Alfred Jarry is responsible for modernism; without him, we might not have had Dadaism and surrealism. Much more importantly, though he loved to ride around Paris on a fixed gear bike and use pistols to keep people out of his way, truly a great way to get about. He may be best known for the play Ubu Roi, but he wrote a book called The Supermale, which deals with a 10,000-mile cycle race and, as far as I am concerned, inspired Le Tour de France, which appeared the year after the book came out.