Tour de France

Tour de France is a bicycle race. It typically has 21 days, or stages, of racing and covers not more than 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi).[2] The shortest Tour was in 1904 at 2,420 kilometres (1,500 mi), the longest in 1926 at 5,745 kilometres (3,570 mi).[3] The three weeks usually include two rest days, sometimes used to transport riders from a finish in one town to the start in another.[4] The race alternates between clockwise and counterclockwise circuits of France. The first counterclockwise circuit was in 1913.[5] The New York Times said 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."[6]
The 2004 Tour rides the Champs Élysées

The number of teams usually varies between 20 to 22, with nine riders in each. Entry is by invitation to teams chosen by the race organiser, the Amaury Sport Organisation. Team members help each other and are followed by managers and mechanics in cars.

Riders are judged by the time each has taken throughout the race, a ranking known as the general classification. There may be time deductions for finishing well in a daily stage or being first to pass an intermediate point. It is possible to win without winning a stage, as Greg LeMond did in 1990. There are subsidiary competitions (see below), some with distinctive jerseys for the best rider.

Riders normally start together each day, with the first over the line winning, but some days are ridden against the clock by individuals or teams. The overall winner is usually a master of the mountains and of these time trials. Most stages are in mainland France, although since the 1960s it has become common to visit nearby countries.[7] Stages can be flat, undulating or mountainous. Since 1975 the finish has been on the Champs-Élysées in Paris; from 1903 to 1967 the race finished at the Parc des Princes stadium in western Paris and from 1968 to 1974 at the Piste Municipale south of the capital.[8]
[edit] Origins

The roots of the Tour de France can be traced to the Dreyfus Affair, a cause célèbre which divided France at the end of the 19th century over the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, a soldier convicted – though later exonerated – of selling military secrets to the Germans. Opinions became heated and there were demonstrations by both sides. One was what the historian Eugen Weber called "an absurd political shindig" at the Auteuil horse-race course in Paris in 1899.[9] Among those involved was Comte Jules-Albert de Dion, the owner of the De Dion-Bouton car works, who believed Dreyfus was guilty.[10] De Dion served 15 days in jail and was fined 100 francs for his role at Auteuil,[11] which included striking Émile Loubet, the president of France, on the head with a walking stick.

The first Tour de France was staged in 1903. The plan was a five-stage race from 31 May to 5 July, starting in Paris and stopping in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Nantes before returning to Paris. Toulouse was added later to break the long haul across southern France from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Stages would go through the night and finish next afternoon, with rest days before riders set off again. But this proved too daunting and the costs too great for most[24] and only 15 entered. Desgrange had never been wholly convinced and he came close to dropping the idea.[25] Instead, he cut the length to 19 days, changed the dates to 1 July to 19 July, and offered a daily allowance of five francs to any rider in the first 50 who had won less than 200 francs[25][26] and who had averaged at least 20 km/h on all the stages.[27] That was what a rider would have expected to earn each day had he worked in a factory.[28] He also cut the entry fee from 20 to 10 francs and set the first prize at 12,000 francs and the prize for each day's winner at 3,000 francs. The winner would thereby win six times what most workers earned in a year.[28] That attracted between 60 and 80 entrants – the higher number may have included serious inquiries and some who dropped out – among them not just professionals but amateurs, some unemployed, some simply adventurous.[17]

Desgrange seems not to have forgotten the Dreyfus Affair that launched his race and raised the passions of his backers. He announced his new race on 1 July 1903 by citing the writer Émile Zola, whose open letter in which every paragraph started" J'accuse ..." led to Dreyfus's acquittal. Establishing the florid style which he used henceforth, Desgrange wrote:

With the wide and powerful gesture that Zola lends to his ploughman in La Terre, L'Auto, a journal of ideas and action, is about to send out over France those tough and uncomplicated sowers of strength, the great professional roadsters.
—[29][30]

He continued:

From Paris to the blue waves of the Mediterranean, from Marseille to Bordeaux, passing along the roseate and dreaming roads sleeping under the sun, across the calm of the fields of the Vendée, following the Loire, which flows on still and silent, our men are going to race madly, unflaggingly.
—[31]

The first Tour de France started almost outside the Café Reveil-Matin at the junction of the Melun and Corbeil roads in the village of Montgeron. It was waved away by the starter, Georges Abran, at 3:16 p.m. on 1 July 1903. L'Auto – which hadn't featured the race on its front page that morning[32][33] – reported:

The men waved their hats, the ladies their umbrellas. One felt they would have liked to touch the steel muscles of the most courageous champions since antiquity. Who will carry off the first prize, entering the pantheon where only supermen may go?
—[34]

Among the competitors were the eventual winner, Maurice Garin, his well-built rival Hippolyte Aucouturier, the German favourite Josef Fischer, and a collection of adventurers including one competing as "Samson".[35]

The race finished on the edge of Paris at Ville d'Avray, outside the Restaurant du Père Auto, before a ceremonial ride into Paris and several laps of the Parc des Princes. Garin dominated the race, winning the first and last two stages, at 25.68 km/h. The last rider, Millocheau, finished 64h 47m 22s behind him.
[edit] 'Last' Tour

