Has the Grande Boucle often put down its suitcases near your home? Since its creation, nearly 600 municipalities have hosted a stage of the Tour de France, either at the start or at the finish. Often big cities, especially during the first editions, but not always: did you know that Bagnères-de-Luchon (Haute-Garonne), with its 2,300 inhabitants, had hosted more stage starts than Paris, Grenoble or Nice? Not less than 55! It must be said that the village of Haute-Garonne quickly became an obligatory stage of the Tour de France on the road to the Pyrenees.
You can find on the map below all the municipalities and departments where the Tour de France has settled since 1903, as well as the list of stage towns.
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In terms of starts, Pau holds the record with 65 stage starts, followed by Bordeaux (56) and Bagnères-de-Luchon (55). In terms of arrivals, it is no surprise that Paris stands out, ahead of Bordeaux (79) and Pau (62). If the Tour de France mainly started from the capital (or surrounding towns) until the immediate post-war period, this has not been the case for a long time: Paris has since become the city of the final stage. , and we would no longer imagine the event without a final sprint on the Champs-Elysées.
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You can also find in our interactive module (signed Batiste Kolenc – Le Dauphinéliberated) all the towns where the Tour de France once stopped in your department:
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Shorter and more stages
The physiognomy of the event has also changed a lot over the past century. The very first edition, in 1903, included only six stages linking the main French cities, for a total route of 2428 km. But in less than ten years, the course more than doubled: the 4000 km mark was crossed in 1906, that of 5000 km jumped in 1911… The 1926 edition will remain that of all records, with more than 5700 km covered by the forty runners who will cross the finish line at the Parc des Princes. A month earlier, there were more than 120 on the starting line! The route of the event follows the borders of France almost scrupulously.
The size of the stages went to match. For twenty years, it was not uncommon for runners (at least those who did not give up) to swallow more than 400km in the day. The longest stage linked Bayonne to Les Sables-d’Olonne for a long time, and exceeded 480 km. By comparison, none of the stages of the Tour 2022 exceed 220 km.
The Grande Boucle then returned to less extreme mileage, but never dropped below the 3200 km mark. For the past ten years, the format of the event has been virtually standardized: between 3,300 and 3,400 km, covered over 20 to 21 stages.
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Nearly 15 km/h gained in a century
The speed of the runners has also changed a lot: from an average of 25.7 km/h in 1906 for Maurice Garin, the first winner of the Tour, we have gone over the past ten years to around 40 km/h. The record is held by Lance Armstrong, who completed his last Tour de France in 2005 at a maddening speed of 41.6 km/h.
The causes ? They relate to the nature of the event (in the early 1920s, the longest Tours de France were also the slowest), but above all technical progress. It was not until the end of the 1930s that derailleurs became widespread, then from the 1980s a whole series of improvements transformed bicycles into technological jewels: high-pressure tyres, automatic pedals, carbon frames, etc. Bad tongues will add that pharmacological progress may also have something to do with it: seven years after pulverizing the counters of the 2005 Tour, Lance Armstrong had also been downgraded for doping.
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