Daily Cycling Facts 05.07.2014

The Tour de France began on this day in 1909, 1938, 1956, 1997, 2003 and 2008.

1909

The Tour, 1909

14 stages, 4,498km.
In 1908, Desgrange decided that all riders should race on identical bikes supplied by the Tour in an attempt to make the race a contest of skill and athleticism, rather than one that might be won by superior equipment. This had not been judged a success and was dropped in 1909 - firstly due to the expense of providing the bikes and secondly because trade teams became official: in the past, while riders did ride with teams, teams were not recognised by the race. Now the teams were official, though riders were still considered to be individuals and were expected to race as such rather than in support of a team leader. This meant the companies that ran them would put more money into the Tour - and in return, they obviously wanted to show off their bikes to the public. However, each rider was still required to complete the race using one bike only, which could only be replaced if a course official declared it irreparably damaged; at the start line each bike was given a stamped lead seal and officials checked them carefully at the start lines, finish lines and checkpoints (where, for the first time, toilets were installed - Desgrange was embarrassed that riders urinated in front of spectators, despite the fact that spectators appear to have always found this a source of great amusement and will still gather around locations thought likely to become "nature break" stops to this day). The winner was selected according to points, as had been the case since 1905; after Stage 8, by which time 79 riders had abandoned (mostly due to the awful weather), the points amassed by those riders were redistributed among the riders still in the race according to the position in which they'd have finished each stage had the race only included them at the start. This was repeated after the eleventh stage.

Faber runs with his broken bike to win Stage 4

A record 150 riders started the race; only 38 of them rode for the teams, the remainder being unsponsored correurs isolés ("isolated riders") who paid their own way. The Tour had been developing into an international event ever since the first edition, but with so many riders there were more foreigners than ever before: the French were still in the majority but there were many Belgians (5), Swiss (5)  and Italians (19) and two riders from elsewhere. Cyrille van Hauwaert won Stage 1 and became the first Belgian stage winner and the first foreigner to lead the race in Tour history, then François Faber (having become the first Luxembourger to win a stage the previous year and only the second foreigner, Faber was tipped to win by Lucien Petit-Breton) won the next when be beat Octave Lapize by 33'. Faber, at 1.88m and 88kg, was enormous by the standards of the day, hence his nickname The Giant of Colombes; he used the strength he'd built up in his work as a docker to ride solo for 200km the next day through deep snow and won again, this time beating Gustave Garrigou by 33'. On Stage 4 his chain broke with a kilometres to go, so he ran the rest of the way with his bike beside him and won that one by 10'. During Stage 5 he was first blown right of the road by a powerful crosswind and then kicked off his bike by a horse, in both cases he was able to continue and ended up beating Garrigou into second place again, this time by 5'.

Faber now had a thirteen point advantage over Garrigou and became the Tour's first superstar: in the past, French fans supported French riders, Belgian fans supported Belgian riders and so on, but Faber transcended that - 20,000 people, French, Belgian, Luxembourger and others, turned out to see him finish Stage 6 and when he won that one too they were ecstatic and his five consecutive stage wins remains a record more than a century later. Tour organisers became worried, however, that if Faber continued to dominate the race so completely, the other riders would give up all hope of winning and race despondently for second and third; so they asked him if he'd take things easy for a while: he'd either tired himself out, realised that the race was already as good as his or agreed, because Stage 7 was won by Ernest Paul - who just happened to be his half-brother. Jean Alavoine won Stage 9 (Faber had a rest and came tenth, his worst performance in the race), then Constant Ménager took the only Tour stage win of his career. Louis Trousselier, Garrigou and Paul Duboc won the following three, but they were all still too far behind Faber overall for a single stage win to make any difference. Finally, Alavoine won Stage 14 in notable circumstances - his bike became sufficiently damaged to be unridable 10km to go and, realising that locating an official and going through the formalities of being permitted a new one was going to lose significant time, he shouldered it like a cyclo cross rider and ran to the finish line where he won the stage by 6'30".

François Faber

Faber had moved to Alcyon from Peugeot at the end of 1908 and was now instrumental in the team's domination of the race, but his team mates had also ridden remarkably well: three places in the top ten went to isolés, including Ernest Paul in sixth, while Le Globe's Ménager was seventh. All the other places were taken by Alcyon. Being tall and well-built with his big moustache, Faber looked older than he was - few realise therefore that, at 22 years and seven months old, he's the third youngest man to have won a Tour a well as the first foreigner. He was only 28 when he climbed out of a trench and went into no man's land to rescue an injured comrade on the 9th of May in 1915, and was shot in the back and killed as he carried the man back. That very morning he'd received a message from his wife, informing him that she had given birth to a healthy baby girl.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 François Faber (LUX) Alcyon 37
2 Gustave Garrigou (FRA) Alcyon 57
3 Jean Alavoine (FRA) Alcyon 66
4 Paul Duboc (FRA) Alcyon 70
5 Cyrille van Hauwaert (BEL) Alcyon 92
6 Ernest Paul (FRA) – 95
7 Constant Ménager (FRA) Le Globe 102
8 Louis Trousselier (FRA) Alcyon 114
9 Eugène Christophe (FRA) – 139
10 Aldo Bettini (ITA) – 142


1938

The Tour, 1938

21 stages (Stages 6 and 17 split into parts A and B; Stages 4, 10 and 20 split into parts A, B and C), 4,694km.
Unsponsored individual riders were barred from entry for the first time - as professionalism among the sponsored riders and teams increased, they had largely ceased to be competitive some time earlier. The time bonus system was extensively overhauled in an attempt to prevent any rider who won two or three stages with a large lead from gaining an unfair advantage over one who rode consistently; now winning a stage earned 1' or a maximum of 1'15" if his lead over the second place rider was judged sufficient. Since climbers were thought to suffer less on plain stages than sprinters did in the mountains, the winner of a mountain stage was limited to one minute. Team time trials had fallen out of favour and were abandoned, not reappearing in the race until 1954, and the Col d'Iseran - a mountain that has played host to so many of the most glorious moments in the history of the Tour, was included for the first time. The Belgian and French teams (there were in fact three French teams - the national team, the Bleuets made up of riders who for various reasons couldn't be included in the national team and the Cadets, a team of young riders) were considered to be the strongest. The Italians were thought less so, but they had Gino Bartali who, having come very close to victory in 1937, was a favourite for overall victory.

The first seven stages were unremarkable, save for the unwelcome sight of Willi Oberbeck winning Stage 1 in a jersey emblazoned with the swastika of Nazi Germany. Then on Stage 8, when the race reached the Pyrenees, Bartali attacked and nobody could follow him (Georges Speicher tried to do so by hanging onto a car, but was seen by officials and disqualified) - he was the first man over the Aubisque, Tourmalet and Aspin, but then disaster struck when his rear wheel crumpled. The Belgians Félicien Vervaecke and Ward Vissers passed him and went on to take first and second place, Bartali managed to take third place 55" behind them. After the stage, Vervaecke led the General Classification with Bartali second at +2'18", but with time bonuses the next day the gap was reduced to 57".

Gino Bartali

On Stage 14, Bartali attacked again - and for a second time nobody could stop him being the first over Allos, Vars and Izoard. This time his bike didn't let him down and he finished the stage with a overall advantage of 17'45" over the Luxembourgian Matt Clemens and 21'30" over Vervaecke. he lost some time in the Stage 20b time trial, but from that point onwards his victory was never in any doubt; his final advantage was 18'27". André Leducq (winner in 1930 and 1932) and Antonin Magne (winner in 1931 and 1934) mounted a successful two-man escape in the final stage and crossed the line together, being declared joint stage winner. For Leducq, it was a record 25th stage win, since bettered by only Eddy Merckx (34) and Bernard Hinault(28) (and, since Mark Cavendish has 21 and shows no signs of slowing down at the time of writing, probably him too before long). Neither man would ever ride the Tour again.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Gino Bartali (ITA) Italy 148h 29' 12"
2 Félicien Vervaecke (BEL) Belgium +18' 27"
3 Victor Cosson (FRA) France +29' 26"
4 Ward Vissers (BEL) Belgium +35' 08"
5 Matt Clemens (LUX) Luxembourg +42' 08"
6 Mario Vicini (ITA) Italy +44' 59"
7 Jules Lowie (BEL) Belgium +48' 56"
8 Antonin Magne (FRA) France +49' 00"
9 Marcel Kint (BEL) Belgium +59' 49"
10 Dante Gianello (FRA) Bleuets +1h 06' 47


1956
22 stages (Stage 4 split into parts A and B), 4,498km.
The French government ordered the Tour to take secondary roads as much as possible so as to avoid major road closures, but the Tour and caravan was now so large that it frequently became stuck on the narrow routes and caused far more disruption than it would have done had the organisers have been permitted to take it on roads of their own choosing. A rule change allowed punctures to be remedied by changing the wheel, previously the rider had to stop and repair it. For the second time in Tour history, no previous winner started the race - this had last happened in 1927 (1903 isn't counted on account of being the first Tour). Based on form, Charly Gaul therefore became favourite.

