THE STORY

What is the most popular sporting event in the world? The World Series? Wimbledon? The Olympic Games? Hardly. The World Soccer Cup? Getting warmer. The Indianapolis 500? Almost (it is the most popular one-day event). The Tour de France? Bingo! Every year, more than 20 million fans line the roads to catch just a quick glimpse of the bicycles flashing by in this most competitive race.

The Tour, which lasts three weeks, is a race of at least 4000 kilometers (2500 miles) winding through France, the Pyrenees, and the Alps, to the traditional finish line on the Champs-Elyses in Paris. The riders who compete in the Tour de France are among the toughest and most courageous athletes in the world; they have to be to survive the formidable daily pace, full-speed sprints, 60 mph spills, treacherous weather, and fickle equipment.

The Tour de France was created in 1903 by Henri Desgranges as a promotional device to sell newspapers, and today it is still owned by I'Equipe, a sports paper. But over the years, the Tour has become practically a sovereign state with its own motorcycle police force, its own traveling bank, and more than 2000 full-time participants (officials, mechanics, trainers, doctors, chauffeurs, technicians, salesmen, reporters, and photographers) in addition to the 170 or so riders.

Although it is theoretically possible to enter the Tour de France as an individual, it is rarely done, not only because of the high cost, but because of the support personnel and equipment required. Thus, in recent years, all of the entries have been teamseach one consisting of ten competitors and a veritable army of support troops.

Many other countries have bicycle tours, but the majority of them are relatively unimportant to the professional teams because of length (too short), time of year (before or after the main European season), or location (Africa, Asia, and East Europe pose unmanageable logistical problems). Thus, only three tours remain significantthose of Spain, Italy, and Franceand, of these three, the Tour de France reigns supreme.

The route of the Tour changes each year and, for a price, a small town or village can buy a few moments of recognition on European television by becoming an evening stopover pointthe end of one stage and the beginning of the next. In these small towns, shops and banks close, and all of the townspeople turn out to welcome the riders as they struggle in at the end of the daily stage. Even more exciting is the half hour in the morning before the departure on the next stage: Young and old turn out in full racing regalia to glide on their bicycles among the riders, children seek autographs, and riders chat with their fans.

The price a town must pay to start the Tour is substantialabout a half million dollars. Therefore the race usually starts in a major city, not necessarily in France. Frankfurt was the starting city in 1980, Nice in 1981, and Basel in 1982. More recently, the organizers have been promoting the idea of a regionrather than a cityhosting the race start. Thus in 1983 the race began in the southeast of Paris, Val-de-Marne Department, and in 1984 the race began north of the capital in the Seine-Saint-Denis Department.

As the route of the Tour changes from year to year, so does the length. It is generally about 4000 kilometers long, although in 1968 it was stretched to a staggering 4664 kilometers. Sometimes the route is continuous, with each new stage starting at the end of the preceding stage, although in recent years there have been some notable breaks, including a 300-kilometer train trip between Stages 22 and 23 in the 1984 race.

Generally, one stage is run each day, although this is not a hard-and-fast rule. Occasionally, a time-trial stage may be run after one of the shorter flat stages. During time trials, racers compete against the clock, starting at one-minute intervals and race completely on their own to the finish line. The time trials are regarded as particularly painful events because a rider cannot use the slipstream or draft effect of his competitors, and because tactics are secondary to pure concentration and sheer physical effort.

Sometimes there may be one or two rest daysusually just one which comes two-thirds of the way through on July 14, Bastille Day. Distances to be covered in each stage are quite different, ranging from 350 kilometers in a flat stage to as little as 20 kilometers in a time trial or one of the high mountain stages.

Although most time trials are held over fairly short distances, there are some that range longer in length. One of the most prestigious long distance events is the Hour Record time trial. In this event a racer is challenged to cover the maximum amount of distance possible in one hour. Points are awarded for winning and placing in all the time trials and race stages. Thus, for determining the overall Tour winner (calculated by a complex formula including total elapsed time and points for stage wins), time trials loom as important events.

