Cyclopedia. Part 17

* ParisNice: the "race to the sun" is the main season-opener in France, symbolically taking the field from the wintry north to the sunny Riviera.

* TirrenoAdriatico: race of the two seas through central Italy that is the main preparation event for MILANSAN REMO.

* Tour of Catalonia: long and tough but run in June, which means it clashes with Switzerland and Dauphine.

* Tour of Basque Country: Spain's biggest event after the Vuelta, famously tough as it is run on the hilly north coast.

* Tour de l'Avenir: mini Tour de France run for under-25s. Newcomers include: * Tour Down Under: based in Adelaide and now a way for pro teams to start the season somewhere sunny.

* Tour of California: main pro race in America, famously sponsored by Amgen, which makes EPO.

* Tour of Britain: growing in popularity on the back of the OLYMPIC team's success and now seems to have resolved early safety problems.

* Tour of Qatar: it's early season, it's sunny, and there is no shortage of prize money. EDDY MERCKX is race director.

STARLEY, James (b. England, 1830, d. 1881) and John Kemp (b. England, 1854, d. 1901) Respectively the "father of the cycle industry" and his nephew, the bike maker behind the Rover safety machine.

James Starley started out working on sewing machines and was one of 19th-century cycling's most inventive minds, responsible for tangential spoking, as used in most spoked wheels today, and various radical TRICYCLES. The Ariel HIGH-WHEELER he produced with William Hillman in 1870 is viewed as a defining moment. The machine was relatively light and had wheels with spokes that could be adjusted; it was Britain's first metal bike produced in any quant.i.ty. His most important invention, however, was the differential gear, used on his tricycles, which enabled cyclists to sit side by side and pedal without the imbalance in force turning the machine in a circle: it became standard on the motorcar. James Starley's tricycles-most notably the Coventry rotary and Royal Salvo-established a form for the three-wheeler of today and foreshadowed the modern bicycle, with chain drive and front wheel connected directly to the handlebars.

John Kemp Starley worked with his uncle making Ariel cycles before founding his own company making tricycles that were branded Rover from 1883. Their "safety" bicycle appeared in 1885; the third variant had a diamond frame, rear-wheel chain drive, and two wheels virtually the same size, establishing the template for the modern bike. After Starley's death, the Rover company began making motorbikes and cars, and it would eventually become a key name in British car manufacture.

STELVIO The greatest mountain pa.s.s in the Eastern Alps and probably the most legendary climb tackled by the GIRO D'ITALIA. The Giro only visits every few years though, giving the Stelvio similar cachet to Mont Ventoux in France (see ALPS). The race went up the Stelvio for the first time in 1953 when FAUSTO COPPI used the pa.s.s to make an audacious attack on the race leader Hugo Koblet and won the last Giro of his career. As he climbed through the snowdrifts on the second-highest pa.s.s in the Alps, he was cheered on by his mistress, the White Lady Giulia Occhini; after the stage they had an a.s.signation in his hotel. One of the greatest moves of BERNARD HINAULT's career came on the mountain in 1980, when he won his first Giro there.

Over 15 miles long and rising to 2,758 m, the Stelvio has a unique history. It was built in 1825 to connect the Austro-Hungarian empire with its Italian province of Lombardy, and was fiercely fought over during the First World War. Its hairpins are the "greatest driving road in the world" according to the gear-head television show Top Gear.

CYCLOSPORTIVES that take in the Stelvio include StelvioBike in August and the Dreilandergiro; there is also a one-off ma.s.s ride up the pa.s.s, the Cima Coppi, STRADA, Alfonsina (b. Italy, 1891, d. 1959) The only woman to compete in any of the three major men's Tours, Strada was born Alfonsina Morin. She won numerous races and was invited to pre-Revolutionary Russia to meet Czar Nicholas II before riding the men's Tour of Lombardy in 1917 and 1918. She entered the 1924 Giro as "Strada, Alfonsin"-deliberately deleting the a from her first name to keep the organizers in the dark regarding her gender-and remained in the race for four days. On day five she broke her handlebars and finished outside the time limit, with the end of a broomstick where part of her bars should have been. She was eliminated but invited to continue by the organizers because the public had gotten wind that a woman was in the race and she had novelty value. Strada started each morning with the race and was timed in in the evening but did not figure on the official listings. She finished 28 hours behind the winner, Giuseppe Enrici, after the 3,613 km and went home with 50,000 lire.