Such was the passion that the first Tour created in spectators and riders that Desgrange said the second would be the last. Cheating was rife and riders were beaten up by rival fans as they neared the top of the col de la République, sometimes called the col du Grand Bois, outside St-Étienne. The historian Bill McGann said:

Desgrange and Lefèvre had a tiger by the tail ... It was a strange Tour and no one is sure exactly what happened. Because the stages were so long, the riders were required to ride at night. Even with Desgrange's men doing what they could to watch the race, cheating was easy. Some were accused of hopping in a car. Others took trains. Moreover, Desgrange's race had lit fires of passion among racing fans that would almost be the ruin of the race.
—[36]

The leading riders, including the winner Maurice Garin, were disqualified, although it took the Union Vélocipèdique de France until 30 November to make the decision.[37] McGann says the UVF waited so long "well aware of the passions aroused by the race."[38]

Desgrange's opinion of the fighting and cheating showed in the headline of his reaction in L'Auto: THE END. He wrote:

The Tour de France has just finished and its second edition will, I fear, be the last. It will have died of its own success, of the blind passions which have been unleashed, of the abuse and of the suspicions that have come from ignorant and ill-intentioned people. And yet, however, it seemed to us and it still seems that we had built, with this great event, the most durable and the most imposing monument to cycle sport. We had hoped to each year bring a little more sport across the greater part of France. The results of last year showed that our reasoning was correct and here we are at the end of the second Tour de France, sickened and discouraged, having lived through these three weeks of the worst slander and abuse.
—[39]

Desgrange's despair did not last. By the following spring he was planning another Tour, longer at 11 stages rather than six -and this time all in daylight to make any cheating more obvious.[40] Stages in 1905 began between 3am and 7:30am.[41]

The race captured the imagination. L'Auto's circulation rose from 25,000 to 65,000;[17] 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.[42] Le Vélo went out of business.
[edit] Early rules

Desgrange and his Tour invented bicycle stage racing.[43] Desgrange experimented with judging by elapsed time[44] and then from 1906 to 1912 by points for placings each day.[45][46] He allowed riders to have personal pacers on the last stage in 1903 and on the first and last stages in 1905.[47]

Desgrange stood against the use of multiple gears and for many years insisted riders use wooden rims, fearing the heat of braking while coming down mountains would melt the glue that held the tyres (they were finally allowed in 1937).[48]

From 1936 there were as many as three stages in a single day.[49]

His dream was a race of individuals. He invited teams but until 1925 forbade their members to pace each other.[50] He then went the other way and from 1927 to 1929[51] ran the Tour as a giant team time-trial, with teams starting separately with members pacing each other. He demanded that riders mend their bicycles without help and that they use the same bicycle from start to end. Exchanging a damaged bicycle for another was allowed only in 1923.[52]

He at first allowed riders who dropped out one day to continue the next for daily prizes but not the overall prize. He allowed teams who lost members in the team time-trial years to recruit fresh replacements.

Above all, Desgrange conducted a campaign against the sponsors, bicycle factories, which he was sure were undermining the spirit of a Tour de France of individuals. In 1930 he insisted that competitors ride plain yellow bicycles that he would provide, without a maker's name.[53]
[edit] Touriste-routiers and regionals

The first Tours were open to whoever wanted to compete. Most riders were in teams which looked after them. The private entrants were called touriste-routiers – tourists of the road – from 1923[52] and were allowed to take part provided they make no demands on the organisers. Some of the Tour's most colourful characters have been touriste-routiers. One finished each day's race and then performed acrobatic tricks in the street to raise the price of a hotel.

There was no place for individuals in the post-1930s teams and so Desgrange created regional teams, generally from France, to take in riders who would not otherwise have qualified. The original touriste-routiers mostly disappeared but some were absorbed into regional teams.
[edit] National teams

The first Tours were for individuals and members of sponsored teams. There were two classes of race, one for the aces, the other for the rest, with different rules.[54] By the end of the 1920s, however, Desgrange believed he could not beat what he believed were the underhand tactics of bike factories.[55][56] When the Alcyon team contrived to get Maurice De Waele to win even though he was sick,[57] he said "My race has been won by a corpse" and in 1930 admitted only teams representing their country or region.[57][58]

National teams contested the Tour until 1961.[59] The teams were of different sizes. Some nations had more than one team and some were mixed in with others to make up the number. National teams caught the public imagination but had a snag: that riders might normally have been in rival trade teams the rest of the season. The loyalty of riders was sometimes questionable, within and between teams.
[edit] Return of trade teams

Riders in national teams wore the colours of their country and a small cloth panel on their chest that named the team for which they normally rode. Sponsors were always unhappy about releasing their riders into anonymity for the biggest race of the year and the situation became critical at the start of the 1960s. Sales of bicycles had fallen and bicycle factories were closing.[60] There was a risk, the trade said, that the industry would die if factories weren't allowed the publicity of the Tour de France.

