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

9 entries

Sport

Home Country or City

Team Type

Founded Year

Connections

Showing the first 400 of 783 connections.

Administered By

Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI)

Competitors Include

Antonin Rolland

Source Antonin Rolland (Wikipedia)

Antonio Bailetti

Source Antonio Bailetti (Wikipedia)

Antonio Pesenti

Source Antonio Pesenti (cyclist) (Wikipedia)

Antoon van Schendel

Source Antoon van Schendel (Wikipedia)

Arigo Padovan

Source Arigo Padovan (Wikipedia)

Armand Baeyens

Source Armand Baeyens (Wikipedia)

Arnaud Démare

Source Arnaud Démare (Wikipedia)

Arsène Alancourt

Source Arsène Alancourt (Wikipedia)

Arsène Mersch

Source Arsène Mersch (Wikipedia)

Baden Cooke

Source Baden Cooke (Wikipedia)

Barry Hoban

Source Barry Hoban (Wikipedia)

Bart Voskamp

Source Bart Voskamp (Wikipedia)

Bartolomeo Aimo

Source Bartolomeo Aimo (Wikipedia)

Beat Breu

Source Beat Breu (Wikipedia)

Ben Healy

Source Ben Healy (cyclist) (Wikipedia)

Ben O'Connor

Source Ben O'Connor (Wikipedia)

Benoni Beheyt

Source Benoni Beheyt (Wikipedia)

Bernard Hinault

Source Wikipedia, Bernard Hinault

Bernard Labourdette

Source Bernard Labourdette (Wikipedia)

Bernard Quennehen

Source Bernard Quennehen (Wikipedia)

Bernard Quilfen

Source Bernard Quilfen (Wikipedia)

Bernard Thévenet

Source Bernard Thévenet (Wikipedia)

Bernard Vallet

Source Bernard Vallet (Wikipedia)

Bernard Van de Kerckhove

Source Bernard Van de Kerckhove (Wikipedia)

Bernard Van Rysselberghe

Source Bernard Van Rysselberghe (Wikipedia)

Bernardo Ruiz

Source Bernardo Ruiz (Wikipedia)

Bert Oosterbosch

Source Bert Oosterbosch (Wikipedia)

Bim Diederich

Source Bim Diederich (Wikipedia)

Biniam Girmay

Source Biniam Girmay, Wikipedia

Bjarne Riis

Source Bjarne Riis (Wikipedia)

Blel Kadri

Source Blel Kadri (Wikipedia)

Bo Hamburger

Source Bo Hamburger (Wikipedia)

Bob Jungels

Source Bob Jungels (Wikipedia)

Bradley McGee

Source Brad McGee (Olympedia)

Bradley Wiggins

Source Wikipedia, Bradley Wiggins

Brian Robinson

Source Brian Robinson (cyclist) (Wikipedia)

Brice Feillu

Source Brice Feillu (Wikipedia)

Briek Schotte

Source Briek Schotte (Wikipedia)

Cadel Evans

Source Cadel Evans - Wikipedia

Caleb Ewan

Source Caleb Ewan (Wikipedia)

Carlos Rodríguez

Source Carlos Rodríguez (Wikipedia)

Carlos Sastre

Source Carlos Sastre (Wikipedia)

Cédric Vasseur

Source Cédric Vasseur (Wikipedia)

Cees Priem

Source Cees Priem (Olympedia)

Cees van Espen

Source Cees van Espen (Wikipedia)

Charles Crupelandt

Source Charles Crupelandt (Wikipedia)

Charles Laeser

Source Charles Laeser (Wikipedia)

Charles Pélissier

Source Charles Pélissier (Wikipedia)

Charly Gaul

Source Charly Gaul (Wikipedia)

Charly Grosskost

Source Charly Grosskost (Wikipedia)

Showing 51 to 100 of 399 in Competitors Include, page 2 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)

EF Education-EasyPost

Flandria (cycling team)

INEOS Grenadiers

Lidl-Trek

Movistar Team

Soudal Quick-Step

Team Visma Lease a Bike

T-Mobile Team

UAE Team Emirates

Administered By

Competitors Include