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Stages of the Tour de France
The Tour de France is a "stage race", divided into a number of stages,
each stage being a race held over one day. Although the number of stages has
varied in the past, recently the tour has consisted of around 20 stages, with
a total length of between 3,000 and 4,000 km. The itinerary of the race
changes each year; however, some of the visited places, especially mountains
and passes, recur almost annually and are famous on their own.
Types of stage
Ordinary stage
In an ordinary stage, all riders start simultaneously and share the road.
Riders are permitted to touch and to shelter behind each other. Riding in
each others' slipstreams is crucial to race tactics: a lone rider has little
chance of outracing a small group of riders who can take turns in the
strenuous position at the front of the group. The majority of riders form a
single large group, the "peloton", with attacking groups ahead of it and the
occasional struggling rider dropping behind. In mountainous stages the
peloton is likely to become fragmented, but in flat stages a split is rare.
Where a group of riders reach the finish line together, they do not race each
other for a few seconds of improvement to their finishing time. There is a
rule that if one rider finishes less than one second behind another then he
is credited with the same finishing time as the first. This operates
transitively, so when the peloton finishes together every rider in it gets
the time of the rider at the front of the peloton, even though the peloton
takes tens of seconds, and possibly even a couple of minutes, to cross the
finish line. There are sprints at the finish line, but they are for the
honour of the stage win, for time bonuses and for points for the green
jersey, not for overall time. After the first twenty finishers, when there
are no more sprint points available, no one competes to cross the line
earlier. This avoids what would otherwise be hideously dangerous mass
sprints. Time bonuses are awarded at some intermediate sprints and stage
finishes, but only to the first three riders who reach the specified point.
These bonuses generally are a maximum of 20 seconds.
Riders who crash within the last kilometre of the stage are credited with the
finishing time of the group that they were with when they crashed, if that is
better than the time in which they actually finish. This avoids sprinters
being penalised for accidents that don't accurately reflect their performance
on the stage as a whole given that crashes in the final kilometre can be huge
pileups that are hard to avoid for a rider farther back in the peloton. A
crashed sprinter inside the final kilometre won't win the sprint, but avoids
being penalised in the overall classification. The final kilometre is
indicated in the race course by a red triangular pennant - known as the
flamme rouge - raised above the road1.
Ordinary stages can be further classified as "sprinters' stages" or
"climbers' stages". The former tend to be raced on relatively flat terrain,
which makes it difficult for small groups or individual cyclists to break
away from the peloton -- there are no big hills to slow it down. So more
often than not, the entire peloton approaches the finish line en masse. Some
teams are organized around a single specialized sprinter (Mario Cipollini,
Alessandro Petacchi, Erik Zabel, and Robbie McEwen are currently among the
most respected), and in the final kilometers of a sprint stage, these teams
jockey for position at the front of the peloton. In the final few hundred
meters, a succession of riders "lead out" their sprinter, riding very hard
while he stays in their slipstream. Just before the line -- 200 meters away
is about the maximum -- the sprinter launches himself around his final
lead-out man in an all-out effort for the line. Top speeds can be in excess
of 72 km/h (about 45 mph). Sprint stages rarely result in big time
differences between riders (see above), so contenders for the General
Classification (overall victory; riders like Armstrong, Indurain, etc.) tend
to stay near the back of the peloton, away from the crashes that frequently
occur when the sprinters jostle for position.
Mountain stages, on the other hand, often do cause big "splits" in the
finishing times, especially when the stage actually ends at the top of a
mountain. (If the stage ends at the bottom of a mountain that has just been
climbed, riders have the chance to descend aggressively and catch up to
anyone who may have beaten them to the summit.) For this reason, the mountain
stages are considered the deciding factor in most Tours, and are often
attended by hundreds of thousands of spectators.
Mountains cause big splits in finishing times due to the simple laws of
physics. Lighter riders generate more power per kilogram than heavier riders;
thus, the sprinters and the roleurs (all-around good cyclists), who tend to
be a bit bigger, suffer on the climbs and lose lots of time -- 40 minutes
over a long stage is not unheard-of. Generally, these riders form a group
known as the "bus" or "autobus" and ride at a steady pace to the finish.
Their only goal is to cross the line within a certain limit -- usually the
stage winner's time plus 15% -- or else they'll be disqualified from the race
(at the discretion of the officials; on rare occasions a lead breakaway
becomes so large that the entire peloton falls that far back and would
normally be allowed to remain in the tour to avoid having only a small field
still in competition).
