Daily Cycling Facts 02.07.2014

The Tour de France began on this day in 1904, 1911, 1930, 1982, 1994, 2005 and 2011.

1904
6 stages, 2,428km.

Hippolyte Aucouturier

The first Tour, in 1903, had been more successful than anyone could even have hoped so, as soon as it was over, Henri Desrange set about organising the next one. Later, he'd pick up a bit of a reputation for changing rules that didn't necessarily need to be changed; but for now he decided that what wasn't broken didn't need to be fixed - so the race used an identical route and almost the same rules (the two differences were that in 1903, a rider could abandon a stage and then start again in the next though without results thereafter counting towards the General Classification whereas this time around any rider that abandoned a stage was out of the race; and while in 1903 only the first 50 riders to finish would receive an allowance of 5 francs a day this time around all riders, regarless of whether they finished or not, would get the same allowance). Maurice Garin, who had won in 1903, was favourite; Hippolyte Aucouturier and Lucien Pothier were also expected to do well. One rider, Henri Paret, was 50 years old and remains the oldest man to have ever taken part.

The edition was not such a success. There was a large crash after the first few kilometres, resulting in a broken finger and early abandonment for a rider named Lipman, then after 100km Pothier lost significant time when his bike broke and Ferdinand Payan was disqualified (we don't know why - it may have been for being helped by riders not in the race or for being helped by motor vehicle; many records of early Tours were lost in the Second World War). Aucouturier crashed just after the halfway checkpoint and finished the stage covered in blood, while Garin and Pothier were attacked and robbed by a gang of four masked men who chased them in a car after they broke away from the peloton. After the stage, "Samson" (real name Julien Lootens) was fined 250f for drafting behind a car, Pierre Chevalier was disqualified for taking a 45' rest (in a car following the peloton) during the race and Aucouturier was fined 500f for the slightly mysterious crime of having a cyclist who wasn't part of the race following him. It also turned out that Garin had asked the race official (also the man who first came up with the idea for the Tour) Géo Lefèvre - concerned that the race would suffer if the favourite hit la fringale, Lefèvre gave him some despite it being against the rules. When they found out - and realised Garin was not going to be punished as other riders had been - the crowd were not happy. During Stage 2 the race passed André Fauré's hometown and a violent mob came out to try to stop the other riders: Garin's hand was injured while Paul Gerbi was knocked out, then abandoned with two broken fingers and the mob only dispersed when race officials fired guns into the air. A little further on, but suspiciously close, persons unknown had strewn nails across the road and almost everyone except Fauré punctured, which allowed him to be the first up the Col de la République and tends to suggest that he might have known something about it. Near the end of the stage the riders were attacked again, this time by a large gang of cyclists: Garin's arm was hurt badly enough that he had to steer with only his other arm. At the finish line there was so much confusion with all the injuries and riders complaining about all the incidents that the times weren't properly recorded - Aucouturier won, but order and times usually given for the rest of the field might not be correct. Riders asked the organisers to neutralise the stage, but it didn't happen.

Julien Lootens, "Samson"

In Stage 3, angry Payan fans threw stones at the riders and tried to barricade the road as the race passed through his hometown Nimes, then grabbed César Garin's bike and smashed it up - he lost 15' while trying to locate a replacement. More nails had been spread on the road further on, after the first crop of punctures the riders carried their bikes over. Stage 4 passed - mercifully, for the long-suffering riders - without incident; in Stage 5 they encountered more nails and Henri Cornet had to ride the final 40km to the finish with flat tyres. On the last stage, riders signed in at the Ville d'Avray checkpoint where they told that the remainder of the race, up until the last kilometre, had been neutralised; when they reached the last kilometre they would be racing again. However, when they got there it was raining so heavily that organisers decided to abandon the last kilometre and declare Ville d'Avray the end of the race - therefore Aucouturier, who had been first to the checkpoint, won a fourth stage. Garin had the lowest accumulated time and was declared overall winner.

Of 88 riders, 27 finished - but the race had hardly ended before new reports of widespread cheating began to appear. Nine riders had been disqualified during the race, now the French Cycling Union launched an investigation into the new allegations and, in December, ten riders were disqualified - among them was Maurice Garin, who was banned from competition for two years (two others were banned for life), and another nineteen riders received fines or warnings. With the first four finishers disqualified, Henri Cornet - who had himself been warned for completing part of a stage in a car - became winner: he was 19 years, 11 months and 20 days old at the time and remains the youngest Tour winner ever.

Henri Cornet

Usually, the riders are said to have been disqualified for taking trains; however, the official reports from the investigation have never been published and are presumably lost. Researcher Jason Jellick has studied large numbers of documents preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale and compared them with race times, coming up with a powerful argument that there was only one occasion that cyclists would have been able to catch a train and finish when they did. He also notes the severity of the punishments - Garin was banned for two years, but in fact he suffered far more than that and effectively vanished from history for many years - may be evidence that a major scandal was covered up. Whatever really happened, Desgrange was so shocked that he swore 1904 would be the last Tour (he also wasn't at all happy that the French Federation had given further punishments to riders he'd already punished - Desgrange always liked his word to be final on any subject, this time it wasn't and there was nothing he could do about it). It took some time to persuade him to organise another for 1905.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Henri Cornet (FRA) 96h 05' 55"
2 Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq (FRA) +2h 16' 14"
3 Aloïs Catteau (BEL) +9h 01' 25"
4 Jean Dargassies (FRA) +13h 04' 30"
5 Julien Maitron (FRA) +19h 06' 15"
6 Auguste Daumain (FRA) +22h 44' 36"
7 Louis Coolsaet (BEL) +23h 44' 20"
8 Achille Colas (FRA) +25h 09' 50"
9 René Saget (FRA) +25h 55' 16"
10 Gustave Drioul (BEL) +30h 54' 49"


1911
15 stages, 5,344km.

Faber, who died a hero's death in the First
World War

Desgrange had initially been reluctant to send his race into the high mountains because he was afraid the riders would be robbed by bandits or eaten by bears, neither of which were uncommon in the more far-flung parts of France a century ago. In 1910, he'd been persuaded to include the Pyrenees and it had been such a success that he included the Alps too in 1911 - and the Tour took on a form that it retains to this day. Since 1906, the riders had crossed the border into German Alsace; now the uneasy truce between Europe's greatest nations was showing strain as the continent moved towards war and the German government would not allow it. During Stage 3, François Faber missed a checkpoint and was made to wait for 2'30" but still won the stage. Émile Georget was hit by a car and plunged into a ravine - he was unhurt and finished the stage, but 49' behind Faber.

