The Tour de France

by Paul Hansford

  Palmarès: The cycling version of a CV, this is the list of the races a rider has won, e.g. ‘Dear Mr Brailsford. Please find enclosed my cover letter and palmarès in the hope you may consider me for the position of Team Sky bicycle rider.’

  Panache: A rider who shows particular style while riding. For example, heading off on a solo attack with more than half the stage still to go. Not to be confused with the cheap French perfume men used to give their spouses for Christmas in the 1980s.

  Pedalling squares: When someone is not riding fluidly or with any rhythm, usually due to fatigue, with their pedalling style looking like the chain ring is square rather than round.

  Peloton: From the French meaning ‘platoon’, the main group of riders, who bunch together collectively to save energy during the majority of the race. Also known as the ‘pack’, the ‘bunch’, and ‘all those stronger buggers disappearing in front of me’.

  Prologue: The start of the race — except it actually isn’t. It’s a short individual time trial before a stage race to decide who wears the leader’s jersey on the first stage.

  Pull: To take a turn at the front of the race, setting the pace and driving the peloton forward while others follow your slipstream, e.g. ‘The rest of Team Sky chuckled like schoolboys when Froome admitted he hadn’t had a pull in a while.’

  Queen stage: The stage in a race that features the highest peak; it is usually used to denote the hardest stage, too.

  Road rash: Skin scrapage caused by falling off a bike at high speed, e.g. ‘Ooh look Cadel, your butt cheeks have matching road rash.’

  Rouleur: A rider who is considered a good all-round cyclist. Rouleurs prefer the Classics, such as Paris–Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, to long, mountainous Grand Tours. Slovakian rider Peter Sagan, who won three stages and the green jersey in his first Tour in 2012, is tipped to be the next great rouleur. Also the name of an excellent (although slightly pretentious) cycling magazine that indulges in pages of great black-and-white photography and frame porn each edition.

  Sit up: After a rider gives a particularly long pull on the front, or just can’t take the pace of the race, they’re said to sit up, sometimes rising noticeably by putting their hands on the top of the handlebars.

  Soigneur: A member of a team who provides all manner of support: equal parts masseur/psychologist/agony aunt/cheerleader/food preparer and, in the darker days, dope supplier.

  Tar surfing: The act of crashing where a part of your body glides along the tarmac like a surfboard on a wave. Indulge in enough tar surfing with your head and you end up sounding like Keanu Reeves in Point Break.

  Time trial: Raced against the clock as an individual or in teams, time trials are typically on a short course, with each rider leaving at fixed intervals. Also known as the ‘Race of Truth’, as it usually reveals a cyclist’s true ability to ride solo in a pressure situation.

  Tête de la course: The rider who is leading the race, if they are ahead of the peloton. Literally translated from French, it means ‘head of the race’.

  Train: A group of riders from the same team who ride in a line to drive the pace of the race. Particularly effective during a bunch sprint, where a team can protect their star sprinter with numbers and then catapult him from the last man’s slipstream towards the line for the win.

  Toenails: Something early riders had none of. French rider Henri Pélissier, winner in 1923, once said: ‘And your toenails: I’ve lost six out of ten. They fall off one by one, on each stage.’

  Wheel sucker: A rider who sits behind a group or another rider, taking advantage of the draft but not taking a turn at the front themselves.

  Work: Riding on the front and sharing the workload of riding against the wind, e.g. ‘Michael Rogers did a lot of work for Bradley Wiggins today.’ Also known as taking a ‘turn’ on the front.

  Yard sale: When riders crash and leave every item they’re riding with — helmet, glasses, computer, water bottles — strewn out on the road, reminiscent of a yard sale.