Enough climbing talent to make a thousand mortal grimpeurs:
Gaul and Bahamontes

Gaul, who was almost as good against the clock as he was in the mountains, won the Stage 4a but remained 15'04" behind overall; however, he was expected to make up time in the mountains provided the weather was on his side - he hated hot conditions, but when it was cool nobody in the world could follow him. Unforunately, the Pyrenees tended to be too hot for him and he lost time; when the race arrived at the Alps it was looking as though he was going to run out of time - even Stage 17, the second day in the Alps when he was the first man over Sestrieres, didn't win back enough time to make much of a difference. Stage 18 was a different matter entirely: Federico Bahamontes (the only climber to ever rival Gaul) was fastest up Mont Cenis and his less-famous countryman René Marigil fastest on Croix de Fer, then Gaul launched one of the blistering attacks that in the future would win him a Tour. Having simply ridden away from the peloton, he won the stage with 3'22" on Stan Ockers and 7'29" on Gastone Nencini and Bahamontes - who was so angry at his inability to respond that he picked up his bike and threw it into a gulley (his team mates managed to get it back out and persuaded him to continue). It had been a superb stage win, but it was still too late for Gaul to take the General Classification. The King of the Mountains, meanwhile, was his.

Every once in a while, the Tour turns up a completely unexpected winner. Roger Walkowiak, who had only been given opportunity to ride at the very last moment after Gilbert Bauvin was transferred from Nord-Est-Centre to the national team, found himself in the maillot jaune after Stage 7 when he got away in an escape group (for the second time in the race) that won the stage by 18'46", but at such an early point he neither expected nor intended to keep it - team manager Sauveur Ducazeaux told him he'd be far better off losing it and seeing what happened later, because defending it would likely prove too much effort. He lost time over the coming stages, giving up the jersey in Stage 10 and few people thought he'd get it back again. However, in Stage 15 the entire Belgian became ill - an incident they blamed on food poisoning from bad fish served in a hotel the night before but which is commonly supposed (and very possibly was) caused by an unknown drug administered to them; a serious setback for the French team's strongest rivals. In Stage 17 he got away in another successful break, though this time the maillot jaune went to Wouter Wagtmans; but when Walkowiak managed to keep up with Bahamontes as Gaul was winning Stage 18 it passed back to him. Bahamontes was now probably the only rider capable of challenging him, but with only one mountain stage left his chance never came - an almost unknown rider, dismissed as an also-ran before the race even got under way, had won. He was the second rider to win a Tour without a stage win on the way to victory, the last man to do so being Firmin Lambot in 1922, and the only Tour winner to have won a single Tour stage at any point during his career.

Roger Walkowiak

Neither the press nor public were impressed; they'd wanted the young Jacques Anquetil (who had decided not to take part anyway) to win - Jacques Goddet said that the applause as he crossed the last finish line sounded more like a lamentation than a celebration. It wasn't long before the first accusations that he was an undeserving winner, a victor through luck rather than skill and effort (the term "à la Walko," to succeed in that way, became popular for a while), began to appear and he was badly hurt by them.  He rode again the next year but his spirit was broken and he rapidly dropped the bottom of the General Classification, despite a stage win at that year's Vuelta a Espana proving that he was fully capable of winning a stage in his own right; gradually, depressed, he faded away. In retirement he opened a bar in his hometown, but even local cycling fans told him he shouldn't have won and before long he gave that up too, preferring the anonymity of a job at a car factory, where he had worked before becoming a professional cyclist.

Goddet had a totally different opinion. Walowiak, he said, was his all-time favourite winner and the very archetype of what an all-rounder should be and had won the maillot jaune with his legs before keeping it with his head. Later, Bernard Hinault would also defend him - "There are people who say that Walkowiak should not have won the Tour. They should have been on that Tour! He took the jersey, he lost it and he regained it. He was not a thief. The Tour is not a gift," he insisted. Walkowiak is 85 at the time of writing. In time, the cycling world finally came to understand that Goddet and Hinault were correct and, after so many years of shameful treatment that left him preferring to pretend his great achievement had never happened he's now happy to talk about it.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Roger Walkowiak (FRA) North East-Center 124h 01'16"
2 Gilbert Bauvin (FRA) France +1'25"
3 Jan Adriaensens (BEL) Belgium +3'44"
4 Federico Bahamontes (ESP) Spain +10'14"
5 Nino Defilippis (ITA) Italy +10'25"
6 Wout Wagtmans (NED) Netherlands +10'59"
7 Nello Lauredi (FRA) South East France +14'01"
8 Stan Ockers (BEL) Belgium +16'52"
9 René Privat (FRA) France +22'59"
10 Antonio Barbosa (POR) Luxembourg/Mixed +26'03"


1997

Ullrich and Udo Bolts, 1997

21 stages + prologue, 3,943.8km.
Jan Ullrich's final advantage of 9'09" becomes the biggest gap between first and second place since Laurent Fignon beat Bernard Hinault by 10'32" in 1984. Ullrich also wins the Youth category, becoming the first rider to have won it and the General Classification in a single edition.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Jan Ullrich (GER) Telekom 100h 30' 35"
2 Richard Virenque (FRA) Festina +9' 09"
3 Marco Pantani (ITA) Mercatone Uno +14' 03"
4 Abraham Olano (ESP) Banesto +15' 55"
5 Fernando Escartín (ESP) Kelme +20' 32"
6 Francesco Casagrande (ITA) Saeco +22' 47"
7 Bjarne Riis (DEN) Telekom +26' 34"
8 José Maria Jimenez (ESP) Banesto +31' 17"
9 Laurent Dufaux (SUI) Festina +31' 55"
10 Roberto Conti (ITA) Mercatone Uno +32' 26"


2003

Armstrong in the maillot jaune after Stage 8, 2003

20 stages + prologue, 3,427.5km.
Unusually for a modern Tour, the 2003 edition started and ended in Paris - to mark the race's first century, celebrations also inspiring the organisers to keep the race entirely in France, as had been the case with early editions. The race was expected to be - and was - one of the most hotly-contested in many years and numerous favourites attempted to prevent Lance Armstrong from matching the five-victory record shared by Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain; yet statistics show - and he confesses - that his preformance in this edition was the worst of his seven wins. The Tour was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award, a prize given to events and organisations that "contribute to encouraging and promoting scientific, cultural and humanistic values that form part of mankind's universal heritage."

In 2003, there was an incident that is likely to remain unique - as fans watched the tail end of the peloton go by on Galibier, they were asked to move a little further along the road. Then, without warning, a man on a mountain bike hurtled down towards the road from higher up the slope, launched into the air from a small rocky ledge and jumped clear across the riders, landing (and crashing) on the rock-strewn terrain on the other side. His name was Dave Watson, a professional freerider with the Kona Clump team; after being given a check-over by paramedics, police decided that his assistants (from a French mountain bike magazine) hadn't endangered any member of the public other than Dave himself, he was allowed to go on his way.

Lance Armstrong, who won this edition and six others, would be stripped of all his Tour victories in 2012 following an investigation into doping.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal Service 83h 41' 12" (disqualified)
2 Jan Ullrich (GER) Bianchi +1' 01"
3 Alexandre Vinokourov (KAZ) Telekom +4' 14"
4 Tyler Hamilton (USA) Team CSC +6' 17"
5 Haimar Zubeldia (ESP) Euskaltel +6' 51"
6 Iban Mayo (ESP) Euskaltel +7' 06"
7 Ivan Basso (ITA) Fassa Bortolo +10' 12"
8 Christophe Moreau (FRA) Crédit Agricole +12' 28"
9 Carlos Sastre (ESP) Team CSC +18' 49"
10 Francisco Mancebo (ESP) iBanesto.com +19' 15"


