History

The Tour de France is a bicycle race over more than 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi). It is held every year. It is held in France and visits a bordering country every year. It usually lasts 23 days. Cyclists from all over the world take part. The race is broken down into day-long segments, called stages. Individual times to finish each stage are totaled to determine the overall winner for the race. The rider with the least elapsed time each day wears a yellow jersey[1] The course changes every year but it has always finished in Paris. There are similar races in Italy and Spain but the Tour de France is the oldest, the most prestigious and the best known.

The first daily sports newspaper in France at the end of the 19th century was Le Vélo[4]. It sold 80,000 copies a day.[5] France was split over a soldier, Alfred Dreyfus, found guilty of selling secrets to the Germans. Le Vélo stood for Dreyfus's innocence while some of its biggest advertisers, notably Albert de Dion, owner of the De Dion-Bouton car works, believed him guilty.[6] Angry scenes followed between the advertisers and the editor, Pierre Giffard, and the advertisers started a rival paper.[7]

The Tour de France began to promote that rival, L'Auto. It was to outdo the Paris-Brest et retour organised by Giffard. The idea for a round-France race came from L'Auto's chief cycling journalist, 26-year-old Géo Lefèvre.[8] He and the editor, Henri Desgrange discussed it after lunch on 20 November 1902.[8] L'Auto announced the race on 19 January 1903. The plan was a five-week race from 31 May to 5 July. This proved too daunting and only 15 riders entered. Desgrange cut the length to 19 days, changed the race dates to 1 July to 19 July, and offered a daily allowance.[9] He attracted 60 entrants, not just professionals but amateurs, some unemployed, some simply adventurous.[8]

The demanding nature of the race (the stages averaged 400 km and could run through the night),[10] caught public imagination. L'Auto's circulation rose from 25,000 to 65,000;[8] by 1908 it was a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour 500,000. The record claimed by Desgrange was 854,000 during the 1933 Tour.[11]

No teams from Italy, Germany or Spain participated in the 1939 Tour de France because of political tensions preceding World War II, and the race was not held again until 1947, although other races were held in that period (see Tour de France during the Second World War).

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.

Description
Relationship of distance
and speed:

The Tour is a stage race, each stage a one-day race, the time each day accumulated to find a winner. It is possible to win without winning a stage, as Greg LeMond did in 1990. Although the number of stages varies, the modern Tour typically has 20, with a total length of 3,000 to 4,000 kilometres (1,800 to 2,500 mi). The shortest Tour was in 1904 at 2,420 km, the longest in 1926 at 5,745 km. [2] The 2007 Tour was 3,569.9 km long.[2] The three weeks usually include two rest days, sometimes used to transport riders between stages.

The race alternates between clockwise and counter-clockwise circuits of France. The combination of endurance and strength needed led the New York Times to say in 2006 that the "Tour de France is arguably the most physiologically demanding of athletic events." The effort was compared to "running a marathon several days a week for nearly three weeks", while the total elevation of the climbs was compared to "climbing three Everests."[3]