Bikers' Britain: Great Motorbike Rides (AA) - The Tours

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See also: Festina affair, Doping at the 1998 Tour de France, Doping at the 1999 Tour de France, Floyd Landis doping case, Doping at the 2007 Tour de France, and Lance Armstrong doping case Spectators' banner during the 2006 Tour de France The Tour and its first Italian winner, Ottavio Bottecchia, are mentioned at the end of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. [160] In 732, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi and an army of Muslim horsemen from Al-Andalus advanced 500 kilometres (300 miles) deep into France, and were stopped at Moussais-la-Bataille [5] (between Châtellerault and Poitiers) by Charles Martel and his infantry. This ignited the Battle of Tours. The Muslim army was defeated, preventing an Islamic conquest of France. The city's football team, Tours FC, currently play in Championnat National 3, the fifth level of French football. They also have a second team, CCSP Tours. CCSP's home stadium is the Stade des Tourettes and they play in the Division d'Honneur Regionale de Centre, the seventh tier of the French football league system. [ citation needed] Tours is a special place for Catholics who follow the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus and the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. In 1843, Sister Marie of St Peter of Tours reported a vision which started the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, in reparation for the many insults Christ suffered in His Passion. The Golden Arrow Prayer was first made public by her.

The combination of unprecedented rigorous doping controls and almost no positive tests helped restore fans' confidence in the 2009 Tour de France. This led directly to an increase in global popularity of the event. The most watched stage of 2009 was stage 20, from Montélimar to Mont Ventoux in Provence, with a global total audience of 44million, making it the 12th most watched sporting event in the world in 2009. [151] Culture [ edit ] Part of the crowd during most days of the Tour is Didi Senft who, in a red devil costume, has been the Tour devil since 1993. Among the competitors were the eventual winner, Maurice Garin, his well-built rival Hippolyte Aucouturier, the German favourite Josef Fischer, and a collection of adventurers, including one competing as "Samson". [n 4] The Tour de France ( French pronunciation: [tuʁ də fʁɑ̃s]; English: Tour of France) is an annual men's multiple-stage bicycle race held primarily in France. [1] It is the oldest of the three Grand Tours (the Tour, the Giro d'Italia, and the Vuelta a España) and is generally considered the most prestigious. The recent history of Tours is marked by the personality of Jean Royer, who was Mayor for 36 years and helped save the old town from demolition by establishing one of the first Conservation Areas. This example of conservation policy would later inspire the Malraux Law for the safeguarding of historic city centres. In the 1970s, Jean Royer also extended the city to the south by diverting the course of the river Cher to create the districts of Rives du Cher and des Fontaines. At the time, this was one of the largest urban developments in Europe. In 1970, the François Rabelais University was founded; this is centred on the bank of the Loire in the downtown area, and not – as it was then the current practice – in a campus in the suburbs. The latter solution was also chosen by the twin university of Orleans. Royer's long term as Mayor was, however, not without controversy, as exemplified by the construction of the practical – but aesthetically unattractive – motorway which runs along the bed of a former canal just 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) from the cathedral. Another bone of contention was the original Vinci Congress Centre by Jean Nouvel. This project incurred debts although it did, at least, make Tours one of France's principal conference centres. Main article: Mountains classification in the Tour de France Richard Virenque pictured at the 2003 Tour de France wearing the polka dot jersey. He won the mountains classification a record seven times.Twice the Tour was won by a racer who never wore the yellow jersey until the race was over. In 1947, Jean Robic overturned a three-minute deficit on the 257 kilometres (160mi) final stage into Paris. In 1968, Jan Janssen of the Netherlands secured his win in the individual time trial on the last day. The race was first organized in 1903 to increase sales for the newspaper L'Auto [2] and has been held annually since, except when stopped for the two World Wars. As the Tour gained prominence and popularity the race was lengthened and gained more international participation. The Tour is a UCI World Tour event, which means that the teams that compete in the race are mostly UCI WorldTeams, with the exception of the teams that the organizers invite. [3] [4] a b Des villages de Cassini aux communes d'aujourd'hui: Commune data sheet Tours, EHESS (in French). Further measures were introduced by race organisers and the UCI, including more frequent testing and tests for blood doping ( transfusions and EPO use). This would lead the UCI to becoming a particularly interested party in an International Olympic Committee initiative, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), created in 1999. In 2002, the wife of Raimondas Rumšas, third in the 2002 Tour de France, was arrested after EPO and anabolic steroids were found in her car. Rumšas, who had not failed a test, was not penalised. In 2004, Philippe Gaumont said doping was endemic to his Cofidis team. Fellow Cofidis rider David Millar confessed to EPO after his home was raided. In the same year, Jesús Manzano, a rider with the Kelme team, alleged he had been forced by his team to use banned substances. [176]