(SEE WOMEN FOR MORE ON WOMEN'S RACING; BERYL BURTON, NICOLE COOKE, AND JEANNIE LONGO FOR GREAT WOMEN RACERS) T.

TANDEMS Bicycles built for two date back to the early days of cycling innovation, and travel quicker than "singles" for obvious reasons: pedaling power is doubled, the actual weight of a racing tandem can be less than twice that of a road bike, friction is the same apart from some loss in the complex drive train, while wind resistance does not increase drastically. In Britain, the Tandem Club (founded 1971) offers its members advice, racing calendars, and regular meets.

Most tandems have a second "timing" chain connecting the front rider's chainset with that of the "stoker" at the back, with the chain rings for the timing chain having an identical number of teeth to keep the pedaling in sync. There are variants that can allow the riders to select different chain ring sizes, or one to freewheel while the other pedals.

There is some uncertainty over the advantages of having the secondary chain rings in phase (where both riders' pedals are at the same part of the pedal stroke at the same time)-the consensus appears to be that with the cranks in phase, the riders can coordinate their efforts better; out of phase enables a better performance to be got out of a pairing of widely differing leg strengths.

Tandem wheels and brakes have to be more substantial than on a single, with the rear wheel-which has more strain put on it than the front-often having a wider hub to reduce the dish (distance between the rim and the f.l.a.n.g.e of the hub where the spokes are located). That in turn means the spokes are slightly longer and more gently angled, and less likely to snap. The hubs may well be adapted for hub brakes, which avoid heating the rims and risking a tire blow-out on long descents; mountain-bike-style disc brakes are also used.

A tandem at full tilt on a velodrome is a spectacular sight, but a rare one. The last tandem sprint world championships were run in Palermo, Italy, in 1994, after which the event was deleted from the program. The champions were Fabrice Colas and Frederic Magne of France. Tandems are still used, however, for PARALYMPIC CYCLING.

TAYLOR, Marshall Walter Born: Indianapolis, Indiana, November 8, 1878 Died: Chicago, Illinois, June 20, 1932 Major wins: World sprint champion 1899; 8 world records including paced flying start mile 1 minute 32 seconds (Philadelphia, November 15, 1898), and standing start paced mile 1 minute 33.4 seconds (Paris, 1908) Nickname: Major Further reading: Major Taylor:The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, Andrew Ritchie, Van der Plas/Cycle Publishing, 2009 "The earliest, most extraordinary, pioneering black athlete in the history of American sports," runs part of the introduction to Andrew Ritchie's biography of the lightning-fast sprinter from the turn of the last century. Taylor overcame racial prejudice to rise to the top of his profession, yet died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Born into rural poverty just outside Indianapolis, Taylor was enlisted as a companion to the son of the white family who employed his father as a coachman, learning early on that color need not be a barrier. He earned his nickname when a teenager because, to earn money, he performed stunts on a bike while wearing a soldier's uniform outside the cycle shop where he worked. By the age of 16 he was winning local races and was adopted by a trainer, "Birdie" Munger.

As cycling expanded in the US, however, color became an issue: white amateurs, particularly from the South, were against blacks racing with them. In 1894, blacks were excluded from the League of American Wheelmen, reflecting the power of segregation; they were still permitted to race but their status was ambiguous and open to individual interpretation. Fearing that Taylor's success would lead to trouble, Munger persuaded him to move to Worcester, Ma.s.sachussetts, where racism was less of an issue, and where he worked in Munger's bike factory. Late in 1896, Taylor managed to break-unofficially-the world fifth of a mile record and turned professional to race at the legendary Madison Square Garden track (see SIX-DAY RACING). He became a star of the American professional track circuit, arousing constant curiosity-and some animosity-as a black athlete earning big money at a time when, as Ritchie writes, "his brothers were expected to doff their hats and step aside for any white man in the street."