To get a feel for an actual race, let's accompany the riders in the 1984 Tour. Seventeen teams entered the 1984 race, each with ten riders. A short prologue stage was held on Friday, June 29, two days before the official start. This was a time trial held near Paris that took the winner, Bernard Hinault, only 6 minutes, 39 seconds to complete. The tenth place rider was only 14 seconds behind the leader, and most riders agreed that this was just a small warm-up and not indicative of the race to follow. Nevertheless, Hinault got to wear the coveted yellow jersey (awarded to the winner of each stage) for the start of the actual race.

The first "real" stage of the 1984 Tour started from Seine-Saint-Denis on Sunday, July 1. The route wound 249 kilometers over secondary roads towards Louvroil in the Nord Department. The day was hot, and would have been oppressively so except for a headwind that was strong enough to cool down the passion for breakaways. Moreover, the road was narrow, rarely allowing more than three men abreast; thus, escape from the pack was effectively blocked. During this stage, the riders seemed most concerned with staying out of each other's way and avoiding the grazing contacts that can cause mass spills. Nevertheless, on a tight corner at the 78th kilometer, Jean-Rene Bernaudeau fell, scraping a knee. Before the day was over, six other riders crashed, injuring shoulders, legs, arms, and heads.

Jaime Vilamajo was fined 75 francs and penalized 10 seconds for receiving a bag of food at kilometer 158, 16 kilometers beyond the feeding zone, a designated stretch where riders can grab a light sack of food. Another rider was fined 50 francs for stopping on the left side of the road, instead of the regulation right, when he had a flat tire. In the old days, each rider carried a spare tire strapped to his back. However, as it took about three minutes for a rider to change his own tire and it takes a team mechanic only 30 seconds, today a rider with a flat simply waits at the side of the road for his team mechanic to come along and change the tire. These days, riders don't even dismount but simply stand, straddling the frame of their bicycle, while a tire is changed or a minor mechanical problem is fixed by a mechanic.

The second day of the 1984 race consisted of two stages, a 51-kilometer team time trial and an 83-kilometer stage through predominantly flat country near the Belgian border. During the afternoon stage, there was a strong sidewind, and Belgian rider Adri van den Haute, running 96th in the standings, perhaps sparked by the proximity to his native land, made a strong breakaway and built an astounding 6 minute and 23 second lead. Crowds love a breakaway, and a great cheer greeted him as he entered Douai, about midway through the stage. However, as the kilometers wore on and the sidewind turned into a rainy headwind, his lead slowly diminished, and he finally finished at Bethune with a 1 minute, 3 second lead.

The next day in Stage 5, Paulo Ferreira, an unknown Portuguese rider, unexpectedly broke away at kilometer 3, just after the start of the race. Two other riders followed him and the three of them swapped the positions of setting the pace and riding the slipstream for the entire 207 kilometers of the stage from Bethune to Cergy-Pontoise. As their lead from the pack built up through 11 minutes, 19 minutes, and ultimately 27 minutes, they experienced the exhilaration of looking back over the small hills and seeing nobody following. Until this stage, there had never been more than 13 seconds difference between the total elapsed time of the first- and fourth-place riders. Now, three completely new riders were in the top three placesVincent Barteau, Maurice Le Guilloux, and Ferreiraand there was more than a 17-minute gap to the former first place rider who had slipped to fourth place.

Stage 6 was a 202-kilometer run over flat country to Alenon. The stage was largely uneventful until, just ten kilometers from the end, two riders in the middle of the pack locked wheels, causing a mass crash of at least 30 other riders. "What's awful about bicycling," said Greg LeMond, the great American cyclist, "is that you're supposed to get up, get back on your bike, and finish. In any other sport they'd let you lie there for a while. What if you'd done something to your neck and they get you up and put you on your bike and break your neck and you're paralyzed the rest of your life?"

Except in the Benelux countries, helmets are not required for cycling in Europe. Nobody wears them, because they are too hot and, according to most riders, their protective value has not been proven. Race organizers like to point out that competitive cycling is quite safe: "After all," they say, "only six riders have died from injuries in the last 30 years." Of course, this argument ignores the scores of non-fatal injuries sustained in nearly every race: broken legs and arms, dislocated shoulders, amputated fingers, concussions, gashes, and sprains.

