Tour de France
This international bicycle race takes place each year in France, over three weeks in July. Find out more about the race and its history, how the teams work, the meaning of the various jerseys and the route map for this year
Tour de France
This international bicycle race takes place each year in France, over three weeks in July. Find out more about the race and its history, how the teams work, the meaning of the various jerseys and the route map for this year...
The Tour: An Overview
The Tour de France is considered by many sports enthusiasts to be the most difficult and challenging athletic event in the world.
The Tour, annually in July, is a three-week cycling race through France that usually dips into neighbouring countries briefly during the race. The route changes every year, and cities and towns benefit from the honour (and tourist money) of the race coming through.
Professional teams of nine compete to ensure a rider from their team (generally the team leader) finishes with the best time at the finish in Paris. The route changes from year to year, but the finish line is always on the Champs d'Elysée in Paris.
Each day during the race is either a race day or a rest day. There are generally only two or three rest days over the course of the race. Each race day is either a long ride of at least 150 Km (90 miles) or a time trial. A time trial is a race purely against the clock. In every Tour, there is always at least one individual time trial and usually a team time trial where five members of a team ride together to get the fastest time as a team.
A Brief History of the Race
In 1903, the race was created by Géo Lefèvre and Henri Desranges as a publicity event for the newspaper, L'Auto (predecessor of L'Équipe). The first race was 2,428 Km (1,508.7 miles) over 19 days with an average speed of 25.7 Km per hour (15.9 miles/hour). Maurice Garin won that first race, while the next fastest finisher trailed behind him by 2 hours and 49 minutes, a record time-gap between the first and second place that still stands today.
The second Tour de France, in 1904, saw a free-for-all as riders desperate to win cheated by taking trains and cars. Some fans placed nails in the road in front of the competition and did what they could to waylay rival riders. Race organisers implemented stricter rules in order to avoid these incidents.
With the advent of clearer and stricter rules, riders were no longer allowed to accept outside assistance and had to finish each stage with everything with which they started. Spare tires, tools, food and shed clothing had to be carried on the rider - a challenging rule, considering that by 1907, the race was nearly 4,500 Km (2650 miles), twice the distance of the inaugural race and about 1,000 Km (600 miles) longer than the modern Tour.
The Basics of the Race
Though every cycling stage race is about there being an individual winner, team strategy plays a vital part in the winner's success. The overall race as well as each stage can be likened to a chess game, wit