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

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L'Auto's mission was accomplished, as circulation of the publication doubled throughout the race, making the race something much larger than Desgrange had ever hoped for. Time trials [ edit ] Bradley Wiggins riding the stage 9 individual time trial of the 2012 Tour de France Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Months before the start of the 1988 Tour, director Jean-François Naquet-Radiguet was replaced by Xavier Louy. [72] In 1988, the Tour was organised by Jean-Pierre Courcol, the director of L'Équipe, then in 1989 by Jean-Pierre Carenso and then by Jean-Marie Leblanc, who in 1989 had been race director. The former television presenter Christian Prudhomme—he commentated on the Tour among other events—replaced Leblanc in 2007, having been assistant director for three years. In 1993 ownership of L'Équipe moved to the Amaury Group, which formed Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) to oversee its sports operations, although the Tour itself is operated by its subsidiary the Société du Tour de France. [73] Miguel Induráin at the 1993 Tour de France Tours sits on the lower reaches of the Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Formerly named Caesarodunum by its founder, Roman Emperor Augustus, it possesses one of the largest amphitheaters of the Roman Empire, the Tours Amphitheatre. Known for the Battle of Tours in 732 AD, it is a National Sanctuary with connections to the Merovingians and the Carolingians, with the Capetians making the kingdom's currency the Livre tournois. Saint Martin and Gregory of Tours were from Tours. Tours was once part of Touraine, a former province of France. Tours was the first city of the silk industry. It was wanted by Louis XI, royal capital under the Valois Kings with its Loire castles and city of art with the School of Tours. The prefecture was partially destroyed during the French Wars of Religion in the late 16th century and again during the Second World War in June 1940.

The Tour and its first Italian winner, Ottavio Bottecchia, are mentioned at the end of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. [160] 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 In fiction, the 2003 animated feature Les Triplettes de Belleville ( The Triplets of Belleville) ties into the Tour de France. The population data in the table and graph below refer to the commune of Tours proper, in its geography at the given years. The commune of Tours absorbed the former commune of Saint-Étienne in 1845 and Sainte-Radegonde-en-Touraine and Saint-Symphorien in 1964. [12] Historical population YearThe 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. A Council of Tours in 813 decided that priests should preach sermons in different languages because the common people could no longer understand classical Latin. This was the first official recognition of an early French language distinct from Latin, and can be considered as the birth of French. The 2006 Tour had been plagued by the Operación Puerto doping case before it began. Favourites such as Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso were banned by their teams a day before the start. Seventeen riders were implicated. American rider Floyd Landis, who finished the Tour as holder of the overall lead, had tested positive for testosterone after he won stage 17, but this was not confirmed until some two weeks after the race finished. On 30 June 2008 Landis lost his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and Óscar Pereiro was named as winner. [183]

The Tour directors categorise mass-start stages into 'flat', 'hilly', or 'mountain'. [110] This affects the points awarded in the sprint classification, whether the 3 kilometer rule is operational [ clarification needed], and the permitted disqualification time in which riders must finish (which is the winners' time plus a pre-determined percentage of that time). [111] Time bonuses of 10, 6, and 4 seconds are awarded to the first three finishers, though this was not done from 2008 to 2014. [112] Bonuses were previously also awarded to winners of intermediate sprints. prize money has increased each year, although from 1976 to 1987 the first prize was an apartment offered by a race sponsor. The first prize in 1988 was a car, a studio-apartment, a work of art, and 500,000 francs in cash. Prizes only in cash returned in 1990. [108]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. 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. 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. Répertoire national des élus: les maires" (in French). data.gouv.fr, Plateforme ouverte des données publiques françaises. 13 September 2022. The longest successful post-war breakaway by a single rider was by Albert Bourlon in the 1947 Tour de France. In the Carcassonne–Luchon stage, he stayed away for 253 kilometres (157mi). [227] It was one of seven breakaways longer than 200 kilometres (120mi), the last being Thierry Marie's 234 kilometres (145mi) escape in 1991. [227] Bourlon finished 16m 30s ahead. This is one of the biggest time gaps but not the greatest. That record belongs to José-Luis Viejo, who beat the peloton by just over 23:00 and the second place rider by 22m 50s in the Montgenèvre-Manosque stage in 1976. [227] He was the fourth and most recent rider to win a stage by more than 20 minutes.

Historical classifications [ edit ] Combination classification jersey won by Greg LeMond at the 1985 Tour de France As of 2015 Jersey sponsor is Optician company Krys, [98] replacing Škoda who moved to the Green Jersey. Tours selects Citadis and APS". Railway Gazette International. London. 14 September 2010 . Retrieved 15 September 2010. French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1km 2 (0.386sqmi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. Tours ( / t ʊər/ TOOR, French: [tuʁ] ⓘ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metropolitan area was 516,973. [3]Louison Bobet was the first great French rider of the post-war period and the first rider to win the Tour in three successive years, 1953, 1954 and 1955. Tours, France". Meet Minneapolis. 2012. Archived from the original on 22 July 2012 . Retrieved 3 August 2012. 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] In 1924, Henri Pélissier and his brother Charles told the journalist Albert Londres they used strychnine, cocaine, chloroform, aspirin, "horse ointment" and other drugs. [172] The story was published in Le Petit Parisien under the title Les Forçats de la Route ('The Convicts of the Road') [14] [173] [174] [175]