Bicycle Racing

The Yellow Jersey, or the "Maillot Jaune" in French goes to the overall race leader - the rider with the shortest overall time.

This means the person who wins a stage of the race does not necessarily get the yellow jersey. This position is calculated by how much time in total each person has taken to get to a certain checkpoint from the very beginning.

As in, the race leader is whoever spent the least amount of time in the race (and finished correctly). For example,

It is the end of stage 2, there are 2 Racers that are in front of everyone else by a large margin (i.e. the others aren't in the running).

Racer A has times of : 3hr35min (leg 1), 4hr5min (leg 2) = 7hr40min (total thus far)

Racer B has times of : 3hr15min (leg 1), 4hr10min (leg 2) = 7hr25min

So even though Racer B has come second in leg 2, that competitor retains the yellow jersey because of the rules.

The wearer of the yellow jersey or "maillot jaune", is the rider with the overall lowest cumulative time of all the riders. He needn't win any stages of the multi stage race as long as his combined time for all stages is lower than anyone else's. As a simple example, if he came in second in every stage, as long as a different rider came in first each time, he would still probably have the lowest combined time.

From what I've read so far, it seems like Robbie McEwen is in Team Katusha in the for this years (2009) Tour de France.

Try the offical Tour de France website www.letour.fr

It is called a peloton.

They're sponsors of the race.

Lucien Van Impe from Belgium won the race

The most appearances have been by Joop Zoetemelk with 16, which includes 1 win of GC, 12 top ten finishes and no abandonments. Three riders, Lucien van Impe (one Tour win), Guy Nulens, and Viatcheslav Ekimov (who rode for many years on Lance Armstrong's variously named teams) have made 15 appearances; van Impe and Ekimov finished all 15 whereas Nulens abandoned twice. George Hincapie holds the mark for most consecutive finishes with thirteen. Big George is currently also riding in his 15th Tour (7/4/10). He is the only rider to have ridden on all 7 of Armstrong's teams during Armstrongs winning streak that ended in 2005 and also the only rider in history to have ridden alongside 8 winners.

Andorra, a small country in between Spain and France.

Chris Boardman has never won a Tour, though he won the prologue in 1994 with fastest time ever recorded which allowed him to wear the Maillot Jaune for the first stage.

There is no official rainbow jersey in le tour de france.

If you've seen one, it was probably a team jersey with that design.

7

In time trial it's every rider for himself, and they ride one by one. In an ordinary stage they ride in teams and packs where they can cooperate and ride in each others draft, which saves energy.

'Lanterne Rouge'means 'red lamp'.

Back in the days of steam trains and crude signal systems, the last car had a red lamp hanging off itin case the train should be caught up by another train.

The last rider gets compared to the last part of a train basically.

I've heard that it's designed like that because that's what riders vision is like when they reach the top of the mountain! :)

The King of the Mountains Jersey was introduced in 1975. The Colors for the jersey were decided by the original jersey sponsor Poulain Chocolate who chose the white jersey with the red dots to match a popular product.

Marco Pantani holds the fastest ascent at 37mins 35sec set in 1997 which Lance Armstrong the second fastest at 37mins 36sec set in 2004.

It's the competition aspect of winning the race.

There are at least two takes on this question:

Riding at speed, air drag AKA wind resistance is quite high. If you're a solo rider, you have to battle all that wind, all the time, by yourself.

If you have a team mate along you can take turns riding point and resting in the pocket of still air just behind the other rider. Means that two riders can either go faster for the same amount of effort, or equally fast at less effort when compared to a solo rider.

The other take is mainly applicable to multi-stage, team racing events. In a multi stage event, overall win is calculated on points, with most points going to the stage winner and then a diminishing scale. This means that if you're consistently placing high, it's possible to win the race w/o actually winning a stage - assuming that there are always different guys getting the top spots.

So let's say you're in a team with a guy in a good position for the overall win, and a strong contender takes off in a breakaway.

If you manage to get a good, but basically disposable rider into that breakaway, you can instruct him to try to steal the win from the contender at any cost. Preventing the contender from getting the highest score will help keep your team's strong rider in a good position for the overall win. The "disposable" rider can put in a greater effort, as he knows there's no pressure on him placing good on the next stage. The contender can't really race as hard, as he has to be in shape to compete during the next stage too.

Jeff Williams is the cyclist, I remember Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett being asked who it was when it was originally shown for the first time on Channel 4 in 1986. The music was composed by Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks. The music and video seems to have become something of a cult, as people are campaigning to bring it back with facebook groups etc however considering the Tour de France highlights are now on itv instead of channel 4 this may prove to be difficult as channel four will no doubt own the rights to the music and video material

The "Maillot Jaune" or " Yellow Jersey" is worn by the rider with the overall shortest time. Or during the 1st stage, lats year's winner.

The original idea behind the colored jerseys was to make it easier for the spectators to recognize when the strong riders passed by.

Average speeds on steep climbs, such as the 2009 July 25, Stage 20 - Mont Ventoux are typically under 20km/h (12.5mph), with lowest speeds over short steep sections (typically over a few hundred meters) recorded as being around 15km/h (just under 10mph). However this was not the steepest climb in the Tour ever and I suspect that speeds of closer to 10km/h (around 6mph) over very short distances of very steep climbs are likely.
This question won't make sense, unless you first define the inclination as the speed will depend on the severity of the climb. It's unlikely to ever be below 10 MPH, and if it's really a "climb" it's probably not over 20 MPH.

No.

It's a bicycle race.

Lucien Petit-Breton

Just 1

The race did not take place that year because of World War 1.