Bikers' Britain: Great Motorbike Rides (AA) - The Tours

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Tours became a metropolis in the Roman province of Lugdunum towards 380–388 AD, dominating Maine, Brittany, and the Loire Valley. One important figure in the city was Saint Martin of Tours, a bishop who shared his coat with a naked beggar in Amiens. The importance of Martin in the medieval Christian West made Tours, and its position on the route of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, a major centre during the Middle Ages. A Council of Tours in 813 decided that priests should preach sermons in different languages because the common people could no longer understand classical Latin. This was the first official recognition of an early French language distinct from Latin, and can be considered as the birth of French.

The book sold six million copies by the time of the first Tour de France, [153] the biggest selling book of 19th-century France (other than the Bible). [155] It stimulated a national interest in France, making it "visible and alive", as its preface said. There had already been a car race called the Tour de France but it was the publicity behind the cycling race, and Desgrange's drive to educate and improve the population, [156] that inspired the French to know more of their country. [157] Notable stages [ edit ] In 2012 Mark Cavendish won the final stage of the Tour on the Champs-Élysées, for a record fourth successive year. See also: Festina affair, Doping at the 1998 Tour de France, Doping at the 1999 Tour de France, Floyd Landis doping case, Doping at the 2007 Tour de France, and Lance Armstrong doping case Spectators' banner during the 2006 Tour de France The Venerable Leo Dupont also known as The Holy Man of Tours lived in Tours at about the same time. In 1849 he started the nightly adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which spread throughout France. Upon hearing of Sister Marie of St Peter's reported visions, he started to burn a vigil lamp continuously before a picture of the Holy Face of Jesus. The devotion was eventually approved by Pope Pius XII in 1958 and he formally declared the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus as Shrove Tuesday (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday) for all Roman Catholics. [17] The Oratory of the Holy Face on Rue St. Etienne in Tours receives many pilgrims every year.Tours is on one of the main lines of the TGV. It is possible to travel to the west coast of Bordeaux in two and a half hours. From there, the line follows the Mediterranean coast via Avignon, and then to Spain and Barcelona. There are also lines to Lyon, Strasbourg and Lille. It takes less than one hour by train to get from Tours to Paris by TGV and one and a half hours to get to Charles de Gaulle Airport. Tours has two main stations: Gare de Tours, the central station, and Gare de Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, used by trains that do not terminate in Tours. Desgrange and his Tour invented bicycle stage racing. [38] Desgrange experimented with different ways of judging the winner. Initially he used total accumulated time (as used in the modern Tour de France) [26] but from 1906 to 1912 by points for placings each day. [36] [n 5] Desgrange saw problems in judging both by time and by points. By time, a rider coping with a mechanical problem—which the rules insisted he repair alone—could lose so much time that it cost him the race. Equally, riders could finish so separated that time gained or lost on one or two days could decide the whole race. Judging the race by points removed over-influential time differences but discouraged competitors from riding hard. It made no difference whether they finished fast or slow or separated by seconds or hours, so they were inclined to ride together at a relaxed pace until close to the line, only then disputing the final placings that would give them points. [36] 1936 Tour de France In 1989, the last stage was a time trial. Greg LeMond overtook Laurent Fignon to win by eight seconds, the closest margin in the Tour's history. [117] The final stage has not been held as a time trial again since then. [ citation needed] Panorama of the famous 21 bends towards Alpe d'Huez with outline Netflix, partnered with the organizer Amaury Sport Organisation, has produced a documentary series about the eight major teams across the 2022 Tour de France named Tour de France: Unchained. [168] It was released in June 2023. [169] Post-Tour criteriums [ edit ] In fiction, the 2003 animated feature Les Triplettes de Belleville ( The Triplets of Belleville) ties into the Tour de France.

The first time trial in the Tour was between La Roche-sur-Yon and Nantes (80km) in 1934. [113] The first stage in modern Tours is often a short trial, a prologue, to decide who wears yellow on the opening day. The first prologue was in 1967. [62] The 1988 event, at La Baule, was called "la préface". [114] There are usually two or three time trials. The final time trial has sometimes been the final stage, more recently often the penultimate stage. Allegations of doping have plagued the Tour almost since 1903. Early riders consumed alcohol and used ether to dull the pain. [171] Over the years they began to increase performance and the Union Cycliste Internationale and governments enacted policies to combat the practice. The Tour de France appealed from the start not just for the distance and its demands but because it played to a wish for national unity, [153] a call to what Maurice Barrès called the France "of earth and deaths" or what Georges Vigarello called "the image of a France united by its earth." [154] School book by Augustine Fouillée under the 'nom de plume' G. Bruno Tours is famous for its original medieval district, called le Vieux Tours. Unique to the Old City are its preserved half-timbered buildings and la Place Plumereau, a square with busy pubs and restaurants, whose open-air tables fill the centre of the square. The Boulevard Beranger crosses the Rue Nationale at the Place Jean-Jaures and is the location of weekly markets and fairs. Among the competitors were the eventual winner, Maurice Garin, his well-built rival Hippolyte Aucouturier, the German favourite Josef Fischer, and a collection of adventurers, including one competing as "Samson". [n 4]Répertoire national des élus: les maires" (in French). data.gouv.fr, Plateforme ouverte des données publiques françaises. 13 September 2022. On the Tour's return, the format of the race settled on between 20 and 25 stages. Most stages would last one day, but the scheduling of 'split' stages continued well into the 1980s. 1953 saw the introduction of the Green Jersey 'Points' competition. National teams contested the Tour until 1961. [55] The teams were of different sizes. Some nations had more than one team, and some were mixed in with others to make up the number. National teams caught the public imagination but had a snag: that riders might normally have been in rival trade teams the rest of the season. The loyalty of riders was sometimes questionable, within and between teams. Sponsors were always unhappy about releasing their riders into anonymity for the biggest race of the year, as riders in national teams wore the colours of their country and a small cloth panel on their chest that named the team for which they normally rode. The situation became critical at the start of the 1960s. Sales of bicycles had fallen, and bicycle factories were closing. [56] There was a risk, the trade said, that the industry would die if factories were not allowed the publicity of the Tour de France. The Tour returned to trade teams in 1962. [55] In the same year, Émilion Amaury, owner of le Parisien Libéré, became financially involved in the Tour. He made Félix Lévitan co-organizer of the Tour, and it was decided that Levitan would focus on the financial issues, while Jacques Goddet was put in charge of sporting issues. [57] The Tour de France was meant for professional cyclists, but in 1961 the organisation started the Tour de l'Avenir, the amateur version. [58]

