Arguably the hardest
bike race ever. The Tour de France covers over 2000
miles through
France and sometimes surrounding
nations. It lasts for around 21 days in June and July, with about 160 miles of
nastiness per day. Men have actually died on the Tour -- recently a fellow lost control during a 60-MPH mountain descent and went off the road. One of the few Englishman ever to wear the
Yellow Jersey (signifiying the overall lead; lowest total elapsed time) died from exertion on the brutal
Mon Ventoux climb.
Greg Lemond used to be the only
American winner (3 times) but recently
Lance Armstrong has bested that with four consecutive wins, after a heroic battle with
cancer.
Nobody has won the race more than five times -- the four five-time winners were Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Indurain. Of those four legendary riders, the most notorious was Eddy Merckx, a Belgian, who earned himself the nickname "Cannibal"; in addition to winning the yellow jersey for the overall victory, he also got the green jersey for best sprinter, the polka-dot jersey for best climber (riding steep mountain roads on a bicycle is a singularly painful form of athletic contest) and the patched jersey for most versatile rider. Unlike other winners of the race, Merckx echewed strategy and won by brute force, whereas other tour winners tend to try to minimize their losses in the mountains (with the help of their teams) and win the individual time trials by large margins.
The winner of The Tour is not the rider who crosses the finish line first, but rather the one who has the lowest cumulative time at the end of the final day of racing.
The official website of The Tour is at http://www.letour.fr/