2008

Sastre in yellow, 2008

21 stages, 3,559km.
The bonification system - which awarded time bonuses to the winners of intermediate sprints and stages - was abandoned. A feud between the ASO and the UCI finally boiled over when the ASO announced that it wasn't inviting Astana to the race due to the team's involvement in Operacion Puerto, despite a UCI rule stating that all ProTour teams were to be invited to the Grand Tours; the ASO got its way. The race remained almost entirely in France, dipping briefly into Italy at the end of Stage 15 and the start of Stage 16. Mark Cavendish won his first four Tour stages but didn't place in the top ten on points, Bernard Kohl won the King of the Mountains and was third overall but was later shown to have doped with CERA, an EPO variant, and was disqualified. To date, second place Carlos Sastre - who also won overall - has not been upgraded in the Mountains, nor has Denis Menchov in the General Classification.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Carlos Sastre (ESP) Team CSC 87h 52' 52"
2 Cadel Evans (AUS) Silence-Lotto +0' 58"
3  ---
4 Denis Menchov (RUS) Rabobank +2' 10"
5 Christian Vande Velde (USA) Garmin +3' 05"
6 Fränk Schleck (LUX) Team CSC +4' 28"
7 Samuel Sánchez (ESP) Euskaltel +6' 25"
8 Kim Kirchen (LUX) Team Columbia +6' 55"
9 Alejandro Valverde (ESP) Caisse d'Epargne +7' 12"
10 Tadej Valjavec (SLO) Ag2r +9' 05"

Eduardo Chozas
Born in Madrid on this day in 1960, Eduardo Chozas, a professional rider from 1980 to 1993, has been largely fogotten today despite winning two stages at the Giro d'Italia (Stage 5, 1983; Stage 2, 1990) and four stages at the Tour de France (Stage 15, 1985; Stage 11, 1986; Stage 22, 1987, Stage 13, 1990 - when he also took his best General Classification result, sixth, and won the overall Combativity Award).

His other claim to fame is that he entered more Grand Tours than any other man in the history of cycling - six editions of the Tour de France, seven editions of the Giro d'Italia and fourteen editions of the Vuelta a Espana. He finished 26 of them, also a record, abandoning only the 1984 Vuelta.

Cyclists born on this day: Philippe Gilbert (Belgium, 1982); Günter Kaslowski (Germany, 1934, died 2001); Ali Çetiner (Turkey, 1925); Raimondas Vilčinskas (Lithuania, 1977); Jan Kudra (Poland, 1937); Hernán López (Argentina, 1973); Amadu Yusufu (Malawi, 1958); Pramote Sangskulrote (Thailand, 1952); Glenn Magnusson (Sweden, 1969); Jo Jae-Hyeon (South Korea, 1938); Alex Zülle (Switzerland, 1968); Gustav Hentschel (USA, 1896, died 1980); Frank Elliott (Canada, 1911, died 1964); Alexander Kristoff (Norway, 1987); Ernest Bens (Belgium, 1949); Ralf Elshof (Netherlands, 1962); ...and Paul Smith, the fashion designed who wanted to be a professional cyclist (Great Britain, 1946).

Daily Cycling Facts 04.07.2014

The Tour de France began on this day in 1906, 1935, 1951, 1986, 1988, 1992 and 2009.

1906

13 stages, 4,545km.
Since its inception and early indication of continuing success, Henri Desgrange had increased the length of the Tour and it was now long enough to closely follow the borders of France. There had been mountains right from the first edition, but it wasn't until 1905 that points were offered to the first riders to the top; that had also proved a success, so in 1906 the Massif Central was added. To reflect the fact that the race was now much longer and more difficult, the prize fund was increased to 25,000 francs - the winner would receive 5,000 francs which, using the ever-popular Baguette Index that takes inflation and the cost of living at that time into account, would have bought him 30,000 standard loaves.

Faber

One notable rule change was that differences in finishing times no longer had any effect on the overall outcome: now only the finishing order mattered and second place would not receive a smaller bonus no matter how long he finished after first place on any stage. The flamme rouge, a triangular red flag that indicates the final kilometre, nowadays hung from a four-legged inflatable that straddles the road, was introduced and for the first time the race ventured beyond France - that it went into Alsace-Lorraine, at that time controlled by Germany and a region that was instrumental in the build-up to the Dreyfus Affair (which, in a round-about way, had given rise to the Tour), was loaded with political symbolism. One final new feature was the transfer between stages - in the past, a stage always began where the previous stage ended; this year Stage 1 ended in Lille and Stage 2 began in Douai, around 40km to the south. 76 riders started the race, of whom one was from Luxembourg (François Faber, who won three years later), one was German, four were Belgian and 70 were French. As in 1905, they were split between two categories, the coureurs de vitesse and the coureurs sur machines poinçonnées - the first, who were expected to use the same bike and equipment throughout the race, were intended to be the elite, supermen who did not require a change to bikes fitted with lower gears in the mountains as did the mere mortal coureurs sur machines poinçonnées. The bike companies that sponsored the teams had unexpectedly chosen to favour the second category in 1905 because it was felt that the average person following the race (ie; somebody who might go away and buy a bike) was more likely to identify with them; in 1906 they realised that cycling fans were nothing if not dreamers and would be more likely to buy the bike and equipment favoured by a coureur de vitesse in the hope that, by doing so, they too would become great (and that, of course, is still very much the case today, as you'll know if you've noticed all the overweight men in full Team Sky kit riding around on £5,000+ bikes).

The first 2km of Stage 1 featured roads so bad that organisers had to neutralise the race temporarily and lead the riders on foot to a point from which they could remount and set off. Since the Tour began in 1903, spectators had frequently spread nails over the road - sometimes this was done strategically in order to give one or more riders a chance to build a lead (in which case, the favoured rider/s were almost certainly in on it) and sometimes for the sheer devilment of doing so. 1906 was no different and the first incident came in the same stage, with all the riders except Lucien Petit-Breton lost time to punctures (Petit-Breton seems to have been reasonably honest for a cyclist and by the standards of his time, but that does look rather suspicious). René Pottier was not so fortunate: having used up all his spare tyres, he had to ride 25km on bare wooden rims in search of replacements and ended up 30' behind the peloton. That he then caught up, rode with Petit-Breton to the last climb and then sprinted away to win the stage is tribute to his athletic prowess.

Pottier had been the first man to the summit of the Ballon d'Alsace when it became the first official climb in 1905, and as perhaps the world's first mountains specialist the 1906 parcours was very much to his liking. Stage 2 featured another ascent of the peak; this time he rode solo for 220km and beat second-place Georges Passerieu by 48', then made excellent use of the Alps - by the end of Stage 5, from which point it was plain stages all the way, he had a nine point lead on Passerieu and twelves points on third-pace Émile Georget. Meanwhile, during Stage 3, Gaston Tuvache, Julien Gabory, Henri Gauban and Maurice Carrere had all been disqualified when they were seen taking a train to complete part of the parcours.

Louis Trousselier

From Stage 7, 1905 winner Louis Trousellier began to impress after a disappointing first half that had left him far behind in the General Classification. He won that stage, recording an equal time to Passerieu and Petit-Breton, then beat Pottier by 27'58 (and Passerieu by 58'58") on Stage 8, when he came second behind Jean-Baptiste Dortinacq. On Stage 9, which he again won, he beat Petit-Breton by 2" and Pottier by 1h10'02" and won again on Stage 10, this time recording and equal time to Petit-Breton, beating Passerieu by 55'30" and Pottier by a second more. He won for a third consecutive time on Stage 11, but this time the outcome was closer with the four men finishing within 30" of one another. He and Pottier equaled winner Passerieu's time on Stage 12, but they were 3h55' ahead of Petit-Breton (tenth-place Eugène Christophe, who was riding his first Tour, arrived more than six hours after the winner), then on the final stage he finished 3'03" behind Pottier and Passerieu but 45'16" ahead of Petit-Breton. Yet, because the winner was selected according to points rather than accumulated time, these gains did him no favours and had it not have been for the thanks Peugeot no doubt paid him for all those headline-grabbing stage wins, he may as well have not bothered and finished each of them in the sprint.

Pottier

As it was, Pottier won with an eight-point advantage over Passerieu. Later that year he won the Bol d'Or 24 Hour race at the Velodrome Buffalo with a distance of 925.290km, but he would not be back in 1907 to try for another Tour victory - early that year, he learned that his wife had had an affair whilst he was away at the Tour and, on the 25th of January when he was 27 years old, he hanged himself from the hook upon which he usually hung his bike.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 René Pottier (FRA) Peugeot 31
2 Georges Passerieu (FRA) Peugeot 39
3 Louis Trousselier (FRA) Peugeot 61
4 Lucien Petit-Breton (FRA) Peugeot 65
5 Emile Georget (FRA) Alcyon–Dunlop 80
6 Aloïs Catteau (BEL) Alcyon–Dunlop 129
7 Édouard Wattelier (FRA) Labor 137
8 Léon Georget (FRA) Alcyon–Dunlop 152
9 Eugène Christophe (FRA) Labor 156
10 Anthony Wattelier (FRA) Alcyon–Dunlop 168


1935
21 stages (Stages 5, 13, 14, 18, 19 and 20 split into parts A and B), 4,338km.
In 1906 the prize money was increased to 25,000 francs - 29 years later, it had grown to 1,092,050f, far beyond inflation (unfortunately, the first prize that year was not made public and so we can't use the Baguette Index - however, if we assume it was 100,000f, as it was when the prize fund was 1,000,000f four years later, it would have bought around 130,000 loaves: 100,000 more than the 1906 winner received).