  Yellow jersey: The coloured shirt given to the leader of the General Classification of the Tour, so both spectators and viewers at home can better identify them in the peloton. Also known as the ‘maillot jaune’, it used to sport the signature of Henri Desgrange until 1983, when race organisers realised it was an obvious ploy to recognise a significant part of the Tour’s history and replaced it with a sponsor’s logo.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tour de France evolution

  To compare the early years of the Tour de France with its modern-day counterpart would be like comparing Aussie rules and rugby: you can see certain similarities, but there’s no doubting they are completely different sports.

  If you were to jump in a Delorean with a crazy white-haired doctor and head to the first Tour de France, the only thing you might recognise would be the bikes, and then only just. It’s cycling, Doc, but not as we know it. Turn-of-the-century cycling featured woollen-clad men wearing big goggles who raced bikes with one gear along dirt roads on stages that would take almost a day to complete (which admittedly sounds much like a Critical Mass ride in Portland, except the Tour riders actually washed their armpits occasionally).

  Almost every aspect of the Tour has changed compared to the initial outings around the ‘hexagone’: the bikes are lighter, the clothing tighter, the rules are nicer and the drugs are better. In fact, the only part of the Tour that has remained constant over time is cheating. Deception, defrauding and double-crossing has been as much a part of the sport as pedals and handlebars over the years. When you consider that the second edition of the Tour was announced to be the last by founder Henri Desgrange due to persistent cheating by its participants, it puts the contemporary problems with dope cheats into some kind of context. Namely that, regardless of the era, some people will do anything they can to win the world’s most prestigious bike race.

  Here’s a look at how the Tour de France has evolved from its early years into the slick, well-oiled machine that it is today.

  The bike

  Early Tour riders rode variations of what was known as the ‘safety bike’, the first example of a bike that was chain-driven. Made from steel, they could weigh up to 20 kg and were fixed-wheel (meaning the rider had to constantly pedal — no free-wheeling); if a rider was lucky, they might have two gears, which would be changed by stopping and flipping the back wheel onto a smaller cog. Derailleur gears, which changed the gears manually with a lever, were introduced in 1937, leading to the formation of an organised peloton and greater reliance on tactics, changing the very essence of racing.

  As time went on, different materials were used in bike production — aluminium, titanium, aluminium/ceramic — but steel bikes were still being ridden by Tour winners right up until the mid-1990s. Today carbon fibre is the weapon of choice, and bikes weigh in at a mere 7 kg, a result of pretty much every part of the bike now being made in the lightweight material, including the saddle. The transmission is now electronically powered for smoother shifting, giving the riders a choice of twenty different gears to help them get around the course.

  Aerodynamics also play a big part in modern-day racing, especially with the time-trial bikes. In fact, there are even rules to stop the bikes from being too aerodynamic, with a minimum weight requirement and a crackdown on wind-beating aids (a bottle cage attached to a bike was once banned, as it was ruled to give too much of an aerodynamic advantage).

  The rules

  Tour founder Henri Desgrange’s early regulations gave off two distinct impressions: a) he wanted his Tour de France to be the hardest sporting endeavour in the world; and b) he didn’t like the riders very much. As if the thousands of kilometres over treacherous terrain weren’t enough, Desgrange subjected riders to restrictions that, were they applied in modern times, would see the event closed for human rights offences.

  First was the rule that participants had to complete the race on, or with, the bike they began with, which proved problematic when the bikes broke. In Rober
t Grassin’s case, he had to ride the final 300 km of a 1922 stage with his original bike strapped to his back, while numerous other riders had to toil in workshops to fix broken frames and forks before continuing. Other early regulations that pushed the boundaries of sadism included strict rules on what and when riders could eat or drink, the refusal to allow riders to work with each other or utilise tactics, and a rejection of the use of derailleur gears, despite the Tour heading into the big mountains in 1910.

  Over time Desgrange softened on some of his harder rules, but it wasn’t until Jacques Goddet took over the Tour in 1936 that the race began to be more considerate to the riders’ needs. Nowadays, there are just as many directives to follow, although there’s little chance you’ll see Alberto Contador finishing a stage with his S-Works strapped to his back or Cadel Evans trying to fix his forks in a blacksmith’s forge.

