What Is the Tour?

The Tour de France

Course 1 · Chapter 1 · What Is the Tour de France? Scope & Sources

Every July, for about three weeks, a bicycle race crosses France, and a large part of the country stops to watch. The Tour de France is a sporting event, a television programme, an advertising campaign, a tourist board's best friend and, for many French people, a national ritual. This first chapter explains what the race is, the jerseys and vocabulary needed to follow it, why the course treats it as culture and not only sport, and where to find reliable sources. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Race in Outline

The format

The Tour is a "stage race": a series of daily races (étapes) whose times are added together. Today there are normally 21 stages over 23 days, with two rest days, and a total distance of around 3,300 km (check). The route changes every year, though it always ends in Paris.

Who rides

About 22 professional teams of 8 riders start (check), around 176 riders in all. Most riders work for a team leader, and the winner is the rider with the lowest total time at the end, called the general classification (classement général, GC).

Who runs it

The race is organised by a private company, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which also runs other major races and belongs to the Amaury group, publisher of the sports daily L'Équipe (check). It has been held every year since 1903 except during the two world wars (check the gaps).

More than a race The Tour is unusual among sporting events because it comes to the spectator. Millions line the roads for free, towns bid to host a stage, and the route is a tour of the French landscape. Television coverage is as much about the châteaux, the villages and the mountains as it is about the cycling. That is why this course treats it as a part of French culture, with its own history, myths and language.

The Four Jerseys

Jersey (check each)	Awarded to
Yellow (maillot jaune)	The overall leader on time. It is yellow because the newspaper L'Auto, which founded the race, was printed on yellow paper; it was first worn in 1919 (check).
Green (maillot vert)	The leader of the points classification, which rewards finishing high on the flat stages and at sprints. Introduced in 1953 (check).
Polka-dot (maillot à pois)	The "King of the Mountains", for the best climber, in white with red dots. The jersey dates from 1975 (check), though the prize is older.
White (maillot blanc)	The best young rider (under 26), based on overall time (check the history of this award).

The Language of the Tour

Term (check each)	Meaning
Peloton	The main group of riders, from the French for a small body of soldiers. Riding in it saves energy, because the riders shelter each other from the wind.
Échappée	A breakaway: a small group that rides ahead of the peloton.
Domestique	A team helper who fetches drinks, shelters the leader and chases breakaways.
Contre-la-montre	A time trial: riders race alone against the clock.
Grand départ	The opening of the Tour, often in a city outside France.
Lanterne rouge	"Red lantern": the rider in last place overall, who has a following of his own.
Voiture-balai	"Broom wagon": the vehicle that picks up riders who abandon the race.
Flamme rouge	The red flag marking the last kilometre of a stage.
Grimpeur and sprinteur	A climber and a sprinter, the two best-known rider types.

Why a Culture Course?

It is a way into French history. The race began in a political quarrel between rival newspapers, was stopped by two wars and helped to build a sense of the whole country (Chapters 2 and 3).
It is a way into French geography. The routes through the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Massif Central make a map of the country's landscape and regions (Chapter 7).
It is a mirror of sport and money. Its business model, scandals and television deals have often been ahead of the rest of sport (Chapters 6 and 8).
It has produced myths. The French essayist Roland Barthes wrote about it in 1957 as a modern epic (Chapter 9, check).

Scope of the Course

Part (check)	Chapters	Topics
Beginnings	2, 3	The newspapers and the first Tour; the heroic age
The champions	4, 5	Coppi and Bartali, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, LeMond, Indurain
Trust	6	Doping and the crisis of the 1990s and 2000s
The event	7, 8	The route, the landscape, the caravan, television and money
Culture and method	9, 10	Women's racing, the Tour in art and writing, and testing the legend

The course is about the race as a culture and a story. It is not a training guide or a betting guide, it keeps results and records to those needed for the story (all flagged "check"), and it deals with doping and deaths factually and respectfully.

Myths to Test

Common claim	The question a careful reader asks (check each)
The Tour is the hardest sporting event in the world.	Hardest by what measure, and compared with what? (Chapters 3, 7 and 10)
The strongest rider always wins.	What do tactics, teams and luck contribute? (Chapters 4, 5 and 7)
The French always win their own race.	When did a Frenchman last win, and what changed? (Chapters 5 and 8)
The Tour is all about doping.	What is documented, and what has changed? (Chapter 6)
The Tour has always been an honest, simple race.	What do the early years show? (Chapters 2 and 3)
Cycling is a men's sport.	What is the history of women's racing? (Chapter 9)

Sources to Use

Newspaper archives. The French national library's Gallica site has digitised runs of the sports press, including L'Auto, the paper that founded the race (check what is online).
The organisers. The race's own website carries route maps and a record of past winners (check), though its history is told from the organisers' point of view.
Museums. The French national sports museum, now in Nice, and local museums in towns on the route (check).
Books and essays. Barthes's Mythologies (1957), and general histories and travel accounts in English, such as Geoffrey Nicholson's Le Tour and Tim Moore's French Revolutions (check which are in print).
Television. Live coverage in Britain has been shown on ITV4 and Eurosport (check current broadcasters), with archive footage from the French national audiovisual archive.

A British comparison For British viewers the Tour became a national fixture only in recent decades: the Grand Départ in London in 2007, British winners from 2012 and the Yorkshire start in 2014 built an audience that had hardly existed before (check). The nearest British equivalent in spirit is perhaps an annual national ritual such as the Grand National or Wimbledon, except that the Tour is held in the open, over three weeks, in a different place every day. Britain's own stage races, the old Milk Race and today's Tour of Britain, are modest by comparison (check).

Check the details Race statistics, rules and the structure of the Tour change from year to year. The figures here (stages, distance, teams, jersey dates) are from memory and should be checked against the organisers' site and a reliable reference. Stories about the race are often retold in a polished form, so check the dates and names of any anecdote before you rely on it.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain the four jerseys to a friend who has never watched the Tour, saying what each rewards and what kind of rider tends to win it.

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Exercise 2

Describe an imaginary stage in two paragraphs using at least six terms from the vocabulary table.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Pick two claims from the "Myths to Test" table and say what evidence you would look for and where you would find it.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Race: stage race, about 21 stages, 22 teams of 8, organised by ASO since 1903
Jerseys: yellow (overall), green (points), polka-dot (mountains), white (young rider)
Words: peloton, échappée, domestique, contre-la-montre, lanterne rouge, voiture-balai
Method: describe the story, check the figures, test the claims