Romain Maes deals with a puncture

The French team was favourite; they had three previous winners and the climbers Maurice Archambaud and René Vietto, as well as individuals Charles Pélissier and Roger Lapébie who would likely assist them and, should any team member abandon, be able to provide a replacement. However, right from the start it became apparent that fortune was not on their side this year - in the first stage, the Belgian Romain Maes made it to a railway crossing seconds before the barriers closed and got through ahead of the pack, which had to wait. The 1' advantage he thus achieved allowed him to win the stage by 53" despite a co-ordinated attempt to catch him. He lost a lot of time to Pélissier after a series of punctures in Stage 2 but retained his overall lead. Stage 4 was a disaster for the French with their best-placed rider, Lapébie, coming tenth - Maes finished the stage with an overall advantage of 5'29". Stage 5a was a plain road race stage which went to Archambaud, who was already too far down in the General Classification for the 1'31" he won by to make much difference to Maes. However, team leader Antonin Magne was expected to take back significant - perhaps even decisive - time in the 5b time trial. He did do well, finishing only 2" behind stage winner Rafaele di Paco, but Maes did much better than expected and lost only 58" from his lead. He remained in the maillot jaune and, with sixteen stages to go, he'd have plenty of chances to take it back should he lose in the next week.

Cepeda, first man to die on the Tour

Stage 7 was a dark day in Tour history. First, Magne was hit by a car on the Col du Telegraphe and had to be carried in agony to an ambulance - the race was over for him, and France had lost its main contender. Later in the stage, Francesco Cepeda's front tyre came away from the wheel rim and burst during a high-speed descent on Galibier; he crashed hard and died from his injuries en route to hospital. French rider Adolphe Helière drowned in 1910, but that had happened on a rest day - 32 years after it began, the Tour had claimed its first victim.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Romain Maes (BEL) Belgium 141h 32' 00"
2 Ambrogio Morelli (ITA) Italian individuals +17' 52"
3 Félicien Vervaecke (BEL) Belgium +24' 06"
4 Sylvère Maes (BEL) Belgian individuals +35' 24"
5 Jules Lowie (BEL) Belgian individuals +51' 26"
6 Georges Speicher (FRA) France +54' 29"
7 Maurice Archambaud (FRA) France +1h 09' 28"
8 René Vietto (FRA) France +1h 21' 03"
9 Gabriel Ruozzi (FRA) Touriste-routier +1h 34' 02"
10 Oskar Thierbach (GER) Germany +2h 00' 04"


1951
24 stages, 4,690km.

Mont Ventoux first featured in the 1951 Tour

For the second time in its history, the Tour started outside Paris - this time it was in Metz (the last time, in 1926, it had been Evian). Over the years, as more mountains and region were added, the race had gradually drifted away from tradition of following the borders of the country. This year, the break was made - the parcours ventured far towards the centre of France on several occasions. 1951 was all about two rivalries - the Italians Coppi and Bartali and the Swiss riders Hugo Koblet and Ferdinand Kübler, but it was the Swiss who were the more interesting and the parallels between them and the later rivalry between Hinault and Fignon are striking: Kübler, like Hinault, was wild, a semi-savage who snorted and frothed at the mouth; Koblet, like Fignon, was urbane, suave, well-mannered and would often pull out a comb to smarten his appearance mid-race (and, one one notable occasion, as he crossed the finish line in first place). It would be a race that provided several new footnotes in the history of cycling, but none of them was as notable as Stage 17 during which the Tour visited Mont Ventoux - where some of its most heroic and tragic events would later take place - for the first time. It would be a sad race for Coppi: his brother, Serse, had been killed in an accident and he was in a terrible state, collapsing from grief (some say it was food poisoning) on Stage 16 and finishing tenth overall despite concerted efforts by Bartali and Fiorenzo Magni to get him back into contention.

Hugo Koblet

Right from the Stage 1 start line, Koblet was on the attack and it took the peloton 40km to catch him, leaving no doubt that he was here with every intention of doing well, but then he settled into the rhythm of the first week and waited for the first time trial where he knew he could win time. He won it, but not without an argument - Louison Bobet was originally declared winner by one second, but Koblet protested to organisers. When intermediate time checks were re-examined, it was found that Bobet could not possibly have won and that a minute had somehow been subtracted from his time. After that, Koblet used a stopwatch to keep his own records. On Stage 11, he attacked from 37km but the peloton declined to respond, believing that the hot weather would foil his plans, until being informed that he'd built a lead of three minutes and was still gaining. They gave chase, but even with 100km in which to catch him he stayed away and won by 2'35" - the maillot jaune was not yet his, but he was close.

Wim van Est (who had started his cycling career as a tobacco smuggler rather than a racer) became the first Dutchman to wear the maillot jaune when he won Stage 12, but then began to lose a lot of time the next day on the Aubisque, not helped at all by a puncture. He tried to make up for it on the descent but made what could very easily have been a fatal mistake - he tried to follow Fiorenzo Magni down the mountain, and Magni was a much better descender. The inevitable happened and he crashed, but was unhurt and carried on. Then he lost control again, an this time he plunged over the edge of the road and into a ravine.

Time stands still whenever something like this happens; team mates, support crew and spectators are reluctant to look over the edge for fear of seeing a smashed corpse lying far below them. However, when they did they were greeted by the site of van Est looking back up at them - he had fallen between 30 and 70m (reports vary widely), yet was somehow unharmed. He later described the experience: "I was lucky because I undid the pedalstraps just before I started to descend. When I fell I kicked my bike away and held my hands over my head. In a few seconds I saw my whole life. My fall was broken by some young trees and I caught one of these trees."

He tried to climb back up to the road but couldn't, so his manager called for a rope - but nobody nearby had one, so they had to improvise one by tying together the team's entire supply of spare tyres. With that, they managed to pull him out and got him into the ambulance that had by now arrived, but he climbed back out and went looking for a bike so he could finish the the stage. Before he could find one, he was persuaded that it might not be such a bad idea to go to hospital just to be checked over and, regretfully, he abandoned the race. The tyres had been stretched and ruined so when they were unable to secure any more, the rest of the team also had to abandon..

That death-defying plunge turned out to be highly profitable for van Est. The Dutch team had been supplied with watches by Pontiac, better known as a car manufacturer, who knew a good advertising opportunity when they saw one. Thus, the rider earned a decent income appearing in adverts with the slogan "Seventy meters deep I dropped, my heart stood still but my Pontiac never stopped!"

Koblet took the yellow jersey the next day when he won Stage 14 and, gradually increasing his advantage with a few more minutes every day, he never let it go again. It was in the Stage 22 time trial that he secured overall victory, winning the stage by 4'50" and increasing his overall lead to 22" over second-place Raphaël Géminiani. Afterwards, Géminiani said, "If there were two Koblets in the sport, I would retire tomorrow."

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Hugo Koblet (SUI) Switzerland 142h 20' 14"
2 Raphaël Géminiani (FRA) France +22' 00"
3 Lucien Lazaridès (FRA) France +24' 16"
4 Gino Bartali (ITA) Italy +29' 09"
5 Stan Ockers (BEL) Belgium +32' 53"
6 Pierre Barbotin (FRA) France +36' 40"
7 Fiorenzo Magni (ITA) Italy +39' 14"
8 Gilbert Bauvin (FRA) East–South East +45' 53"
9 Bernardo Ruiz (ESP) Spain +45' 55"
10 Fausto Coppi (ITA) Italy +46' 51"


1986

Hinault (combination) and Lemond (yellow)