Taylor began receiving threats against his life as he raced, and at one meeting was pulled off his bike and strangled into unconsciousness. On other occasions he received threatening letters and had nails scattered in front of him. Racial politics continued to dog Taylor's career. He was a ma.s.sive draw for promoters and sponsors, but as the only black professional at the time he faced resentment from, for example, hoteliers who refused him accommodation, as well as judges at races, and other compet.i.tors. "The uncompromising deviousness of his white rivals deprived him for two consecutive years of the possibility of becoming champion of America," wrote Ritchie. Even so, by the end of 1898 he was beating world records on a regular basis-he held seven including the paced mile, which denoted the "fastest man in the world." In 1899 he took the world paced mile close to 44 mph with the help of a steam-powered pacing engine, and later that year he took the world one-mile championship, becoming only the second African American world champion. But at first he was unable to buy a house because of his color, and when he did so, in Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, without revealing his ident.i.ty, he was not made welcome.

In 1901 his career reached its zenith with a three-month trip to Europe in which he defeated the leading European sprinter, Edmond Jacquelin of France, and won over crowds and media across the continent, the first African American athlete to do so. Between 1902 and 1904 he traveled and raced continuously in Europe, the US, and Australia. But at home, he still faced constant hostility, even in cities such as San Francisco, where the color line was drawn in restaurants and hotels.

Taylor spent 1904 and 1905 out of racing due to physical and mental exhaustion and finally retired in 1910. Afterward his fortunes declined, the wealth he had earned on the velodromes dissipated-despite the publication of his MEMOIRS in 1929-and he died in Chicago in 1932. The body was unclaimed, and he was buried in a pauper's grave.

TEAMS Cycling has always been among the most commercial of sports: when JAMES MOORE won the first road race in 1869 he was supported by a bike maker while major races were all run by newspapers in order to increase sales.

The earliest serious sponsors were the cycle companies La Francaise-who supported MAURICE GARIN, the first Tour winner-and PEUGEOT, who were the longest-standing sponsors in the sport. The cycle maker Alcyon backed the most powerful team in the HEROIC ERA, claiming the first five places in the 1909 Tour and taking overall victory four years running. This led to a problem: the biggest manufacturers wanted victory so much that they would buy every star they could. The budgets to run a team became so large that only a few teams had enough money to be compet.i.tive, which made the racing dull.

The domination of teams such as Alcyon-or the "sky-blues" as they were known-and La Sportive in the 1920s prompted the Tour organizer HENRI DESGRANGE to bring in national teams starting in 1930, to make the racing more open and more exciting. In an attempt to counter the power of the manufacturers, the Tour organizers issued standard bikes to the riders.

That began a conflict between the national and trade team concepts that lasted until the 1960s, by which time the bike industry was struggling and an Italian named Fiorenzo Magni had brought in the first proper "extra-sportif" sponsor, the face-cream makers Nivea. "I rode for a team named 'Ganna,' and at the end of 1953 they told me they were pulling out," he recalled. "I said 'Why should I ride for a bike maker? Who has said it has to be like that?'"

Magni's team was GS Nivea-Fuchs, with the bike-maker's name on the jersey as per the rules. Other early sponsors included chewing-gum makers Brooklyn, the Quinquina aperitif company-who marketed their St. Raphael drink through JACQUES ANQUETIL and his appropriately named teammate Raphael Geminiani-and Italian fridge makers Ignis. Initially extra-sportifs were banned in France, but eventually they persuaded the Tour organizers to include trade teams in the race; national teams last figured in 1968.

Initially, sponsorship was a flexible concept: riders might race for different sponsors in different countries. The better teams were highly organized, though, with the Bianchi squad of FAUSTO COPPI leading the way in the 1940s and 1950s. By then the principles were long-established: a team would have one or more leaders, and the rest would organize themselves in his support, a.s.sisting in chasing down threatening rivals, making the pace before the time came for the leader to attack, and helping the number-one get back to the bunch if he had mechanical problems.

