A bluffer’s guide to Le Tour de France Don’t know your sprints from your time trials, your leaders from your pelotons or your Yellow Jersey from your Polka Dot Jersey? General Info The Tour de France is a bike race that is over a century old and was started by a newspaper as a means to bolster sales. It currently consists of 21 racing days (stages) and two rest days, and is held predominantly in July each year. As the name implies, it is an approximate lap of France, usually alternating between clockwise and anti-clockwise loops. These loops are always anchored by stages in both the Alps and the Pyrenees. The course is never the same from year to year, with an intricate system of bidding from prospective host towns, coupled with nods to social and historical issues helping to shape the route. Stages can be either “normal” road stages – with a mass start and “first past the post wins the day” rules – or time trials, where riders (or teams) start at staggered intervals and the contestant who travels the distance of the stage in the least amount of time wins the stage. The finish line of a stage on one day is not necessarily the start line of the next day’s stage, with transfers between the finish, the team hotel for the night, and the start the following day often being hundreds of kilometres apart. This allows riders to cover more of France in the three weeks of racing, as well as more interesting stages. At the finish line in the road stages, groups of riders that cross the line with less than a bike-length between consecutive finishers are considered to have finished at the same time. This is for both logistical and safety reasons: if every stage had all 200 riders jockeying for position in the final metres, the number of crashes would shoot through the roof, and thus those not at the head of the field can be confident of not losing any time if they finish with the main group. The Jerseys There are multiple competitions within the race itself, all of which attract huge amounts of prestige for the victorious rider and his team within the cycling world, and positive press for team sponsors in the rest of the world. The most obvious race is that for the Yellow Jersey (Le Maillot Jaune), which is awarded to the rider of the race with the lowest aggregate time. The White Jersey (Le Maillot Blanc) is awarded to the best-placed rider under the age of 25. The Green Jersey (Le Maillot Vert) is awarded to the rider who accrues the most points for high-placed finishes. The Polka Dot Jersey is awarded to the Best Climber (Meilleur Grimpeur) of the race (or the rider who crosses the mountain summits close to the front of the race at that point in time). The race that most teams vie for (other than the select few with a contender for one of the Jerseys mentioned above) is the daily race to win the stage. This achievement can define a cyclist’s career, determine the perceived success or failure of a team’s season, and result in enormous amounts of positive press for the team and sponsors. However you look at it, the Tour is a big deal. The person holding last place on the overall classification is named the Lanterne Rouge (named after the red lights on the back of a train), and whilst not being a particularly prestigious title, there is a cult following from tragic cycling fans of the race for this “honour”.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:01:25 +0000
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