A race invented to sell newspapers
The Tour de France began in 1903 as a publicity stunt. A French sports paper called L'Auto was fighting a rival for readers, and one of its journalists suggested a bicycle RACE right round the country, reported day by day. The first Tour had just six stages, some of them more than 400 kilometres long, and riders pedalled through the night. Sixty riders started and only 21 reached the finish in Paris.
Today's Tour lasts three weeks and covers around 3,500 kilometres, with each STAGE a race of its own. Flat stages usually end in a bunch SPRINT, mountain stages are decided on the long CLIMB through the Alps and the Pyrenees, and in the time trial each rider races alone against the clock. Our mountains page covers the ranges themselves.
Why the leader's jersey is yellow
The leader of the Tour has worn a yellow JERSEY since 1919, so that spectators at the roadside could pick him out of the crowd. It is yellow because L'Auto was printed on yellow paper. The first rider to wear it was a Frenchman called Eugène Christophe.
Christophe is also remembered for the 1913 Tour, when the front fork of his bike snapped on a mountain descent. The rules said riders had to mend their own machines, so he walked about fourteen kilometres down to a village blacksmith and repaired it himself. He was still given a time penalty, because a boy had worked the bellows for him. Other jerseys came later: green for the points competition, white for the best young rider and white with red polka dots for the best climber.
Riding in the bunch
A rider tucked in behind another uses much less energy, because the rider in front pushes the air out of the way. This is called DRAFTING, and it is why riders gather in a big group, the PELOTON, and why a BREAKAWAY of a few riders out in front has to work so hard.
Each team has a leader and a group of helpers called domestiques, from the French for servants. A DOMESTIQUE shelters the leader from the wind, fetches a BOTTLE of water from the team car, and will even hand over a WHEEL after a puncture. Near the finish, teammates line up in front of their SPRINTER and peel away one by one, launching the final ATTACK for the line.
On the track
A VELODROME is an oval track with steeply banked ends, and track bikes have a single fixed gear and no brakes at all. One of cycling's toughest challenges is the Hour Record: ride as far as possible in sixty minutes. Eddy Merckx covered 49.431 kilometres in Mexico City in 1972, where the thin air at high altitude pushes back less. In 2022 the Italian Filippo Ganna rode 56.792 kilometres.
Spinning, stretching and staying safe
Track and road riders both think about CADENCE, the number of times the pedals go round each minute; professionals often spin at around ninety. The stretchy fabric in their kit, LYCRA, was invented by a chemist in 1958, and a HELMET has been compulsory in professional road racing since 2003. Old photographs show riders with spare TYRE casings looped round their shoulders in a figure of eight, because early racers had to fix their own punctures. Racing bikes must also weigh at least 6.8 kilograms, a rule meant to stop teams building bikes so light they became unsafe. For the history of the machine itself, see our bicycles page.