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The Tour de France is an annual road bicycle race held over 23 days in July. Established in 1903 by newspaper L'Auto, the Tour is the best-known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours"; the others are the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España. [1]
While the Giro d'Italia Women was first held in 1988 and consistently since 1993, a full Tour de France Femmes was only launched in 2022 (though the Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale offered a female equivalent of the Tour from 1984-2009) and La Vuelta Femenina was only established in 2023.
Peter Sagan set the record for the most stages in the lead of a Tour de France classification, wearing the green-jersey for 100 days through stage 18 of the 2018 Tour de France. Two winners of the points classification, Sean Kelly and Sam Bennett both hail from the town of Carrick-on-Suir, Ireland, a town with a population of only 5,771 residents.
Overall Speed of the Tour de France. The 2022 edition was the fastest Tour de France in history. Jonas Vingegaard rode 3,349,8 km in 79h 33' 20", thus realising an overall speed of 42.102 km/h (26.161 mph). [17] The slowest Tour de France was the edition of 1919, when Firmin Lambot's average speed was 24.1 km/h. [18]
During the 2011 Tour de France, Vande Velde assisted Tom Danielson to a top ten finish, and was an integral part of Garmin–Cervélo's first place in the team classification. [15] Vande Velde finished a close second at the 2011 USA Pro Cycling Challenge , which was ultimately won by Levi Leipheimer ( Team RadioShack ).
The winner of the first several Tour de France races wore a green armband instead of a yellow jersey. [1] After the second Tour de France, the rules were changed, and the general classification was no longer calculated by time, but by points. This points system was kept until 1912, after which it changed back to the time classification.
Only seven times, the Tour started without any former Tour de France winner. This happened in 1903, 1927, 1947, 1956, 1966, 1999 and 2006. Only in 1903, apart from the cyclist that won the race, was there no other former or future Tour de France winner. In 1914, a record of seven former Tour de France winners started that year's Tour: [23]
The "Challenge Martini" trophy for 1956, won by the Belgian national team. In the early years of the Tour de France, cyclists entered as individuals. Although they had sponsors, they were not allowed to work as a team, because tour organiser Henri Desgrange wanted the Tour de France to be a display of individual strength.