Tour de France

It is called a peloton.

To gain viewers, which pleases the sponsors.

71 signed up to take part, but only 60 started the race. 21 were sponsored, the rest private. 21 completed the course - the winner was Maurice Garin and le lanterne rouge (the last rider to finish) was Arsene Millocheau.

TdF isn't really a competition between nations, it's a race between professional teams usually consisting of riders from several different nations.

But sure, there's been British rides that has done well.

They did the music for freedom tour sponsored by jagermiester with Dope, nocturne, and invain. It was about a week b4 huuricane Katrina.

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.

Lance Armstrong, but he has then been stripped of his titles due to doping.

There'd be one or two star riders, and the rest will be support riders.

The task of the support riders is to make the race as easy as possible for the star rider(s) until he is in a good position to do his thing.

If a team's star rider is a sprinter, the rest of the team is responsible for keeping him out of the wind and deliver him fit and rested to a good spot to start the sprint from.

The same goes if it's a good mountain rider.

If the star rider is a generally good rider, then the support riders can be used to chase down any breakaway riders. It's possible to win the overall title w/o winning any stages, as long as there are always different riders in the top position.

Another task for support riders is to drop back to the team car for more water and food, and then catch up with the star rider and deliver those items to him.

Last but not least a support rider may be asked to give up his bike to the star rider if he should suffer a flat or other mechanical problems.

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 the Tour and all other stage races, during a stage the rider wears the jersey of the most important classification that s/he is leading (in the order of priority: general classification, points classification, mountains classification for the Tour at present) and the other race classification jersey(s) that s/he would have qualified to wear are worn by the rider next in that classification. The actual category leader appears on the podium to collect all the relevant leader's jerseys, however.

The race-specific jerseys take precedence over other distinctive jerseys worn (e.g. world and national champions jerseys and jerseys for leaders of multi-race competitions like the ProTour) but these are not taken over by other riders if the wearer leads a race classification.

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.

No.

These days, the race organisers tends to like to move the start between different nearby countries where the race is popular.

How to say on Saturday I went on a tour

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.

rookie winners of the tour de France