Competition

Tour de France

TOOR duh FRAHNSS (approximate English rendering of the French)

Also Known As La Grande Boucle (French for the big loop)

Grand Tour Stage Races

An annual multiple stage bicycle race held primarily in France, first run in 1903; the oldest and most prestigious of the three Grand Tours in cycling, with the race leader wearing the yellow jersey known as the maillot jaune. The race's format has changed at several dated points: individual time trial stages, in which riders race the clock alone rather than as a mass-start group, were introduced in 1934; from 1930 through 1961 the race was contested mainly by national teams rather than the trade or sponsor-branded teams used in ordinary professional racing, a format later reverted, so that since 1962 the Tour has again been raced by sponsor teams as in the rest of the professional calendar.

Facts

Founding Year

1903 1

Founding Date

1903-07-01 1

Frequency

Annual each July; not held during the two World Wars. 1

Host History

Organized and finishing in France, most often in Paris. The race's opening stages, the Grand Depart, have periodically started outside France, including in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, but the route changes from year to year rather than repeating a fixed host city. 1

Classification

Scope

World or International 1

Frequency

Frequency (category)

Annual 1

Learn More

The Yellow Jersey and the Needle: The Tour's Doping Reckoning

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Tour de France's doping era became impossible to ignore in 1998, when French customs officials stopped a car belonging to the Festina team at the Franco-Belgian border and found a substantial supply of erythropoietin, known as EPO, along with other banned substances. The discovery triggered police raids on team hotels mid-race, arrests, and a wave of rider protests and strikes that brought stages to a standstill, an episode remembered simply as the Festina affair. EPO, which boosts the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity, had made systematic doping newly effective for endurance cycling, and its use spread through the peloton across the 1990s largely ahead of any reliable test to detect it.

Marco Pantani, the 1998 champion, was disqualified from the 1999 race while leading, after a blood test found an abnormally high hematocrit level. Floyd Landis was stripped of his 2006 title after failing a doping test during the race itself. Neither case, though, compared in scale to what followed Lance Armstrong's seven consecutive victories from 1999 to 2005. The United States Anti-Doping Agency's 2012 Reasoned Decision concluded Armstrong had run what it called the most sophisticated doping program cycling had ever seen, organized through his own team; Armstrong was stripped of all seven titles and banned for life from Olympic-affiliated sport. Tour organizers removed his name from the record books entirely, leaving those seven years without a recognized winner rather than naming a replacement champion.

Selling Newspapers, Making a Legend: Henri Desgrange and the Tour's Origins

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Tour de France exists because of a newspaper circulation war, not a cycling federation's ambition. Henri Desgrange, editor of the French sporting paper L'Auto, was searching for a way to outsell his rival paper Le Velo when his colleague, the journalist Geo Lefevre, proposed an around-France cycling race that would keep readers buying the paper daily for updates. The first race, run in 1903, had only six stages, some of them well over 400 kilometers long and raced through the night, a grueling format built as much for newspaper drama as for sport.

Desgrange introduced the race's best known symbol, the yellow jersey worn by the overall leader, only in 1919, its color chosen to match the yellow newsprint L'Auto itself was printed on, giving spectators along the route an immediate way to spot the rider they were reading about each morning. The race's modern character as a mountain-and-sprint spectacle came later still: the Pyrenees were added to the route in 1910 and the Alps in 1911, transforming what had begun as a flat, largely tactical race into the climbing contest that now defines it. The race has been cancelled only twice in its history, during both World Wars, a suspension that briefly interrupted but never displaced the event's deliberately, and enduringly, French character.

Tour de France

44 entries

Sport

Nationality

Active Era

Competition Category

Connections

Showing the first 400 of 783 connections.

Administered By

Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI)

Competitors Include

Abraham Olano

Source Abraham Olano (Wikipedia)

Acácio da Silva

Source Acácio da Silva (Wikipedia)

Ad Wijnands

Source Ad Wijnands (Wikipedia)

Adolph Braeckeveldt

Source Adolph Braeckeveldt (Wikipedia)

Adri van der Poel

Source Adri van der Poel (Wikipedia)

Adri van Houwelingen

Source Adri van Houwelingen (Wikipedia)

Adriano Vignoli

Source Adriano Vignoli (Wikipedia)

Aimé Dossche

Source Aimé Dossche (Wikipedia)

Aitor González

Source Aitor González (Wikipedia)

