The Legendary Tour de France Cycle Race
The Tour de France is an annual cycle race held in France every year. Known in the sport as the Tour, this race may occasionally venture into neighbouring countries as well, but is primarily a French sporting event. The Tour de France was first established in 1903, and has subsequently been held every year apart from the World Wars. The Tour is now a World Tour event, and this means that the competing teams are UCI World Cycling Teams.
Traditionally the Tour de France is held during July, or summer, every year. The route varies quite significantly every year, and riders and teams conduct much practice and research on each route and stage of the Tour. The format of the race itself is not altered, and riders of each Tour will need to compete in the time trial, team time trials, mountains stages in both the Alps and Pyrenees, and finish the race in style along the Champs-Elysees in Paris. The modern Tour de France consists of twenty-one stages that take place over a twenty-three-day period and cover about three thousand five hundred kilometres. The race alternates annually between clockwise and counter-clockwise circuit design.
A Team Event To Be Sure
The number of teams participating the Tour is between 20 and 22. Each team has 9 riders. Each stage of the Tour is timed to the finish, the riders’ times compounded with their previous stage time, and an overall time calculated. Overall the rider with the lowest overall time on the road is the leader of the Tour and he gets to wear the most famous jersey in cycling, the yellow jersey.
There are other classifications in the Tour de France, and each one has a distinctive jersey that the classification leader wears. This includes the Points classification and green jersey, the King of the Mountains classification and the polka-dot jersey, and the Young rider classification with its white jersey. Winning even a single stage in the Tour de France is a career-enhancing achievement, and each stage is therefore hotly contested by the best field of cyclists that the sport can offer every year.
Winning Legacy of the Tour
Doping scandals have made the listing of legendary status in Tour de France terms rather a complicated task. Miguel Indurain officially holds the record again for the highest number of Tour de France wins. He won the race 5 times, and although this was eclipsed by the USA rider, Lance Armstrong, who won the race 7 times, he was stripped of these titles after a sad, and public doping scandal. Over the recent past period, the Tour de France has been dominated by British riders and team, namely Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome racing for Team Sky.
The 2016 Tour de France was the 103rd edition of this avidly supported race. The 3,529 km race started in Mont Saint-Michel, and featured a total of 198 riders from 22 teams. The event was won by Chris Froome of Team Sky, with Romain Bardet and Nairo Quintana second and third respectively. Placing any Tour de France cycling online betting on these riders would have delivered some great winnings over the sports season.
The points classification was won by Peter Sagan, who also won the award for the most combative rider, and who would be an excellent bet for the title in 2017. In 2017 the Tour de France will start in Dusseldorf, Germany, but spectators and punters alike can expect another great event with plenty of twists and turns.