Cycling took a long time to become fully professional, however. In the 1950s even the better riders had contracts only for eight or nine months of the year; teams were sometimes simply cobbled together for major races on an ad-hoc basis. In the 1960s there were plenty of cases of hopeful amateurs turning "professional" for a jersey and a bike, often losing money in the process. There was also an intermediate category: "independents," who could ride certain pro races and top amateur events. That served as a stepping stone and a fallback if things went wrong, until the category was abolished in the 1960s.

Although most pros gradually became full-time, salaries remained relatively small for all apart from the most senior riders until the 1990s. By then, the hierarchy had begun to change, with teams like TI-Raleigh showing that strong groups of talented riders could be more potent than squads with just one star. The arrival in the sport of new blood with the FOREIGN LEGION changed the structure in another way as GREG LEMOND, PHIL ANDERSON, and STEPHEN ROCHE in particular took salaries to a new level, dragging up the base level.

Great Teams =.

A subjective selection of the world's greatest teams, based on longevity, race results, management, and stylishness of their gear. For some reason, the greatest teams seem to have the best outfits-or is it that the outfits become iconic by a.s.sociation with the greats?

Bianchi: Began sponsoring in 1899 and became one of the first complete "racing machines" built around FAUSTO COPPI, a legacy that then included the later greats of Italian cycling, from Felice Gimondi to Moreno Argentin, all in iconic eggsh.e.l.l blue jerseys.

Faema/Faemino: EDDY MERCKX was just the greatest name to wear the red jersey, in a tradition that ran back through the '60s with RIK VAN LOOY, Charly Gaul, and FEDERICO BAHAMONTES.

Gitane/Renault/Castorama: Under Cyrille Guimard, a talent-spotting, Tour-winning machine that took the 1976 race with Lucien Van Impe and followed up with BERNARD HINAULT, GREG LEMOND, and LAURENT FIGNON. The Renault stripes remain one of the great jersey designs, while Castorama's "carpenters overalls" were imaginative if not pretty.

TI-Raleigh/Panasonic: Under Peter Post's dictatorial management one of the "winningest" teams of the 1970s and 1980s built around a Dutch core that included Jan Raas, Gerrie Knetemann, and Joop Zoetemelk, and later featured PHIL ANDERSON and ROBERT MILLAR.

Telekom/T-Mobile/Columbia/HTC: Like the penknife with many blades and loads of handles, the squad led by MARK CAVENDISH in 2010 bore little resemblance to the German team that won the 1996 Tour with a drug-fueled Bjarne Riis. But Telekom/T-Mobile changed German cycling for ever-for good and bad-thanks to Riis, Jan Ullrich, and company, and their pink strip remains instantly recognizable.

Peugeot/Z/Gan/Credit Agricole: The granddaddy of teams, dating back to the HEROIC ERA, and producing probably the most distinctive jersey design, the checkerboard worn by TOM SIMPSON, EDDY MERCKX, Bernard Thevenet, ROBERT MILLAR, STEPHEN ROCHE, and many others, as well as almost every amateur in France. The checkerboard went in 1988, but under Roger Legeay the personnel and team structure remained largely unchanged and the historic link was retained until the end of 2008 with leaders including GREG LEMOND and CHRIS BOARDMAN.

Reynolds/Banes...o...b..leares/Caisse d'Epargne: Longstanding Spanish team under the aegis of Jose-Miguel Echavarri that changed sponsors every few years and brought cycling Pedro Delgado and MIGUEL INDURAIN, winning six Tours between 1988 and 1995.

Mapei: Eyewatering multicolored shorts, mouthwatering results in the 1990s. The first truly international superteam included stars like Johan Museeuw and Tony Rominger and launched the careers of riders like 2009 world champion Cadel Evans. The clean sweep of the first three in 1996 Paris...o...b..ix was the defining moment.

The advent of a world ranking system in the mid-1980s (see HEIN VERBRUGGEN to read about the man who brought this in) and qualifying for major races decided through team standings led to a ma.s.sive hike in the value of middle-ranking cyclists who didn't necessarily win much but had earned points by riding consistently. That at least raised salaries and there was an all-around increase in budgets-tens of thousands of dollars in the 1970s, many millions for teams such as Sky three decades later-as the TOUR DE FRANCE captured an increasingly large worldwide audience through the 1990s.

At the same time, teams remained poorly organized in many cases-although there were notable exceptions such as Bjarne Riis's CSC-and there was insufficient regulation. Smaller teams went bust at a rate of almost one a year, because there were no strict checks to see if they had any financial stability. The advent of another Verbruggen baby, the ProTour in 2005, resulted in tighter financial scrutiny, while the early years of the 21st century saw teams become increasingly concerned about the impact of DRUGS. Several major sponsors-most notably T-Mobile in Germany-pulled out because of negative publicity after drug scandals while some of those who stayed in the sport brought in their own internal antidoping programs. Standards were pushed higher, however, by the arrival of new backers such as Columbia Sportswear and Team Sky, run by outsiders who worked on business principles rather than on tradition.

TEAM TIME TRIAL Exactly what it says, and varies from "two-up" races run in Britain for two-man teams, to the stages of the TOUR DE FRANCE that are contested by full squads of nine. There was a team time-trial world championship over 100 km from 1962 until 1993. A non-medal race for professional teams will return to the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS from 2012. The UK championship ran from 1970 to 1999 and was reinst.i.tuted in 2004.

Choice of formation is key in team time-trialling: some teams adopt a "two-line" formation, with the riders rotating continuously, taking short turns at the front. A higher speed results, but because weaker members do the same amount of work as the stronger men, they tire more quickly. In the "one-line" formation, the riders stay at the front of the string for as long as they feel is appropriate; the weaker elements do shorter turns.

In team time trials in the Tour de France, teams have to have a minimum number of finishers; the rules of team time trials in stage races vary, sometimes with the actual time of each squad counting toward his or her overall time, while sometimes a system of bonuses is put in place to ensure that losses are capped.

TELEVISION "Newspapers created the Tour de France, radio made it popular, television made it magnificent," said the TOUR DE FRANCE organizer Christian Prudhomme as he launched the 2010 race. Prudhomme, it should be noted, is a former television presenter, but he is broadly right.

The modern-day Tour is a televisual product, and that has an impact right through the sport. First, the way the sport is depicted is completely different. The historian Benjo Maso made the point that the victories of EDDY MERCKX made less impact on public consciousness than those of FAUSTO COPPI because television pictures could not hide how weak Merckx's rivals were; much of the time Coppi was equally dominant, but the written press could big up his opponents.

The search for televisual novelty means that the Tour organizers seek out new, dramatic backdrops-in 2010 the vast North Sea d.y.k.es of Holland were the novelty-and they try to construct a route that may provide a last-ditch denouement. The dream scenario was that of 1989, where the race was decided in the final meters of the final stage (see LAURENT FIGNON, GREG LEMOND). Television finances the race; sponsors enter cycling in order to get in the Tour and "show the jersey," and ever-greater resources are devoted to getting the pictures and showing them.

The Tour has ma.s.sive airtime, growing from 38 hours in 1986 to 112 hours in 1996. Live stage coverage picks up about 50 percent of the available audience. The great increase in worldwide audience came in the 1980s as new nations figured in the action: 50 million in 1980, a billion six years later. The Tour is now covered by 65 stations transmitting to 110 countries. The television rights grew accordingly, going from 12 million francs in 1990 to 85 million francs eight years later. By then, television was the biggest contributor to the event's income.

Television money has enabled the sport to survive because it trickles down in various ways, but it has also created the ma.s.sive imbalance within the sport, where the Tour dominates the entire year and lesser events struggle to get screen time because of production costs. The outcome has been that ASO, who run the Tour, have become the dominant force because they can use the Tour's revenues to subsidize smaller events, and its prestige to find sponsors and venues (see ASO entry for how far their tentacles stretch).

This is all relatively new.

The Tour was not shown live on TV until 1958; stage finishes in Paris were not even shown on the same day until the following year, while it was 1960 when images began to be shown using motorcycle cameras. Now it is televised in 186 countries.