Thursday, July 5, saw the first serious individual time trial67 hilly kilometers from Alenon to Le Mans. Riders were started at two-minute intervals in the inverse order of their overall ranking. On a long time trial, a rider must not think about the distance traveled or the distance to go; rather, he must just focus on the next 20 meters; his attention cannot wander and he cannot relax. His back may be aching, his lungs bursting, and his legs wobbly, but he must pedal on.

Laurent Fignon of the Renault team finished with a time of 1 hour, 27 minutes, 33 seconds, with an average speed of nearly 46 kph. Sean Kelly, an Irish rider, was 16 seconds behind, and Bernard Hinault, an unpopular Breton who had won the Tour four times since his debut in 1978, finished 49 seconds off Fignon's time. Barteau was still in the lead, but Fignon had made up more than five minutes on his total time and was in fourth place overall.

The eighth stage on Friday, July 6 was a largely flat 192-kilometer ride from Le Mans to Nantes at the mouth of the Loire River on the West Coast. Pascal Jules of the Renault team won the stage, although overall he was well down in the rankings. The ninth, another flat stage, saw the cyclists "riding forever," as LeMond put it, "forever" being the 338 kilometers between Nantes and Bordeaux.

At the end of one of the bonus sprints on this long and boring stage, Hinault, accompanied by 20 other riders, made a breakaway and gained 30 seconds on the pack. It didn't take long for the Renault, Panasonic, and Kwantum teams to react. Their riders fell into team time-trial formations and pushed the pace up to 60 kph in an effort to catch the Hinault group. When a team is chasing over a flat road and can see the gap narrowing, the chasers have the psychological advantage. On this particular July day, some additional aid to the chasers came from an unexpected ally, the wind, which shifted from the left side to a headwind. In 20 kilometers the pack had caught the renegades, and things settled down for the remaining 200 odd kilometers. Jan Raas of the Kwantum team was the winner with a time of 9 hours, 40 minutes. The order of the first six riders had not changed since Alenon, and Barteau, surprisingly, was still in first place overall, with the favored Fignon in fourth place, trailing the leader by more than 12 minutes.

The tenth stagethe prelude to the mountainswas held Sunday, July 8. It covered 198 kilometers from Bordeaux to Pau in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Eric Vanderaerden was the stage victor. Fignon displaced Ferreira from third place but was still more than 12 minutes behind race leader Barteau.

Compared to previous years, the climb in the Pyrenees from Pau to the ski resort at the summit of Guzet-Neige (1480 meters high) was relatively benign. Asked why the new route was chosen, the organizers claimed it was to avoid the steeper peaks close to the Spanish border where Spanish Basques, eager for publicity, might possibly disrupt the race. Robert Millar of Scotland was the easy winner with Luis Herrera of Colombia 41 seconds behind him. Overall, the first three places remained unchanged, but Ferreira, who had been holding on to fourth place, proved conclusively that he was not a climber by finishing dead last, 59 minutes and 43 seconds behind Millar.

Next came a series of four stages through the Massif Central, France's mountainous heartland and the transition between the Pyrenees and the Alps. This is a region of hills, gorges, short climbs, and sharp descents. The roads are bumpy and narrow. Stressful climbs, sharp turns, and bold descents took their toll on the ridersboth physically and mentally. Grenoble, the start of the tough Alpine stages, was reached on July 14, Bastille Day and the only rest day of the Tour. At this point, after 15 stages, Barteau was still leading with a total elapsed time of 73 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds. Fignon had worked up to second place, 10 minutes, 13 seconds behind; Hinault was third, less than two minutes behind Fignon; LeMond was sixth and Kelly seventh, both a bit over 14 minutes behind the leader; and Millar had pulled up to ninth place. Barteau had held up far better than his two companions on the Cergy-Pontoise breakaway; Le Guilloux had dropped to thirty-third while Ferreira, totally defeated by the mountains, was running dead last in the field of 140 men remaining in the race.

The next five days in the Alps would answer many questions:

Could the young Barteau hold onto his lead? Could Hinault win a fifth victory? Could Fignon duplicate his win of the year before? How would the American LeMond make out? Would the Scot, Millar, or the Irishman, Kelly, be any real challenge to the leaders? Would any of the Colombians, known for their mountain racing, be a factor in this race?

