indeed, more than a third of top finishers between 1998 and 2013 have been linked to doping, with official investigations uncovering widespread abuses ranging from the use of anabolic steroids to riders transfusing themselves with their own blood. Most famous, of course, is seven-time winner Lance Armstrong, who admitted to doping and to evading testing measures and was stripped of his titles in 2012.

And yet, despite the notoriety surrounding Armstrong’s fall from sporting grace, deception and doping have always been nearly as central to the Tour de France as bicycles.

From the earliest days of the race, entrants drank to deaden the monotony, huffed ether to tamp down the pain, took amphetamines for stamina, or opiates to ease aches and cramps. Henri Pélissier, who won the Tour in 1923, described his winning regimen to a journalist the following year: “Cocaine to go in our eyes, chloroform for our gums, and do you want to see the pills? We keep going on dynamite. In the evenings, we dance around our rooms instead of sleeping.” In 1960, then-second place contender Roger Rivière plunged into a ravine and suffered a double fracture to his spinal column -- in part, many believe, because of his slowed reaction time due to opiate use.

From the 1960s onward, teams (first introduced to the race in the 1920s after years of every man for himself) kept up their nefarious ways but also began taking advantage of pharmaceutical advances, switching from drugs that primarily affected the brain to hormones and steroids, which help build physical strength. Whole teams dropped out mysteriously from time to time, presumably when doping went wrong. The sport banned drug use in 1965 and began drug testing in 1966, but riders largely shrugged it off, relying on evasive tactics: Some fled their hotel rooms when they heard testing officials were on their way; others went on strike in protest of the new testing regime, walking their bicycles instead of riding. In 1967, British cyclist Tom Simpson -- in a dramatic demonstration of how ineffective the new rules were at preventing doping -- dropped dead during the race after drinking brandy and taking amphetamines. His last words to his team, according to reports, were: “Go on, go on.”

Drugs, which weren’t even banned for the race’s first six decades, were never the only way riders tried to exceed their physical limitations. The race also saw blatant attempts to cut corners: During the very first Tour in 1903, Italian-born racer Maurice Garin won by nearly three hours, the widest margin in history, after a close competitor was disqualified for riding in the slipstream of a car. In the next year’s Tour, every single top contender -- and nine riders in total -- were disqualified post-race for having skipped part of the course, catching rides in cars and trains, leaving 19-year-old fifth-place finisher Henri Cornet, who crossed the finish line with two flat tires, with the title.

As is still sometimes the case today, early Tours were dangerous and messy. Riders crashed often; broke bones; had to stop to repair shredded tires; fell on their faces and kept riding, covered in blood. In 1913, French racer Eugène Christophe’s bicycle broke when he was in the lead. He walked over six miles to the nearest village, carrying the bike over his shoulders. “I was weeping so badly that I couldn't see anything,” he said. Upon reaching the nearest village, he sought out a blacksmith, who had to coach the athlete on how to weld the frame back together, in order to comply with race rules that forbade riders from receiving direct assistance. Christophe still came in seventh.

But the chaos also meant opportunities for sabotage were rampant: In 1904 -- the same year nine were disqualified for hopping onto trains and cars -- four masked men in a car ambushed and roughed up Garin and another leader. They were never caught. "If I'm not murdered before we reach Paris, I'll win the Tour de France again," Garin reportedly said. (He finished first but was disqualified for cheating.) Hundreds of fans swarmed the racecourse to block the way of riders who were not their favorites, and organizers had to fire shots in the air to calm the situation. (These sorts of shenanigans continued for decades. As late as 1950, both Italian teams competing that year withdrew from the race after crowds knocked cyclist Gino Bartali off his bike, whereupon an onlooker threatened him with a knife.)
In 1905, the Tour instituted a series of sign-ins in an effort to prevent shortcuts. Riders had to sign papers proving their presence at points along the route -- except that rider Louis Trousselier smashed an inkstand, which prevented others from signing, and went on to win that year.

The modern Tour -- as it has been since the beginning -- is captivating, dramatic, thrilling, and terrifying. The one thing it has never been, however, is clean. Here, in anticipation of the 2015 Tour, which begins on July 4, Foreign Policy looks back at the early years of a messy annual rite.

Top photograph by George Grantham Bain / Courtesy Library of Congres