Your guide to Le Tour

The Tour de France is the most demanding sporting event in the world. Cyclists use up to 10,000 calories a day and the three week-long route is the equal to climbing up and down Everest three times.

Cyclists enter the race as part of the team. Usually there are nine riders in a team and about 20 teams that enter.
Teams all wear the same colours to help identify them. They can help one another during the race and have access to a shared car with spare parts, equipment etc.

The Tour is run in stages and the overall winner of the Tour is the person who has won the most stages.

There are two rest days during the three-week Tour. The stages of the Tour have different sorts of terrian: flat, mountainous or undulating.

The Stages are either raced by all the riders together and the one who finishes first being the winner or as time-trials.

The Tour changes direction every other year going clockwise and then anti-clockwise through France.

Since 1975, the Tour has finished on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
Over two million pounds in prize money is awarded to riders on The Tour for winning stages and if your team wins. The overall winner gets about £300,000.

The Tour is quite complicated when it comes to apportioning points.

Apart from the overall winner, there are points and mountain competitions. The current leaders of all three sections wear special jerseys.

These are awarded at the end of every stage. If one rider has won more than one, he wears the most prestigious and then the runner up wears the next one down.

The yellow jersey is the most famous and prestigious. It is awarded to the overall leader at the end of each stage.

The green jersey is awarded for sprint points.
The white jersey with red dots is given to the King of the Mountains: with a points system for the hardest climbs.

For most stages all the riders start at the same time. Riders are allowed to touch each other and to shelter in other riders' slipstreams.

The rider who crosses the line first wins. If riders of the same team all finish together then they also get points. Various time bonus points are also awarded.

If a rider crashes within the last 3 kms of a stage they are still crediting with finishing with the time that the rest of their group finishes.