Meanwhile, the lighter climbers hurl themselves up the slopes at a much
higher speed. Usually, the General Classification riders (Armstrong and
Ullrich have been the main ones since 1997) try to stay near the front group,
and they also try to keep a few teammates with them. These teammates are
there to drive the pace -- and hopefully "drop" the opposition riders -- and
to provide moral support to their leader. Typically, the leader will attack
very hard when there are only a few kilometers to go, trying to put time into
his main rivals. Gaps of two and even three minutes can be created over just
a few kilometers by hard attacks. (Note that in the Tour, most mountain
stages include at least three, and sometimes as many as six or seven, major
climbs. Total distance climbed -- the vertical gain, not the length of road
that went uphill -- can approach 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles.)
Lastly, a handful of stages each year are known as being "good for a
breakaway" -- when one or a few riders attacks the peloton and beats it to
the finish line. Typically these stages are somewhere between flat and
mountainous -- rolling hills are ideal -- though Tyler Hamilton succeeded in
breaking away over some large mountains in the 2003 Tour, in one of the
greatest individual performances of all time. Breakaway stages are where the
roleurs, the hard-working, all-around riders who make up the majority of most
teams, get their chance to grab a moment in the spotlight. (The climbers will
want to save their energy for the mountains, and the sprinters aren't built
for hills.)
Individual time trial
In an individual time trial each rider rides individually. Normally,
riders leave in reverse order of their standing in the general
classification, in between intervals of one or two minutes, although longer
intervals often occur on longer trials. The highest-placed riders, starting
last, may start at intervals of three minutes or more, and these are merely
guidelines which are adjusted as seen appropriate.
The first stage of the tour is often a time trial, known as a prologue which
determines who will wear the yellow jersey for the first stage and serves to
avoid all the riders being bunched together in the overall classification.
(For the first week, most riders will be recording the same stage times, due
to the bunch rule discussed above.). This initial time trial is normally
about 7km long, sometimes in a foreign country such as Belgium or Ireland.
Here, riders start in reverse order of race number, meaning the weakest rider
on the lowest ranked team will be first off, with the final rider being the
defending champion, wearing Number 1. The purpose of the prologue is to
decide who gets to wear yellow on the opening day, and provide a large and
prestigious spectacle for one lucky city.
Because the time trial is a test of individual skill, riders are not supposed
to interact during the stage. If a rider catches up with one in front, which
does happen despite the staggered starts, they are forbidden to ride as a
group. They must avoid each other's slipstreams, hence their starting at
different times.
There are usually three or four individual time trials during the Tour. One
of these may be a team time trial, where each team rides as a unit and all
riders are allocated the time of the fifth rider across the line. This
prevents a team leader who is far stronger than his teammates from riding by
himself and setting a pace that would give his weaker teammates an unfair
boost in the general classification. Traditionally, each team receives the
exact time it records in that stage. However, in the 2004 Tour, the only team
that received its actual time was the winning team; the trailing teams
received set time penalties based on their placings in that stage. This was
widely viewed as an attempt by the Tour organizers to prevent Armstrong's
team from gaining too much time.
Traditionally the final time trial has been the penultimate stage, and
effectively determines the winner before the final ordinary stage which is
not ridden competitively. On a few occasions, the race organisers made the
final stage into Paris a time trial. The most recent occasion on which this
was done, in 1989, yielded the closest ever finish in Tour history, when Greg
LeMond beat Laurent Fignon by eight seconds overall. Fignon wore the yellow
jersey for the final stage, with a narrow lead of 50 seconds, and was beaten
by LeMond's superior time trial performance.
Team time trial
Often in the first week of the Tour there is a team time trial. This
resembles an individual time trial, but with entire teams competing together.
The team rides as a group, rotating their riding order, but must not interact
with another team. Each member of the team is credited with the time of the
fifth team member to cross the finish line; this is the middle member of a
nine-person team. However, if a rider is dropped from the team's main group
on the parcourse, finishing separately in sixth position or later, then the
dropped rider will get his actual time, not that of the fifth rider. This
means there are often difficult decisions to make regarding hanging back for
a team leader, and chaos can often ensue if ground rules have not been made
by the team's manager. In 2004, the Tour de France adopted the rule that the
amount of time lost in a team time trial would be limited. This meant that a
team that fininshed 6 minutes behind the winner might lose only 3 minutes in
the classification. This modifcation was made to "level the playing field"
due to domincance by some teams like US Postal and Telekom.
Famous stages
The final stage now always finishes at the Champs-Elysées, which, being
cobbled, is an unpleasant surface to cycle on. This stage is not usually
competitive, the leader having 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 recent years, with closer finishes, the Tour organisers have experimented
with holding the final time trial as the final, rather than as the
penultimate, stage. Most famously, the final stage of the 1989 Tour saw Greg
LeMond overtake Laurent Fignon's overall lead by just 8 seconds, the closest
winning margin in the Tour's history. It is likely that this arrangement will
be repeated in 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 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 starts
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. The Tour alternates between
starting inside and outside France; frequently the first couple of stages are
in a neighbouring country.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from Wikipedia
and from http://www.treadly.com
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