| In cycling, a road race run over several stages, each of which constitutes a race in itself, by contrast with a single-day, one-off classic. Most stages are generic massed-start road races, but some may be run as individual or team time trials.
Overall placings (usually referred to as the General Classification or GC, calqued from the French classement général) are generally determined by a rider's total elapsed time on all the stages, so flat stages (where the field usually stays together and are often all awarded the same finishing time) are less important than hilly or mountainous ones where the time gaps are significant. There are generally secondary classifications calculated on points awarded for placings instead of time and for points awarded on major climbs during the race. Interim leaders of the various classifications are often awarded distinctive coloured jerseys along the model of the maillot jaune.
The archetypical men's stage races are the three Great Tours: the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España, each run over three weeks, but there are many shorter events, including the Tour de Suisse, Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Volta a Catalunya, the six day long Quatre Jours de Dunkerque, the Tour de Romandie, the Midi Libre, the Dauphiné Libéré and the Tour of the Basque Country. For women the hardest are the Hewlett Packard International Women's Challenge, the Giro Femminile and the Grande Boucle Féminin, which was formerly the Tour de France féminin.
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