Alain Meslet

Source Le Dico du Tour: Alain Meslet dans le Tour de France

Alain Prost

Source Wikipedia, Alain Prost

Albert Bourlon

Source Albert Bourlon (Wikipedia)

Albert Dejonghe

Source Albert Dejonghe (Wikipedia)

Albert van Schendel

Source Albert van Schendel (Wikipedia)

Albert Van Vlierberghe

Source Albert Van Vlierberghe (Wikipedia)

Alberto Contador

Source Wikipedia: Alberto Contador

Aldo Parecchini

Source Aldo Parecchini (Wikipedia)

Aldo Ronconi

Source Aldo Ronconi (Wikipedia)

Alejandro Valverde

Source Wikipedia, Alejandro Valverde

Alessandro Ballan

Source Alessandro Ballan (Wikipedia)

Alessandro Petacchi

Source Alessandro Petacchi (Wikipedia)

Alex Zülle

Source Alex Zülle (Wikipedia)

Alexander Kristoff

Source Alexander Kristoff (Wikipedia)

Alexander Vinokourov

Source Alexander Vinokourov, Wikipedia

Alexandr Kolobnev

Source Alexandr Kolobnev (Wikipedia)

Alexey Lutsenko

Source Alexey Lutsenko (Wikipedia)

Alexis Vuillermoz

Source Alexis Vuillermoz (Wikipedia)

Alfons De Wolf

Source Alfons De Wolf (Wikipedia)

Alfred Faure

Source Alfred Faure (cyclist) (Wikipedia)

Alfred Haemerlinck

Source Alfred Haemerlinck (Wikipedia)

Alfredo Binda

Source Alfredo Binda (Wikipedia)

Alfredo Pasotti

Source Alfredo Pasotti (Wikipedia)

Anatole Novak

Source Anatole Novak (Wikipedia)

André Darrigade

Source André Darrigade (Wikipedia)

André Desvages

Source André Desvages (Wikipedia)

André Greipel

Source André Greipel (Wikipedia)

André Leducq

Source André Leducq (Wikipedia)

André Rosseel

Source André Rosseel (Wikipedia)

André Trochut

Source André Trochut (Wikipedia)

Andreas Klöden

Source Andreas Klöden (Wikipedia)

Andrei Tchmil

Source Andrei Tchmil (Wikipedia)

Andrew Hampsten

Source Andrew Hampsten (Wikipedia)

Andrew Talansky

Source Andrew Talansky (Wikipedia)

Andrey Amador

Source Andrey Amador (Wikipedia)

Andy Schleck

Source Wikipedia, Andy Schleck

Ángel Arroyo

Source Ángel Arroyo (Wikipedia)

Ángel Sarrapio

Source Ángel Sarrapio (Wikipedia)

Annemiek van Vleuten

Source Wikipedia, Annemiek van Vleuten

Anthony Turgis

Source Anthony Turgis (Wikipedia)

Antonin Magne

Source Antonin Magne (Wikipedia)

Showing 1 to 50 of 399 in Competitors Include, page 1 of 8.

Sources

1. Tour de France, Official History

Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO)

entity record, SubLabel (scope)
SubLabel: Grand Tour Stage Races
Features: Cycling
Competitors Include: Eddy Merckx

Wikipedia, 1903 Tour de France

WikipediaLead section

Quote, Lead section

It ran from 1 to 19 July in six stages over 2,428 km (1,509 mi)

Alberto Contador

Alejandro Valverde

Alexander Vinokourov

Andy Schleck

Annemiek van Vleuten

Bernard Hinault

Bernard Thévenet

Biniam Girmay

Bradley Wiggins

Cadel Evans

Charly Gaul

Chris Froome

Eddy Merckx

Egan Bernal

Erik Zabel

Fabian Cancellara

Fausto Coppi

Felice Gimondi

Gino Bartali

Greg LeMond

Hugo Koblet

Jacques Anquetil

Jan Ullrich

Lance Armstrong

Laurent Fignon

Laurent Jalabert

Lizzie Deignan

Lucien Petit-Breton

Marianne Vos

Mark Cavendish

Mathieu van der Poel

Miguel Indurain

Nairo Quintana

Olaf Ludwig

Peter Sagan

Rudi Altig

Sean Kelly

Simon Yates (cyclist)

Stephen Roche

Tadej Pogacar

Thor Hushovd

Tom Simpson

Vincenzo Nibali

Wout van Aert

Administered By

Competitors Include