23 stages + prologue, 4,094km.
In 1985, Bernard Hinault had taken his record-equaling fifth victory, but had only been able to do so with the help of his La Vie Claire team mate Greg Lemond. In return, he had promised that he would ride for Lemond the following year. The team was back (now renamed La Vie Claire-Wonder-Radar, which is surely the best team name since Genial Lucifer in the first half of the century): whether or not Hinault meant to keep his promise is still open for debate - there are those who say that, as Hinault claims, his savage attacks throughout the race were designed to crush the opponents of the man he always knew would win; there are as many who claim that he intended to wear down Lemond, and take a sixth victory. Whatever the truth may be, it worked - one by one the main contenders were swept aside by Hinault's onslaught. For a while, the two men made up: Hinault launched a suicidal attack on the Alpe d'Huez, dropping everyone but Lemond, and they crossed the finish line hand-in-hand. Finally, Lemond won by 3'10" - the first ever American to win the Tour and the beginning of a new era in cycling. Shortly afterwards, another era came to an end - Hinault, the last Frenchman to have won a Tour, retired.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Greg LeMond (USA) La Vie Claire-Wonder-Radar 110h 35' 19"
2 Bernard Hinault (FRA) La Vie Claire-Wonder-Radar +3' 10"
3 Urs Zimmermann (SUI) Carrera +10' 54"
4 Andrew Hampsten (USA) La Vie Claire-Wonder-Radar +18' 44"
5 Claude Criquielion (BEL) Hitachi-Marc-Splendor +24' 36"
6 Ronan Pensec (FRA) Peugeot-Shell +25' 59"
7 Niki Rüttimann (SUI) La Vie Claire-Wonder-Radar +30' 52"
8 Álvaro Pino (ESP) Zor-B.H +33' 00"
9 Steven Rooks (NED) PDM +33' 22"
10 Yvon Madiot (FRA) Système U +33' 27"

1988
22 stages + prelude, 3,281km.
Unusually, this edition started on a Monday - the reason being that the UCI had brought in a new rule stipulating that no Grand Tour was permitted to encompass three weekends. To get around the problem, organisers abandoned the prologue and replaced it with an unofficial prelude time trial. To prevent the UCI saying that the prelude was in fact a prologue under a different name and that the race therefore covered three weekends, each team rode for 3.8km before a nominated rider completed the last 1km as a solo time trial. The results would not be counted towards the overall standings, but the fastest rider would start the Tour wearing the maillot jaune. So, what it really was was a 1km time trial prologue in disguise.

Gert-Jan Theunisse of PDM-Concorde looked like challenging team leader Pedro Delgado for a while, but then an anti-doping test revealed suspiciously high testosterone levels and he received a 10' penalty and dropped for fifth to eleventh place overall. Delgado also failed a control that revealed traces of probenecid - a drug with no recognised performance-enhancing effects but which can be used as a masking agent for other drugs that do. However, at that time probenecid had not yet been added to the UCI's list of banned substances and so the rider could not be punished; Tour director Xavier Louy, who had replaced previous director Jean-François Naquet-Radiguet weeks before the race began, asked him to leave voluntarily, but Delgado declined to do so. The Amaury Sports Organisation, owners of the Tour (and numerous other events around the world), felt that Louy's handling of the case was unsatisfactory and, a few months afterwards, replaced him with Jean-Marie Leblanc who occupied the position until retirement when it passed over to current director Christian Prudhomme.

Puy de Dôme

Stage 19 finished on the Puy de Dôme, a 1,464m dormant volcano in the Massif Central that had played host to some of the most remarkable duels in Tour history. As the race grew, the corkscrew road up to the summit had become too narrow for the sheer number of riders taking part - this was the last time it was featured and it'll probably never feature again.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Pedro Delgado (ESP) Reynolds 84h 27' 53"
2 Steven Rooks (NED) P.D.M. +7' 13"
3 Fabio Parra (COL) Kelme +9' 58"
4 Steve Bauer (CAN) Weinmann-La Suisse-SMM Uster +12' 15"
5 Eric Boyer (FRA) System U +14' 04"
6 Luis Herrera (COL) Café de Colombia +14' 36"
7 Ronan Pensec (FRA) Z-Peugeot +16' 52"
8 Álvaro Pino (ESP) BH +18' 36"
9 Peter Winnen (NED) Panasonic +19' 12"
10 Denis Roux (FRA) Z-Peugeot +20' 08"


1992
21 stages + prologue, 3,975km.
Lemond, who discovered soon after the race began that his career would soon end, formed an alliance with Claudio Chiappucci that had one aim - to do as much damage to Miguel Indurain and his attempt for a second victory as possible.

Miguel Indurain, 1993

The greatest ride of Chiappucci's career happened in Stage 13. Previously considered a respectable if inconsistent climber, he attacked on the first climb with a small group going with him while Indurain and Gianni Bugno, both certain that such an early break was doomed to failure, let them go. When there was 100km to go it seemed that the break would soon be caught, but Chiappucci had others ideas and attacked again on the Col d'Iseran. He was the first man to the summit, then set about increasing his lead on the descent - and became virtual race leader, climbing Le Mont-Cenis alone. Bugno was now worried and faced a dilemma: did he let Chiappucci continue unchallenged, thus risking any chance he still had at winning overall, or did he chase - in which case, Indurain would surely follow and leave him no better off? Damned no matter what he did, he chose the second option - and the moment he did, Indurain was onto him. Andy Hampsten and Franco Vona joined them and, surely but slowly, they began grinding away at Chiappucci's advantage.  On Sestriere, when the time the finish line drew near, Chiappucci's lead was looking fragile - especially when Indurain attacked on his own and began gaining time just as the Italian became bogged down in the ecstatic tifosi.

And Indurain cracked. Chiappucci's lead began to grow again and, while he had no chance of beating the Spaniard overall, he'd found a place among the ranks of the greatest riders.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Miguel Indurain (ESP) Banesto 100h 49' 30"
2 Claudio Chiappucci (ITA) Carrera Jeans-Vagabond +4' 35"
3 Gianni Bugno (ITA) Gatorade +10' 49"
4 Andrew Hampsten (USA) Motorola +13' 40"
5 Pascal Lino (FRA) RMO +14' 37"
6 Pedro Delgado (ESP) Banesto +15' 16"
7 Erik Breukink (NED) PDM +18' 51"
8 Giancarlo Perini (ITA) Carrera Jeans-Vagabond +19' 16"
9 Stephen Roche (IRE) Carrera Jeans-Vagabond +20' 23"
10 Jens Heppner (GER) Telekom +25' 30"


2009

Alberto Contador

21 stages, 3,459.5km.
The UCI decided to ban radio communication between riders and the team cars in Stage 10, but riders rode non-competitively in protest and radios were back the next day. Following the first half of the race, in which Mark Cavendish came to the fore with four stage wins (he won two more in the later stages) and became the first British rider to have led the Points competition for two consecutive days. When he won Stage 19, he became the most successful British rider at the Tour in history.

Stage 4 was the first team time trial featured in the Tour since 2005. During Stage 13, Oscar Freire and Julian Dean were hit by airgun pellets fired. Freire, who had to have a pellet surgically removed from his leg, said he'd heard three shots; Dean was hit on his finger. Both men continued the race as police hunted two teenagers wanted in connection with the incident.

As soon as the race reached the Alps in Stage 15, Alberto Contador took control - only Andy Schleck could stay near him, revealing himself to be a likely challenger within another year or two. Stage 20 featured a summit finish atop Ventoux, won by Juan Manuel Gárate; Contador and Schleck both finished 38" after him while Lance Armstrong (making a brief return from retirement) was fifth at +41".

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Alberto Contador (ESP) Astana 85h 48' 35"
2 Andy Schleck (LUX) Team Saxo Bank +4' 11"
Lance Armstrong (USA) Astana +5' 24" (disqualified)
3 Bradley Wiggins (GBR) Garmin +6' 01"
4 Fränk Schleck (LUX) Team Saxo Bank +6' 04"
5 Andreas Klöden (GER) Astana +6' 42"
6 Vincenzo Nibali (ITA) Liquigas +7' 35"
7 Christian Vande Velde (USA) Garmin +12' 04"
8 Roman Kreuziger (CZE) Liquigas +14' 16"
9 Christophe Le Mével (FRA) Française des Jeux +14' 25"
    Mikel Astarloza (ESP) Euskaltel-Euskadi 14'44" (disqualified)
11 Sandy Casar (FRA) Française des Jeux +17'19"


Danny Van Haute, born in Chicago on this day in 1957, rode with the victorious Pursuit team at the US National Championships in 1978, 1984 and 1985. He is now team director of Jelly Belly Cycling.

Cyclists born on this day: Will Wright (Great Britain, 1973); Kevin Nichols (Australia, 1955); Connie Paraskevin-Young (USA, 1961); Burkhard Ebert (Germany, 1942); Paul Carbutt (Great Britain, 1950, died 2004); Annabella Stropparo (Italy, 1968); Matthew Walsh (Great Britain, 1887); Petra Grimbergen (Netherlands, 1970); Karin Thürig (Switzerland, 1972); Paul Frantz (Luxembourg, 1915, died 1995).

Daily Cycling Facts 03.07.2014

The Tour de France began on this day in 1910, 1934, 1953, 1993, 1999, 2004 and 2010.