In Stage 10 Paul Duboc, a rider with La Française who had been successfully catching up with overall leader Garrigou, was left with crippling abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea after he supposedly drank from a bidon that had been poisoned. His manager gave him an emetic and, after some time, he recovered and was able to continue, eventually finishing the race in second place overall, and a man working for a third team was later shown to have been the culprit. In the meantime Duboc's fans put two and two together, decided that since Garrigou was the man who would most benefit if Duboc abandoned, he must have been the poisoner and it wasn't long at all before he started receiving death threats. Duboc himself appears never to have suspected Garrigou and was horrified to learn that in Rouen, his hometown and the place where his fans would be most numerous, persons unknown had put up posters saying "Citizens of Rouen: I would have been leading this race had I not been poisoned. You know what you have to do when the race reaches your city," followed by a forgery of his signature. By this point, Garrigou (at the suggestion of the organisers) had taken to wearing disguise, but the two men realised that if the angry Rouennais even suspected his true identity they were likely to become a lynch mob. Duboc offered to ride on ahead to the city and do what he could to placate them, but an equally concerned Henri Desgrange decided that extreme tactics were required. As a result, Garrigou rode through the city protected on all sides by three cars, each filled with the burliest men Desgrange could find.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Gustave Garrigou (FRA) Alcyon 43
2 Paul Duboc (FRA) La Française 61
3 Emile Georget (FRA) La Française 84
4 Charles Crupelandt (FRA) La Française 109
5 Louis Heusghem (BEL) Alcyon 135
6 Marcel Godivier (FRA) La Française 141
7 Charles Cruchon (FRA) La Française 145
8 Ernest Paul (FRA) Alcyon 153
9 Albert Dupont (BEL) Le Globe 158
10 Henri Devroye (BEL) Le Globe 171


1930

21 stages, 4,822km.
Desgrange had been furious when Maurice Dewaele, who had been so ill during one stage that two team mates had to ride either side of him and hold him upright, won the 1929 Tour. "My race has been won by a corpse!" he proclaimed, and immediately set about finding ways to prevent such a thing ever happening again. He'd had problems which he blamed on trade teams who, due their commercial interest in promoting themselves, he suspected used all sorts of dirty tricks to try to ensure their riders won (he was right, too - they got up to all sorts of things) and so as soon as that edition was over he started trying to come up with a way to prevent it happening again. The answer, he believed, was national teams; in 1930 they replaced the trade teams.

During Stage 16, André Leducq was in a terrible crash when he misjudged a bend, came off the road, hit a rock and was thrown over the handlebars, landing hard enough to lose consciousness; Pierre Magne was with him and waited until Marcel Bidot came along, after which the two of them managed to revive him and then got him into a position where he could remain in contention, Learco Guerra of Italy and Jeff Demuysere of Belgium having decided that their rival's accident was a superb opportunity to attack and go in search of a race-winning time advantage. However, just as the trio arrived at the beginning of the Col du Télégraphe, which tops out at 1,566m, Leducq's pedal broke away from the crank. He and Magne tried to bodge a repair; Bidot, remembering his own experiences with a broken pedal at the notorious 1927 Tour, thought it'd be a better idea to try to find a replacement and eventually managed to beg one from some spectators who had ridden their own bikes to see the race.

In 1929, Victor Fontan had snapped his bike's forks while leading the race and had run around all the houses in the nearest village until someone agreed to lend him a bike (a woman's model, it was far too small for him) and had ridden 145km to the finish with the broken machine strapped to his back because the rules stated that riders could not accept mechanical assistance and had to finish every stage with (Fontan obviously had a good memory for obscure facts, or he'd have assumed the rule said on) the same bike he'd started on, and for years afterwards he bore deep scars where the broken metal dug into his flesh. The press had been horrified (for some reason, they hadn't been quite so bothered when, in 1927, Bidot had been reduced to trying to remove a tyre using his teeth when a race official had threatened to throw him out of the race if he dared use a penknife given to him by the driver of a team car), demanding to know why a rider who had been doing so well could have his chances utterly ruined because of a fault with his machine rather than through any fault of his own, and for once Desgrange had listened - in 1930, the rule was dropped, and so Leducq, Magne and Bidot were able to use a spanner supplied by someone in the L'Ami du Peuple newspaper's car that had been following the race and successfully replaced the pedal. Just as they did so, by happy coincidence, three other riders from the French team happened to come by - Charles Pélissier, Jules Merviel (who had won Stage 7) and Antonin Magne, who was Pierre's brother and would win the Tour the following year and again in 1934. Then a French touriste-routier named Marius Guiramand was roped in to help (being a touriste-routier, he was independent of any team; his willingness to help was probably due as much to a bribe as to some sense of French brotherhood) and, despite Leducq's initial desire to give up and go home, they worked together and managed to get within 14 minutes of Guerra and Demuysere.

With 140km left of the 331km stage, the Frenchmen caught their two rivals, dropped them and sped away. Reaching Evian with a clear lead, they set Leducq up for a perfect sprint finish and the yellow jersey he'd worn since Stage 9 remained his. When the race finished on the 27th of July, Guerra's time was 14'13" greater than Leducq's - equal to the time the French had made up on Stage 16.

Charles Pélissier won eight stages that year, which remains a record and wasn't equaled until Eddy Merckx managed it four decades later in 1970 (Merckx did it again four years later, then Freddy Maertens did it too in 1976). He also won the last four consecutive stages, which wasn't equaled until Mario Cipollini did the same 69 years later in 1999.

The Caravan made its first appearance but was a fraction of the size it would become and bore little resemblance to the day-glo technicolour glory/mobile migraine it would become in the future. It was also the first time the reporters broadcast live from the Tour - in the past they had recorded reports which would then be sped to Paris for broadcast.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 André Leducq (FRA) France 172h 12' 16"
2 Learco Guerra (ITA) Italy +14' 13"
3 Antonin Magne (FRA) France +16' 03"
4 Jef Demuysere (BEL) Belgium +21' 34"
5 Marcel Bidot (FRA) France +41' 18"
6 Pierre Magne (FRA) France +45' 42"
7 Frans Bonduel (BEL) Belgium +56' 19"
8 Benoît Fauré (FRA) Touriste-routier (South-East regional team) +58' 34"
9 Charles Pélissier (FRA) France +1h 04' 37"
10 Adolf Schön (GER) Germany +1h 21' 39"


1982

Hinault

22 stages (one split into parts A and B) + prologue. 3,507km.
The French Sports Minister, Edwige Avice, complained that the race was being ruined by excessive advertising and suggested that organisers might consider returning to a national teams format; however, they pointed out (in public, to make sure they were supported) that it was only through commercial sponsors and their adverts that the Tour could possibly be as big as it is and entirely free to watch without costing the nation's tax-payers one single centime. A new rule stated that cyclists would be fined, lose all prize money amassed so far and be banned the following year if they chose to leave the Tour without providing a good reason to organisers; this being in response to incidents the previous year when the Plackaert brothers Walter and Eddy, along with Swiss track rider Urs Freuler (brought in as a last-minute replacement for sprinter Jan Raas - manager Peter Post believed he'd be dead weight in the mountains and sent him home after Stage 15, just before the Alps) had left. Stage 5 was halted and neutralised due to protesting steel workers, then during Stage 16 is was stopped again by protesting farmers who drove their tractors along in front of the peloton - a photograph of overall victor Bernard Hinault being given a lift on the back of an official's motorbike with his bike wheeling along beside them had become one of the most iconic images of that year's Tour, as have photographs of the final stage when he broke with tradition and beat 125 riders in the sprint to the finish line. After the race, organisers were inspired by the huge audience of the soccer world cup and discussed running the Tour every four years with the main part in France and subsequent races held in other nations around the world. Thankfully, little came of the plan.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Bernard Hinault (FRA) Renault 92h 08' 46"
2 Joop Zoetemelk (NED) Mercier +6' 21"
3 Johan van der Velde (NED) Raleigh +8' 59"
4 Peter Winnen (NED) Capri Sonne-Campagnolo-Merckx +9' 24"
5 Phil Anderson (AUS) Peugeot +12' 16"
6 Beat Breu (SUI) Cilo +13' 21"
7 Daniel Willems (BEL) Sunair-Colnago-Campagnolo +15' 33"
8 Raymond Martin (FRA) Mercier +15' 35"
9 Hennie Kuiper (NED) DAF Trucks-Teve Blad-Rossin +17' 01"
10 Alberto Fernández (ESP) Teka +17' 19"