  The clothing

  The Tour began in an age when showing a little bit of ankle was considered risqué, so for the men to be showing anything above the knees surely scandalised polite society. (Tour chief Henri Desgrange once lost a job at a law firm after a client spotted him riding bare-legged in a park.)

  Early cycling kits were usually woollen and would get hot and heavy with sweat during the French summers. One rule stated riders had to finish with the same clothes they began with — a problem, as many stages began on chilly nights and ended in the afternoon sun. Frenchman Henri Pélissier took such umbrage with an official trying to look up his shirt in 1924 that he got off his bike and quit the Tour. Giant goggles were worn to keep the dust out of the eyes, while inner tubes were twisted into a figure eight and worn around the shoulders for ‘quick’ roadside changes.

  Team and country colours were gradually introduced in the early years, as was advertising, which was usually printed on separate material and pinned on the shirt. Wool clothing was eventually phased out in the 1980s, replaced by acrylic and then lycra, allowing riders to take advantage aerodynamically as well as show off their sinewy curves. Sponsorship was taken to new heights, with the bum and back becoming prime placement areas, and everyone from confectioners to lawnmower companies got in on the advertising action.

  Some riders have worn helmets since the early years of racing — particularly those with a propensity to fall over frequently, like Jean ‘Leatherhead’ Robic — but the compulsory wearing of head protection didn’t come into effect until the twenty-first century, prompted in no small part by Italian Fabio Casartelli’s death on the road during the 1995 Tour.

  Today’s biggest clothing innovations are taking place with time-trial skin-suits (that is, the skin-tight, one-piece ‘second skins’ that riders wear during the ‘Race of Truth’, rather than the skin-tight ‘second skin’ that Hannibal Lecter’s mate Buffalo Bill liked to wear on his local club rides). Many teams believe the right material and fit can give a clear aerodynamic advantage to a rider, so much so that in 2012 Team Sky was said to be unhappy that race leader Bradley Wiggins had to wear a generic yellow skin-suit provided by the organisers rather than the team’s own technologically advanced garment. Apparently it didn’t go with his eyes …

  The roads

  To say the initial Tours took place on roads might be exaggerating things a little. Turn-of-the-century France was a mainly rural nation, and anything that resembled a road would be littered with potholes, rocks and mud at the best of times. When in its second decade the race entered the mountains, the routes were barely rideable, with many competitors needing to hop off and push their bikes up the steeper passes. The weather would play havoc too, turning roads into mud bowls and washing the mountain passes into the ravines below; when they dried out, the byways would be deeply rutted and difficult to navigate. Spare a thought for the racers in 1909, who had to battle through constant rain, sleet and snow that was so bad that more than a third of the riders gave up in the first week alone.

  But as France modernised, so did its infrastructure, and the post-war surfaces that the competitors rode upon became less of an issue. Tarmac covered most main roads and even the mountain passes were almost fully sealed by the late ’60s, leading to the tradition of writing messages of support for the riders on the road to read as they struggled to the top.

  However, contemporary roads bring their own dangers with them, with one of the biggest issues being the tendency to melt in the summer sun, leaving small slick patches that are as slippery as ice. Bollards, speed bumps, crowd barriers, traffic islands and roundabouts are all hazards that need to be negotiated by the modern professional cyclist.

  The tactics

  Henri Desgrange believed that the Tour should be a test of an individual’s strength and endurance, and set out his race rules accordingly. Riders were forbidden to race in each other’s slipstream or share the work at the front, and in early races it was officially every man for himself, although there were frequent acts of collusion along team and national lines when the officials weren’t looking.

  The moment that transformed the Tour tactically was the introduction of derailleur gears in 1937, which not only increased the average speed of the race but served to set in motion the organisation of the peloton as the key strategic tool in racing. No longer having to stop to change gear, the pack became faster and more compact, forcing riders to think more about when to attack and who to chase. With cycling in the slipstream finally legalised, domestiques were able to ride for their team leaders, shielding them from the elements, chasing down breakaways and delivering them to the line safe and sound. Cyclists became free to play to their strengths, evolving into specialised sprinters, climbers and rouleurs (all-rounders) and competing for the stages that best suited their skills.