1910
15 stages, 4,737km.
Having consisted of 14 stages since 1907, in 1910 the Tour grew to 15. For the first time, the race visited the Pyrenees which in those days seemed far more remote and wild than today, their high passes haunted by bandits and bears rather than holiday-makers on their way to Spain; hence race directeur Henri Desgrange's initial reluctance to send the race up there - he was concerned that the riders would be robbed, or eaten.

Some of the staff at L'Auto, meanwhile, were keen to include the high mountains and pointed at the popularity of the stages in the lower mountains that had been included in the Tour since 1905. Desgrange was a man who didn't like to admit it when he was wrong but he couldn't deny that those stages had indeed drawn huge numbers of spectators and, more importantly, boosted sales of the newspaper, so eventually he gave them permission to investigate the possibility of including the Pyrenees. Nobody at the paper had ever actually been there, so Adolphe Steinès - who had plotted out the route of every Tour since the first in 1903 - was given the task of traveling south to find out if it was even feasible that a bicycle could be ridden up there.

Steinès arrived on the 27th of January and checked into an inn. When he explained to the innkeeper that he'd be going up the mountains he was told that the high cols were virtually impassable in high summer, never mind January, and warned not to attempt it. Nevertheless, he hired a car and set out. Somewhere near the summit, the snow became so deep that the car could go no further, so Steinès tried to walk the rest of the way. Soon he became lost. Then he fell into a ravine, and would almost certainly have frozen to death had the innkeeper not alerted a search party that finally located him at 3am.

The next day, Steinès sent a telegram to Desgrange, choosing to be rather economical with the truth because he knew that a stage in the mountains would prove to be such a spectacle: "Have crossed the Tourmalet on foot STOP Road passable to vehicles STOP No snow STOP" By 1910, the Tour's reputation had spread and 136 riders signed up to take part. When newspapers announced that the Pyrenees were to be included - which was "dangerous" and "bizarre," they said, echoing the language still used by the more conservative press whenever anyone tries anything new to this day - 26 of them asked to be removed from the list. Those riders that were brave enough to start the race were still worried, however, and so Desgrange made arrangements to rescue any who found themselves unable to continue. Thus the Tour gained its voiture ballai, the broom wagon, for the first time - 37 years before the birth (and, incredibly, 71 years before the last one rolled off the production line) of the Citroen H van, which most people stiff think of when they hear the term broom wagon. Desgrange famously once said that the ideal Tour would be one in which only one rider finished, but even he apparently felt the Pyrenees were inhumane, so he made a rule that riders who ended up in the broom wagon during the mountain stages would be permitted to start again on the next stage.

There were two other big changes for 1910. First of all, riders were grouped into teams - previously, while riders might have shared sponsors, they were expected to ride as individuals without providing or receiving any form of assistance from other riders (the three teams that took part, Alcyon, Legnano and Le Globe, accounted for thirty riders between them; the rest were all competing individually). Secondly, some of them were taking advantage of a major technical innovation - their bikes had gears.

Charles Crupelandt, who became a hero in the First World War and was later treated appallingly by rival riders before dying in terrible poverty, won the first stage; then François Faber, who also became a hero in the War, won Stage 2. Émile Georget took Stage 3, then Faber, the Tour's first sprint specialist, won the fourth. Octave Lapize was the victor Stage 5, followed by Julien Maitron on Stage 6 - the only Tour stage he ever won.

1934

Fédérico Ezquerra in the mountains, 1934

23 stages (one split), 4,363km.
Organisers made a few rule changes. The first was an alteration to bonus times, with the winner of each stage now receiving a minute-and-a-half rather than two minutes; secondly, while there had been team time trials in earlier Tours, an individual time trial was included for the first time (Stage 21b). This came about due to the popularity of the ITT-based Grand Prix des Nations, first run in 1932 without much interest and then far more successfully a year later by L'Auto's rival newspaper Paris-Soir (the GP des Nations was itself a response to L'Auto's decision to start Tour stages later in the day, thus preventing Paris-Soir - which was published each evening, rather than in the morning as L'Auto was - from being able to be the first newspaper with each day's Tour results. This had negatively impacted L'Auto's sales and, now that the Tour was no longer open to sponsored trade teams, L'Auto was ultimately responsible for paying all the national teams' food and accommodation costs and thus needed every penny it could make). The addition was not universally favoured by the riders: some said it would encourage riders to forget about team work in other stages. Climbers were especially dismissive - René Vietto claimed that it was dull and that a race should be a test of a rider's intelligence as well as horsepower. The Tour only paid for food and lodgings for the national team riders; there were also twenty riders who paid their own way (some were rich enough to live in considerable luxury, sometimes far better than the team members; others were happy to sleep anywhere they could and eat whatever they found) - these riders had previously been known as touriste-routiers, for the first time in 1934 they became known as independents.

It was during this edition that Vietto rather undeservedly became a popular hero. His team leader, Antonin Magne, had dominated the race from the first stage, wearing the yellow jersey ever since (and would keep it throughout the race). Then disaster struck on the way to the spa town of Aix-les-Thermes during Stage 15 when he rode into a pothole and splintered his wooden front wheel rim. So that he could continue, he took Vietto's wheel, leaving him at the roadside. He discovered a short way further along the road that his frame was damaged too, so he waited for the next rider from his team - Georges Speicher - and took his bike. Thus began one of the most interesting legends in the long history of the Tour.

Vietto, "all alone"

In another version - which is somewhat more accurate - Magne could not make Vietto's wheel fit into his forks and waited for Speicher before taking his wheel instead. Speicher also couldn't use Vietto's wheel. Vietto, meanwhile, was still waiting for a team car to give him another a wheel and had become so upset that his chances of winning the stage - though the time he lost, eight minutes and tiny when compared to the winning margins of the day, would probably have had little if any effect on his overall Tour result (some say that we should also take into account that he was a 20-year-old domestique riding his first Tour, but the fact that he won four stages and came 5th overall that year suggests that he was a stronger rider than most debutantes) - that he'd started crying. A photographer found him at the side of the road and took the picture, which was published the following day accompanied by a story sometimes attributed to future race director Jacques Goddet and earned the rider the adoration of the French public (and, since his new celebrity would allow him to charge high fees to appear at future races, set him up for life). Henri Desgrange, for all his usual enthusiasm for anything that might increase his race's mythos, was said to have been furious at the fabrication and swore he would reveal the truth - but the public, fortunately, seem to have realised that truth should not stand in the way of a good story.

The following day, Magne once again had trouble and broke his back wheel on the fast descent of the Portet d'Aspet. Vietto, trying to make up time, was out in front and didn't see it happen so had carried on. At the bottom of the mountain, an official beckoned him over and relayed the news, informing him that his leader was stuck without support. So Vietto turned around and rode back up to find him, and handed over his bike. Italian Guiseppe Martano, Magne's most dangerous rival, would break his own bike in Stage 17, leaving the Frenchman to finish the Tour without challenge.

Antonin Magne in the lead

Feeling sorry for him? Let's delve a little deeper. The famous photograph shows poor Vietto all alone in the world as he waits for a new wheel, but in fact the photographer had realised that he would have a sensational image once he'd cropped out the apparently quite sizable crowd of people who had gathered around the stricken rider and were taking care of him (it remains, however, one of the sport's most iconic images, commonly used to illustrate the glorious pain and hardship of the Tour). Secondly, while Magne was grateful for his team mate's actions, Vietto was far from magnanimous - he verbally attacked his leader and told him he was a bad rider when he tried to thank him. Magne continued to express thanks for the rest of his life, even though he wasn't permitted to ride the victory lap to which he was rightfully entitiled and angry crowds waved banners declaring Vietto to be the "moral winner." Vietto became increasingly bitter as he refused to let go of the incident and ended up becoming a distinctly unpleasant bully: Tour legend has it - without proof, since none of the people involved are still alive - that when he lost a toe to an infection, he demanded that his domestique Apo Lazaridès chopped off one of his own toes too. "But why? I don't need to," the Greek rider protested. "Because I say so," Vietto replied. Lazaridès, whilst perhaps not the most intelligent rider in cycling history, was not lacking in bravery - he had risked death at the hands of the Nazis when he used his bike to transport supplies through the mountains to the Resistance during the Occupation of France, and so the toe came off. He walked with a limp until the 30th of October 1988, the day he died. The legend says that Magne's toe is kept in a jar filled with formaldehyde (or absinthe, in some versions) in a bar in Marseilles - but nobody seems to know which bar.

