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Tour de France 2008
History - Important Facts - Teams - Stages - Winners - Favourites
Important Facts - Records
Tour de France 2008 |
Local name |
Le Tour de France |
Edition |
95th |
Distance |
3.500 Km (Through France and Italy) |
Date |
Saturday July 5 to Sunday 27, 2008 |
Distinctive Aspects
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-4 mountain finishes
-2 rest days
-82 Km of individual time-trials
-19 Category 1, Category 2 & highest level passes will be climbed
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Stage's Profiles |
-10 flat stages
-5 mountain stages
-4 medium mountain stage
-2 individual time-trial stages |
General Director |
Christian Prudhomme |
- The Tour de France is the most prestigious of all cycling competitions in the world. While the other two European Grand tours are well-known in Europe and attract many professional cyclists, they are relatively unknown outside the continent, and even the UCI World Cycling Championship is only familiar to cycling enthusiasts.
- For 2008 race Christian Prudhomme announced that the Tour would change the format of the order of the stages. Normally it would star with a prologue, that was followed by a flat stages week. For the 2008 the program won't have a prologue race, and instead will have an uphill finish at the end of stage one, which will held several types of sprinters. Later in the forth stage there will be a time trial and for the sixth stage they bring the Super-Besse, the first mountain of the competition.
- Other major cycling 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 constitute the Triple Crown of Cycling.
- The Tour de France has long been a household name around the globe, even amongst people who are not generally interested in pro cycling, and is for cycling what the FIFA World Cup is to soccer in terms of global popularity. Only the best cycling teams in the world are chosen to compete and competitors must have an invitation to enter the race. It is also the world's largest annual pro sporting event, measured in the number of viewers.
- The traditional ending stage is in Paris on the Champs-Élysées. During the Tour, 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 race itinerary changes each year and alternates between clockwise and counter-clockwise direction around France. For example in 2005 was clockwise and in 2006 was counter-clockwise.
- The Tour of France is a stage race, divided into a number of stages, each being a race held over one day. The time it takes each rider to complete each stage is noted, recorded and accumulated. Riders who finish in the same group are awarded the same time, with possible subtractions due to time bonuses. Two riders are said to have finished in the same group if the gap between them is less than one bike-length. A crash in the final kilometer of a normal stage means that all riders in the same group entering the final kilometer are given the same time.
- The ranking of the riders according to accumulated time is known as the General Classification, or GC. The overall winner is the one who is ranked first on GC at the end of the final stage. Winning a Tour de France stage is considered a great pro cycling achievement, more prestigious than winning most single day races, regardless of one's overall standing in the GC.
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