1994

Chris Boardman

21 + prologue, 3,978.7km.
Lille hosted the prologue (won by Chris Boardman) and the Grand Depart, then the race made its way to the Eurotunnel at the end of Stage 3 ready for its first visit to Britain for 20 years. Stage 4 ran from Dover to Brighton, then Stage 5 started and ended in Portsmouth. In both cases, thousands of fans turned out to watch and the visit was magnitudes more successful than the previous attempt when a few hundred people turned out to watch fed-up riders going through the motions on an unopened by-pass near Plymouth. Miguel Indurain took his fourth consecutive win.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Miguel Indurain (ESP) Banesto 103h 38' 38"
2 Piotr Ugrumov (LAT) Gewiss-Ballan +5' 39"
3 Marco Pantani (ITA) Carrera +7' 19"
4 Luc Leblanc (FRA) Festina +10' 03"
5 Richard Virenque (FRA) Festina +10' 10"
6 Roberto Conti (ITA) Lampre-Panaria +12' 29"
7 Alberto Elli (ITA) GB-MG +20' 17"
8 Alex Zülle (SUI) ONCE +20' 35"
9 Udo Bölts (GER) Telekom +25' 19"
10 Vladimir Poulnikov (UKR) Carrera +25' 28"

2005
21 stages, 3,592.5km.

David Zabriskie

David Zabriskie, riding his first Tour, won Stage 1 (which was an individual time trial but wasn't a prologue on account of being 19km - a prologue must be 8km or less) - the next time a debutant won Stage 1 was Peter Sagan in 2012, and it had last happened when Fabio Baldato won Stage 1 after an initial time trial in 1995. He crashed during the Stage 4 team trial and lost the maillot jaune to team mate Lance Armstrong who initially refused to wear it until being forced to do so by organisers, who threatened him with disqualification if he failed to comply. Stage 9 climbed Ballon d'Alsace, marking 100 years since the mountain was the first to feature points for the first men to the top in Tour history (there had been mountains in the Tour previously, but organisers didn't distinguish between plain and mountain stage and no points were awarded for cimbing them), then Stage 15 climbed the Col du Portet d'Aspet to mark the ten years since Fabio Casartelli died there in the 1995 Tour. Many books and websites state that Stage 10 began in Grenoble, in fact official ASO documents show that the start was relocated to Froges. In the last stage, organisers made use of a so-called "rain rule" and declared the first rider of the first passage of the finish line to be stage winner rather than the first rider of the eighth passage, which was fortunate for Alexandre Vinokourov as he'd escaped solo 1km beforehand and moved into fifth place overall. In a break with tradition, overall winner Lance Armstrong was permitted to take the microphone on stage and talk to the crowd; every winner since has been permitted to do the same. Jan Ullrich, who had crashed his bike into his directeur sportif's car the day before the race started, came third overall. Later he would become embroiled in the Operacion Puerto doping case and was stripped of the result - at the time of writing, riders who finished with slower times have not yet been upgraded and third place remains vacant.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) Discovery Channel 86h 15' 02"
2 Ivan Basso (ITA) Team CSC +4' 40"
Disq. Jan Ullrich (GER) T-Mobile +6' 21"
3 Francisco Mancebo (ESP) Illes Balears-Caisse d'Epargne +9' 59"
4 Alexandre Vinokourov (KAZ) T-Mobile +11' 01"
5 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Gerolsteiner +11' 21"
6 Michael Rasmussen (DEN) Rabobank +11' 33"
7 Cadel Evans (AUS) Davitamon-Lotto +11' 55"
8 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak +12' 44"
9 Óscar Pereiro (ESP) Phonak +16' 04"
10 Christophe Moreau (FRA) Crédit Agricole +16' 26"

2011
21 stages, 3,430km.

Cadel Evans

One of the most mountainous editions for some years, the 2012 Tour began with a mass-start stage starting off with a neutral (non-raced) route along the Passage du Gois causeway. The first half of the race was criticised by many fans and some riders due to what seemed an unusually high number of crashes (whether or not the crashes were statistically significant, which would suggest an unusually dangerous parcours, doesn't appear to have been shown) and several of the favourites, including Alberto Contador, lost large amounts of time that had to be made up later in the race; other riders, including British favourite Bradley Wiggins, were not so fortunate and had to abandon the race (Alexandre Vinokourov broke his pelvis and announced his retirement, but later returned to the sport). Andy Schleck provided one of the Tour's all-time highlights with a stunning Stage 18 solo break on Galibier (which was climbed again in Stage 19, before the Alpe d'Huez), riding away from the peloton and winning the stage - brother Frank was second, 2'07" behind. Many fans believed that Schleck had won the Tour, but as ever nothing was decided until the end: Cadel Evans turned a 57" disadvantage at the start of the Stage 20 individual time trial into a 1'34" advantage and, with that, became the first ever Australian rider to win the Tour. Mark Cavendish left nobody in any doubt that, when he's feeling his best, he's the fastest sprinter in the world with five stage wins.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Cadel Evans (AUS) BMC Racing Team 86h 12′ 22″
2 Andy Schleck (LUX) Leopard Trek + 1′ 34″
3 Fränk Schleck (LUX) Leopard Trek + 2′ 30″
4 Thomas Voeckler (FRA) Team Europcar + 3′ 20″
5 Samuel Sánchez (ESP) Euskaltel-Euskadi + 4′ 55″
6 Damiano Cunego (ITA) Lampre-ISD + 6′ 05″
7 Ivan Basso (ITA) Liquigas-Cannondale + 7′ 23″
8 Tom Danielson (USA) Garmin-Cervélo + 8′ 15″
9 Jean-Christophe Péraud (FRA) Ag2r-La Mondiale + 10′ 11″
10 Pierre Rolland (FRA) Team Europcar + 10′ 43″


Cyclists born on this day: Jürgen Roelandts (Belgium, 1985);Walyer Godefroot (Belgium, 1943); Rob Peeters (Belgium, 1985); Frank Southall (Great Britain, 1904); Amar Singh Sokhi (India, 1935); Andrea Collinelli (Italy, 1969); Armando Martínez (Mexico, 1931); Daniel Olivares (Philippines, 1940); Nikolay Trusov (USSR, 1985); Gustavo Martínez (Guatemala, 1932); Petre Nuţă (Romania, 1928); Michael Turtur (Australia, 1958); Mogens Frey Jensen (Denmark, 1941); Clive Saney (Trinidad and Tobago, 1948); Petr Lazar (Czechoslovakia, 1976).

