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The Tour De France, The Worlds Biggest Road Bike Race.
The Tour de France is the BIG one; it's the World cup and the
Olympics all in one. It has it all, the high mountains, the wind
swept northern planes and the heat of the south. It also has the
world's media, all the top teams and riders and millions of
cycling mad fans watching. The other "Grand Tours" of Italy and
Spain are as exciting, sometimes more so, but they don't have
the thing the Tour has, that unique Tour ness, that unique
French ness.
How it started.
It all started in 1903, when the French daily paper, L'Auto
wanted to sell more than its competitor, Le Vélo, who at that
time was the only paper reporting on cycle racing. It was
suggested to the papers director, Henri Desgrange that they
should organise a bike race all round France. The first race was
2,428 kilometres split into six stages and was run off at 25.29
kilometres per hour and out of the 60 starters 21 finished and
the race was lead from start to finish by Maurice Garin.
The Heroes.
Over the years there has been a lot of heroes in the Tour de
France, you could say all the riders are heroes, to win the race
once is hard, but to win it five times is phenomenal. Only five
men have done this, and one of these has won it seven times.
French rider Jacques Anquetil was the first to win the race five
times, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and then Spaniard Miguel
Indurain all equalled him. Then the American, Lance Armstrong
started to win in 1999 and didn't stop until he had won it a
record seven times in a row. This is all the more amazing as he
is a cancer survivor and was given a 50/50 chance of life; he
beat the cancer and went on to beat all comers in the Tour de
France.
The
course.
The race starts in a different town every year and every other
year it starts outside France, the choice of stage towns is a
combination of money and sporting considerations, the towns will
pay for a start or a finish, but they need to be near a mountain
or a cobbled road or be near other town who want to host the
Tour. The Towns pay to be the centre of interest for a day, the
Tour also brings in a lot of money in tourism and the Towns
collect much more than they pay and the world will remember the
name of the Town, for at least a day.
The riders.
All the best riders want to win the Tour de France, but they
cant, from the 200 or so starters there is a possible five or
six riders who can win, the rest are either helping their team
leaders or sprint or mountain specialists who want to win stages
or points or mountain jerseys, this keeps the race active and
interesting from beginning to end.
The BIG Tour.
The Tour is the biggest, but that has its problems, some Towns
are not big enough, hotels etc., the television needs more
space, the journalists need more phone lines and computers, more
and more people are following the race and the riders can be
forgotten about in all the razzmatazz, but its still the biggest
sporting event in the world, long may in run!
About the author:
Alastair Hamilton is a successful writer who offers a truly
unique depth of experience in competitive cycling, he also
contributes adding technical articles on road bikes (
http://www.bike-cycling-reviews.com/road-bikes.html ) to some
cycling online magazines. Further information on components and
cycling news at http://www.bike-cycling-reviews.com
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