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Dirt Bike Safety
Who needs to consider dirt bike safety?
Dirt bike safety is something that absolutely every rider and possible rider must consider before getting on a bike every time. The massive rise in popularity of dirt bikes, ATVs and...
Don't Count On A Bird Flu Vaccine, Count On A Nanomask
You've no doubt seen the news reports about Bird Flu, a deadly airborne virus. And you no doubt feel at risk and vulnerable. A Bird Flu vaccine is months and months away from production, and production will be a problem since health officials...
My Golf Disaster
Although I was never picked for sports teams as a kid, I always thought that golf would be far easier than all the others as it required very little physical exertion in regards to chasing a ball up and down a field for 90 minutes while opponents...
Quick guide to choosing a new pair of sneakers
Sneakers are probably the most important items in a sports wardrobe. As interesting as it may be, you can't jog in the same shoes you go to the office.
It's important to have at least one pair of sneakers handy each time you go out. Whether you...
What You Must Know About Trampoline Safety
Tumbling on the trampoline caught on like wildfire in the early 1960s, and still enjoys great popularity today, but the sport also still involves the same potential dangers. Trampolines in the last 45 years have gone from being an institutional or...
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The Tour de France, the Worlds biggest road bikes race
The Tour de France is the BIG one; it's the World cup and the
Olympics all in one. It has it all, the high mountains, the wind
swept northern planes and the heat of the south. It also has the
world's media, all the top teams and riders and millions of
cycling mad fans watching. The other "Grand Tours" of Italy and
Spain are as exciting, sometimes more so, but they don't have
the thing the Tour has, that unique Tour ness, that unique
French ness.
How it started.
It all started in 1903, when the French daily paper, L'Auto
wanted to sell more than its competitor, Le Vélo, who at that
time was the only paper reporting on cycle racing. It was
suggested to the papers director, Henri Desgrange that they
should organise a road
bike race all round France. The first race was 2,428
kilometres split into six stages and was run off at 25.29
kilometres per hour and out of the 60 starters 21 finished and
the race was lead from start to finish by Maurice Garin.
The Heroes.
Over the years there has been a lot of heroes in the Tour de
France, you could say all the riders are heroes, to win the race
once is hard, but to win it five times is phenomenal. Only five
men have done this, and one of these has won it seven times.
French rider Jacques Anquetil was the first to win the race five
times, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and then Spaniard Miguel
Indurain all equalled him. Then the American, Lance Armstrong
started to win in 1999 and didn't stop until he had won it a
record seven times in a row. This is all the more amazing as he
is a cancer survivor and was given a 50/50 chance of life; he
beat the cancer and went on to beat all comers in the Tour de
France.
The course.
The race starts in a
different town every year and every other
year it starts outside France, the choice of stage towns is a
combination of money and sporting considerations, the towns will
pay for a start or a finish, but they need to be near a mountain
or a cobbled road or be near other town who want to host the
Tour. The Towns pay to be the centre of interest for a day, the
Tour also brings in a lot of money in tourism and the Towns
collect much more than they pay and the world will remember the
name of the Town, for at least a day.
The riders.
All the best riders want to win the Tour de France, but they
cant, from the 200 or so starters there is a possible five or
six riders who can win, the rest are either helping their team
leaders or sprint or mountain specialists who want to win stages
or points or mountain jerseys, this keeps the race active and
interesting from beginning to end.
The BIG Tour.
The Tour is the biggest, but that has its problems, some Towns
are not big enough, hotels etc., the television needs more
space, the journalists need more phone lines and computers, more
and more people are following the race and the riders can be
forgotten about in all the razzmatazz, but its still the biggest
sporting event in the world, long may in run!
More reviews at http://www.bike-cyclin
g-reviews.com
About the author:
Alastair Hamilton is a successful writer who offers a truly
unique depth of experience in competitive cycling, he also
contributes adding technical articles on roa
d bikes to some cycling online magazines. Please, visit bike cycling
reviews to reach further information on bike and cycling
news
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