Tour de France Explained For Newbies

The Tour De France is the biggest bike race in the world, here’s a crash course in how it works for rookies, or perhaps a refresher!

Thanks to the ASO for usage of their excellent photos and Credit to Astana, Decathlon AG2R, Tudor for extra footage.

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You’ve heard of the tour to France. Maybe you’ve seen a clip of people racing bikes through stunning mountain roads. Pileups of hundreds of cyclists or some geyser in a yellow top holding a toy lion getting sprayed in the face with champagne. But what is it exactly? Why is it such a big deal? And why are grown adults crying after cycling for 3 weeks? We’re going to break down the men’s tour to France today. There’ll be a separate video on the women’s tour to follow. By the end of this, you’re going to have all the knowledge you need to enjoy the racing this July. The biggest bicycle race in the world has been around since 1903, over 120 years. It takes place every July, a different route around France each time, but sometimes dips into other countries like Italy or Spain. And it did even start in England a few years back for what they call the Grand Depart. Now, get this. It’s 3 weeks long. Yeah. 21 days of racing, covering about 3,500 km. That’s over 2,100 m. That’s like riding from New York to Las Vegas. And they’re not just cruising along on flat roads. They’re climbing literal mountains and a lot of them. It’s made up of 21 stages. That means 21 separate races, each with their own winner on the day, plus an overall winner for the whole race, the yellow guy. We’ll get into how all of this works later. Some stages are flat, some are hilly, some are mountainous, and one or two are time trials where the riders race alone against the clock. Usually on a different type of bike with those skinny little bars in the middle. So, who actually races this thing? Around 22 teams with eight riders. That’s 176 riders in total. Proycling is very team oriented as we’ll go into later. These teams are made up of the best cyclists in the world from all over the place. Europe, the US, Australia, Central and South America, you name it. Now, there are different types of riders who suit different kinds of terrain. You’ve got climbers. They’re light, skinny-l lookinging people, great at going uphill. They’ll be looking to get results in the mountain stages where the heavier riders just can’t keep up. Then you have sprinters, specialists at riding at explosive speed at the end of flat stages, usually packing a bit of muscle to do this. Time trial specialists, historically bigger riders who can sustain high speeds riding solo while holding an extremely aerodynamic position on the bike. GC riders, this stands for general classification, and this just means a rider who’s targeting the overall win of the race. They need to be good at both climbing and time triing. A pretty tall order. Thankfully, they also have domestics. These are riders on each team that are solely there to help other riders. There’ll often be riders who are good at everything and will chase down the competition, carry water bottles, go back to the cars behind the race to pick up extra food, anything that the star rider or team leader needs. Now, there’s a lot going on in the tour, but the main goal is to win the overall race. That means having the lowest time across all 21 stages. So, if rider A finishes stage 1 in 4 hours and rider B finishes in 4 hours and 10 minutes, rider A is 10 minutes ahead overall. You add all of those up after every stage and the rider with the lowest time total gets to wear the famous yellow jersey or Mayo Jean in French. Oh, and someone’s wearing this jersey from the end of stage one onwards. It will usually change hands multiple times during the three weeks depending on whoever is in the lead. But what about these lads wearing a green jersey? And what about this spotty one? There are other competitions, too. You got the green jersey, which is actually called the points competition, but usually serves as best sprinter competition. You get points for winning stages and winning sprints in the middle of stages, which add up. Rider with the most points gets to wear the green jersey. You got the polka dot jersey. This works similar to the green jersey competition, but the points are awarded for reaching the top of mountains first. So naturally, it will be a climber who wins this. Then you got the white jersey. Bit like the yellow jersey based on time, but for riders who are under 26 years old or best young rider. Can you imagine doing this when you’re 26? As you can see, there’s a lot going on. And all of these jerseys are being competed for every single day, so there’s always something interesting happening. Well, almost always. To add some incentive and make things interesting, there is some prize money. In 2024, you would have won €500,000 for the overall GC. Second place would be €200,000. Third place, €100,000. Stage winners would win €11,000 each. At the end of the race, the green jersey winner would get €25,000. Polka dot jersey €25,000 and white jersey €20,000. Then there’s the team classification. So, the overall team with the lowest amount of time accumulated, that would be €50,000 and a lot more smaller prizes as well. Some decent wedge on offer, but don’t forget this is a team sport, so in most cases, all of that money will be divvied out between the team, right? I’m getting out of breath just talking about this. How long have I been going? I haven’t even mentioned the bikes. All of this racing is done on high performance road bikes specifically designed to go as fast as possible within the rules that are set out by the UCI, the world governing body of pro cycling. Each team has their own bike sponsor, but there is some overlap of components. A lot of teams will be on the same tires and gearing systems, for example. To the layman, all the teams bikes look pretty similar. They’re the same wheel size, same frame material, everything is carbon fiber. They have hydraulic disc brakes, electronic gear shifting, and they all weigh about the same because the UCI implement a weight limit of 6.8 kg. That is a very, very light bicycle. They also have heads-up displays showing information to the riders like their heart rate and the power the rider is putting out through the pedals. This gets measured via sensors, usually inside the pedal themselves or in the cranks. And is useful for riders so they can pace themselves. What’s wild here is that all of the Tour to France bikes have to be available for purchase by regular people. It’s part of the rules. So, if you wanted to buy exactly the same bike as reigning Tour to France champion Telle Picata, you could. Good luck riding it as fast though. During regular stages of the tour, the UCI rules mean that bikes have to have drop handlebars and there’s limits on where your saddle can be and a few other little measurements like how wide your handlebars have to