The Tour returned to trade teams in 1962,[61] although with further problems. Doping had become a problem and tests were introduced for riders. Riders went on strike near Bordeaux in 1966[62][63] and the organisers suspected sponsors provoked them. The Tour returned to national teams for 1967 and 1968[64] as "an experiment".[65] The author Geoffrey Nicholson identified a further reason: opposition to closure of roads by a race criticised as crassly commercial.[66][67] He said:

What the Tour did to placate the opposition in 1967 was to play the patriotic card. It scrapped trade teams in favour of national teams ... since a contest between squads in French and Belgian colours would appear less blatantly commercial than one between Ford-France-Gitane and Flandria-Romeo. 'It was being done,' said L'Équipe, the voice of the Tour, 'in response to the noble and superior interests of the race, to the wishes of the public and the desires of the public authorities.'
—[66]

The sponsors had to accept the change, but did so with ill-grace. The new arrangement, they argued, was basically unfair: they paid the riders' salaries all summer only to be denied publicity from the season's major event. They also pointed to the danger of collusion between trade-team colleagues of different nationalities ... Indeed loyalties were put under so much strain that the experiment was dropped after only two seasons.
—[66]

The Tour returned to trade teams in 1969[68] with a suggestion that national teams could come back every few years. This never happened.
[edit] Distances

The Tour originally ran around the perimeter of France. Cycling was an endurance sport and the organisers realised the sales they would achieve by creating supermen of their competitors. Night riding was dropped after the second Tour in 1904, when there had been persistent cheating when judges could not see riders.[69] That reduced the daily and overall distance but the emphasis remained on endurance. Desgrange said his ideal race would be so hard that only one rider would make it to Paris.[70]

A succession of doping scandals in the 1960s, culminating in the death of Tom Simpson in 1967, led the Union Cycliste Internationale to limit daily and overall distances and to impose rest days. It was then impossible to follow the frontiers, and the Tour increasingly zig-zagged across the country, sometimes with unconnected days' races linked by train, while still maintaining some sort of loop. The modern Tour typically has 21 daily stages and not more than 3,500 km (2,200 miles). The longest Tour was in 1926 at 5,745 km, the shortest in 1904 at 2,428 km.[3]
[edit] Advertising caravan

The Tour changed in 1930 to a competition largely between teams representing their countries rather than the companies which sponsored them. The costs of accommodating riders fell to the organisers instead of the sponsors and Henri Desgrange raised the money by allowing advertisers to precede the race.

The procession of often colourfully decorated trucks and cars became known as the publicity caravan. It formalised a situation which had already arisen, companies having started to follow the race. The first to sign to precede the Tour was the chocolate company, Menier, one of those which had followed the race. Its head of publicity, Paul Thévenin, had first put the idea to Desgrange.[71] It paid 50,000 old francs. Preceding the race was more attractive to advertisers because spectators gathered by the road long before the race or could be attracted from their houses. Advertisers following the race found that many who had watched the race had already gone home.

Menier handed out tons of chocolate in that first year of preceding the race, as well as 500,000 policemen's hats printed with the company's name. The success led to the caravan's existence being formalised the following year.

The caravan was at its height between 1930 and the mid-1960s, before television and especially television advertising was established in France. Advertisers competed to attract public attention. Motorcycle acrobats performed for the Cinzano apéritif company and a toothpaste maker, and an accordionist, Yvette Horner, became one of the most popular sights as she performed on the roof of a Citroën Traction Avant .[72] The modern Tour restricts the excesses to which advertisers are allowed to go but at first anything was allowed. The writer Pierre Bost[73] lamented: "This caravan of 60 gaudy trucks singing across the countryside the virtues of an apéritif, a make of underpants or a dustbin is a shameful spectacle. It bellows, it plays ugly music, it's sad, it's ugly, it smells of vulgarity and money."[74]

Advertisers pay the Société du Tour de France approximately €150,000 to place three vehicles in the caravan.[75] Some have more. On top of that come the more considerable costs of the commercial samples that are thrown to the crowd and the cost of accommodating the drivers and the staff - frequently students - who throw them. The vehicles also have to be decorated on the morning of each stage and, because they must return to ordinary highway standards, disassembled after each stage. Numbers vary but there are normally around 250 vehicles each year. Their order on the road is established by contract, the leading vehicles belonging to the largest sponsors.

The procession sets off two hours before the start and then regroups to precede the riders by an hour and a half. It spreads 20–25 km and takes 40 minutes to pass at between 20 and 60kmh. Vehicles travel in groups of five. Their position is logged by GPS and from an aircraft and organised on the road by the caravan director - Jean-Pierre Lachaud[76] - an assistant, three motorcyclists, two radio technicians and a breakdown and medical crew.[75] Six motorcyclists from the Garde Républicaine, the élite of the gendarmerie - ride with them.[77]

The advertisers distribute publicity material to the crowd. The number of items has been estimated at 11 million, each person in the procession giving out 3,000 to 5,000 items a day.[75] The bank, GAN, gave out 170,000 caps, 80,000 badges, 60,000 plastic bags and 535,000 copies of its race newspaper in 1994. Together, they weighed 32 tons.[77]

Spectators have died in collisions with the caravan (see below). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France