Climat Centre-Val de Loire" (in French). Meteo France. Archived from the original on 16 April 2019 . Retrieved 31 December 2015. Tours was also marked by the Second World War as the city suffered massive destruction in 1940. For four years it was a city of military camps and fortifications. From 10 to 13 June 1940, Tours was the temporary seat of the French government before its move to Bordeaux. On the Tour's return, the format of the race settled on between 20 and 25 stages. Most stages would last one day, but the scheduling of 'split' stages continued well into the 1980s. 1953 saw the introduction of the Green Jersey 'Points' competition. National teams contested the Tour until 1961. [55] The teams were of different sizes. Some nations had more than one team, and some were mixed in with others to make up the number. National teams caught the public imagination but had a snag: that riders might normally have been in rival trade teams the rest of the season. The loyalty of riders was sometimes questionable, within and between teams. Sponsors were always unhappy about releasing their riders into anonymity for the biggest race of the year, as riders in national teams wore the colours of their country and a small cloth panel on their chest that named the team for which they normally rode. The situation became critical at the start of the 1960s. Sales of bicycles had fallen, and bicycle factories were closing. [56] There was a risk, the trade said, that the industry would die if factories were not allowed the publicity of the Tour de France. The Tour returned to trade teams in 1962. [55] In the same year, Émilion Amaury, owner of le Parisien Libéré, became financially involved in the Tour. He made Félix Lévitan co-organizer of the Tour, and it was decided that Levitan would focus on the financial issues, while Jacques Goddet was put in charge of sporting issues. [57] The Tour de France was meant for professional cyclists, but in 1961 the organisation started the Tour de l'Avenir, the amateur version. [58]Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard, second in 2021, won in both 2022 and 2023, with Pogačar coming second both times. The 2022 race was followed by the Tour de France Femmes, the first official Tour de France for women since 1989. [89] Classifications [ edit ] The four jerseys of the 2020 Tour de France This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( May 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) The first time trial in the Tour was between La Roche-sur-Yon and Nantes (80km) in 1934. [113] The first stage in modern Tours is often a short trial, a prologue, to decide who wears yellow on the opening day. The first prologue was in 1967. [62] The 1988 event, at La Baule, was called "la préface". [114] There are usually two or three time trials. The final time trial has sometimes been the final stage, more recently often the penultimate stage. In 1944, L'Auto was closed—its doors nailed shut—and its belongings, including the Tour, sequestrated by the state for publishing articles too close to the Germans. [52] Rights to the Tour were therefore owned by the government. Jacques Goddet was allowed to publish another daily sports paper, L'Équipe, but there was a rival candidate to run the Tour: a consortium of Sports and Miroir Sprint. Each organised a candidate race. L'Équipe and Le Parisien Libéré had La Course du Tour de France, [53] while Sports and Miroir Sprint had La Ronde de France. Both were five stages, the longest the government would allow because of shortages. [54] L'Équipe's race was better organised and appealed more to the public because it featured national teams that had been successful before the war, when French cycling was at a high. L'Équipe was given the right to organise the 1947 Tour de France. [50] However, L'Équipe's finances were never sound, and Goddet accepted an advance by Émilion Amaury, who had supported his bid to run the postwar Tour. [50] Amaury was a newspaper magnate whose sole condition was that his sports editor, Félix Lévitan, should join Goddet for the Tour. [50] The two worked together—with Goddet running the sporting side, and Lévitan the financial. See also: Category:People from Tours, France Louise de la Vallière, 17th.C General Régis de Trobriand, 1865 Public service [ edit ]

The academic historians Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Léonard say most people in France had little idea of the shape of their country until L'Auto began publishing maps of the race. [158] Arts [ edit ] Tours selects Citadis and APS". Railway Gazette International. London. 14 September 2010 . Retrieved 15 September 2010. On 11 July 2008, Manuel Beltrán tested positive for EPO after the first stage. [189] On 17 July 2008, Riccardo Riccò tested positive for continuous erythropoiesis receptor activator, a variant of EPO, [190] after the fourth stage. In October 2008, it was revealed that Riccò's teammate and Stage 10 winner Leonardo Piepoli, as well as Stefan Schumacher [191]– who won both time trials– and Bernhard Kohl [192]– third on general classification and King of the Mountains– had tested positive.

From 2011 to 2015, Lead Graffiti, an American letterpress studio, experimented with handset wood and metal type to print same-day posters documenting events of each stage of the Tour de France. The designers called the project "endurance letterpress." A 2013 article on the poster series appeared in Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sports in Media" issue. [161] In 2014 the British Library celebrated the Tour's fourth Grand Départ from the U.K. with an exhibition of Tour de Lead Graffiti posters. [162]