Talk:Tour de France/Archive 1

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Discussion moved from Talk:Tour de France.

Winner 1904

Concerning the winner of 1904 please read: [1], [2] -- mkrohn 13:13 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

"Many places and - especially - mountains occur frequently (sometimes almost annually) in the parcours (the course taken by the stage or race), and have gained fame on their own."

I don't think this sentence makes sense. -- Deane

Rewritten. -- David.Monniaux 09:08, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"In 2000, Richard Virenque and the management of the Festina team were tried."

What happened to them? -- Deane

Wish granted. -- David.Monniaux 09:08, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How do the riders' numbers get chosen

Lance is number 1, Ulrich is 11. How do those get chosen?

The team of last year's winner gets the numbers 1 to 9, the team of last year's runner-up gets 11 to 19, etc. Within each team, the team leader gets the lowest number; the other numbers are given out alphabetically. (You could add this to the article, if you think that's a good idea.) -- Eugene van der Pijll 05:49, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Length of the Tour

There is no length of race given

I've added some information about this.

At the same time, I have removed some incorrect information: In the early days of the race, it was a near-continuous endurance event. Racers slept by the side of the road and were required to avoid all assistance, but several competitors in the second Tour de France were disqualified for taking a train part of the way.

The tour was never near-continuous. The 1903 Tour de France lasted 20 days, and the winning time was 94+ hours. Compare this with 23 days and 83+ hours for the 2004 Tour de France. The riders sleeping at the roadside seems dubious to me; there were often two or three resting days between stages. The text about the second Tour should perhaps be mentioned in another section, or in 1904 Tour de France. -- Eugene van der Pijll 14:29, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The early Tours were near-continuous in that they were not separated into formal one-day stages like the modern event. Specifically, the first Tour had exactly 6 stages, despite covering much the same distance. Obviously, riders didn't carry on riding continually all the way through a stage, and the idea was that they would make their own sleeping arrangements and simply arrive as quickly as possible at the designated end-point - "by the side of the road" is probably a slight exaggeration, since they were free to book into a hotel, but most likely it would have been a road-side hotel.

The separate article for 1903 Tour de France is rather hard to read right now, and I might tidy it up to make this clearer; or, I might create an article on The history of the Tour de France, or Early Tours de France, or somesuch. -- IMSoP 20:07, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Links to individual tours

I don't think the links to the articles about the individual tours are prominent enough. This is how the table looks now:

90	2003	Lance Armstrong	United States
91	2004	Lance Armstrong	United States
92	2005	-	-

The number in the first column is linked to the individual tours; not really intuitive, and easily overlooked. I'd prefer something like this (even though it is a bit repetitive):

90	2003	Lance Armstrong	United States	Detailed results
91	2004	Lance Armstrong	United States	Detailed results
92	2005	-	-	Route

(Oh, and as you can see, I added some info on next year's tour. It's now in the section "List of overall winners", Should it perhaps be renamed to "List of all tours", or something like that?) -- Eugene van der Pijll 21:00, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

EasyTimeline

I just saw the TdF winners diagram with flags that replaced the EasyTimeline version. Of course it is not clickable like ET version, but it is neat. I will look into adding image support to EasyTimeline, hopefully later this year. -- Erik Zachte 19:00, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Reverse chrono-order of table

I changed the table of TdF winners to list the tours in reverse order, like the graphical timeline to the right of the table. In my experience, this is the common/preferred way of presenting such tables, as many readers are often more interested in the latest results (i.e. this years' and, say, a decade or two back) and only after some further reading may want to check up on earlier results and history. -- Wernher 20:58, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Summary table near top of article

i added a couple of rows to this table to list "latest winner" "and most yellow jerseys" thinking these are interesting stats for the tour as well. but then i realized two things:

• should there be rows on the table for latest green, king of the mountains, and white jerseys too?
• this table is used for all the articles on the grand tours who do not use the exact same colors.

question: does this modification make sense for this article? IMO it is interesting to know who the latest winner is and the holder of the most yellow jerseys.

if someone knows the answers, perhaps the can modify the pages on the giro and vuelta to match this one. -- uri budnik 07:10, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone confirm the stated 115 yellow jerseys for Eddy Merckx? A recent AP Story says 111. -- Falcorian 03:49, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

i could not find any sources online (although i am sure they are out there). i got the number 115 during the TdF coverage on the american network called outside life network (olntv.com) they have two british annoucers paul sherwin and phil liggett who have been covering the tour for many years if not decades. i am farily confident in the number, but since it is not a "printed" source, its not the best one to site. there has to be something else out there on an english speaking site (most likely in the uk) -- uri budnik 04:52, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

ok, i just did more looking and it looks like it is 96. the best (as in most reputable) source i've found is: http://www.athens2004.com/en/EddyMerckx maybe someone can take a look at the wikipedias in french or belgian to figure this out. they GOT to have bettter info on this. -- uri budnik 05:21, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

96 sounds close to another number I found on a site that listed all his stats, although I can't find it at the moment. -- Falcorian 04:02, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, looking for the site it found [3] which agrees with 96, as does [4]. With so many sites agreeing on one number, I'm going to change it to that. -- Falcorian 04:09, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Only one reputable source so far (Athens 2004) cites 96, but here are 8 sources that say it's 111:

CNN/SI: [5] ESPN: [6] Washington Post: [7] MSNBC: [8] USAToday: [9] Reuters: [10] Associated Press: [11] ABCNews: [12]

Therefore, I am changing it back to 111. -- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:23, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I believe the two numbers come from the fact that there were "half stages" in the seventies. For example, in 1970, there was a prologue and 23 stages, but 5 of those stages had two parts: one in the morning (often a time trial), one in the afternoon. If you count the number of times Merckx was at number 1 after a stage, including half-stages, you get 111. I think (but I'm not sure) that the number of 96 only takes into account the standings at the end of each day.

