The Tour de France: History, Stages, and the World's Most Demanding Race

Born From a Newspaper War

The Tour de France was created to sell newspapers. In 1902, Henri Desgrange, editor of sports daily L'Auto, was losing a circulation battle with rival paper Le Vélo. His solution was audacious: organize a bicycle race around the entire perimeter of France, making it so spectacular that readers would buy the paper to follow its progress.

The first Tour de France ran from July 1 to July 19, 1903. Sixty cyclists departed from Montgeron, a suburb south of Paris. The race covered 2,428 kilometers in six stages, with rest days in between. Maurice Garin of France won, completing the course in 94 hours, 33 minutes. He averaged roughly 26 km/h over nearly four days of actual riding.

The race nearly died in its second year. The 1904 Tour was plagued by cheating—riders took cars, trains, and shortcuts. Fans attacked cyclists from rival regions. After the race, the top four finishers were all disqualified. Desgrange publicly despaired, writing that the Tour had been "killed by its own success." He then proceeded to make it harder, longer, and more dangerous the following year.

The Yellow Jersey and Race Structure

The maillot jaune—the yellow jersey worn by the overall race leader—was introduced in 1919. Yellow matched the color of L'Auto's newsprint. The first rider to wear it was Eugène Christophe, though he didn't win that year; his forks broke crossing the Pyrenees and he walked 14 kilometers to the nearest blacksmith. Race officials penalized him 10 minutes for allowing a young boy to pump his bellows.

The modern Tour structure uses a points-based system in which the overall leader after each stage wears yellow the following day. The race also awards:

• Green jersey (maillot vert): Points leader, awarded for sprinting success
• Polka dot jersey (maillot à pois rouges): King of the Mountains—best climber
• White jersey (maillot blanc): Best young rider (under 26)
• Red dossard: Most aggressive rider—awarded daily since 1994

The Mountains

The introduction of the Pyrenees in 1910 and the Alps in 1911 transformed the Tour from a long road race into an endurance epic. Riders crossed the Col du Tourmalet (2,115 m) and Col d'Aubisque on basic bikes with no gears—most had to walk sections of the climbs. The first rider to summit the Tourmalet in 1910, Octave Lapize, reportedly screamed at race officials: "Assassins!"

The mountains remain the Tour's defining theater. Cols like Alpe d'Huez (21 hairpin turns, 1,860 m altitude), Col du Galibier (2,642 m), and Mont Ventoux (the "Giant of Provence," 1,909 m) have hosted defining moments in cycling history. Tom Simpson collapsed and died near the summit of Mont Ventoux in 1967, amphetamines and alcohol found in his jersey pockets—a defining moment in doping regulation.

Record Champions

Eddy Merckx—known simply as "The Cannibal" for his insatiable appetite for victories—dominated the Tour from 1969 to 1974. He won 34 individual stages, a record that stood for decades, and claimed not only the yellow jersey but the green and polka dot jerseys simultaneously in 1969—the only rider to win all three major jerseys in one edition.

Lance Armstrong and the Doping Era

Lance Armstrong won seven consecutive Tours from 1999 to 2005 after surviving testicular cancer that had spread to his brain and lungs. His story became one of sport's most celebrated narratives. In 2012, following an investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Armstrong was stripped of all seven titles and banned from sport for life after evidence confirmed systematic doping. The USADA report described it as "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

• No official winners have been declared for the 1999–2005 Tours
• Armstrong admitted the doping publicly in a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey
• The doping scandals of the 1990s–2000s prompted UCI to implement the Biological Passport in 2008
• The Biological Passport monitors biological markers over time to detect doping indirectly

Modern Tour Statistics

The modern Tour de France is a three-week, 3,000+ kilometer race requiring riders to sustain outputs of approximately 300–400 watts for hours on end—a physiological demand at the absolute limit of human endurance. Top riders burn roughly 8,000 calories per stage and must consume vast quantities of food while racing.

Tadej Pogačar of Slovenia, born in 2000, won the 2024 Tour by over six minutes—the largest winning margin in 25 years—signaling a generational shift in the sport. He completed it averaging 42.4 km/h over three weeks in the mountains and plains of France, a number that would have been inconceivable to the sixty riders who left Montgeron in 1903.