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The first Tour de France competition waswas organized in 1903 as an advertising project of the Parisian newspaper L'Auto. The author of the idea was journalist Geo Lefevre, and the main organizer of the cycling race was the editor and co-founder of the newspaper Henri Degrange. The new competition was a response to a similar move by competitors who sponsored two similar cycling events. "Tour de France" in the first year brought to the organizers a huge success - only the number of regular subscribers of the publication during the race increased by two and a half times. Such a sales boom occurred then during the cycle of each subsequent year and peaked in the summer of one of the last prewar years - 1933. Then the organizers sold on average 854,000 copies of their newspaper each day. After the Second World War, the journalists of L'Auto created a new sports newspaper L "Equipe, which by now has become one of the leading daily national publications, is part of the media holding Editions Philippe Amaury, one of whose divisions - Amaury Sport Organization - deals with organizations of various large sports including the famous Paris-Dakar rally-marathon, and the "Tour de France" branch is engaged in an annual road race that was unofficially called the "Big Loop" in this division of the holding. The modern Tour de France timepiece consists of from the "prologue" and twenty stages, each of which is allocated for one day of competition.This year the competition will begin on June 30 and except for the French territory will be held in Belgium and Switzerland. The total length of the stages is 3,479 km. In addition to the winner in the team and personal classification will be determined and the best among young - up to 25 years - riders, the leader of the mountain stages and the best sprinter velomnogodnevki.

Most international cycling series "Tour deFrance "starts in early July, and ends at the end of the same month. But for the event in 2012, an exception was made. It will begin on June 30, and will end on July 22. The race route is always selected anew. For this reason, the distance, which is to pass the drivers, is constantly changing. So, in 2012 it will be 3479 km. This time the race will start in the city of Liege (Belgium), and will end on the Champs-Elysées, in the center of the French capital. All the events of the Tour de France series consist of three types of stages. The principle of the first of these is that cyclists do not compete at first, and they do not need to overtake each other. For several kilometers they move in the same order in which they started. Then the representative of the organizer raises the white flag, and from this moment the competition begins. Now each of the riders strives to come to the finish line first. They are allowed to slightly touch each other, but it is forbidden (under pain of disqualification) to jostle. The winner is the participant who reached the finish line first. In the second stage, the riders start individually. From the start of each of them, an individual stopwatch is started. After this, the cyclist does not pay attention to the rest - his goal is to keep the time from start to finish as low as possible. Finally, the stages of the third type differ in that they are not started in turn by individual riders, but by their teams. The time spent by each participant to overcome the route is also fixed by stopwatches. The periods of time spent by each of the riders to overcome all the stages are summarized. Then the smallest of these values ​​is chosen, and the corresponding cyclist is declared the winner. It is considered prestigious and win in any of the individual stages.

Round of the Tour de France is divided into 21one-day stage. The time of each driver is summed up. Thus, the athlete can become the winner of the race as a whole according to the results of the General Classification, i.e. at the lowest total time without even winning a single stage, as, for example, this happened in 1990, when the winner was Greg Lemond and in 2010 - Alberto Contador won. The victory at the stage is considered a significant achievement of the athlete, even regardless of his position in the Classification as a whole. In addition to the general classification there are several more nominations - the best sprinter, the best mountain racer, the best young athlete. Three weeks of competition include 2 days of rest, which are often used to transfer athletes to the start of the next stage. The Grand Tour 2012, the length of which is 3,479 km, will start on July 30 in the Belgian city of Liege and will pass through the territory of three states. It includes 20 stages and a prologue - an individual race for a time with a separate start. It will pass through the center of Liege. Its length is 6.1 km, the terrain is flat, has many straight sections. Total Tour 2012 includes 4 mid-mountain, 5 mountain stages and 9 flat-topped terrain. There are 2 individual races with a separate start, the total length of which is 96.1 km. The first two stages will pass through the territory of Belgium. Part eight, which starts in Belfort - in the Swiss mountains Jura. All the remaining stages - 39 departments of France. The last 130-kilometer Rambouillet-Paris stage will end on July 22 in the French capital on the Champs Elysees. In the race of 2012, 22 teams take part, including the Russian professional cycling team "Katyusha", created in 2008. It includes 28 riders. 17 of them represent Russia.

Road cycling begins its history in 1868year. The first major bicycle race was held in 1869 at the distance Paris-Rouen. Then the athletes overcame 120 km. The average speed of its winner, Moore from England, reached 11 km / h. Further in 1892, a large tour of Liège-Bastogne-Liège was organized. This sport is especially popular in European countries. Competitions on road bike races are divided into group and individual. In a group race, the athlete who first crosses the finish line becomes the winner. At the start, participants are distributed according to the rating of the UCI (International Cycling Union). Men overcome a distance of 239 km, and women compete on the track at 120 km. Team members have the right to assist in repairing their partners. Riders need to properly share the roles in the group. Competent tactics help to unroll the athlete leader and eliminate the rivals' breaks. Several years in the program of the Olympic Summer Games included a team road race at a distance of 100 km. At the same time, the team had 4 riders, and the start was made with an interval of 3 minutes. It was believed that the team came to the finish line if at least 3 members of the group overcame the distance, and the time was fixed at the intersection of the finish line by the third member of the team. If in the group race all the sportsmen start simultaneously, then in the individual race they start the competition with an interval of one and a half minutes. The length of the course for the race is much smaller. For men, it is 46.8 km, and for women - 31.2 km. During the individual cycle race, the contestants can not help their comrades. In addition, you can not use as an advantage the aerodynamic shadow of the ahead-going bicyclist. Bicycles for racing are made from light steel, aluminum, and titanium, as well as carbon fiber. All of them are equipped with pneumatic tires, narrow seats, brakes and speed switches. The length of the bicycle can be 2 m maximum, and its width - not more than 50 cm. The weight of the equipment usually varies from 8 kg to 10 kg. The compulsory equipment of participants of road cycling events includes a helmet that can protect them from head injuries. In order to avoid accidents, a rule has been introduced according to which riders must observe a distance of at least 2 m between each other.