The Tour de France

Le Tour de France (Tour of France), often referred to as La Grande Boucle, Le Tour or The Tour, is the most famous and prestigious road bicycle race in the world. With the exception of interruptions for World War I and World War II, it has been held annually since 1903. It is a long-distance stage race competition for professional cycling teams, travelling through France and its nearby countries over the course of three weeks each July. The winner is the individual rider who finishes the course of the race in the least accumulated time.

The Tour was founded as a publicity event for the newspaper L'Auto by its editor Henri Desgrange, to rival the Paris-Brest et retour ride (sponsored by Le Petit Journal), and Bordeaux-Paris. The idea for a round-France stage race is also credited to one of his journalists, Georges Lefevre, with whom Desgrange had lunch at the Cafe de Madrid in Paris on 20 November 1902. L'Auto announced the race on January 19, 1903. Promotion of the Tour de France certainly proved a great success for the newspaper; circulation leapt from 25,000 before the 1903 Tour to 65,000 after it; in 1908 the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour it was selling 500,000 copies a day.

The Tour is a "stage race", divided into a number of stages, each being a race held over one day. The time it takes each rider to complete each stage is noted, recorded, and accumulated. Riders who finish in the same group are awarded the same time, with possible subtractions due to time bonuses. Two riders are said to have finished in the same group if the gap between them is less than one bike-length. A crash within the final 3 kilometres of a normal stage means that all riders in the same group entering the final 3 kilometres are given the same time. The ranking of the riders according to accumulated time is known as the General Classification, or GC. The overall winner is the one who is ranked first on GC at the end of the final stage. It is possible to win the overall race without winning any individual stages (which Greg LeMond did in 1990).

The maillot jaune (yellow jersey), which is worn by the overall time leader, is the most prized. It is awarded by calculating the total combined race time up to that point for each rider. The maillot vert (green jersey) is awarded for sprint points. At the end of each stage, points for this jersey are earned by the riders who finish first, second, etc. The "King of the Mountains" wears a white jersey with red dots (maillot a pois rouges), referred to as the "polka dot jersey". At the top of each climb in the Tour, there are points for the riders who are first over the top. The maillot blanc (white jersey) is like the yellow jersey, but only open for young riders who are under 25 years old on January 1 of the year the Tour is ridden. Finally, the "fighting spirit" award goes to the most combative rider of the previous stage. Each day, a group of judges awards points to riders who made particularly attacking moves the day before, and the rider with most points in total gets a white-on-red (instead of a black-on-white) identification number.

One rider has won the Tour a record seven times: Lance Armstrong (USA) in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 (seven consecutive years). Four other riders have won the Tour five times: Jacques Anquetil (France) in 1957, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964; Eddy Merckx (Belgium) in 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1974; Bernard Hinault (France) in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1985; and Miguel Indurain (Spain) in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995 (the first to do so in five consecutive years). Other than Armstrong's winning the Tour six times on his way to a seventh win, no one else has won the Tour more than five times.