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Tour de France 2006 | Tour de France Odds

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Tour de France 2005 News and Stages

Date	Stage	Departure town	Arrival town	Km
July 2	Stage 1 (time trial)	Fromentine	Noirmoutier en I'ile	19,0
July 3	Stage 2	Challans	Les Essarts	181,5
July 4	Stage 3	La Châtaigneraie	Tours	212,5
July 5	Stage 4 (team time trial)	Tours	Blois	67,5
July 6	Stage 5	Chambord	Montargis	183,0
July 7	Stage 6	Troyes	Nancy	199,0
July 8	Stage 7	Lunéville	Karlsruhe	228,5
July 9	Stage 8	Pforzheim	Gérardmer	231,5
July 10	Stage 9	Gérardmer	Mulhouse	171,0
July 12	Stage 10	Genoble	Courchevel	192,5
July 13	Stage 11	Courchevel	Briançon	173,0
July 14	Stage 12	Briançon	Diege-les-Bains	187,0
July 15	Stage 13	Miramas	Montpellier	173,5
July 16	Stage 14	Agde	Ax-3 Domaines	220,5
July 17	Stage 15	Lézat-sur-Lèze	Saint-Lary Soulan (Pla d'Adet)	205,5
July 19	Stage 16	Mourenx	Pau	180,5
July 20	Stage 17	Pau	Revel	239,5
July 21	Stage 18	Albi	Mende	189,0
July 22	Stage 19	Issoire	Le Puy-en-Velay	153,5
July 23	Stage 20 (time trial)	Saint-Etienne	Saint-Etienne	55,5
July 24	Stage 21	Corbeil-Essonnes	Paris Champs-Élysées	144,5

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Types of stage

Ordinary stage

In an ordinary stage, all riders start simultaneously and share the road. Riders are permitted to touch and to shelter behind each other1. The one who crosses the finish line first wins. In the first week of the Tour, this usually leads to spectacular mass sprints.

After the first twenty finishers, when there are no more sprint points available, no one competes to cross the line earlier. This avoids what would otherwise be hideously dangerous mass sprints. Time bonuses are awarded at some intermediate sprints and stage finishes, but only to the first three riders who reach the specified point. These bonuses generally are a maximum of 20 seconds. So, a good sprinter can get the Yellow Jersey early in the Tour.

Riders who crash within the last kilometre of the stage are credited with the finishing time of the group that they were with when they crashed. This avoids sprinters being penalised for accidents that do not accurately reflect their performance on the stage as a whole given that crashes in the final kilometre can be huge pileups that are hard to avoid for a rider farther back in the peloton. A crashed sprinter inside the final kilometre will not win the sprint, but avoids being penalised in the overall classification. The final kilometre is indicated in the race course by a red triangular pennant - known as the flamme rouge - raised above the road2.

Some ordinary stages take place in the mountains, almost always causing major shifts in the General Classification. On ordinary stages that do not have extended mountain climbs, most riders can manage to stay together in the peloton all the way to the finish; during mountain stages however, it is not uncommon for some riders to lose 40 minutes to the winner of the stage. The so called mountain stages are often the deciding factor in determining the winner of the Tour de France. With the exception of the now traditional finish at the Champs-Elysées all famous stages, like Alpe d'Huez and Mont Ventoux, are mountain stages, and these often bring out the most spectators who line up the roads by the thousands to cheer and encourage the cyclists and support their favorites.

Individual time trial

In an individual time trial each rider rides individually. The first stage of the tour is often a time trial, known as a prologue. Here, riders start in reverse order of race number, meaning the weakest rider on the lowest ranked team will be first off, with the final rider being the defending champion, wearing Number 1. The purpose of the prologue is to decide who gets to wear yellow on the opening day, and provide a large and prestigious spectacle for one lucky city.

There are usually three or four individual time trials during the Tour. One of these may be a team time trial (see below). Traditionally the final time trial has been the penultimate stage, and effectively determines the winner before the final ordinary stage which is not ridden competitively. On a few occasions, the race organisers made the final stage into Paris a time trial. The most recent occasion on which this was done, in 1989, yielded the closest ever finish in Tour history, when Greg LeMond beat Laurent Fignon by eight seconds overall. Fignon wore the yellow jersey for the final stage, with a narrow lead of 50 seconds, and was beaten by LeMond's superior time trial performance. Lemond was the first cyclist in the Tour de france to use aerodynamic equipment in the time trial. His use of a helmet and aero handlebars helped him defeat Fignon, who rode bareheaded.

Team time trial

Often in the first week of the Tour there is a team time trial. Each member of the team is credited with the time of the fifth team member to cross the finish line; this is the middle member of a nine-person team. Traditionally, each team received the exact time it recorded in that stage.

However, in the 2004 Tour, the only team that received its actual time was the winning team; the trailing teams received set time penalties based on their placings in that stage - for example, riders in a team that finished six minutes behind the winner might lose only three minutes in the General Classification. This was widely viewed as an attempt by the Tour organisers to prevent Lance Armstrong's US Postal Team from gaining too much time.

Famous stages

The final stage now always finishes at the Champs-Elysées, which, being cobbled, is an unpleasant surface to cycle on. This stage is not usually competitive, the leader having a sufficiently large margin to be unchallengeable. There have been exceptions, however. In 1987, with Stephen Roche leading Pedro Delgado by only 40 seconds after the final time trial, Delgado broke away from the peloton on the Champs-Elysées, threatening to snatch victory at the last minute. (In fact he was caught, he and Roche both finished in the peloton, and Roche thereby won the Tour.)

In recent years, with closer finishes, the Tour organisers have experimented with holding the final time trial as the final, rather than as the penultimate, stage. Most famously, the final stage of the 1989 Tour saw Greg LeMond overtake Laurent Fignon's overall lead by just 8 seconds, the closest winning margin in the Tour's history. It is likely that this arrangement will be repeated in future.

The particularly tough climb of Alpe d'Huez is a favourite, providing a stage finish in most Tours. In 2004, in another experiment, the mountain time trial ended at Alpe d'Huez. This seems less likely to be repeated, following complaints from the riders. Another famous mountain stage is the climb of the Mont Ventoux, often claimed to be the hardest climb in the Tour due to the harsh conditions there. The tour usually features only one of these two climbs in a year.

To host a stage start or finish brings prestige, and a lot of business, to a town. Whereas formerly each stage would start at the preceding stage's finish line, making a continuous course for the race, nowadays each stage starts some distance from the previous day's finish, to allow more towns to share in the glory. Sometimes the Tour will jump very long distances between stages, requiring a rest day to allow riders to be transported.

The prologue and first stage of the Tour are particularly prestigious to host. Usually one town will host the prologue (which is too short to go between towns) and also the start of stage 1. The Tour alternates between starting inside and outside France; frequently the first couple of stages are in a neighbouring country.

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