First in the Alps was a 22-kilometer individual time trial, followed by daily climbs to L'Alpe-d'Huez, La Plagne, Morzine, and Crans-Montana Mountain in Switzerland. Fignon won the time trial easily; Herrera was second, Delgado third, and Hinault fourth.

The first climb was 151 kilometers; the second, 185 kilometers; the third, 186 kilometers; and the fourth, 140 kilometers. In the first mountain stage, Barteau was unseated from his first-place position. (He continued to slip and finally finished the Tour in 28th place, exactly one hour behind the leader.) By the end of the second of these mountain stages, it was clear that Fignon would win the race unless he was injured or did something very stupid. Hinault was running second, almost nine minutes behind Fignon, but it was clear that he could not close the gap. LeMond was third, just a little more than one minute behind Hinault, and Millar was just 20 seconds behind him.

As it turned out, these places did not change from the second Alps stage, the eighteenth stage of the race, to the end of the Tour. On the other hand, the mountains exacted a terrible toll from the rest of the pack. Delgado, a fast Spanish rider, got a puncture just before the Morzine finish line, crashed, broke his shoulder, and left the race. Tonon, an experienced Italian rider, hit a spectator who had wandered onto the road with his bike; both were rushed to a hospital by helicopter, Tonon with a fractured skull, the spectator with "grave injuries." In all, 16 riders were forced to retire from the race with injuries during these four stages.

The twenty-first stage was another long one320 kilometers, from Crans-Montana to Villefranche-sur-Sane, across the Beaujolais wine country. The riders, exhausted from their days in the mountains, appealed to the race organizers to shorten the stage; they won a reduction, and the first 30 kilometers were covered in team cars.

Little was at stake during this stage and during the ten hot and dreary hours, the riders decided to clown a bit. Barteau pretended to read a newspaper, Castaing did a giant crossword puzzle, Brun turned his handlebars up like a casual Sunday rider, and the pack goaded Cabrera, a timid little Colombian, to win two of the bonus sprints. Kelly was not having any of it; while Cabrera was playfully being allowed to win his first sprint, Kelly was right behind him, gaining an eight-second reduction in his overall time. By the end of the day, Kelly had worked his way up from seventh place to fifth. Kelly, desperate for a stage victory, kept pressing on and eventually won a mock victory at the midpoint of the stage.

The next day was a 51-kilometer time trial, and Kelly, determined to earn the coveted stage victory, went all out to win. His time was a sensational 1 hour, 7 minutes, 9 seconds; Hinault was second, 36 seconds behind; and LeMond third, 41 seconds behind. Only Fignon, last to start, was still out on the road. He finished the race with a long sprint in the same time as Kelly; when the timers calculated the time to thousandths of a second, they gave the race to Fignon by 48/1000 seconds. Disappointed and frustrated, Kelly had no use for the condolences of other riders.

Later that day, July 21, the riders boarded a train for Paris. For all intents and purposes, the race was over, although there was one last 196-kilometer stage run around the suburbs of Paris that would pass the Arc de Triomphe six times before it swept down the Champs-Elyses to the finish line at the Place de la Concorde. This was a sprinter's stage, and it was won by Vanderaerden, with Jules, Hoste, Hinault, and Kelly following.

Finishers: 124 out of 170. First: Laurent Fignon. Second: Bernard Hinault. Third: Greg LeMond. Fourth: Robert Millar. Fifth: Sean Kelly. First Colombian finisher: Luis Herrera, twenty-seventh place. Leading climber (polka-dot jersey): Millar. Points leader (green jersey): Franck Hoste. Leading neophyte (white jersey): LeMond. Top team by time: Renault. Top team by points: Panasonic/Raleigh.

Months later, as the season came to a close, Hinault came back to win two prestigious one-day classics; Barteau, being in great demand, rode several six-day races; and Sean Kelly was awarded the Super Prestige Pernod trophy as the season's top-ranked professional bicyclist. LeMond left the Renault team and signed a $1 million contract with the La Vie Claire team. Three other teams disbanded. And riders mounted their exercise machines to wait for the start of the next season.