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

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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

Gerben Karstens

Source Gerben Karstens (Wikipedia)

Gerrie Knetemann

Source Gerrie Knetemann (Wikipedia)

Gerrit Schulte

Source Gerrit Schulte (Olympedia)

Gerrit Solleveld

Source Gerrit Solleveld (Wikipedia)

Gerrit Voorting

Source Gerrit Voorting (Wikipedia)

Gert Steegmans

Source Gert Steegmans (Wikipedia)

Gert-Jan Theunisse

Source Gert-Jan Theunisse (Wikipedia)

Gianluca Bortolami

Source Gianluca Bortolami (Wikipedia)

Gianni Bugno

Source Gianni Bugno (Wikipedia)

Gianpaolo Mondini

Source Gianpaolo Mondini (Wikipedia)

Gilbert Bauvin

Source Gilbert Bauvin (Wikipedia)

Gilbert Glaus

Source Gilbert Glaus (Wikipedia)

Gilles Delion

Source Gilles Delion (Wikipedia)

Gino Bartali

Source Gino Bartali (Wikipedia)

Gino Sciardis

Source Gino Sciardis (Wikipedia)

Giovanni Battaglin

Source Giovanni Battaglin (Wikipedia)

Giovanni Fidanza

Source Giovanni Fidanza (Wikipedia)

Giovanni Rossi

Source Giovanni Rossi (Olympedia)

Giulio Ciccone

Source Giulio Ciccone (Wikipedia)

Giuseppe Fezzardi

Source Giuseppe Fezzardi (Wikipedia)

Giuseppe Guerini

Source Giuseppe Guerini (Wikipedia)

Giuseppe Martano

Source Giuseppe Martano (Wikipedia)

Giuseppe Tacca

Source Giuseppe Tacca (Wikipedia)

Glauco Servadei

Source Glauco Servadei (Wikipedia)

Graziano Battistini

Source Graziano Battistini (Wikipedia)

Greg LeMond

Source Wikipedia, Greg LeMond

Greg Van Avermaet

Source Greg Van Avermaet (Wikipedia)

Guido Bontempi

Source Guido Bontempi (Olympedia)

Guido Carlesi

Source Guido Carlesi (Wikipedia)

Gustaaf Van Slembrouck

Source Gustaaf Van Slembrouck (Wikipedia)

Gustave Garrigou

Source Gustave Garrigou (Wikipedia)

Hans Dekkers

Source Hans Dekkers (cyclist, born 1928) (Wikipedia)

Hector Heusghem

Source Hector Heusghem (Wikipedia)

Hector Martin

Source Hector Martin (Wikipedia)

Heinrich Haussler

Source Heinrich Haussler (Wikipedia)

Heinz Wengler

Source Heinz Wengler (Wikipedia)

Henk Faanhof

Source Henk Faanhof (Wikipedia)

Henk Lubberding

Source Henk Lubberding (Wikipedia)

Henk Nijdam

Source Henk Nijdam (Olympedia)

Henk Poppe

Source Henk Poppe (Wikipedia)

Hennie Kuiper

Source Hennie Kuiper (Wikipedia)

Henri Cornet

Source Henri Cornet (Wikipedia)

Henri Massal

Source Henri Massal (Wikipedia)

Henri Pélissier

Source Henri Pélissier (Wikipedia)

Henri Puppo

Source Henri Puppo (Wikipedia)

Henri Vanlerberghe

Source Henri Vanlerberghe (Wikipedia)

Henry Anglade

Source Henry Anglade (Wikipedia)

Herman Frison

Source Herman Frison (Wikipedia)

Herman Vanspringel

Source Herman Vanspringel (Wikipedia)

Hippolyte Aucouturier

Source Hippolyte Aucouturier (Wikipedia)

Showing 251 to 300 of 399 in Competitors Include, page 6 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