Hello all! Some of you may have been confused by my recent social networking pictures and statuses, if you keep track of that kind of thing. You will have noted I’m cheering for people you’ve never heard of in a sport you can’t identify without it being named. Well, I have decided to change that. Here is the concept of le Tour.
Le Tour was started in 1903 or thereabouts by a man named Desgrange, who owned a sport newsletter. Sales were low, and a common thing to boost them was to start and advertise races; then people would buy papers to find out what happened. Desgrange had the brilliant idea of beginning a race that circumnavigated all of France; such a race would be the most epic in the world – and sell a lot of papers.
In those days, the Tour was hard. Stages of over 500 km over poorly paved or unpaved roads were common, although mountains were not introduced until 1905 sometime (to make things more interesting). Degrange had the ideal of lone men, suffering over great stretches, lone heros out to prove their worth against the elements and each other. So he made a bunch of despotic rules: No assisting each other; You must carry all of your equipment, food, and water for each day yourself; If your bike breaks, you must fix it yourself without assistance or withdraw. This led to one contestant, Eugene Christophe (nicknamed The Old Gaul) twice in two years breaking the front fork of his bike and walking for miles over the mountains to find a blacksmith shop where he could repair it. (He never won, but he had a lot of sympathetic fans.)
The race has changed a lot since then. Desgrange would not have liked it, but it is more popular than ever. Now, teams of up to nine riders each (200 max contestants) ride courses between 150 and 225 km long over the course of three weeks of July, with two rest days. They begin in various places in and around the country (this year beginning in Rotterdam), go over at least a little of each of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and since 1975 have ended with 8 laps on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. There are one or two riders on each team who are team captain, depending on the goals of the team; all the other riders are ‘domestiques’, there to help their captains through the stages without incident and to help them race faster. The domestiques may try to grab some glory in a stage win but their goal is not finish the race with the fastest overall time. That is the domain of the GC (Grand Competition?) contestants, men like Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans, Alberto Contador, or Lance Armstrong, the last having won each year between 1999 and 2005 (this is why he is famous – and he beat cancer first). (If there is a rider who is a champion in his own right, but who is working for another member of the team, he is called a ‘superdomestique’, like Fabian Cancellara or George Hincapie.)
Some technical notes – riding behind another cyclist is called drafting, and it can let a rider save up to 30% of his energy. The leader’s team will often set the pace, keeping their leader near the front where he is protected from crashes, which has the bonus effect of keeping him highly visible to the media. In flat stages with no mountains, the sprinters’ teams will take the lead in the last 5-10 km of a race (see below, after mountains).
The mountains and time trials are where the race is decided. The Prologue is usually a time trial, and for the last few years, Fabian Cancellara, “the Swiss Time Machine” (also nicknamed “Spartacus”), has won and gotten to wear the leader’s yellow jersey, the Maillot Jaune, for a few days. (There is also a white jersey for the fastest rider aged 25 and under.) This sorts all the cyclists into places, to see where they all stand in relation to each other. But it is the mountains that are really explosive. The strongest climbers go up the mountains like they were flying, while the rest flounder and struggle. Cancellara is not a strong climber, though he does his best, but the smaller riders like Schleck, Evans, or Contador have less weight and more drive.
There is also an award for the man who goes over the top of the most mountains first; the polka-dot (white with red dots) jersey. Most GC contenders aren’t interested in it; the yellow prize is bigger.
The sprinters, usually big men with big legs, struggle hugely on the mountains. Usually on the first climb, they fall off the peloton (as the main group of riders is called) and form a group called the autobus in order to make it over the climbs at their own pace. By the final stage, they will be as much as two or three hours behind the leaders. But they don’t care. Their goal is to win individual flat stages – and the coveted green points jersey. Points are awarded to the rider who crosses the finish line first, with decreasing numbers for the riders coming after them. The flat stages are thus kept interesting while letting the climbers conserve and regain their energy. The sprints are a work of art to watch; the ‘lead out train’ of each team jockeys for position in the kilometre leading up to the finish line – two or three riders in front of their main sprinter, letting him draft and pick up speed on the way to the line. As they tire, they will peel off, letting the man behind go even faster, until at last the final man shoots away at speeds up up to 75km an hour. Other sprinters without lead-out trains will follow the sprinter with a lead-out train, hoping to pass him in the last few metres. Currently, the ‘fastest man in the world’ is Mark Cavendish, the “Manx Missile” on the team HTC-Columbia. Once he goes, no one can get in front of him.
About crashes: they happen. They happen sometimes frequently. But unless a rider actually breaks his leg or his collarbone, they will usually continue, fighting against huge pain to complete the race, just to say they’ve done it, even if before they were a good contender for a top prize.
And of course no Tour is complete without watching it with the commentary of Phil Liggett, “the Voice of Cycling”, commentating since 1975, and his partner Paul Sherwen.
The Tour is an amazing sporting event, full of intense drama, beautiful scenery, exciting finishes, interesting personalities, clever tactics, and brilliant stories. I do not know if I’ve given it justice, but rest assured, this is only labelled Part 1, so anything I’ve forgotten can go in Part 2!
Cheers!
