Tour de France

The (Le) Tour de France (French for Tour of France), also simply known as Le Tour, is an epic long distance cycling competition for professionals held over three weeks in July in and around France. It has been held annually since 1903, only interrupted by World War I and World War II, and is now one of the world's largest sporting events.

Tour de France 2000
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Along with the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and the Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain), the Tour de France makes up cycling's "Grand Tours".

The race was founded as a publicity event for the newspaper L'Auto (ancestor of the present l'Équipe) by its editor, Henri Desgrange, to rival the Paris-Brest et retour (now known as Paris-Brest-Paris, or PBP) ride sponsored by Le Petit Journal and Bordeaux-Paris sponsored by Le Vélo.

The tour 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.

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, but also non-neighbouring countries such as the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom 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 is preceded by a short individual time trial (1 to 15 km), called the prologue. The traditional finish is in Paris on the Champs-Élysées.

In between, various stages occur, including a number of mountain stages, individual time trials and a team time trial. 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; however, 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 could possibly win the race.

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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