Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Planning The Route Of The Tour De France

By Owen Jones


The Tour de France is the most prestigious bicycle race in the world, so it is easy to imagine that the path has to be selected extremely carefully. However, to lesser degrees the routes of all cross-country races of all types have to be selected carefully too with safety and exciting features in mind.

The Tour de France is a long race, but each leg has to be completed in roughly the same time - the hours of daylight basically - no matter what the obstacles are. This means that not every leg may be of the same length as it would be in a stadium.

Spectators, both at the event and those keeping an eye on it on TV, expect to see some of the most striking scenery in France, whilst watching the best competitors in the world trying to give their best under demanding conditions of heat and incline. For the Tour de France is played out mostly in the mountains.

The Tour de France has been held for more than 100 years and it has always been one of the objectives of the route committee to plan a route that is roughly equally arduous as the previous races so that the athletes over the decades may be compared to some level.

Naturally, training regimens and the technology of the apparatus have improved much and the cyclists are all professionals nowadays, whereas decades ago, many, if mot all would have been part-timers - amateurs. This makes significant comparisons over decades practically worthless.

One of the things to take into account is the fact that there are different types of cyclists. Some are good sprinters, some are power-climbers, some are marathon cyclists, so the route planners have to make sure that the course does not give one particular sort of cyclist an unfair advantage.

Access for rescue services is a further consideration, because one of the most well-liked features of the Tour de France is seeing the cyclists charging through a tiny, remote village that no outsiders have ever heard of. It is also a great thrill for the villagers to find themselves on the path of the Tour de France - the highlight of decades.

In fact, villages find it so attractive to get on the path, that there is a protracted selection process, which is similar to countries applying to hold the Olympic Games. The mayor or the village will have a proposal drawn up and people will be picked and trained to present it to the route planning committee.

This is a difficult process and often involves big alterations to a small village, After all, they will have to be able to provide food and maybe shelter for thousands of visitors, which might be more than the entire population of the whole village itself.

This may become even more of a difficultly if the village is selected as a rest point for an overnight stay - what with the cyclists, the mechanics, the trainers, the doctors, the planners and thousands of spectators.

Planning the route of the Tour de France is a difficult job and one for which the route planners rarely receive the recognition that they deserve.




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