Sport / sports 102 | Biciklizam » Cycling 1 09t h Tour de F r ance FromCopenhagen to Paris on twowheels Slovenian cyclist Tadej Pogačar will this year attempt to become the youngest ever competitor to win three consecutive Tour de France titles This year’s Tour de France starts in Copenhagen on 1st July, with the best riders set to cross the finish line on Paris’s Champs-Élysées 24 days later, when the champion and his team will drink champagne, cheered on by hundreds of thousands of cycling fans standing along the avenue. Slovenian cyclist Tadej Pogačar won convincingly in 2020 and 2021, and no one doubts this 23-year-old’s ability to make it three in a row. The record of five titles has been achieved by local French cyclists Jean Anquetil and Bernard Hinault, SpaniardMiguel Induráin and legendary BelgianEddie Merckx, who won a total of 34 stages. This year’s race will include 21 stages, with cyclists covering a total of 3,328 kilometres. To ease your calculations, they will cover a distance equivalent to travelling from Belgrade to Tehran! Apart from Denmark, the tour’s cyclists will also traverse Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland as they head to Paris, attempting to conquer the peaks of the Alps and the Pyrenees along the way. France has also long utilised its famous bike race to present its areas of natural beauty and tourist attractions to everyone, thereby attracting visitors from all over the world. Returning to the cycle race itself, the first Tour de France was held in 1903, with the newspaper L'Auto seeking to use this event as a way of increasing its circulation. It has since been held every year, with the only exceptions being interruptions during the two world wars. Unbelievably, the race’s pioneering competitors were forced to ride day and night, as they had to cover a total of 2,428 kilometres in six stages. The winner of the first stage,Maurice Garin, arrived at the finish line at 9am the next morning. Garin led from start to finish, winning in front of 20,000 thrilled Parisians. L'Auto’s circulation increased fivefold while the race was being ridden. The traditional race leader’s yellow jerseywas first introduced after WorldWar I.The colour yellowwas chosen tomake it easier for spectators to see the best rider among a large group, but also because L'Auto is printedonyellowpaper.The longest ever Tour de France was held in 1925, when cyclists covered a total of 5,745 kilometres. The newspaper closed down during World War II, but the ownerswere permitted to launch a new one, which led to the birth of L'Équipe. The inaugural race secured prize money of 20,000 francs, while winners during the period of the 1970s and ‘80s would receive an apartment. They would later receive both a car and an apartment, only for a return to prizemoney in the early ‘90s. Tadej Pogačar received half a million euros per victory in 2020 and 2021. The first Tour de France to start abroadwas the 1954 edition, when racers set off fromAmsterdam. Cyclists have had to cross the English Channel a total of three times (with the race having started in Dublin, London and Leeds), while themost recent “guest appearance” was in Brussels in 2019. Lance Armstrong won seven consecutive Tours from 1999 to 2006, but the American was stripped of all titles and trophies after admitting to doping. Those were the “black years” for the Tour, which has nonetheless managed to return to the routes of its former glory. It is also interesting to note that each team arrives with supplies that include 3,900 nutrition bars, 80kg of nuts, raisins, apricots and figs, 3,000 bottles of water and – most importantly – 20 jars of jam! This should come as no surprise to those who know that each individual competitor needs to consume an average of 123,900 calories over the three weeks of the race. Moris Garin, pobednik iz 1904. godine, morao je da vrati trofej nakon što se saznalo da je jednu od etapa prešao vozom Maurice Garin, winner of the 1904 edition, had to return the trophy after it was discovered that he’d taken a train to complete one of the stages Foto: Profimedia.rs / J.E.E / Sipa Press
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzExMjc5