Without knowledge of the basics, it’s impossible to appreciate the allure of the Tour de France. If you have no idea why Bradley Wiggins is wearing a yellow jersey instead of the usual black attire of Team Sky, a) we’ve got a lot of work to do, and b) you probably should have bought that fly-fishing book you flicked through in the bookstore instead.
Don’t stress, though, help is at hand. This chapter takes a look at the Tour essentials, from an explanation of the different-coloured shirts and what prizes are up for grabs to the importance of the course and where the race is won and lost.
With any luck you’ll be spouting off the gradients of the Tour’s steepest cols in no time and forgetting you ever had an interest in spey casting with a two-handed fly rod.
Eyes on the prize
Victory in the Tour de France is the ultimate for any cyclist, but winning the General Classification — or ‘GC’ — isn’t the only prize during the race. As well as the yellow jersey for the overall winner, there’s the green jersey for the Points Classification (often called the sprinter’s jersey), the polka-dot jersey for the King of the Mountains and the white jersey for the Best Young Rider.
At the end of each stage, the rider who leads each classification is invited on stage to be presented with their jersey, which they have the honour of wearing on the next day of racing. Rather than a proper jersey, it’s a ceremonial shirt with a zip at the back, probably designed to allow the models that put it on the riders not to have to think about too many complex tasks at once.
Yellow jersey
For: Winner of the General Classification
First winner: Firmin Lambot, 1919
There are few more iconic prizes in all of sports than the yellow jersey. Tour founder and early race director Henri Desgrange struck upon the idea of a coloured jersey for the race leader after realising it was difficult to pick out the leading rider as the peloton raced by. The first man to wear yellow was Frenchman Eugène Christophe in 1919. He was asked to wear it at the start of stage 11, although Belgian Firmin Lambot was the first overall winner of the jersey. There was a claim by Belgian Philippe Thys that Desgrange had given him a yellow leader’s jersey in 1913, but no-one can corroborate the story. Eddy Merckx holds the record for the most days in yellow (at ninety-six, which equates to more than three months), while the most days by a current rider is twenty-eight, held by Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara.
Green jersey
For: Winner of the Points Classification
First winner: Fritz Schaer, 1953
The winner of the green jersey is the rider who wins the most points, which are awarded at intermediate sprints and at the end of each stage. It is also known as the sprinter’s jersey, as it’s usually contested during the long, flat stages that end in sprint finishes, but the winner also needs to display some all-round skills, if only to finish within the time limit in the mountain stages. The first winner of the green jersey was Switzerland’s Fritz Schaer in 1953, and it was an award dominated by the Belgians in the early years: they took out eighteen of them between 1955 and 1988. German Erik Zabel holds the record for most green-jersey wins with six.
Polka-dot jersey
For: Winner of the King of the Mountains
First winner: Lucien Van Impe, 1975
A prix du meilleur grimpeur — or ‘prize for the best climber’ — has been awarded in the Tour since 1933 (first won by Spaniard Vicente Trueba) but it wasn’t until 1975 that the King of the Mountains wore a polka-dot jersey. The jersey is given to the rider who wins the most climbs during the Tour (first over the top), with different-category climbs worth different numbers of points. The distinctive pattern of red spots on a white background was chosen due to an early sponsorship deal with a chocolate company that sold its product in polka-dot wrapping. France’s Richard Virenque holds the record with seven wins, although for many his achievements are tainted by doping admissions; with six wins, legendary climber Federico Bahamontes is a more legitimate and worthy owner of the ‘best of all time’ record.
White jersey
For: Winner of the Best Young Rider
First winner: Francesco Moser, 1975
The white jersey is awarded to the best young rider under the age of twenty-six in General Classification. Compared to youth awards in other sports twenty-six years of age is relatively old, but it’s due to the fact that professional riders tend to come into their prime later in their careers. The exceptions to that rule are Laurent Fignon (1983), Jan Ullrich (1997), Alberto Contador (2007) and Andy Schleck (2010), who all won the yellow and white jerseys in the same year.