Magne won the individual time trial, though he might not have done had Giuseppe Martano's frame not snapped, and secured his General Classification lead. It was his second win (the first was in 1931) and the fifth consecutive victory for France.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Antonin Magne (FRA) France 147h 13' 58"
2 Giuseppe Martano (ITA) Italy +27' 31"
3 Roger Lapébie (FRA) France +52' 15"
4 Félicien Vervaecke (BEL) Individual +57' 40"
5 René Vietto (FRA) France +59' 02"
6 Ambrogio Morelli (ITA) Individual +1h 12' 02"
7 Ludwig Geyer (GER) Germany +1h 12' 51"
8 Sylvère Maes (BEL) Individual +1h 20' 56"
9 Mariano Cañardo (ESP) Switzerland/Spain +1h 29' 02"
10 Vicente Trueba (ESP) Switzerland/Spain +1h 40' 39"


1953
22 stages, 4,479km.
To mark the half-century since the first Tour, two new competitions were introduced - the first was the Super-Combativity award, given to rider judged to have ridden most aggressively or courageously throughout the race (the daily Combativity award was first given the year before). The second was the Points competition, based upon the points system used to decide the overall winner between 1905 and 1912 before return to the accumulated time format and designed to keep the sprinters interested throughout the race. The jersey given to the rider with the most points (between 1905 and 1912, the winner of a sprint was given zero points, second place one point and so on - so the idea then was to amass as few points rather than as many as possible) was green because it was sponsored by a manufacturer of green lawnmowers.

Hugo Koblet

1952 winner Fausto Coppi did not take part, officially due to an injury - many wondered if in actual fact he wanted to save himself for the World Championships (which he would win for the only time that year), others thought he just didn't want to be on the same time as his old rival Gino Bartali. Whatever the reason, Louison Bobet and 1951 winner Hugo Koblet became favourites in his absence. Bobet was a controversial choice among the French as team leader - the Italians and Swiss had won the last five editions and the race's home nation was becoming desperate for victory; Bobet was still haunted by a widespread belief that he was weak and a cry-baby, allegations that stemmed from his early career and ones that were made by, among others, his own team mate Raphaël Géminiani (Géminiani's comment was probably motivated by personal dislike as much as anything else; other riders - with some justification - found Bobet pompous and snobbish). However, despite many occasions when the rider left him exasperated, team manager Marcel Bidot had always seen potential in Bobet: Bidot had left him out of the selection for 1952 and spent much of the year working on building up his confidence; the lack of which, he believed, was the only thing holding him back.

It worked. In 1953, Bobet won Stage 18, one of the most remarkable stages of post-war Tour history and a classic, text book example of team tactics. His team mate Adolphe Deledda, who was out in front riding with a breakaway group, received the message that Bobet had dropped Jesus Lorono on the way down from the Col de Vars and was on his way. So, he left the group and took his time while Bobet caught up, then helped him all the way to the Col d'Izoard. The landscape of Izoard is frequently compared to that of the Moon (and is in fact far more like the lunar surface than Ventoux - which is much, much stranger) and in those days the road was no better: merely a rough track made of loose stones picking its way between the boulders. Yet Bobet, having had chance to replenish his energy supplies while Deledda nursed him there, attacked it "as if he had wings," according to race historian Bill McGann. At the top, waiting to see the race go by, was Coppi; at his side was the Woman in White, his mistress Giulia Locatelli. Bobet may have been a bit full of himself, but he knew greatness when he saw it and thanked the Italian for coming as he sailed past.

Louison Bobet

When he reached Briançon, he had a five minute advantage - enough to retain the yellow jersey for the rest of the race. A perfect individual time trial in Stage 20 won him the race with an advantage of 14 minutes. When he crossed the finish line he was greeted by Maurice Garin who, after spending many years in obscurity following the mysterious events of 1904 and the ban he received as a result, had been tracked down and invited along with a selection of other previous winners to celebrate the Tour's first fifty years.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Louison Bobet (FRA) France 129h 23' 25"
2 Jean Malléjac (FRA) West France +14' 18"
3 Giancarlo Astrua (ITA) Italy +15' 02"
4 Alex Close (BEL) Belgium +17' 35"
5 Wout Wagtmans (NED) Netherlands +18' 05"
6 Fritz Schär (SUI) Switzerland +18' 44"
7 Antonin Rolland (FRA) France +23' 03"
8 Nello Lauredi (FRA) France +26' 03"
9 Raphaël Géminiani (FRA) France +27' 18"
10 François Mahé (FRA) West France +28' 26"

1993

Miguel Indurain, 1993

20 stages + prologue, 3,714.3km.
1993 was a three-way battle: Chiappucci v. Indurain; Cipollini v. Indurain; Rominger v. Indurain -  Claudio Chiappucci was best able to rival the two-time winner all-round, Mario Cipollini was the fastest sprinter in the world and Toni Rominger had plans to take him on in the mountains. Indurain won the prologue, sat back for the next eight stages (the final one of which was won by a young American rider, on his first Tour, named Lance Armstrong) and then showed them exactly what they were up against by winning the Stage 9 individual time trial by 2'11" and taking 5'18" from Chiappucci - only Alex Zülle had been thought to have any chance of getting near him in the time trial, but his hopes ended the day before when a spectator accidentally dropped a carrier bag right in his path: after it caught up in his spokes, he was left bruised and bleeding. Chiappucci had hoped to do well in the Alps, but Rominger far outclassed him and won both stages - Indurain beat him by 8'49" on the first, then by 13" on the next; the Italian's General Classification hopes ended there. Rominger knew he was unlikely to win but hoped to take back some time in the Stage 19 time trial - he won the stage, but a puncture stopped him from winning as well as he'd have liked and Indurain won overall by 4'59".

The Tour offers a great many impressive sights, but nothing quite like the one that appeared in 1993: a large, bearded German man dressed as the Devil - it was Didi Senft's first Tour.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Miguel Indurain (ESP) Banesto 95h 57' 09"
2 Toni Rominger (SUI) Clas-Cajastur +4' 59"
3 Zenon Jaskula (POL) GB-MG +5' 48"
4 Alvaro Mejia (COL) Motorola +7' 29"
5 Bjarne Riis (DEN) Ariostea +16' 26"
6 Claudio Chiappucci (ITA) Carrera +17' 18"
7 Johan Bruyneel (BEL) ONCE +18' 04"
8 Andrew Hampsten (USA) Motorola +20' 14"
9 Pedro Delgado (ESP) Banesto +23' 57"
10 Vladimir Poulnikov (RUS) Carrera +25' 29"


1999

Passage du Gois

20 stages + prologue, 3,690.8km.
Several riders were not permitted to take part after the scandals of 1998, including Laurent Roux, Richard Virenque, Philippe Gaumont, the entire TVM team and ONCE-Deutsche Bank manager Manolo Saiz who, the year before, had withdrawn his team from the race before informing the press that he had "stuffed a finger up the Tour's arse" (he was thrown of the 2003 Vuelta when he insulted a television cameraman - his foul language making it onto the live broadcast - too). However, Virenque appealed to the UCI, citing his right to make a living under the International Code of Human Rights; Saiz was also allowed back in.

All eyes were on Lance Armstrong as the race set off - after several years rising up through the ranks, the American rider had gradually revealed himself to be a rider the likes of which had not been seen since Indurain (and no matter what one thinks of Armstrong, nor how his current problems pan out, he was a remarkable rider). Stage 2 featured the Passage du Gois, a tidal causeway that, being underwater twice a day, is covered in algae and proved extremely slippery - a large crash caused a six-minute split in the peloton and ended the chances of more than a few riders. Riders were angry, asking why the organisers had included the Passage if - as they claimed whenever the subject of doping came up - riders' health and well-being was their primary concern; nevertheless, it was used again in 2011.

