Le Tour De France

The Tour de France is the world's best-known cycling race, a three week long road race that covers a circuit of most areas around France, and sometimes neighbouring countries. The race is broken into stages from one town to another, each of which is an individual race. The time taken by cyclists to complete each stage becomes a cumulative total in order to decide the outright winner at the end of the Tour.

Together with the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain), the Tour de France is one of the three major stage races and the longest of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) calendar at three weeks each. While the other two European Grand Tours are well-known in Europe, they are relatively unknown outside the continent.

As with most cycling races, competitors enter as part of a team. The race normally consists of 20-22 teams of 9 riders each. Traditionally, entry in the Tour de France is extended to teams by invitation only, with invitations being granted only to the best of the world's professional teams.Some of the teams being US Postal services (with whom Lance Armstrong won many titles),Discovery channel team, CSC, T-mobile and the recent title holders Phonak Hearing Systems (Floyd Landis).

An important fact about Tour De France is that the race alternates each year between clockwise and counter-clockwise circuits of France. For example, 2005 was a clockwise direction Tour while the 2006 race went in the opposite direction.

Classification Jerseys: Unlike other sport events in Tour de France the leaders are awarded distinctive coloured Jerseys.The different coloured jerseys are Yellow, Green, Polka dot Jersey and the white jersey.

Yellow Jersey: It is the most prestigious and the most coveted jersey of all.It is awarded to the rider with the lowest time taken to complete the tour at the end.

Green Jersey: It is awarded for sprint points (ie) it is awarded to the rider with the lowest time taken to complete all the sprint stages of the tour.There are few sprint races otherwise called as time trials in between various stages, where the rider can show his racing talents in covering minimum distances with minimal time.

Polka Dot Jersey: It is a white jersey with red dots and awarded to "King of the Mountains" , the rider who gained maximum points in stages involving hills and mountain steeps.

White Jersey: This is for the best-placed rider less than 25 years old on January 1 of the year the Tour is ridden.

Some Important Facts:

Lance Armstrong holds the record for most number of wins in Tour de France (Record Seven Times) that too in consecutive years between 1999 and 2005.He retired from the sport after winning his final title.Another important fact about Lance is he survived testicular cancer in early 90's.His athletic success and dramatic recovery from cancer inspired him to commemorate his accomplishments, with Nike, through the Lance
Armstrong Foundation, a charity founded in 1997. The foundation's yellow rubber "Livestrong" wristbands, first launched in 2004, have been a major success, netting the foundation tens of millions of dollars in the fight against cancer.I can proudly say that I contributed to this foundation by getting a yellow wrist band.

Floyd Landis the defending champion has been accused of using a banned steroid during the 2006 tour de france and he was banned from the sport for two years.But still he was not officially stripped of the title yet.