The Tour de France is the cycling's most famous grand tour. The Tour goes on for three weeks, during which the riders cover about 3,500km in a rough circuit of the country. It is divided into 21 days of racing, with each day's 'stage' lasting up to five and a half hours and covering up to 225km. Some stages are relatively flat, some tortuously mountainous. Each stage has its own winner and offers points for the first 15 riders across both the finish line and and intermediate line around halfway through.
But forget trying to understand what all the colored jerseys mean and the controversies surrounding the riders. The event is a bicycles race.....yet we never talk about the the bicycles. The amount of engineering and design that goes into these two-wheeled wonders is remarkable and could easily be appreciated by any gear-head Perform some web searches on racing bikes over the years and you'll see an evolution on par with F1 technology (and ingenuity). Current models employ all sorts of exotic materials and composites and leverage the most advanced aero technology . Long before swoopy carbon fiber frames became the rage handmade frames made from light steel tubing joined by intricate lugs were works of art. The old two wheeled-racers used the same methods as their 4 wheel counterparts to shave weight...like drilling holes where possible.
In my opinion, current and historic racing bicycles have the same purpose-built beauty as any race car because the guys who built them were both part scientist and part artist with the same desire.....to go faster than the other guy. Here's a couple photos illustrating what I'm talking about...
Fast bike tech back in the day (a far cry from you clapped out Huffy)...
Fast bike tech today (these bikes cost more than your car)...
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