Tour de france questions?

Question

does any one know what kind of bikes do most riders use in the tour de france and how it all began

Answer 1

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Back in 1903, the idea of the Tour was dreamed up by French sports newspaper L'Auto as a publicity stunt to help increase its circulation. It not only fulfilled its objective, but also managed to destroy the rival paper of the time and become one of the most attractive events for competitive cyclists overnight.

Only the gutsy and the tough of the professional cycling world entered the 2,428km, 19-day event and the first champion, Maurice Garin, managed to beat 59 other cyclists to take the title by a margin of two hours and 49 minutes.

The Tour very nearly didn't make it through to its second year with the amount of cheating involved. This was cheating of the non-chemical kind and involved riders catching trains, taking cars and dropping spikes to puncture opponent's tyres.................

This is continued at

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/tourdefra...

and you can also read about the 2008 team riders and their equipment at

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/Tour...

Answer 2

Your after a heap of info so I'm going to cop out and give you links that cover it.

This link shows all the teams, the riders, the brand of bikes  and the components they ride. Most (probably all) would be described as monoqucue (one piece) carbon framed road bikes. International rules mean the minimum bike weight is 6.8 kg (15 lb) all bikes will be a tad over this limit.

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/tourdefra...

The best place to get the history is from the official site.

Here you go.

http://www.letour.fr/HISTO/TDF/us/index....

**edit

Sorry Just checked my history link only got the riders page. This one is more general

http://www.letour.fr/2008/TDF/COURSE/us/...

Answer 3

they use many name brands of bikes, depending on who sponsors the team.  columbia used giants, garman used felts, astana uses trek. in general the cutting edge today is carbon fiber, and sponsored teams use the top line frames, groups and wheels out.  not having to worry about servicablity like a consumer might, they can often use stuff that is on the light and fragile side to save weight, because if it breaks they dont have to worry about the cost of replacing it.

le tour was actually started as a race.  it wasnt like some drunken dare like the ironman.  bike racing was big at one point.  bike races used to fill madison square garden, and america had some of the best in the late 1800's, early 1900's.  cars kind of killed cycling in america, but not in europe.  it continued.

when the tour first began it was on fixed gear bikes. shifting and other things came along over the years.  the tour is over a century old, and there is a lot of history there.