Lance Armstrong

It was a good year for the Americans, being the first of Armstrong's seven consecutive victories, and for the Italians as Cipollini won four stages in a row to beat Bartalo's previous record of three, set in 1948; they also celebrated Giuseppe Guerini's Stage 10 victory on the Alpe d'Huez, which had been all the more remarkable since he collided with a spectator trying to take a photograph in the way up. It was not a good year for the French, however: they had not had a General Classification winner since Bernard Hinault in 1985, this year they didn't even win a stage. Perhaps that's why Le Monde was so quick to publish news that a sample provided by Armstrong after Stage 1 had tested positive for corticosteroid, albeit at a level too low for action to be taken. The US Postal team was able to provide a medical certificate proving that the rider had prescribed a UCI-approved saddle sore cream containing the drug (which has no performance-enhancing properties of its own, but has been used to mask the presence of other steroids that have), but the incident would be brought up many times in the future.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal Service 91h 32' 16"
2 Alex Zülle (SUI) Banesto +7' 37"
3 Fernando Escartín (ESP) Kelme +10' 26"
4 Laurent Dufaux (SUI) Saeco +14' 43"
5 Ángel Casero (ESP) Vitalicio Seguros +15' 11"
6 Abraham Olano (ESP) ONCE +16' 47"
7 Daniele Nardello (ITA) Mapei +17' 02"
8 Richard Virenque (FRA) Polti +17' 28"
9 Wladimir Belli (ITA) Festina +17' 37"
10 Andrea Peron (ITA) ONCE +23' 10"


2004
20 stages + prologue, 3,391.1km.
The 2004 edition was originally to be competed by 22 teams, but after Jesús Manzano alerted the world to the systematic doping in the team (which had sacked him the previous September as a result of a depression he suffered after collapsing with near-fatal dehydration 2.5km from the finish line of Stage 7 at the 2003 Tour, an incident he blamed on an injection of 50ml of an unidentified substance administered by the team's doctor that morning), Kelme's invitation was revoked. This was the biggest race of Lance Armstrong's career - he had already equaled the five-win record shared by Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Indurain, could he now beat them all with a sixth? Many thought he could not, and as the race drew near he didn't appear to have the form he'd once had. Jan Ullrich was not convinced: "Believe me, he's a lot better than he's letting on. That's Lance's style, to try and fool his rivals," he warned.

Right from the prologue, it looked like Ullrich was right. Fabian Cancellara set a blistering pace on the 6.1km parcours to win, but Armstrong was only 2" slower - of those riders most likely to present him with a challenge for the overall victory Ullrich was closest, but he was a whole 15" slower. Slowly but surely, Armstrong's rivals were picked off either as a result of his efforts or by circumstance: Iban Mayo, who had given him hell in the mountains in 2003, was too light to control his bike over the notorious pavé of Belgium and Northern France; Tyler Hamilton crashed hard on the cobbles too, later on in the race he would abandon after receiving news that his beloved dog Tugboat (who had been frequently seen waiting at the finish line, had been adored by fans as much as any rider and on more than one occasion had been interviewed by reporters) had died. However, it was on the Alpe d'Huez (where spectators spat on him as he went by and the road was covered in abusive slogans, not one of cycling's finest moments) when he recorded a time only once second slower than Marco Pantani's 1997 record of 37'35" (which, fifteen years later at the time of writing, still stands) that he secured victory - he finished the day with a 3'48" advantage. He was favourite for the last mountain stage the following day too, by winning that and the Stage 19 time trial he extended his overall lead to 6'19".

Voeckler in yellow, 2011

The real star of the race was Thomas Voeckler - racing his very first Tour, he took the maillot jaune in Stage 5. That was enough of a surprise as it was; the cycling world was therefore amazed when he kept it until Stage 15 and he earned an entire army of doting fans around the world as a result. Meanwhile, Robbie McEwen lost some - when René Haselbacher lay bleeding in the road with broken ribs, a smashed nose and internal organ damage following a Stage 6 crash, McEwen directed a vicious verbal attack his way and refused to retract his words even when told that the crash was caused by a snapped handlebar rather than by any mistake on the injured rider's behalf.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal Service 83h 36' 02"
2 Andreas Klöden (GER) T-Mobile +6' 19"
3 Ivan Basso (ITA) Team CSC +6' 40"
4 Jan Ullrich (GER) T-Mobile +8' 50"
5 José Azevedo (POR) US Postal Service +14' 30"
6 Francisco Mancebo (ESP) Illes Balears-Banesto-Santander +18' 01"
7 Georg Totschnig (AUT) Gerolsteiner +18' 27"
8 Carlos Sastre (ESP) Team CSC +19' 51"
9 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Rabobank +20' 12"
10 Óscar Pereiro (ESP) Phonak +22' 54"

Fabian Cancellara

2010
20 stages + prologue, 3,642km.
As happens every few years, the Tour paid a visit to the treacherous cobbled roads of Belgium and Northern France to pay homage to the Flemish Classics and the hardest race of them all, Paris-Roubaix. Lance Armstrong returned from retirement and was immediately haled as favourite by people who didn't know any better and failed to realise that at the age of almost 40 he didn't stand much of chance against younger men such Andy Schleck in the mountains, Mark Cavendish in the sprints, Fabian Cancellara in the time trials (Cancellara beat him in the prologue in 2004 by 2", this time he beat him by 22" in the prologue and then annihilated him to the tune of 7'05" in the Stage 19 individual time trial) and - most crucially of all - Alberto Contador, even though some sections of the US media rather ill-advisedly claimed that the race would be an epic battle between the Spaniard and the Texan.

In fact, it was to be an epic battle between the Spaniard and a Luxembourger, Andy Schleck. The son of retired Tour rider Johny Schleck and brother of Frank (who was forced to abandon the 2010 race after breaking his collarbone in Stage 3), Schleck had been discovered by Cyrille Guimard - an ex-rider who became one of the most successful managers cycling has ever seen: his proteges have won numerous prestigious races including seventeen Grand Tours, among them Laurent Fignon, of whom he said Andy reminded him, adding that Andy was one of the greatest natural talents he had ever seen. He was, therefore, predicted to do well - but, when he took the maillot jaune in Stage 9 and then hung on to it, it started to look as though he might win despite Contador's efforts to take over.

Andy Schleck

The pivotal point of the race was Stage 15. As the race climbed the last mountain of the day on the way to Bagnères-de-Luchon, Schleck dropped his chain. Contador chose that moment to attack, assisted by Denis Menchov, Samuel Sanchez and a number of other climbers looking to improve their times; by the time Schleck set off again he was alone with nobody able to help him make up the gap. Contador took the maillot jaune at the finish line, along with a 39" advantage - the exact same time by which he would win overall five stages later. It remains one of the most controversial incidents in recent Tour history, attacked and defended by equal numbers: Sean Kelly was disgusted with what he saw as a total lack of sportsmanship and Gerard Vroomen said that while Contador had gained a great chance to win, he'd lost his chance to win greatly; meanwhile, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain saw nothing wrong in what he'd done. Contador said that he hadn't realised Schleck was in trouble and apologised (but even those who want to believe him, this writer included, have difficulty accepting his claims: the video of the incident makes it look very unlikely that he didn't know). Schleck says that he accepts the explanation and the apology; they remain friends.

However, following a complicated and long-running case, two years later Contador was found guilty of doping after a sample he provided during a rest day between Stages 16 and 17 (a rest day) was found to contain trace amounts of a banned bronchodilator known as Clenbuterol. While the Court for Arbitration in Sport favoured his explanation that the drug had got into his body without his intention, it decided that the process by which it got there was most likely to have been a contaminated food supplement rather than - as he had argued - via contaminated meat (it's used, rarely and illegally in the EU, as a growth enhancer in cattle). As a result, the court handed him a back-dated two-year ban and stripped him of all results gained during that period, including the 2010 Tour. Schleck was thus declared winner by default, and while he was initially reluctant to accept the yellow jersey he was forced to do so by sponsors and the threat of a UCI fine.

Top Ten Final General Classification

Disq. Alberto Contador (ESP) Astana 91h 58' 48"
1 Andy Schleck (LUX) Team Saxo Bank 91h 59' 27"
2 Denis Menchov (RUS) Rabobank +1' 22"
3 Samuel Sánchez (ESP) Euskaltel +3' 40"
4 Jurgen Van Den Broeck (BEL) Omega Pharma – Lotto +6' 54"
5 Robert Gesink (NED) Rabobank +9' 31"
6 Ryder Hesjedal (CAN) Garmin +10' 15"
7 Joaquim Rodríguez (ESP) Katusha +11' 37"
8 Roman Kreuziger (CZE) Liquigas +11' 54"
9 Chris Horner (USA) Team Radioshack +12' 02"
10 Luis Leon Sánchez (ESP) Caisse d'Epargne +14' 21"


Cyclists born on this day: Nicolas Roche (Born in France, Irish nationality, 1984); Kim Kirchen (Luxembourg, 1978); Sergey Firsanov (USSR, 1982); Sarah Phillips (Great Britain, 1967); Federico Della Ferrera (Italy, 1887, died 1965); Robert Power (Ireland, 1971); Lothar Claesges (Germany, 1942); Mario Zanin (Italy, 1940); Hugo Machado (Uruguay, 1923); Vasyl Yakovlev (USSR, 1972); András Takács (Hungary, 1945); Wilson Meneses (Colombia, 1981); Serhiy Honchar (USSR, 1970); Willy Vanden Berghen (Belgium, 1939); David Plaza (Spain, 1970); Fred Rodriguez (USA, 1973); Mykhailo Khalilov (USSR, 1975); Kristian Frisch (Denmark, 1891, died 1954); August Schaffer (Austria, 1905).