Daily Cycling Facts 30.11.2013

Tommy Simpson, 1937-1966

Tom Simpson
Today is a holy day in cycling, for all the cycling nations and not just in Britain - it would have been the birthday of legendary, tragic Tom Simpson. Born in Haswell, Co. Durham in 1937, Simpson seemed for many years to have been Britain's best ever hope for a Tour de France overall General Classification winner and was the only British rider to win the men's World Road Racing Championship until Mark Cavendish took the title in 2011.

Tom died on the 13th of July in 1967, during the 13th stage of the Tour de France. There were 22 stages that year and they covered a total of 4,708km; for the first time there was also a prologue, and the race had been designed to be the hardest Tour ever. It cannot, therefore, have been an uneventful race all the way until it reached Mont Ventoux that day - but because of what happened there, everything else has been forgotten.

Simpson was rated by many as the finest rider Britain had ever produced and, thanks largely to him, the Tour was increasingly popular on the English side of the Channel. He was also intelligent and funny, making him popular with the other riders; those that might not have liked him (and not one surviving rider from his era will admit to that) learned to respect him, because he had the legs to go with it. Many believed that he could win.

It was hellishly hot when the riders woke up that morning and forecasters warned it would get worse, reaching as high as 45C. That worried official race doctor Pierre Dumas - when he went for a walk at 06:30, he met some friends. "If the riders take something today, we'll have a death on our hands," he told them. They may have shared his concerns, but Dumas - who had come to cycling almost by chance, with no previous background in the sport - was well known for taking doping far more seriously than anybody else; needlessly so, it was commonly thought, as many people accepted it a simply a part of the sport - and something that was better not discussed..

It seems odd that, only 45 years ago, medical science believed that drinking the amount of water now recommended during athletic activity was actually harmful; but that was the case and, as a result, race organisers permitted riders no more than four standard bidons (about two litres) of water per stage. The riders, meanwhile, knew that they got thirsty and mounted cafe raids in which they would descend en masse upon rural bars and shops and guzzle down any fluids they could find, not caring about the large bills that showed up on their managers' desks months later. The riders hadn't long started the stage when the first raids took place, and one of Tom's domestiques had obtained a bottle of brandy. Tom had been seen gulping it down.

He'd been up Ventoux before and was well aware, as Raphaël Géminiani had tried to warn Ferdinand Kübler more than a decade earlier, that the unearthly summit is "not like any other col." Kübler thought he could prove himself greater than the mountain, so Ventoux ended his career to prove him wrong. Tom knew all this - he described an earlier ascent thus:

"It is like another world up there among the bare rocks and the glaring sun. The white rocks reflect the heat and the dust rises, clinging to your arms, legs and face. I rode well up there doing about five miles to the gallon in perspiration. It was almost overwhelming hot up there and I think it was the only time that I have got off my bike and my pants have nearly fallen down. They were soaked and heavy with sweat which was running off me in streams and I had to wring out my socks because the sweat was running into my shoes."

He knew, then, that Ventoux demanded respect. At Chalet Reynard, near the point where riders emerge from the weird and airless forests of the lower slopes and come out into the blast furnace of a road that leads to the top, the heat and alcohol was already giving his problems and several riders passed him. Team manager Alec Taylor wondered briefly if this might be a psychological trick designed to make his rivals think he couldn't cope, but when he drew close to Tom he could see that it wasn't. A little further up he was even worse, unable to concentrate and wondering about all over the road in a place without barriers to prevent a plunge over the side. At this point, Taylor and team mechanic Harry Hall still didn't doubt Tom would make it up the mountain and were far more concerned about what he might do to try to make up the time he was losing once he was over the summit - he'd long ago earned a reputation for being a lunatic descender, apparently relishing the thrill of high-speed corners that would have had most other riders reducing their speed by half. Then he crashed.

Hall was the first one to reach him. "That's it for you, Tom," he said, preparing himself for the emotional outpouring that was sure to come when the rider sat out the remainder of the stage in the team car, following his comrades. But Tom wanted to go on. Both men wished later that they'd stopped him.

For a man suffering as Tom was, he made it a very long way - it's 5.35km along the road and not far from 400m upward (which is an average gradient of 7.5%, not too bad for a professional cyclist - but as Géminiani knew and so many have found out, Ventoux is different) to the place where he fell for the second time. This time he wasn't going on, though he didn't know it because he was already unconscious, his hands locked in a deathgrip to the bars and his legs still trying to pedal. Hall was first to him again and said later that he knew it was too late as soon as he got there. With the help of another mechanic, Ken Ryall, they prised his hands loose and laid him down at the side of the road. One of the Tour's police outriders summoned Dr. Dumas, who was there in moments. He, his deputy and a nurse took turns administering heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and oxygen until the helicopter arrived and took him to hospital, where he was declared dead. His last words, spoken as Hall reached him, were not "Put me back on my bike!" - that was made up by a journalist who wasn't there. Hall and Taylor say they were "Go on! Go on!" What he meant by that we'll never know, but the most obvious explanation is that he thought he was still riding.

The Simpson memorial, Mont Ventoux

The cause of death was given as a heart attack but Dumas, knowing that there was more to it than that and realising that Tom had bequeathed him a chance to prevent more stupid deaths, refused to sign the death certificate until an approved poisons expert had carried out an autopsy. Five days later, it confirmed that he had been taking the amphetamines that were also found in the pockets of his jersey - the drugs had stopped him being able to know when his body was unable to take any more, so that he carried on until he destroyed himself. Tom' story has become one of professional cycling's most-told; the memorial on the mountain where he died is a place of pilgrimage for cyclists from around the world. He was enormously popular both with British fans and those from abroad, as such he did not die in vain: thanks to Dumas, his death was the wake-up call that alerted the world to the prevalence and dangers of doping and forced organisers to begin to consider ways to control it.

When Cavendish was awarded an MBE by the Queen following his World Championship victory, Tom was remembered also - the honour was bestowed on the 74th anniversary of his birth.

Laurent Jalabert
Laurent Jalabert, born in Mazamet on this day in 1968, is a retired French cyclist and one of the few to have become a well-known character among the non-cycling public outside the cycling nations of France, Italy, Spain and the Benelux. As a result, it frequently comes as a surprise to many when they learn that Jaja never won cycling's most famous race, the Tour de France. However, stage wins on Bastille Day in 1995 and 2001 earned him the thanks of French fans, restoring to them some of the pride lost during the long years since Bernard Hinault last took overall Tour victory.

The outcome of The Policeman's Crash

Jalabert - whose nickname Jaja came into being because he continued drinking wine when he became professional (it's slang for a glass of wine) - began racing with the Toshiba team in 1989, having come to their attention due to his rocket-like sprinting capabilities. He moved on to ONCE in 1992 and would remain with them for nine seasons. Having won a wide variety of stages and one-day races, he was involved in a dramatic crash in the sprint finish of Stage 1 at the 1994 Tour de France when a policeman's love for the sport got the better of his common sense and caused him to step into the road, where Belgian rider Wilfried Nelisson and Jalabert piled straight into him - an incident that has gone down into cycling history, known as The Policeman's Crah. The policeman was thrown backwards into the crowd and Nelissen concussed. Jalabert was most injured, requiring reconstructive surgery to repair his smashed teeth and face.