THIEVES The most prolific bike thief is believed to be Igor Kenk, a 50-year-old retired police officer in Canada, who in July 2008 was found to have 2,285 bikes stored in warehouses and garages across Toronto after a sting operation in which police planted bikes in various locations in the city and watched to see who stole them. Police raided a shop run by Kenk and found so many bikes inside that they could not be moved out of the upper floor. He was sentenced to two and a half years in jail-about three days per bike. In 2010, his story was made into an acclaimed graphic novel by Richard Poplak and Nick Marinkovich.

THREE PEAKS The longest and hardest CYCLO-CROSS race in the world has been run annually over Whernside, Ingleborough, and Pen-y-Ghent in the English Peak District since 1961. Whereas most cyclo-cross races are on short park circuits, the Peaks consists of a single large loop with over 5,000 feet of climbing. The cyclo-cross was inspired by the cla.s.sic fell run over the three mountains, and at the end of 1959 the first cyclist to complete the course was a 14-year-old schoolboy, Kevin Watson, who took almost seven hours.

The cyclo-cross was founded two years later and now draws such a large field that in places riders have to line up to get over stiles. Since its inception, course changes have extended the distance to almost 40 miles, of which about 34 can be ridden. Part of the course is on private land, meaning that the race offers the only chance to ride the complete circuit. Mountain bikes were permitted for a few years in the 1990s, but the rule now is that only cyclo-cross bikes can be used.

TIME TRIALLING Yet another English eccentricity in European eyes, this branch of the sport is the most popular racing discipline in Great Britain, yet it exists in almost total isolation. It was not until 1994 that a regular time trial world championship was inaugurated-the first winner was CHRIS BOARDMAN-and time trialling in Europe is limited to a few one-off events held in autumn and individual stages in stage races. But in Britain, thousands of cyclists test themselves against the watch most weeks from February to October, and an informal local time trial is where most British bike racers compete for the first time.

The growth of time trialling can be traced back to cycling's formative years, when racing was banned on British roads after a legendary episode on the North Road-the main road from London to Edinburgh, now the A1-in which a horse collided with a cycle race. The British governing body, the National Cyclists' Union, forbade racing on the roads and refused to recognize RECORDS set on the roads.

The NCU's hope was that racers would compete on tracks, but that was impractical as not every town had one. Time trialling was the way compet.i.tive cyclists got around the ban: running timed events over fixed distances in which the racers rode "alone and unpaced," separated by intervals of one or two minutes. Because the compet.i.tors rode solo, with no numbers (although they had to have bells), who was to know if they were racing? There were no prizes, and the racers had to wear black. If they wore white socks, for example, they would be disqualified, and were, as late as 1945. Courses were referred to by CODES so that no one outside cycling clubs knew where the start and finish would be.

There had been time trials before-the NCU had run a championship in 1878-but the first time trial over one of today's set distances was run over 50 miles on October 5, 1895, by the North Road Cycling Club. In 1930 the sport was given further impetus with the creation of the BRITISH BEST ALL ROUNDER by Cycling magazine.

The most popular distances today are 10, 25, 50, and 100 miles, and for most club cyclists the key targets are those that equal a 25 mph average-24 minutes for 10 miles, "under the hour" for 25, and so on. A handful of 12-hour contests are also run as they enable cyclists to qualify for the BBAR, and there are also events over 24 hours and 15 miles, as well as over hilly courses of any distance from 10 to 60 miles. Hilly events on nonstandard circuits have become more popular since the first world championships were held in 1994, as they replicate the sort of course used at the World's. They are also easier to organize as traffic has become heavier on Britain's main roads. The end of season HILL CLIMBS are as atmospheric and popular as ever.