be and how deep your wheels can be. The deeper, the faster. Generally, this means teams and riders work hard to maximize how aerodynamic they can be within these rules. Riders can adopt a few different hand position while riding these road bikes. On the tops when they’re riding slower, usually in slower, more controlled sections of the race. Sometimes while climbing to help with breathing. It’s a nice upright position. Then you have the hoods. This is where they’ll be most of the time. It’s more aerodynamic than the previous position and easy to reach your gears and brakes. And finally, on the drops, a more aerodynamic position and provides a lower center of gravity for control. You can see that racers use these while descending mountains and when the racing is fast coming into a sprint finish. Now, there are differences between the team’s bikes. Some are faster than others, but the differences are very small, a lot smaller than in other racing sports like F1 or Moto GP. The winners of probicycle races generally aren’t decided based on equipment choice, and a lot of riders have been very successful despite riding equipment that’s slower on paper. It’s more about the ability of the rider than anything else. There is, of course, still a quest for the fastest machine, but riders will often have to ride what they’re given by sponsors and don’t have much say in changing it. Broadly speaking, though, aerodynamics matters a huge amount, and it’s the reason racing is so tactical. Cycling behind another person is much easier than cycling solo. The person in front is blocking the wind and the person behind will save loads of energy. This is why bike racers stick together in large groups and why having a team around you is so important. They can shelter their star rider from the wind and ensure they finish with the best time possible. Riding behind one another is called drafting and it dictates everything about how a race pans out. It even makes a difference riding slower uphill. Less, but still significant. To gain a time advantage in a bike race, you have to put some distance in between you and the people you’re trying to beat. This is why breakaways for riders who try and go off the front and escape. They’ll often work together as a group, even when they’re in different teams, while the rest of the race, known as the pelon, will attempt to control this time gap. Depending on who’s in the breakaway, you’ll be saving a ton of energy riding inside the Pelaton, so it’s always a risk going up the road. Now, the tour isn’t just long, it’s brutal. You’re riding 4 to 6 hours a day with just two rest days during the 3 weeks. Your legs are dead. You’re climbing mountains so steep that cars struggle. You’re doing it in the heat, in the rain, sometimes through hail storms. and they only seem to cancel the stages when it gets really bad. Crashes are constant. Riders break bones. Lots continue riding while injured because they just don’t want to quit. They lose skin, sometimes collapse from exhaustion. People have tragically died during this race. If equipment’s damaged, it’s up to the teams to support their riders with spare bikes, wheels, and sometimes a sneaky draft to get them back into the pelaton afterwards. Bit naughty this, and sometimes they get big fines for doing it. The riders are constantly eating up to 8,000 calories a day. Think pasta, rice, protein bars, gels, even cokes mid race. And they still end up losing weight. And to make things even tougher, you’ve got to finish within the time cut. Otherwise, you get booted out of the race. The time cut is calculated as a percentage of the winner’s time for that stage. And the exact percentage depends on the type of stage, flat, mountain, time trial, etc. This means at no point can anyone take things easy. Even the sprinters have to work hard on mountain days to make sure they finish in time. Often cutting it as close as possible to conserve as much energy as they can. It’s not just physical, it’s a mental challenge, and you have to stay focused because that breakaway could go at any point. Now, I mentioned time trials earlier. They normally throw in a couple of stages like this for good measure. A time trial or TT is a race against the clock. usually solo. Sometimes we see team time trials as well. The tour historically sometimes begins with a time trial known as the prologue. Although this hasn’t happened for a few years now, it was a nice opportunity for riders to win and wear the yellow jersey who wouldn’t normally be on the cards to win a regular stage. In the upcoming tour, there’s two TT stages, one flat and one mountainous. And these stages can really affect the results of the race. It’s all well and good being a GC contender that can climb, but if you can’t hold your own in the race against the clock, then you could be losing precious seconds and places in the race. Usually bikes are switched out for these stages to bikes that are well, they’re called time trial bikes. Those big fat tubed super arrow deep wheeled monster looking bikes with teeny tiny handlebars in the middle to help the rider get as arrow as possible and cut through the wind. Riders are also allowed to use other pieces of arrow equipment that aren’t allowed in the road stages, like arrow helmets and disc wheels. Despite the riders heading off solo, I’ve always found the TT stages pretty exciting. The riders usually start their effort in reverse order of the current GC standing. The leader of the race will start last and his closest competitor just before. This ensures the most exciting finale with the GC contenders battling things out right to the end. And the tour winner has often been decided in the last TT stage. Despite there being TT specialists competing, more often than not, the GC contenders are so strong that they’ll be winning these stages, too. Although sometimes we get a surprise, so it’s always worth watching those stages in my opinion. At the end of the tour, the final stage almost always finishes on the Shamsiliz in Paris. But the ride leading up to the final stage within the city is neutralized by the riders. It’s tradition to have a kind of procession on that day where the teams celebrate as they know they have the race in the bag or celebrate getting through the three weeks. Laps through the center of Paris and a sprint finish as a finale mean it’s great for spectators. Truly special if you ever have the chance to see it in person. Finally, there’s one last competition that I haven’t spoken about yet. A competition to be last place. Whoever comes last wins the lantern rouge. And yes, riders compete for this at the tour at the other end of the field. Who can ride slowest but still finish within the time cut? It’s kind of a skill in its own right. All right, that’s the tour to France. It’s going to be on in a few days time if I get this video out in time. I hope you enjoyed that. Have you got any weird facts about the tour to France? Put them in the comment section down below.