Sylvie, Jalabert's wife to whom he is still married, was understandably concerned that her husband had been so badly hurt in such an unpredictable accident. He promised her that he would find a way to continue racing that didn't require him to be in the high-speed tussle of a final sprint. Thus began his transformation into one of the finest all-rounders of his generation, a change that turned him from a sprinter able to grab glory in individual sprints to a rider who had a real chance at topping general classifications. Just a year later, he proved his new status at the Vuelta a Espana when he won the Points classification, the King of the Mountains and the General Classification - the trifecta, the only man to have done so in the Vuelta and an honour he shares in the Grand Tours with only Tony Rominger and the legendary Eddy Merckx. In that same Vuelta, he cemented his popularity among fans by allowing a little-known German rider named Bert Dietz to win the sought-after summit finish at Sierra Nevada: Dietz had ridden much of the race in a solo break but, after chasing for many kilometres, Jalabert caught him on the mountain. The outcome of the stage was, apparently, settled - but then Jaja was seen to hold back, refusing to overtake. "I never thought we'd catch him, and when I saw he was ready to drop I felt sorry for him," he later told reporters.

Jaja
(image credit: Cycling Art)

His generosity was repaid in good fortune, because in the coming years he won  string of races including prestigious events such as the Giro di Lombardia (1997), Paris–Nice (1995, 1996, 1997), the Classique des Alpes (1996, 1998), Milano-Torino (1997), the Vuelta a Asturias (1998), the Tour de Romandie (1999), the Tour Méditerranéen (2000), the Clásica de San Sebastián (2001, 2002) and many others before retiring after 14 years at the top. He has continued in sport since, becoming a consultant for Look who had used their experience as a ski manufacturer to develop clipless pedals and move into the bike market and acting as a commentator for French television - he can often be seen at the Tour providing race reports from the back of one of the motorbikes that follow the peloton. He also competes in triathlon and has entered numerous Ironman events, at which he unsurprisingly excels in the cycling sections - in the 2007 Swiss Ironman, he was in 966th place after the swimming section, then rose through 857 places in the cycling section to put himself into 91st overall. He also runs and has completed several marathons - something else that has stood him in good stead for triathlon, of course; in that same Swiss Ironman, he rose another 69 places during the running section.

Maurice Garin in 1897

Maurice Garin stripped of Tour win
On this day in 1904, four months after the end of the race, the Union Velocipedique de France announced that it would be stripping Maurice Garin of his Tour de France win and banning him for two years as part of its disciplinary action against 30 riders found to have cheated. Second place Lucien Pothier was also disqualified, as were several other riders, allowing Henri Cornet (real name Henri Jardry)  to become the youngest winner in Tour history at 19 (Henri Paret, at 50 the oldest rider to have completed a Tour, also rode that year). Such were the severity of the punishments that some historians have suggested that riders were not banned for taking trains, as is the official reason, but due to a major scandal that was covered up; this theory has been fueled by research carried out by Jason Jellick, who argues that riders would not have been able to take trains and finish when and where they did (but does not suggest that any scandal took place) and by the fact that official records have vanished.

Garin had also won the first Tour in 1903, but spectators claimed to have seen him take a train rather than ride one stage the following year - he denied doing so at the time, but admitted it in old age according to a man who had once run errands for his garage and later ended up working as the gravedigger and attendant at the Cimetiere Est where Garin was buried in 1957. The organisers, despite suspicions that they had permitted Garin to cheat because his personal sponsor was also a race sponsor, appear to have had grounds to have banned him immediately and would have been keen to do so had not angry spectators been likely to turn into a lynch mob if they'd done so.

In fact, aggression and cheating by spectators had been rife throughout the race that year - they'd felled trees to block riders they disliked and at one point Garin was savagely beaten by a crowd thgat had to be dispersed with pistol shots. This, combined with cheating among the entrants, was sufficient for Henri Desgrange to announce that the 1904 Tour would be the last. Thankfully, he was convinced to run the event again the following year with different, stricter rules.

Knud Enemark Jensen
Knud Enemark Jensen, born in Århus, Denmark on this day in 1930, achieved cycling fame in the very worst way possible - he was one of the earliest cyclists whose death was connected to doping when he collapsed in the 42C heat and fractured his skull during the team time trial event on the 26th of August at the 1960 Olympics. He went into a coma and died a few hours later in hospital.

Witnesses claimed that Jensen had swallowed eight pills believed to be phenylisopropylamine, an amphetamine-like drug, and another fifteen containing amphetamine and caffeine in the run-up to the race. His trainer initially said that he had administered Roniacol (nicotynol alcohol), a vasodilator, to the team but formally retracted his statement soon after. An autopsy confirmed the presence of both Roniacol and amphetamines in his body, but doctors concluded that his collapse had been caused by the heat rather than the drugs and his family were awarded one million lire compensation.

There are obvious comparisons between the deaths of Jensen and the British rider Tom Simpson, with whom he shared his birthday. Jensen's death encouraged the International Olympic Committee to accept that there was a problem with doping in sport and to establish a medical council in 1967, the year that Simpson died. Anti-doping controls would be put into place the following year, paving the way for similar controls to be introduced at the Tour de France and other races.

Pierrick Fédrigo, a French rider born in Marmande on this day in 1978, has been National Champion (2005) and has won the Tour du Limousin twice (2004, 2006), the Four Days of Dunkirk (2005), the Critérium International (2010) and stages at the Critérium du Dauphiné (Stage 6, 2011) and Tour de France (Stage 14, 2006, Stage 9, 2009, Stage 16, 2010, Stage 15, 2012). In 2013, he recorded very good results in all of his early season races and won Paris-Camembert. As a result, he probably feels a little disappointed that he is chiefly famous - and most likely to be remembered - for his nose, a prominence that gave rise to his nickname "le Nez de Marmande" and which is best described as "splendid."

Born in Rabat, Morroco on this day in 1922, Custodio Dos Reis had Portuguese nationality but became a French citizen at the age of nine - and turned out to be a  worthwhile catch by France, because he won Stage 14 of the Tour de France in 1950.

Charles Henry Bartlett died on this day in 1968 in Enfield, London. In 1908, he rode 100km in 2h41'48.6" on the track at the Olympics in London and won a gold medal for his achievement. He was born on the 6th of February 1885 in Bermondsey, also in London, making him 85 when he died.

Other cyclists born on this day: Domenico Pozzovivo (Italy, 1982); Arthur Griffiths (Great Britain, 1881); Martin Hvastija (Slovenia, 1969); István Liszkay (Hungary, 1912); Armand Putzeyse (Belgium, 1916, died 2003); Franck Perque (France, 1974); Kyriaki Konstantinidou (Greece, 1984); Andrés Torres (Guatemala, 1966); Álvaro Pachón (Colombia, 1945).

Daily Cycling Facts 02.07.2013

The Tour de France began on this day in 1904, 1911, 1930, 1982, 1994, 2005 and 2011.

