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Tour de France 2006 | Tour de France Odds

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Tour de France 2006 Headline News ABC News anchor, cameraman stable after Iraq bombing Metro Toronto, Canada >... Tonight&", answer questions during the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena ... an Emmy>award>winning cameraman, is Canadian and lives in France. ... Allison Sheeve 2006 Formula Oceanic Champ Sail World, Australia >... one week ago and will be preparing for her Olympic trials coming up later this year by going to Europe for the Olympic Tour which starts in April in France. ... German chancellor issues Iran warning US Shows Its Depth and Ties Record in Run>Up to the Olympics Durban: Sunday Quotes

2006 Overall Standings Click for more...

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Tour de France - Le Tour

The (Le) Tour de France (French for Tour of France), also simply known as Le Tour, is an epic long distance road bicycle racing competition for professionals held over three weeks in July in and around France. It has been held annually since 1903, only interrupted by World War I and World War II, and is now one of the world's largest sporting events.

Along with the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and the Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain), the Tour de France makes up cycling's "Grand Tours".

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Lance Armstrong Six Time Winner

Lance Armstrong (born September 18, 1971) is an American cyclist from Texas. He is most famous for recovering from cancer to subsequently win the Tour de France a record six consecutive times—1999 to 2004. His success prompted some to nickname the event Tour de Lance.

Armstrong's achievements have been widely lauded. In 2002, Sports Illustrated magazine named him their Sportsman of the Year. He was also named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year for 2002, 2003 and 2004, received ESPN's ESPY Award for Best Male Athlete in 2003 and 2004, and won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award in 2003. In April 2005, Armstrong announced that he would retire from racing after the 2005 edition of the Tour.

Lance's true comeback came in 1999, when he won his first Tour de France. His final lead times over his closest competitor have been over six minutes every year except for 2003, when he finished 1:01 ahead of Jan Ullrich, following an unusual set of circumstances including a stomach illness at the outset of the race.

Armstrong at speed during the prologue to the Tour de France, 2004.In his most recent Tour victory (2004), Armstrong won with a personal-best 5 stages, plus the team time trial (TTT) with his U.S. Postal Service "Blue Train". He contends he let his friend Ivan Basso win Stage 12 at the finish line as his way of offering support for Basso's mother's struggle with cancer, though video footage appears to show Armstrong being beaten fairly. After that he seized the reins by outsprinting Basso to take the very next stage, and followed that up by becoming the first man since Gino Bartali in 1948 to win three consecutive mountain stages—15, 16, and 17. For the first time Armstrong also found himself unable to ride away from his rivals in the mountains (except for the individual time trial in stage 16 up L'Alpe d'Huez when he started two minutes behind Basso and passed him up) and won in sprint finishes in stages 13 and 15 versus Basso and made up a huge gap in the last 250 meters to nip Andreas Klöden at the line in stage 17. He won the final individual time trial (ITT), stage 19, to complete his personal-record of stage wins.

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Tour de France Records

Lance Armstrong (United States) holds the record as the only rider to have won the Tour six times (consecutively 1999-2004). Four other riders have managed to win the Tour five times:

Jacques Anquetil (France) in 1957, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964;

Eddy Merckx (Belgium) in 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1974;

Bernard Hinault (France) in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1985;

Miguel Induráin (Spain)in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995 (the first to do so in five consecutive years).

In terms of nationality, riders from France have won most Tours (36), followed by Belgium (18), Italy and the United States (9 each), Spain (8), Luxembourg (4), Switzerland and the Netherlands (2 each) and Ireland, Denmark and Germany (1 each).

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Tour de France History and General description

The race was founded as a publicity event for the newspaper L'Auto (ancestor of the present l'Équipe) by its editor and co-founder, Henri Desgrange, to rival the Paris-Brest et retour ride (sponsored by Le Petit Journal), and Bordeaux-Paris. The idea for a round-France stage race is also credited to one of his journalists, Géo Lefèvre, with whom Desgrange had lunch at the Café de Madrid in Paris on 20 November 1902). Promotion of the Tour de France certainly proved a great success for the newspaper; circulation leapt from 25,000 before the 1903 Tour to 65,000 after it; in 1908 the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour it was selling 500,000 copies a day. The record circulation claimed by Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933 Tour. Today, the Tour is organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), part of the media group that owns l'Équipe.

The tour is a "stage race", divided into a number of stages, each stage being a race held over one day. Although the number of stages has varied in the past, recently the tour has consisted of around 20 stages, with a total length of between 3,000 and 4,000 km.

Most stages take place in France though it is very common to have a few stages in nearby countries, such as Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, but also non-neighbouring countries such as the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The three weeks usually includes two rest days, which are sometimes used to transport the riders long distances between stages.

In recent years, the first stage is preceded by a short individual time trial (1 to 15 km), called the prologue. The traditional finish is in Paris on the Champs-Élysées. In between, various stages occur, including a number of mountain stages, individual time trials and a team time trial. The remaining stages are held over relatively flat terrain. With the variety of stages, sprinters may win stages, but the overall winner is almost always a master of the mountain stages and time trials.

The itinerary of the race changes each year; however, some of the visited places, especially mountains and passes, recur almost annually and are famous on their own. The most famous mountains are those in the hors-categorie (peaks where the difficulty in climbing is beyond categorization), including the Col du Tourmalet, Mont Ventoux, Col du Galibier, the Hautacam and Alpe d'Huez. Although the tour is often won in the mountain stages, the length and variety of terrain ensures that only an all-round rider could possibly win the race.

Other major stage races include the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and the Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain). The Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and World Cycling Championship comprise the Triple Crown of Cycling.

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Visit Tour de France - Le Tour Official Website at http://www.letour.fr/