THE HISTORY OF THE TOUR DE FRANCE

An Analysis of the History and Culture of the Tour De France

An Analysis of the History and Culture of the Tour De France

Introduction

Tour de France is the most popular race in the world. Its fame attracts the best stars from the world of cycling, spectators and thousands of journalists. Its history dates back the early twentieth century, where some of the stages were over 400 km, and the bike did not have a single bracket. The Tour de France is one of Europe's most important cycling competitions, but it is also very famous in the World.

The Tour de France, run every summer since 1903 (except during World Wars I and II) is the world's foremost professional cycling race. The tour has been intimately linked to the industry of professional sport in France and Europe, as it was born from a circulation war between rival sports newspapers, and has subsequently been the major promotional event for the paper (now known as L'Equipe) that won the struggle.

During most of the 20th century, the tour was significant both as a contest of supreme endurance and heroic competition between elite professional athletes representing either national or commercially sponsored teams and as advertising showcase for cycling-related or non-sport-related companies. But since the 1990s, the tour has become synonymous with drug-taking in elite sport and with crises of identification between sports fans and consumers and their erstwhile heroic champions.

Tour de France Logo

History of Tour De France

The 1903 Tour de France cycling competition was first staged in history. Previously there had been competition that covered vast distances, as the route Paris-Brest-Paris 1,200 km in 1891 and Bordeaux-Paris from 576 km also in 1891. However, it was the French journalist Geo Lefevre who developed the idea of creating a competition staged to elapse from the French territory. Lefèvre proposed to the director of the sports newspaperL'Auto, Henri Desgrange , creating a racing cyclist to promote the newspaper. Thus, the July 19, 1903 the first Tour de France began in Montgeron, near Paris, where 60 riders started the race that covered the opening stage of 467 km to Lyon. The route consisted of six stages in a total of 2,428 km. The Frenchman Maurice Garin was the first Tour winner in history, completing the test at a speed of 25 km / h. He received a prize of 6,075 francs (Wheatcroft, 2004).

Map of the Tour De France Route

The following editions of the Tour de France was marred by a series of scandals that led to the exclusion of the top four in the overall standings of the Tour de France 1904, partly as a result of unauthorized use of the railway. The period before the First World War is seen in retrospect as a heroic age, and at that time were covered regularly daily distances of 400 kilometers. In retrospect, it looks amazing if you consider the modest technical equipment of the time and poor quality of roads that used ...