1904
6 stages, 2,428km.

Hippolyte Aucouturier

The first Tour, in 1903, had been more successful than anyone could even have hoped so, as soon as it was over, Henri Desrange set about organising the next one. Later, he'd pick up a bit of a reputation for changing rules that didn't necessarily need to be changed; but for now he decided that what wasn't broken didn't need to be fixed - so the race used an identical route and almost the same rules (the two differences were that in 1903, a rider could abandon a stage and then start again in the next though without results thereafter counting towards the General Classification whereas this time around any rider that abandoned a stage was out of the race; and while in 1903 only the first 50 riders to finish would receive an allowance of 5 francs a day this time around all riders, regarless of whether they finished or not, would get the same allowance). Maurice Garin, who had won in 1903, was favourite; Hippolyte Aucouturier and Lucien Pothier were also expected to do well. One rider, Henri Paret, was 50 years old and remains the oldest man to have ever taken part.

The edition was not such a success. There was a large crash after the first few kilometres, resulting in a broken finger and early abandonment for a rider named Lipman, then after 100km Pothier lost significant time when his bike broke and Ferdinand Payan was disqualified (we don't know why - it may have been for being helped by riders not in the race or for being helped by motor vehicle; many records of early Tours were lost in the Second World War). Aucouturier crashed just after the halfway checkpoint and finished the stage covered in blood, while Garin and Pothier were attacked and robbed by a gang of four masked men who chased them in a car after they broke away from the peloton. After the stage, "Samson" (real name Julien Lootens) was fined 250f for drafting behind a car, Pierre Chevalier was disqualified for taking a 45' rest (in a car following the peloton) during the race and Aucouturier was fined 500f for the slightly mysterious crime of having a cyclist who wasn't part of the race following him. It also turned out that Garin had asked the race official (also the man who first came up with the idea for the Tour) Géo Lefèvre - concerned that the race would suffer if the favourite hit la fringale, Lefèvre gave him some despite it being against the rules. When they found out - and realised Garin was not going to be punished as other riders had been - the crowd were not happy. During Stage 2 the race passed André Fauré's hometown and a violent mob came out to try to stop the other riders: Garin's hand was injured while Paul Gerbi was knocked out, then abandoned with two broken fingers and the mob only dispersed when race officials fired guns into the air. A little further on, but suspiciously close, persons unknown had strewn nails across the road and almost everyone except Fauré punctured, which allowed him to be the first up the Col de la République and tends to suggest that he might have known something about it. Near the end of the stage the riders were attacked again, this time by a large gang of cyclists: Garin's arm was hurt badly enough that he had to steer with only his other arm. At the finish line there was so much confusion with all the injuries and riders complaining about all the incidents that the times weren't properly recorded - Aucouturier won, but order and times usually given for the rest of the field might not be correct. Riders asked the organisers to neutralise the stage, but it didn't happen.

Julien Lootens, "Samson"

In Stage 3, angry Payan fans threw stones at the riders and tried to barricade the road as the race passed through his hometown Nimes, then grabbed César Garin's bike and smashed it up - he lost 15' while trying to locate a replacement. More nails had been spread on the road further on, after the first crop of punctures the riders carried their bikes over. Stage 4 passed - mercifully, for the long-suffering riders - without incident; in Stage 5 they encountered more nails and Henri Cornet had to ride the final 40km to the finish with flat tyres. On the last stage, riders signed in at the Ville d'Avray checkpoint where they told that the remainder of the race, up until the last kilometre, had been neutralised; when they reached the last kilometre they would be racing again. However, when they got there it was raining so heavily that organisers decided to abandon the last kilometre and declare Ville d'Avray the end of the race - therefore Aucouturier, who had been first to the checkpoint, won a fourth stage. Garin had the lowest accumulated time and was declared overall winner.

Of 88 riders, 27 finished - but the race had hardly ended before new reports of widespread cheating began to appear. Nine riders had been disqualified during the race, now the French Cycling Union launched an investigation into the new allegations and, in December, ten riders were disqualified - among them was Maurice Garin, who was banned from competition for two years (two others were banned for life), and another nineteen riders received fines or warnings. With the first four finishers disqualified, Henri Cornet - who had himself been warned for completing part of a stage in a car - became winner: he was 19 years, 11 months and 20 days old at the time and remains the youngest Tour winner ever.

Henri Cornet

Usually, the riders are said to have been disqualified for taking trains; however, the official reports from the investigation have never been published and are presumably lost. Researcher Jason Jellick has studied large numbers of documents preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale and compared them with race times, coming up with a powerful argument that there was only one occasion that cyclists would have been able to catch a train and finish when they did. He also notes the severity of the punishments - Garin was banned for two years, but in fact he suffered far more than that and effectively vanished from history for many years - may be evidence that a major scandal was covered up. Whatever really happened, Desgrange was so shocked that he swore 1904 would be the last Tour (he also wasn't at all happy that the French Federation had given further punishments to riders he'd already punished - Desgrange always liked his word to be final on any subject, this time it wasn't and there was nothing he could do about it). It took some time to persuade him to organise another for 1905.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Henri Cornet (FRA) 96h 05' 55"
2 Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq (FRA) +2h 16' 14"
3 Aloïs Catteau (BEL) +9h 01' 25"
4 Jean Dargassies (FRA) +13h 04' 30"
5 Julien Maitron (FRA) +19h 06' 15"
6 Auguste Daumain (FRA) +22h 44' 36"
7 Louis Coolsaet (BEL) +23h 44' 20"
8 Achille Colas (FRA) +25h 09' 50"
9 René Saget (FRA) +25h 55' 16"
10 Gustave Drioul (BEL) +30h 54' 49"


1911
15 stages, 5,344km.

Faber, who died a hero's death in the First
World War

Desgrange had initially been reluctant to send his race into the high mountains because he was afraid the riders would be robbed by bandits or eaten by bears, neither of which were uncommon in the more far-flung parts of France a century ago. In 1910, he'd been persuaded to include the Pyrenees and it had been such a success that he included the Alps too in 1911 - and the Tour took on a form that it retains to this day. Since 1906, the riders had crossed the border into German Alsace; now the uneasy truce between Europe's greatest nations was showing strain as the continent moved towards war and the German government would not allow it. During Stage 3, François Faber missed a checkpoint and was made to wait for 2'30" but still won the stage. Émile Georget was hit by a car and plunged into a ravine - he was unhurt and finished the stage, but 49' behind Faber.