The joy of time trialling for the average cyclist is that even if you do not win, you always come away from a race with a result: your personal time. This can be compared with your times on other courses and those of your rivals-and national stars as well-and progression can be noted. Being low-key-usually just a few people with a watch in a parking lot-they are easily organized, which is why most British cycling clubs run midweek evening time trials on local courses. The best-known time triallist to go on to bigger things was CHRIS BOARDMAN, a national champion at 25 miles, who used skills honed in British time trialling to win the yellow jersey three times in the Tour de France prologue time trial. However, he felt that a lack of bunched racing in his early years meant he did not have perfect bike handling skills: he quit three Tours due to crashes. Another time triallist to make it on the world stage was BERYL BURTON, who used her ability to ride solo to win several world t.i.tles, but lacked a sprint. SEAN YATES went from British time trialling to become one of the most respected pros on the European circuit and returned to "testing" after retirement. Boardman and more recently BRADLEY WIGGINS used time trials as part of their preparation for the Tour de France and Olympics. Time trialling has produced its own list of purely British greats such Ray "The Boot" Booty, who was the first man to break four hours for 100 miles in 1956, and Alf Engers, a flamboyant baker from the East End who took the 25-mile record from 55 minutes 11 seconds in 1959 to 49 minutes 24 seconds in 1978.

Some Great British Time Trials =.

"25" championship: The most compet.i.tive and the most prestigious national t.i.tle, but it is currently being challenged by the national "10." Changes course every year.

National hill-climb championship: See HILL CLIMBS for more details Anfield "100": First run in 1889 and still organized on quiet Shropshire roads by the club that boasted early BordeauxParis winner G.P.Mills among its members.

SCCU "100": Run since 1908, by a grouping of clubs; the team winners receive an Edwardian shield measuring more than three feet by two and embossed in silver with a time-trialling scene.

Nelson Wheelers Circuit of the Dales: A hilly springtime 50-miler over a course that includes towns such as Kirkby Lonsdale, Sedburgh, Hawes, and Ingleton and climbs such as Garsdale.

North Road Hardriders: Cla.s.sic early season event in Hertfordshire including steep hills and descents (sometimes icy).

TIRES Pioneered by John Boyd Dunlop, who wanted to improve his son's tricycle. He used a "sausage" on the wheel rim, which was first a water-filled hosepipe, then a tube of rubber wrapped in canvas. Dunlop then put on a rubber tread and a one-way valve that only let air in, not out, and patented the design in 1888. Initially there was scepticism, but in May 1889 his tires were tested in compet.i.tion in Belfast by W. Hume, who won four events out of four.

Also in the 1880s, another household name, Hutchinson, began making tires at their factory in France.

In about 1887 the concentric bead principle or "clincher" that held the tire on to the rim was patented by A. C. Welch. Dunlop bought the patent in 1892. This was to be the basis of their fortune, being the only practical way to make a clincher tire that could be easily detached from the rim to enable punctures to be repaired.

In 1892, Michelin ran a race from Paris to their base in Clermont-Ferrand, open only to riders using pneumatic tires; they arranged for 25 kg of nails to be scattered on the road, to demonstrate how good their products were. Ironically the first finisher, Auguste Stephane, was using Dunlops; he was disqualified.

Tires divide into conventional high-pressures, in essence a refinement of the 1890s Michelin design, and tubulars or "sew-ups," in which the inner tube is held inside a cylindrical casing made by sewing both sides of the carca.s.s together. Tubulars were the racer's choice for a century after the Wolber company offered a prize for the first Tourman to finish on its "removable" tire; the Tourman with a spare or two strung round his neck epitomized the HEROIC ERA. The only downside was the fact that they had to be glued securely onto the rim, meaning that the casing had to be unst.i.tched if the inner tube needed repair. Once rest.i.tched after repair, a "tub" was never quite the same again.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Michelin began producing the first high-performance "clincher" tires with a narrower, lighter casing and a flexible bead so the tire could be folded, and since then clincher performance has improved virtually year on year, to the extent that now the difference between high-grade clincher and medium-weight tubular is a matter of tiny degree: the best tubulars offer about a 50 g saving, which is significant in high-performance terms, but their cost and the risk of puncturing makes them second choice for most road racers.