Lanterne rouge
For: ‘Winner’ of the last place in the GC
First ‘winner’: Unknown
Named after the red light that shines on the last carriage of a train, the lanterne rouge is awarded to the rider who comes dead last in the General Classification. While no jersey is awarded, the honour is a coveted one as the ‘winner’ is usually invited to many of the lucrative criteriums later in the season, where they are ironically revered (or is it patronised?) as the worst of the best riders in the world. In a perverse way, the lanterne rouge can be just as hard to win as the other classifications, as riders need to balance the fine line of being slow — but not too slow as to be disqualified by being outside the time limit.
The course
More than any other factor over the three-week race, the Tour de France’s route decides who will be standing triumphantly in yellow and who will be clinging on for dear life on the middle of a mountain pass. It creates and destroys legends in equal measure and dictates when riders attack, crack or fall to the ground in a heap of twisted metal. The biggest mistake any professional cyclist can make is to believe that they have control of the course; the course has all the power.
Traditionally the Tour is raced over twenty-one stages. A Prologue kicks things off at the end of June, and then it runs for three weeks into the back end of July — with only two rest days during the competition for riders to salve their butt cheeks (or do whatever other funny business men can get up to in makeshift massage rooms in dodgy French motels).
The race almost always pops into Italy and Spain along the way, and in modern times multiple stages have been held in foreign countries as far afield as Holland, Switzerland and Ireland. The Tour has even flirted with taking stages further — New York was once mooted as a stage host, and Qatar is said to be interested in bringing the race to the Arabian Peninsula in the future. The 2013 edition marked its hundredth anniversary by staying in France for the duration of the race.
The sprinters, who get to pump their powerful tree trunks along the relatively flat first stages and stake an early claim on the green jersey, usually contest the initial week of racing. With all the slightly unhinged speedsters jostling for position, it’s the most dangerous time of the Tour and usually when the most crashes take place. Teams look to stay out of trouble and keep their leaders safe by getting as near to the front as they can, which only serves to increase the pace and make the front as congested and dangerous as anywhere else. However, the advantage of being at the head of the pack is that you can control the pace and avoid the fatal blow of being held up in or behind an early crash.
The flat stages provide a great adrenalin rush, but for the majority of fans the Tour de France is all about the mountains. If the Tour is theatre, then the stages in the Alps and Pyrenees are the main act. It’s there the race takes on mythic status, where reputations are made and Tours are won. Simply put, if you can’t ride in the mountains, you don’t have a hope in hell of winning the Tour de France.
Each mountain — or ‘col’ — has its own unique characteristics and challenges, from the twenty-one switchback bends of L’Alpe d’Huez and scorching lunar landscape of Mont Ventoux to the pant-browning descent of the Col d’Aubisque and the rare air of the Col de l’Iseran.
They have a distinct history, too, mountains and riders inextricably linked by heroic attacks or epic battles. Mention a specific col to any Tour de France aficionado and they’ll invariably be able to tell you the legendary moment associated with it: Fausto Coppi’s obliteration of the field on Puy de Dôme; Mont Ventoux and Tom Simpson’s tragic final ascent; Louison Bobet’s flight across the dusty roads of the Col d’Izoard; and Lance Armstrong’s ‘look’ at Jan Ullrich before storming up L’Alpe d’Huez.
The mountains usually sort the men from the boys. But for the select few racers who can survive the vertical war of attrition, there’s still hope if they can pick up time on the time-trial (‘TT’) stages. Tour winners such as Jacques Anquetil and Miguel Indurain won Tours predominantly on their time-trialling skills, building such large advantages that they could ride defensively for the remainder of the race. Popularly known as the ‘Race of Truth’, there’s no hiding in the TT and races can be lost as well as won on them (e.g. Andy Schleck’s defeat by Cadel Evans in 2011). Undoubtedly the most famous time trial took place on the final stage in 1989, where Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond battled it out for yellow in the most dramatic finale the Tour has ever seen.
The conclusion of the modern-day Tour takes place in Paris along the famous Champs-Élysées. First used as the finish line in 1975, the race around the capital’s streets and the sprint to the line along la plus belle avenue du monde — ‘the most beautiful avenue in the world’ — is one of the most iconic in all of world sport.