Tour de France
Many of us know about Lance Armstrong, the world class cyclist who had testicular cancer. He overcame the cancer and went on to win Tour de France for a record seven times. So what makes tour de France the most toughest and the most prestigiuos bicycle race. Since 2006 Tour de France is round the corner (starts July first week). I thought I will put a post giving details about the tour.
The race is a long-distance race consisting of stages. There are in total 20 stages, with a total length of between 3000 to 4000 km. The race lasts for three weeks and covers France and its neighboring countries (Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxenburg and Germany). The winner is the individual rider who finishes the course of the race in the least accumulated time.
The stages are divided as time trails and road stages. The time trails come in three varieties Indiviidual time trail, team time trail and prologue (a short individual time trail that serves to kick off a stage race).
But why did I mention the race to be toughest. Well consider running marathon everyday for three weeks (there is a break of two days but that too is spend in travelling), that's the amount of energy this race consumes. There are flat roads and mountain trails with average speed of bikes on flat surfaces is 40 km/hour (25mi/hr). The weather is not all that great too with rain and cold winds all against the riders. The riders attack each other not on flat surfaces but while decending at high speeds around 110 km/hr (70mi/hr) from the mountain. Due to this there a lot of injuries and deaths during the course of the race. Luck is considered as a skill and maximized in use along with superstitions.
So the race contains speed, danger, heroism and sees the human potential go to its limits and beyond it.
(the riders metabolic rate is far beyond any other animal species) . All these make the Tour de France the greatest and the qruelsome race.
For more details look at homepage Tour de France
The race is a long-distance race consisting of stages. There are in total 20 stages, with a total length of between 3000 to 4000 km. The race lasts for three weeks and covers France and its neighboring countries (Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxenburg and Germany). The winner is the individual rider who finishes the course of the race in the least accumulated time.
The stages are divided as time trails and road stages. The time trails come in three varieties Indiviidual time trail, team time trail and prologue (a short individual time trail that serves to kick off a stage race).
But why did I mention the race to be toughest. Well consider running marathon everyday for three weeks (there is a break of two days but that too is spend in travelling), that's the amount of energy this race consumes. There are flat roads and mountain trails with average speed of bikes on flat surfaces is 40 km/hour (25mi/hr). The weather is not all that great too with rain and cold winds all against the riders. The riders attack each other not on flat surfaces but while decending at high speeds around 110 km/hr (70mi/hr) from the mountain. Due to this there a lot of injuries and deaths during the course of the race. Luck is considered as a skill and maximized in use along with superstitions.
So the race contains speed, danger, heroism and sees the human potential go to its limits and beyond it.
(the riders metabolic rate is far beyond any other animal species) . All these make the Tour de France the greatest and the qruelsome race.
For more details look at homepage Tour de France
posted by Rohit at
1:31:00 AM
2 Comments:
ohhhhhhh boy !!! what an amazing race is this, i did not know soo much about it. thanks for giving the details of the race in a well format.
By
Anonymous, at 11:58 AM, July 02, 2006
Yes indeed it is the human strength test! There is similar sounding phrase we use like "Tour De Force" :)
But, what makes sense of such marathon-like events is still not clear. People seem to be amazed at others' capacity (this happens only when one is unsure about onself).
There are similar (not so strenuous) events held in INDIA itself. Even some junior college level events (not mountain regions mostly), but wouldn't get covered in media. Though this one is world-apart, and may be meants for pondering over for people believing themselves a world-apart.
What ya say Ro?
By
Anonymous, at 9:42 AM, July 15, 2006
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