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The 2008 Tour De France
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The 95th Tour de France
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The route for the 2008
Tour De France
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Running
from Saturday July 5th to Sunday July 27th 2008, the 95th Tour de
France will be made up of 21 stages and will cover a total distance of
3,500 kilometres. These 21 stages have the following
profiles: 10
flat stages, 5
mountain stages, 4 medium mountain
stages, 2
individual time-trial stages. Distinctive aspects of
the race are 4
mountain finishes, 2 rest days, 82 kilometres of individual
time-trials, 19
Category 1, Category 2 and highest level passes will be climbed. There
will be 10
new stop-over towns Auray, Aigurande, Brioude, Prato
Nevoso (Italy),
Cuneo (Italy),
Jausiers, Embrun, Roanne,  Cérilly, Étampes.The 2008 Tour
de France
is the 95th Tour de France. The event will take place from July 5 to
July 27, 2008. The first three stages will start in Brittany. The
tour will also enter Italy on the 15th stage and return to France
during the 16th. Time bonuses for intermediate sprints and at the
finish line have also been scrapped. |
 The Tour de France is the
largest cycling race in the world.
The duration of the tour de France is twenty two days and has over 20
stages that is usually run over more than
3,000 km (1,864 miles). It is a circuit of France
and neighbouring countries. This year 2008 the tour takes in Italy
whereas last year, 2007, the tour took in England. The race |
| is broken
into stages
from one town to another, each of which is an individual race. The time
taken to complete each stage becomes a cumulative total to decide the
outright winner at the end of the Tour.
The Tour de France is one
of the three major stage races and the longest of the Union Cycliste
Internationale (UCI) calendar.While the other two European Grand
Tours, Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and Vuelta a
España (Tour of
Spain), are well known within Europe,
they are relatively unknown outside. The
Tour de France, in contrast, has long been a household sporting name
around the world, even to those not generally interested in
cycling. The
race consists of between 20 to
22 teams with nine riders each. As with most cycling
races, competitors enter as part of a team. |
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| 1 |
Plain |
Saturday
5 July |
Brest Plumelec |
195 km |
| 2 |
Plain |
Sunday
6 July |
Auray Saint-Brieuc |
165 km |
| 3 |
Plain |
Monday
7 July |
Saint-Malo Nantes |
195 km |
| 4 |
Individual
time-trial |
Tuesday
8 July |
Cholet Cholet |
29 km |
| 5 |
Plain |
Wednesday
9 July |
Cholet Châteauroux |
230 km |
| 6 |
Medium
mountains |
Thursday
10 July |
Aigurande Super-Besse Sancy |
195 km |
| 7 |
Medium
mountains |
Friday
11 July |
Brioude Aurillac |
158 km |
| 8 |
Plain |
Saturday
12 July |
Figeac Toulouse |
174 km |
| 9 |
High
Mountains |
Sunday
13 July |
Toulouse Bagnères-de-Bigorre |
222 km |
| 10 |
High
Mountains |
Monday
14 July |
Pau Hautacam |
154 km |
| R |
Rest Day |
Tuesday
15 July |
Pau |
|
| 11 |
Medium
mountains |
Wednesday
16 July |
Lannemezan Foix |
166 km |
| 12 |
Plain |
Thursday
17 July |
Lavelanet Narbonne |
168 km |
| 13 |
Plain |
Friday
18 July |
Narbonne Nîmes |
182 km |
| 14 |
Plain |
Saturday
19 July |
Nîmes Digne-les-Bains |
182 km |
| 15 |
High
Mountains |
Sunday
20 July |
Digne-les-Bains Prato Nevoso |
216 km |
| R |
Rest Day |
Monday
21 July |
Cuneo |
|
| 16 |
High
Mountains |
Tuesday
22 July |
Cuneo Jausiers |
157 km |
| 17 |
High
Mountains |
Wednesday
23 July |
Embrun L'Alpe-d'Huez |
210 km |
| 18 |
Medium
mountains |
Thursday
24 July |
Bourg-d'Oisans Saint-Étienne |
197 km |
| 19 |
Plain |
Friday
25 July |
Roanne Montluçon |
163 km |
| 20 |
Individual
time-trial |
Saturday
26 July |
Cérilly Saint-Amand-Montrond |
53 km |
| 21 |
Plain |
Sunday
27 July |
Étampes Paris
Champs-Élysées |
143 km |
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| Entry by
means of invitation granted only to the best professional
teams. The
tour organizers recently have utilized
UCI points (based upon team riders/results) to determine which teams
would gain automatic entry into the tour and then typically reserve 2-4
team slots to at large teams or French continental teams who would not
be able to race in the tour based upon their individual team results.
Each team, known by the name of its sponsor, wears a distinctive
jersey. |
HOW THE TOUR DE
FRANCE CAME ABOUT
|
The dominant sports
newspaper in France at the end of the 19th century was Le
Vélo.
Like other sports papers, it mixed sports reports with news and
political comment. France was split socially over the guilt or
innocence of a soldier, Alfred Dreyfus, who had been found guilty of
selling secrets to the Germans. Le Vélo
stood for Dreyfus's innocence while some of its biggest advertisers,
notably the owner of the Dion car works, believed him guilty.
Angry scenes followed between the advertisers and the editor, Pierre
Giffard, and the advertisers withdrew their support and started a rival
paper. It was to promote sales of the rival, L'Auto that the Tour de
France began. It
was a publicity measure toout do the Paris-Brest et retour
raceorganised
by Giffard. The idea for a round-France stage race came from
L'Auto's chief cycling journalist, 26-year-old Géo
Lefèvre. He and
the editor, Henri Desgrange then discussed it after lunch at what is
now the TGI Friday bar in Montmartre in Paris on November 20, 1902.
L'Auto announced the race on January 19, 1903.
The plan was for a five-week tour from May 31 to July 5; however, this
proved too daunting, with only 15 entrants, so Desgrange cut the length
to19 days, changed the date to run from July 1 to 19, and offered a
daily allowance which attracted 60 entrants, including amateur
characters, some unemployed, some simply adventurous. It was these
characters that helped catch the public imagination. The demanding
nature of the race caught public imagination. The race was
such a
success for the
newspaper that the circulation, which was 25,000 before the 1903 Tour,
increased to 65,000 after it;
by 1908 the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and
during the 1923 Tour it was selling 500,000 copies a day. The record
circulation claimed by Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933
Tour. Today, the Tour is organised by the Société
du
Tour de France, a
subsidiary of Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which is part of the
media group that owns L'Équipe.
|
THE TOUR DE FRANCE supplied by
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|
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Giraudiere
