Cycling Tour de France- The Greatest Race in Cycling Tour de France

The Amaury Sport Organisation is responsible for inviting each team to the race and it is by invitation only.

During the race, team members help each other with a team leader being selected at the beginning who is the one member that is expected to win the race at the end. The overall winner is selected based on points gained during each stage of the race. It is however possible to win the race even if you do not win any of the stages; in 1990 Greg LeMond became the first cyclist in history to do so.

The cycling Tour de France got its start as the result of a dispute between Pierre Giffard of the daily sports newspaper Le Vélo and car manufacturer Albert de Dion over the guilt of a French soldier accused of selling secrets to the Germans. De Dion founded his own sports newspaper called L'Auto to try and squeeze out the paper produced by Giffard, but soon found his sales slumping. He turned to his chief cycling journalist who came up with the idea of a race around the country to be completed in stages. After some changes to the basic idea the greatest race in cycling was born.

In the beginning the riders raced as individuals or as members of sponsored teams, however in the 1920's Henri Desgrange (the sports editor at L'Auto and organizer of the race) found that the race was so tainted by factory cheating that by 1930 he changed the rules and only admitted teams representing their home countries to race. It stayed this way for the next 31 years until the factories started to pressure the Tour to switch back to Trade Teams to try and help boost seriously flagging bicycle sales. In 1962 the trade teams returned and have been a mainstay ever since.

Traditionally the race went around the perimeter of France; this served two purposes it helped increase the sales of the newspaper L'Auto and created national heroes out the supermen who rode in the race.

The first race included night racing, but that was dropped in the second race and the distance reduced, however the emphasis then as now was on endurance. The shortest race was only 2,420 km and the longest clocked in at a massive 5,745 km in 1926.

Prize money has always been a part of the cycling Tour de France with 20,000 Francs being offered for the first race in 1903 and it increased year by year. For 11 years from 1976 to 1987 the prize was an apartment in Paris and in 1988 the grand prize was a new car, an apartment, a work of art and half a million francs.It was not until 1990 that an all cash prize was once again offered for the winner.

Tour Great Prizes

The prizes for 2009 were €8,000 for each stage winner and €450,000 for the overall winner. There are also prizes for the green and polka dot shirt jersey competition winners of €25,000 while the white jersey and combativity prizes are €20,000 and for the winner or the overall team standing the prize for 2009 was €50,000.

While there have been many winners over the years and some who have won twice there have only been three men who have won 5 times, Jacques Anquetil who won in 1957 and then consecutively from 1961 - 1964, then there was Eddy Merckx who won 5 times from 1969 to 1972 and then again in 1974, lastly Miguel Insdurain who won five in a row from 1991 - 1996. By far the greatest racer and winner of 7 Tour de France Championships is American cyclist Lance Armstrong who has also won 25 stages in his career.

Climbing grueling mountain passes and racing along the flat lands in and around France the Tour is without a doubt the most exciting and hard fought race in cycling. To ride in it one has to be a virtual superman, to win it takes absolute teamwork, no man can win today's Tour without the help and dedication of his teammates. To win and wear the Yellow Jersey is the dream of many professional road racers and is the ultimate prize in the sport.