In Stage 10 Paul Duboc, a rider with La Française who had been successfully catching up with overall leader Garrigou, was left with crippling abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea after he supposedly drank from a bidon that had been poisoned. His manager gave him an emetic and, after some time, he recovered and was able to continue, eventually finishing the race in second place overall, and a man working for a third team was later shown to have been the culprit. In the meantime Duboc's fans put two and two together, decided that since Garrigou was the man who would most benefit if Duboc abandoned, he must have been the poisoner and it wasn't long at all before he started receiving death threats. Duboc himself appears never to have suspected Garrigou and was horrified to learn that in Rouen, his hometown and the place where his fans would be most numerous, persons unknown had put up posters saying "Citizens of Rouen: I would have been leading this race had I not been poisoned. You know what you have to do when the race reaches your city," followed by a forgery of his signature. By this point, Garrigou (at the suggestion of the organisers) had taken to wearing disguise, but the two men realised that if the angry Rouennais even suspected his true identity they were likely to become a lynch mob. Duboc offered to ride on ahead to the city and do what he could to placate them, but an equally concerned Henri Desgrange decided that extreme tactics were required. As a result, Garrigou rode through the city protected on all sides by three cars, each filled with the burliest men Desgrange could find.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Gustave Garrigou (FRA) Alcyon 43
2 Paul Duboc (FRA) La Française 61
3 Emile Georget (FRA) La Française 84
4 Charles Crupelandt (FRA) La Française 109
5 Louis Heusghem (BEL) Alcyon 135
6 Marcel Godivier (FRA) La Française 141
7 Charles Cruchon (FRA) La Française 145
8 Ernest Paul (FRA) Alcyon 153
9 Albert Dupont (BEL) Le Globe 158
10 Henri Devroye (BEL) Le Globe 171


1930

21 stages, 4,822km.
Desgrange had been furious when Maurice Dewaele, who had been so ill during one stage that two team mates had to ride either side of him and hold him upright, won the 1929 Tour. "My race has been won by a corpse!" he proclaimed, and immediately set about finding ways to prevent such a thing ever happening again. He'd had problems which he blamed on trade teams who, due their commercial interest in promoting themselves, he suspected used all sorts of dirty tricks to try to ensure their riders won (he was right, too - they got up to all sorts of things) and so as soon as that edition was over he started trying to come up with a way to prevent it happening again. The answer, he believed, was national teams; in 1930 they replaced the trade teams.

During Stage 16, André Leducq was in a terrible crash when he misjudged a bend, came off the road, hit a rock and was thrown over the handlebars, landing hard enough to lose consciousness; Pierre Magne was with him and waited until Marcel Bidot came along, after which the two of them managed to revive him and then got him into a position where he could remain in contention, Learco Guerra of Italy and Jeff Demuysere of Belgium having decided that their rival's accident was a superb opportunity to attack and go in search of a race-winning time advantage. However, just as the trio arrived at the beginning of the Col du Télégraphe, which tops out at 1,566m, Leducq's pedal broke away from the crank. He and Magne tried to bodge a repair; Bidot, remembering his own experiences with a broken pedal at the notorious 1927 Tour, thought it'd be a better idea to try to find a replacement and eventually managed to beg one from some spectators who had ridden their own bikes to see the race.

In 1929, Victor Fontan had snapped his bike's forks while leading the race and had run around all the houses in the nearest village until someone agreed to lend him a bike (a woman's model, it was far too small for him) and had ridden 145km to the finish with the broken machine strapped to his back because the rules stated that riders could not accept mechanical assistance and had to finish every stage with (Fontan obviously had a good memory for obscure facts, or he'd have assumed the rule said on) the same bike he'd started on, and for years afterwards he bore deep scars where the broken metal dug into his flesh. The press had been horrified (for some reason, they hadn't been quite so bothered when, in 1927, Bidot had been reduced to trying to remove a tyre using his teeth when a race official had threatened to throw him out of the race if he dared use a penknife given to him by the driver of a team car), demanding to know why a rider who had been doing so well could have his chances utterly ruined because of a fault with his machine rather than through any fault of his own, and for once Desgrange had listened - in 1930, the rule was dropped, and so Leducq, Magne and Bidot were able to use a spanner supplied by someone in the L'Ami du Peuple newspaper's car that had been following the race and successfully replaced the pedal. Just as they did so, by happy coincidence, three other riders from the French team happened to come by - Charles Pélissier, Jules Merviel (who had won Stage 7) and Antonin Magne, who was Pierre's brother and would win the Tour the following year and again in 1934. Then a French touriste-routier named Marius Guiramand was roped in to help (being a touriste-routier, he was independent of any team; his willingness to help was probably due as much to a bribe as to some sense of French brotherhood) and, despite Leducq's initial desire to give up and go home, they worked together and managed to get within 14 minutes of Guerra and Demuysere.

With 140km left of the 331km stage, the Frenchmen caught their two rivals, dropped them and sped away. Reaching Evian with a clear lead, they set Leducq up for a perfect sprint finish and the yellow jersey he'd worn since Stage 9 remained his. When the race finished on the 27th of July, Guerra's time was 14'13" greater than Leducq's - equal to the time the French had made up on Stage 16.

Charles Pélissier won eight stages that year, which remains a record and wasn't equaled until Eddy Merckx managed it four decades later in 1970 (Merckx did it again four years later, then Freddy Maertens did it too in 1976). He also won the last four consecutive stages, which wasn't equaled until Mario Cipollini did the same 69 years later in 1999.

The Caravan made its first appearance but was a fraction of the size it would become and bore little resemblance to the day-glo technicolour glory/mobile migraine it would become in the future. It was also the first time the reporters broadcast live from the Tour - in the past they had recorded reports which would then be sped to Paris for broadcast.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 André Leducq (FRA) France 172h 12' 16"
2 Learco Guerra (ITA) Italy +14' 13"
3 Antonin Magne (FRA) France +16' 03"
4 Jef Demuysere (BEL) Belgium +21' 34"
5 Marcel Bidot (FRA) France +41' 18"
6 Pierre Magne (FRA) France +45' 42"
7 Frans Bonduel (BEL) Belgium +56' 19"
8 Benoît Fauré (FRA) Touriste-routier (South-East regional team) +58' 34"
9 Charles Pélissier (FRA) France +1h 04' 37"
10 Adolf Schön (GER) Germany +1h 21' 39"


1982

Hinault

22 stages (one split into parts A and B) + prologue. 3,507km.
The French Sports Minister, Edwige Avice, complained that the race was being ruined by excessive advertising and suggested that organisers might consider returning to a national teams format; however, they pointed out (in public, to make sure they were supported) that it was only through commercial sponsors and their adverts that the Tour could possibly be as big as it is and entirely free to watch without costing the nation's tax-payers one single centime. A new rule stated that cyclists would be fined, lose all prize money amassed so far and be banned the following year if they chose to leave the Tour without providing a good reason to organisers; this being in response to incidents the previous year when the Plackaert brothers Walter and Eddy, along with Swiss track rider Urs Freuler (brought in as a last-minute replacement for sprinter Jan Raas - manager Peter Post believed he'd be dead weight in the mountains and sent him home after Stage 15, just before the Alps) had left. Stage 5 was halted and neutralised due to protesting steel workers, then during Stage 16 is was stopped again by protesting farmers who drove their tractors along in front of the peloton - a photograph of overall victor Bernard Hinault being given a lift on the back of an official's motorbike with his bike wheeling along beside them had become one of the most iconic images of that year's Tour, as have photographs of the final stage when he broke with tradition and beat 125 riders in the sprint to the finish line. After the race, organisers were inspired by the huge audience of the soccer world cup and discussed running the Tour every four years with the main part in France and subsequent races held in other nations around the world. Thankfully, little came of the plan.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Bernard Hinault (FRA) Renault 92h 08' 46"
2 Joop Zoetemelk (NED) Mercier +6' 21"
3 Johan van der Velde (NED) Raleigh +8' 59"
4 Peter Winnen (NED) Capri Sonne-Campagnolo-Merckx +9' 24"
5 Phil Anderson (AUS) Peugeot +12' 16"
6 Beat Breu (SUI) Cilo +13' 21"
7 Daniel Willems (BEL) Sunair-Colnago-Campagnolo +15' 33"
8 Raymond Martin (FRA) Mercier +15' 35"
9 Hennie Kuiper (NED) DAF Trucks-Teve Blad-Rossin +17' 01"
10 Alberto Fernández (ESP) Teka +17' 19"