Which number is correct depends on whether new jerseys were awarded after a morning stage. I'm not sure about that, but based on the fact that the authorities that I trust most (books, mainly, e.g. La Bible du Tour de France by Jean Nelissen) say 96, I'd go for that number. Eugene van der Pijll 22:48, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

A likely explination. I'm not sure how to handle it in the article but I would not rate the news sources higher than La Bible du Tour de France, but the real question is how does the book list it? If it is lists days or something similar, then it seems we must accept that he wore it for 96 days, but was awarded it 111 times. Of course, translations might bring up further issues. -- Falcorian 01:59, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Too much general information

Imho this article could benefit from moving stuff (terminology, etc.) to road bicycle racing. -- Phlebas 15:33, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

You got a point there. I will try to make the article more concise, more focused on "Tour de France", and not just "road bicycle racing". -- Onomatopoeia 27 May 2005

OK, did it. Moved much of the "general stuff" into the respective articles, e.g. road bicycle racing, team time trial, stage (bicycle race), individual time trial and so on. -- Onomatopoeia 27 May 2005

Footnote on drafting

I added a footnote about sheltering/drafting because i thought that a casual reader of this article would not realize the significance of this. after reading the comments above on too much general information, now i wonder if this should be here or not. i think it should but of course, i am open to other's opinions. also, my explanation on drafting i feel is a little weak and perhaps could be improved by someone else. the 40% figure that i use is something i have read elsewhere but its not refrenceable. if this number is incorrect, please fix it.uri budnik 06:50, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure this needs to be in the TdF article. I agree it's a very important foundation of road racing, but it's not specific to the TdF. I hope that we can get this article to the stage where people can understand the mechanics of the race and provide links to further articles to explain the mechanics of racing itself. -- (M4rk 10:24, 13 July 2005 (UTC))

If you're omitting entire from TdF, do link it; it's an important racing innovation, & N just road cycling. Cf NASCAR. -- Trekphiler 18:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Mountain stages

I built furhter on a paragraph that someone else started about mountain stages in the ordinary stage section. in it, i said that all the famous stages (except for Champs-Elysées) are mountain stages. i based this on my following the tour de france since 2000 and noticing this fact. if i am wrong, please correct. -- uri budnik 06:50, 28 May 2005 (UTC) (PS: in a way, i suppose the opening prologue is a famous stage...)

Participants

Near the end of the section on jerseys, the article says ... "The Tour currently has 21 teams of 9 riders each (when starting), each sponsored by one or more companies." Is it required by the rules that there are only 21 teams? What's to stop me and my buddies from forming our own team and applying for participation, assuming we have enough money for round-trip tickets to France and application fee ( as it seems that no pre-qualification of riders is required )? Incidentally, the whole paragraph should probably be moved out of jerseys and into the "general description." -- Itinerant1 18:01, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quite a lot seeing that the race organisers are obliged to admit the twenty teams of the UCI Pro Tour and then one wildcard of their own chosing - typically a French team 16:01 4th Jul 2005 (BST)

What's to stop me and my buddies from forming our own team and applying for participation

Yeah, I was thinking about getting a couple guys together, buying some jersies and entering the Superbowl... -- AHands 5 July 2005 18:46 (UTC)

As a slightly different answer: no, of course it's not just open to anyone who "applies", but neither is the existence of 21 teams, or their means of selection, in any way consistent from year to year. The "Pro Tour" only started this year, so previously there were a number picked from the top of the UCI rankings, plus a number of wildcards picked at the discretion of the organisers - I think sometimes it was something like the top 14 plus 8 wildcards.

As teams always have 9 riders each, the organisers have to limit the number of teams in order to limit the size of the peloton - if it gets too big, it becomes more dangerous, and the whole event harder to run successfully. It's varied over the years.

And obviously, you could ask to be one of the wildcards (or, currently, the wildcard) but you'd be unlikely to convince the organisers that including your team would be good for the event; they famously denied Mario Cipollini's team a wildcard, because it was built entirely around him winning a few sprints early on, and then giving up at the first mountains - presumably, they decided it wasn't good for the event to have a whole team built around a few stages. The Super Bowl analogy's maybe going too far; more like applying to play in the FA Premier League without playing in any other divisions of The Football League (or "lower" leagues) first. -- IMSoP 5 July 2005 20:55 (UTC)

Ok, I think I've figured it out.

• We must have at least 12 team members and a few non-riders such as personal doctor, etc.
• It costs 100,000 euros and a lot of paperwork to form a "professional team" or "trade team" and to get a 4-year UCI ProTeam licence that allows us to participate in the events ( probably in the Division III ); it may or may not cost money to participate in each particular race
• As we participate in more and more races, our ratings go up, eventually we end up in the Division I
• Top 20 teams from the Division I go to the ProTour, all 20 teams of the ProTour go to the Tour de France

Can anyone confirm/disprove this? -- Itinerant1 18:09, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

National jerseys

It appears some racers wear jerseys with their national colors if they are national champions. Can something be added to reflect this and what the guidelines are? (6 July 2005)

Have included national jersey bit. However, it might be more appropriate somewhere in a general cycling article? -- Robdurbar 6 July 2005 19:18 (UTC)