  The early ’90s saw an innovation no less significant than the derailleur when teams began using race radios between riders and the support car. Time splits and tactics could be relayed to riders in real time, taking away the need for team cars to catch up with one of their riders. Critics believe radios have also taken away the need for riders to think, with all the strategy now in the hands of the managers behind the wheel and not the men on the road.

  The drugs

  It’s only logical that, if the sport has progressed in areas of technology, clothing and tactical thinking, it would also see advances in the quality of the pharmaceuticals that the racers ingest. Riders in the first editions of the race were partial to a little liquor, a dab of cocaine or a sneaky pill to give them a pick-me-up at just the right time. Henri Pélissier raised awareness of doping in the sport when he went on his ‘cocaine for our eyes’ rant in 1924 (more on that in chapter 9), but authorities appeared happy to turn a blind eye to riders hopping up if it stopped them from crumpling in a heap before the finish line.

  Amphetamines were the drug of choice right up until the mid-’90s and, while it would be doing the few clean riders a disservice to say that everyone was at it, everyone was at it. Even champions such as Fausto Coppi and Jacques Anquetil alluded to using more than just bread and water to win their races.

  But where amphetamines basically helped an already-talented rider break through the pain barrier, the advent of EPO in the ’90s had the effect, as one observer put it, of turning workhorses into thoroughbreds. EPO, or erythropoietin, is a hormone that increases the production of red blood cells, therefore enabling the blood to carry more oxygen to the muscles. For endurance athletes, this was the not-so-Holy Grail. Suddenly cyclists had an undetectable drug that could increase their performances to a stunning degree and, with the help of complicit team staff and doctors, EPO-enhanced riders dominated the sport from the mid-’90s to the end of the 2000s.

  Although the drug testers always appear to be one step behind the drug cheats, the sport is fighting back against the dopers, principally with the biological passport, which can alert testers to a doping violation by highlighting variances in an athlete’s established blood levels. The passport has seen a reduction in the number of doping cases detected — either a sign that it’s working, or that ri
ders have moved on to another, more sophisticated, drug. While there is still a long way to go for cycling to be truly clean, there’s now hope that a new generation of riders who have no association with doping will help lead the sport out of the shadows.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  How-to’s of the Tour de France

  First of all, don’t panic. This chapter isn’t one of those cycling-magazine articles that offers advice on ‘How to Get Fit and Ride the Tour de France Course’, and then gives you a plan of daily four-hour training rides and a diet you can only follow if you are a franchise owner of Whole Foods. It’s a little more relaxed than that.

  What it will tell you is how a team with Tour de France ambitions builds up to the big race, as they put in a lot of work during the early months of the year in the hopes it will pay dividends in July.

  You can also immerse yourself in the analytical side of the sport with an informative watcher’s guide, where various TV-viewing characteristics are analysed by a sports psychologist* to discern which Tour de France rider you are most similar to. (*Analysis may be undertaken by the author and not by an actual qualified sports psychologist.)

  How to win the Tour de France

  The professional cycling calendar is packed with high-profile events from March to September but, with very few exceptions, teams will focus all their attention on peaking at the Tour de France.

  For any outfit with ambitions of a podium finish at the Tour, nothing is left to chance. From off-season recruitment and winter training camps to the continual assessment of the riders and the all-important build-up races, the time and effort put into challenging for the yellow jersey is a year-round pursuit.

  Not every team is looking to win the yellow jersey, though. The planning and investment it takes to launch an assault on the podium is beyond some of the smaller teams with limited means. Winning stages can be just as prestigious — the victory providing all-important camera time for sponsors — and some teams are happy constructing themselves around a top-class sprinter or climber.