1994

Chris Boardman

21 + prologue, 3,978.7km.
Lille hosted the prologue (won by Chris Boardman) and the Grand Depart, then the race made its way to the Eurotunnel at the end of Stage 3 ready for its first visit to Britain for 20 years. Stage 4 ran from Dover to Brighton, then Stage 5 started and ended in Portsmouth. In both cases, thousands of fans turned out to watch and the visit was magnitudes more successful than the previous attempt when a few hundred people turned out to watch fed-up riders going through the motions on an unopened by-pass near Plymouth. Miguel Indurain took his fourth consecutive win.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Miguel Indurain (ESP) Banesto 103h 38' 38"
2 Piotr Ugrumov (LAT) Gewiss-Ballan +5' 39"
3 Marco Pantani (ITA) Carrera +7' 19"
4 Luc Leblanc (FRA) Festina +10' 03"
5 Richard Virenque (FRA) Festina +10' 10"
6 Roberto Conti (ITA) Lampre-Panaria +12' 29"
7 Alberto Elli (ITA) GB-MG +20' 17"
8 Alex Zülle (SUI) ONCE +20' 35"
9 Udo Bölts (GER) Telekom +25' 19"
10 Vladimir Poulnikov (UKR) Carrera +25' 28"

2005
21 stages, 3,592.5km.

David Zabriskie

David Zabriskie, riding his first Tour, won Stage 1 (which was an individual time trial but wasn't a prologue on account of being 19km - a prologue must be 8km or less) - the next time a debutant won Stage 1 was Peter Sagan in 2012, and it had last happened when Fabio Baldato won Stage 1 after an initial time trial in 1995. He crashed during the Stage 4 team trial and lost the maillot jaune to team mate Lance Armstrong who initially refused to wear it until being forced to do so by organisers, who threatened him with disqualification if he failed to comply. Stage 9 climbed Ballon d'Alsace, marking 100 years since the mountain was the first to feature points for the first men to the top in Tour history (there had been mountains in the Tour previously, but organisers didn't distinguish between plain and mountain stage and no points were awarded for cimbing them), then Stage 15 climbed the Col du Portet d'Aspet to mark the ten years since Fabio Casartelli died there in the 1995 Tour. Many books and websites state that Stage 10 began in Grenoble, in fact official ASO documents show that the start was relocated to Froges. In the last stage, organisers made use of a so-called "rain rule" and declared the first rider of the first passage of the finish line to be stage winner rather than the first rider of the eighth passage, which was fortunate for Alexandre Vinokourov as he'd escaped solo 1km beforehand and moved into fifth place overall. In a break with tradition, overall winner Lance Armstrong was permitted to take the microphone on stage and talk to the crowd; every winner since has been permitted to do the same. Jan Ullrich, who had crashed his bike into his directeur sportif's car the day before the race started, came third overall. Later he would become embroiled in the Operacion Puerto doping case and was stripped of the result - at the time of writing, riders who finished with slower times have not yet been upgraded and third place remains vacant.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) Discovery Channel 86h 15' 02"
2 Ivan Basso (ITA) Team CSC +4' 40"
Disq. Jan Ullrich (GER) T-Mobile +6' 21"
3 Francisco Mancebo (ESP) Illes Balears-Caisse d'Epargne +9' 59"
4 Alexandre Vinokourov (KAZ) T-Mobile +11' 01"
5 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Gerolsteiner +11' 21"
6 Michael Rasmussen (DEN) Rabobank +11' 33"
7 Cadel Evans (AUS) Davitamon-Lotto +11' 55"
8 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak +12' 44"
9 Óscar Pereiro (ESP) Phonak +16' 04"
10 Christophe Moreau (FRA) Crédit Agricole +16' 26"

2011
21 stages, 3,430km.

Cadel Evans

One of the most mountainous editions for some years, the 2012 Tour began with a mass-start stage starting off with a neutral (non-raced) route along the Passage du Gois causeway. The first half of the race was criticised by many fans and some riders due to what seemed an unusually high number of crashes (whether or not the crashes were statistically significant, which would suggest an unusually dangerous parcours, doesn't appear to have been shown) and several of the favourites, including Alberto Contador, lost large amounts of time that had to be made up later in the race; other riders, including British favourite Bradley Wiggins, were not so fortunate and had to abandon the race (Alexandre Vinokourov broke his pelvis and announced his retirement, but later returned to the sport). Andy Schleck provided one of the Tour's all-time highlights with a stunning Stage 18 solo break on Galibier (which was climbed again in Stage 19, before the Alpe d'Huez), riding away from the peloton and winning the stage - brother Frank was second, 2'07" behind. Many fans believed that Schleck had won the Tour, but as ever nothing was decided until the end: Cadel Evans turned a 57" disadvantage at the start of the Stage 20 individual time trial into a 1'34" advantage and, with that, became the first ever Australian rider to win the Tour. Mark Cavendish left nobody in any doubt that, when he's feeling his best, he's the fastest sprinter in the world with five stage wins.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Cadel Evans (AUS) BMC Racing Team 86h 12′ 22″
2 Andy Schleck (LUX) Leopard Trek + 1′ 34″
3 Fränk Schleck (LUX) Leopard Trek + 2′ 30″
4 Thomas Voeckler (FRA) Team Europcar + 3′ 20″
5 Samuel Sánchez (ESP) Euskaltel-Euskadi + 4′ 55″
6 Damiano Cunego (ITA) Lampre-ISD + 6′ 05″
7 Ivan Basso (ITA) Liquigas-Cannondale + 7′ 23″
8 Tom Danielson (USA) Garmin-Cervélo + 8′ 15″
9 Jean-Christophe Péraud (FRA) Ag2r-La Mondiale + 10′ 11″
10 Pierre Rolland (FRA) Team Europcar + 10′ 43″


Cyclists born on this day: Jürgen Roelandts (Belgium, 1985);Walyer Godefroot (Belgium, 1943); Rob Peeters (Belgium, 1985); Frank Southall (Great Britain, 1904); Amar Singh Sokhi (India, 1935); Andrea Collinelli (Italy, 1969); Armando Martínez (Mexico, 1931); Daniel Olivares (Philippines, 1940); Nikolay Trusov (USSR, 1985); Gustavo Martínez (Guatemala, 1932); Petre Nuţă (Romania, 1928); Michael Turtur (Australia, 1958); Mogens Frey Jensen (Denmark, 1941); Clive Saney (Trinidad and Tobago, 1948); Petr Lazar (Czechoslovakia, 1976).