·Tour De France 环法自行车公开赛
自行车公开赛历史
The race was founded as a publicity event for the newspaper L'Auto (ancestor of the present l'?quipe) by its editor and co-founder, Henri Desgrange, to rival the Paris-Brest et retour ride (sponsored by Le Petit Journal), and Bordeaux-Paris. The idea for a round-France stage race is also credited to one of his journalists, Géo Lefèvre, with whom Desgrange had lunch at the Café de Madrid in Paris on 20 November 1902). Promotion of the Tour de France certainly proved a great success for the newspaper; circulation leapt from 25,000 before the 1903 Tour to 65,000 after it; in 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 Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), part of the media group that owns l'?quipe.
The tour is a "stage race", divided into a number of stages, each stage being a race held over one day. Although the number of stages has varied in the past, recently the tour has consisted of around 20 stages, with a total length of between 3,000 and 4,000 km.
Most stages take place in France though it is very common to have a few stages in nearby countries, such as Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, but also non-neighbouring countries such as the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
The three weeks usually includes two rest days, which are sometimes used to transport the riders long distances between stages.
In recent years, the first stage is preceded by a short individual time trial (1 to 15 km), called the pr