Marcel Molines

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Marcel Molines (born December 22, 1928 in Chibli, Algeria) was a French racing cyclist and the first African to win a stage of the Tour de France.

Molines, because he was born in Algeria (at that time part of France), competed in the 1950 Tour de France in a team representing French North Africa. His background meant neither he nor his teammate, Abdel-Kader Zaaf, suffered in that summer's heat wave. The temperature was so high on the stage from Perpignan to Nîmes that the race stopped at St-Maxime on the Mediterranean coast and many riders ran or even cycled into the sea.

Two exceptions were Molines and Zaaf, who profited from their lowly status and from a widespread disinclination to ride fast by riding 200km by themselves and sometimes getting up to 20 minutes' lead. Their advantage was enough to make Zaaf the de facto leader of the race and he would have taken the yellow jersey of best rider had he not began to zigzag 15km (8m) before the end. An official, or perhaps a spectator, pulled him off his bike and let him sleep under a tree. Molines went on to win by five minutes and remains the first African and the only non-white rider to have won a stage.

His career included riding for big teams such as Peugeot and Dilecta. He has subsequently vanished and nothing is known of his whereabouts or if, like Zaaf, he has died.

The most successful African rider in the Tour de France is the Frenchman Richard Virenque, born in Morocco in 1969, who won the race's king of the mountains competition a record seven times.