Team Sky dominated the event for several years, with wins for Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome (four times) and Geraint Thomas before Egan Bernal became the first Colombian winner in 2019. The streak was interrupted only by Vincenzo Nibali's 2014 win. German incendiary bombs caused a huge fire which blazed out of control from 20 to 22 June and destroyed part of the city centre. Some architectural masterpieces of the 16th and 17th centuries were lost, as was the monumental entry to the city. The Wilson Bridge that carried a water main which supplied the city was dynamited to slow the progress of the German advance. With the water main severed, nobody was able to extinguish the inferno, therefore inhabitants had no option but to flee to safety. More heavy air raids by Allied forces devastated the area around the railway station in 1944, causing several hundred deaths. The oldest and most sought-after classification in the Tour de France is the general classification. [90] [91] All of the stages are timed to the finish. [91] The riders' times are compounded with their previous stage times; so the rider with the lowest aggregate time is the leader of the race. [90] [91] The leader is determined after each stage's conclusion: he gains the privilege to wear the yellow jersey, presented on a podium in the stage's finishing town, for the next stage. If he is leading more than one classification that awards a jersey, he wears the yellow one, since the general classification is the most important one in the race. [9] Between 1905 and 1912 inclusive, in response to concerns about rider cheating in the 1904 race, the general classification was awarded according to a point-based system based on their placings in each stage, and the rider with the lowest total of points after the Tour's conclusion was the winner. [91]Climat Centre-Val de Loire" (in French). Meteo France. Archived from the original on 16 April 2019 . Retrieved 31 December 2015. The Tour directors categorise mass-start stages into 'flat', 'hilly', or 'mountain'. [110] This affects the points awarded in the sprint classification, whether the 3 kilometer rule is operational [ clarification needed], and the permitted disqualification time in which riders must finish (which is the winners' time plus a pre-determined percentage of that time). [111] Time bonuses of 10, 6, and 4 seconds are awarded to the first three finishers, though this was not done from 2008 to 2014. [112] Bonuses were previously also awarded to winners of intermediate sprints. Nine people died when a supply van hit a bridge in the Dordogne region, resulting in the highest tour-related death toll. [208]

Normes et records 1961–1990: Tours – St Symphorien (37) – altitude 112m" (in French). Infoclimat . Retrieved 31 December 2015. A motorcyclist giving a demonstration in the velodrome of La Roche-sur-Yon, to entertain the crowd before the cyclists arrived, died after he crashed at high speed. [205] Minor classifications and prizes [ edit ] Warren Barguil with the prix de la combativité award at the 2017 Tour de France Main article: Points classification in the Tour de France Peter Sagan in the green jersey at the 2018 Tour de France. Sagan won the points classification a record seven times, in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019Populations légales 2020". The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. 29 December 2022. The city of Tours has a population of 140,000 and is called "Le Jardin de la France" ("The Garden of France"). There are several parks located within the city. Tours is located between two rivers, the Loire to the north and the Cher to the south. The buildings of Tours are white with blue slate (called Ardoise) roofs; this style is common in the north of France, while most buildings in the south of France have terracotta roofs. When the 15th-century illuminator Jean Fouquet was set the task of illuminating Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, his depiction of Solomon's Temple was modeled on the nearly-complete cathedral of Tours. The atmosphere of the Gothic cathedral close permeates Honoré de Balzac's dark short novel of jealousy and provincial intrigues, Le Curé de Tours ( The Curate of Tours), and his medieval story Maître Cornélius opens in the cathedral itself. Tours, France". Meet Minneapolis. 2012. Archived from the original on 22 July 2012 . Retrieved 3 August 2012. The academic historians Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Léonard say most people in France had little idea of the shape of their country until L'Auto began publishing maps of the race. [158] Arts [ edit ]