Tour de France

Le Tour de France (Tour of France), often referred to as La Grande Boucle, Le Tour or The Tour, is the most famous and prestigious road bicycle race in the world. With the exception of interruptions for World War I and World War II, it has been held annually since 1903. It is a long-distance stage race competition for professional cycling teams, traveling through France and its nearby countries over the course of three weeks each July. The winner is the individual rider who finishes the course of the race in the least accumulated time.

The Tour de France, Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and the Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain) are the three major stage races and the longest ones of the UCI International Calendar, at three weeks each. The Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, and World Cycling Championship constitute the Triple Crown of Cycling. While the other two European Grand Tours are well-known in Europe and attract many professional cyclists, they are relatively unknown outside the continent, and even the UCI World Cycling Championship is only familiar to cycling enthusiasts. The Tour de France, in contrast, has long been a household name around the globe, even among people who are not generally interested in professional cycling; it is for cycling what the FIFA World Cup is to football (soccer) in global popularity.

Since 2005, the race has been a part of the UCI ProTour race series. The most recent Tour was the 2006 Tour de France.

The Tour was founded as a publicity event for the newspaper L'Auto (predecessor to the present l'Équipe) by its editor and co-founder, Henri Desgrange, to rival the Paris-Brest et retour ride (sponsored by Le Petit Journal), and Bordeaux-Paris. The idea for a round-France stage race is also credited to one of his journalists, Géorges Lefèvre, with whom Desgrange had lunch at the Café de Madrid in Paris on November 20, 1902. L'Auto announced the race on January 19, 1903. Promotion of the Tour de France certainly proved a great success for the newspaper; increasing circulation from 25,000 before the 1903 Tour to 65,000 after it; in 1908 the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour it was selling 500,000 copies a day. The record circulation claimed by Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933 Tour. Today, the Tour is organized by the Société du Tour de France, a subsidiary of Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which is part of the media group that owns l'Équipe.

The Tour is a "stage race", divided into a number of stages, each being a race held over one day. The time it takes each rider to complete each stage is noted, recorded, and accumulated. Riders who finish in the same group are awarded the same time, with possible subtractions due to time bonuses. Two riders are said to have finished in the same group if the gap between them is less than one bike-length. A crash within the final 3 kilometres of a normal stage means that all riders in the same group entering the final 3 kilometres are given the same time. The ranking of the riders according to accumulated time is known as the General Classification, or GC. The overall winner is the one who is ranked first on GC at the end of the final stage. It is possible to win the overall race without winning any individual stages (which Greg LeMond did in 1990). Winning a Tour de France stage is considered a great pro cycling achievement, more prestigious than winning most single day races, regardless of one's overall standing in the GC. Although the number of stages has varied in the past, recently the Tour has consisted of about 20 stages, with a total length of between 3,000 and 4,000 km (1800 to 2500 mi). In addition to the race for the overall win, there are several additional competitions. The leaders of these competitions are represented by certain coloured jerseys;

The Tour is nowadays contested by professional teams backed by commercial sponsors, but the event began as a race for individuals; slipstreaming and other team tactics were initially savagely condemned by Desgrange, and he only accepted their inevitability during the 1920s. Even when commercial cycling teams had become commonplace in other events, the Tour was contested by national teams for several years during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Most stages take place in France though it is very common to have a few stages in nearby countries, such as Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany as well as non-neighbouring countries such as the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom (visited in 1974 and 1994, and will start the 2007 tour) and the Netherlands. The three weeks usually includes two rest days, which are sometimes used to transport the riders long distances between stages.

In recent years, the first stage had been preceded by a short individual time trial (1 to 15 km), called the prologue. This was scrapped in 2005, but was reinstated again in 2006. Since 1975, the traditional finish is in Paris on the Champs-Élysées. During the Tour, various stages occur, including a number of mountain stages, individual time trials and a team time trial (scrapped in 2006). The remaining stages are held over relatively flat terrain. With the variety of stages, sprinters may win stages, but the overall winner is almost always a master of the mountain stages and time trials.

The itinerary of the race changes each year and alternates between clockwise and anti-clockwise direction around France. (For example, 2005 was a clockwise direction Tour — visiting the Alpes first and then the Pyrenees — while the 2006 race visits those two mountain ranges in the reverse order.) Some of the visited places, especially mountains and passes, recur almost annually and are famous on their own. The most famous mountains are those in the hors-categorie (peaks where the difficulty in climbing is beyond categorization), including the Col du Tourmalet, Mont Ventoux, Col du Galibier, the Hautacam, and Alpe d'Huez. Although the tour is often won in the mountain stages, the length and variety of terrain ensures that only an all-round rider can win the race. (A notable exception in recent years being the late Marco Pantani, the winner in 1998, who was a mountain climbing specialist.)

From 1984 to 2003 there was a race called La Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale, which was unofficially considered Tour de France for women.

Tour directors

Famous stages

Since 1975, the final stage always finishes on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, which is cobbled, making it a difficult surface to cycle on, though not as hard as the famous Paris-Roubaix. The race takes multiple turns over the avenue, which is lined with enormous spectator crowds. This stage is not usually competitive in terms of the overall lead since it is a flat sprinters' stage, and the leader is likely to have a sufficiently large margin to be unchallengeable. There have been exceptions, however. In 1987, with Stephen Roche leading Pedro Delgado by only 40 seconds after the final time trial, Delgado broke away from the peloton on the Champs-Elysées, threatening to snatch victory at the last minute. (In fact he was caught, he and Roche both finished in the peloton, and Roche thereby won the Tour.)

In 1989 the Tour organizers experimented by holding the final time trial as the final, rather than as the penultimate, stage. Famously, this final stage of the Tour saw Greg LeMond overtake Laurent Fignon's 50 second overall lead to win by just 8 seconds, the closest winning margin in the Tour's history. It is unlikely that this experiment will be repeated in the future.

The particularly tough climb of Alpe d'Huez is a favourite, providing a stage finish in most Tours. In 2004, in another experiment, the mountain time trial ended at Alpe d'Huez. This seems less likely to be repeated, following complaints of abusive spectator behavior from the riders. Another famous mountain stage is the climb of the Mont Ventoux, often claimed to be the hardest climb in the Tour due to the harsh conditions there. The Tour usually features only one of these two climbs in a year.

To host a stage start or finish brings prestige, and a lot of business, to a town. Whereas formerly each stage would start at the preceding stage's finish line, making a continuous course for the race, nowadays each stage can often start some distance from the previous day's finish, to allow more towns to share in the glory. Sometimes the Tour will jump very long distances between stages, requiring a rest day to allow riders to be transported.

The prologue and first stage of the Tour are particularly prestigious to host. Usually one town will host the prologue (which is too short to go between towns) and also the start of stage 1. In some years, like 2005, there is no prologue. The Tour alternates between starting inside and outside France; traditionally, the first few stages are in a neighbouring country.

Prize money

Since the first Tour in 1903, prize money is awarded. From a total 20.000 francs the first year, the total amount of prize money increases each year. Prizes and bonuses are awarded according to the classification in each stage and the overall classifications at the end of the race. A smaller amount is paid to teams as participation expense or presence bonus. In 2006, a total of over 3 million Euro was awarded, the winner of the individual general classification receiving 450,000 Euros. Notwithstanding these increasing amounts, the importance of the prize money decreased through the years, as riders are well paid by their employers -the cycling teams- by contract.