Tubulars remain the first-choice for velodrome racing, however, because punctures are less likely, and for safety reasons: they should not come off the rim in the event of a puncture. Sticking them on remains an art, however: the new rim has to be abraded to give the glue purchase, and then it has to be given several coats. Top tubular makers include Vittoria of Italy, and Clement of France, while generations of CYCLO-CROSS riders swore by custom-made studded fat "tubs" from Parisian firm Dugast. Aficionados emulate top racers such as EDDY MERCKX and keep tubulars for years in dark places to season them like fine wine, and pro-team service courses sometimes have a locked tubular room in which-the Motorola mechanics used to claim in the early 1990s-the head wrench-man can go and savor the rubber and glue fumes.

Tire covers have been made of various materials including hemp and nylon, while silk-woven tubular tires were once the ultimate choice for track racing, with heavier cottons used for training and road racing. The bullet-proof fiber kevlar is a recent development but is now common to most high-end tires to give an extra puncture-proof edge.

Punctures were once the cyclist's bane. Generations have sought remedies for this th.o.r.n.y problem, including thin tape underneath high-pressure covers, foam injected tires, semi-solid tires made up of multiple rubber b.a.l.l.s and a pump (the Skinner Automatic) located inside the wheel that made a single pedal stroke with every revolution of the wheel. The modern generation of tires makes riding generally flat-free.

Tire-savers were popular for many years: lightly sprung strips of wire with a plastic strip on them that would be fixed to the brake bolts so they brushed the surface of the tire, to whip off any thorns or flints before they were pushed through the cover. (They had one nasty side-effect, which was to spray water all over the rider in the wet.) Few cyclists, however have gone as far as the British Tour de France star ROBERT MILLAR, who in winter would put a tubular tire inside a high-pressure cover in place of the inner-tube.

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Henri de (b. France, 1864, d. 1901) The French impressionist was an ill.u.s.trator of early cycling in Paris, a racing fan who went regularly to the Buffalo and Seine velodromes through his friendship with the track's technical director Tristan Bernard. The results, wrote Bernard, did not interest the artist, but the atmosphere and the people did. Toulouse-Lautrec's poster for the Simpson chain company, La Chaine Simpson, is an iconic example of the genre (see POSTERS for others; ART for what draws artists to cycling).

The version seen most often depicts the French champion Constant Huret, watched by the raffish Bernard and the French importer who gave himself the English name Spoke. It shows one of what became known as the Chain Matches from 1896, when the Simpson company pitted top cyclists of the time such as the Welsh stars Jimmy Michael and Arthur Linton against all-comers to publicize the product. Toulouse-Lautrec traveled with the team from Paris to London to attend the matches.

This is actually Toulouse-Lautrec's second attempt. The first, showing Michael training-complete with his trademark toothpick in his mouth-was rejected because the chain company was not happy with the artist's depiction of the triangular links. Intriguingly, the picture also shows the soigneur Choppy Warburton looking for something-a pick-me-up presumably-in a Gladstone bag (see SOIGNEURS for more on these witchdoctors and their magic remedies).

The artist also drew his friend, the singer Aristide Bruant, on his bike and produced a notable lithograph of the American sprinter A. A. ZIMMERMAN (Zimmerman et Sa Machine) to go with a magazine article written by Bernard.

TOUR DE FRANCE After the finish of the first Tour de France in 1903, the winner MAURICE GARIN gave the organizer HENRI DESGRANGE a handwritten account of the race to be printed in Desgrange's newspaper L'Auto. "You have revolutionised the sport of cycling," he wrote, "and the Tour de France will remain a key date in the history of road racing." His words still I ring true. Approaching its 110th birthday, the Tour is cycling's flagship race, the only event in the racing calendar that has significance in every country, and the biggest annual sports event in the world.

The Tour's enduring fascination lies in the fact that its core principles have not changed. It began life as an outlandish, mammoth publicity stunt, and still is. It still circ.u.mnavigates France on public roads and remains free for the public to watch. Unlike every other great sports event in the world, it goes out to its public rather than being confined to a stadium. People travel to watch the race, but virtually every village in France has been visited at some point. As the late Geoffrey Nicholson wrote, it is the only form of international conflict that takes place on the doorstep other than war itself. It is also now an integral part of the French summer, "the fete of all our countryside" as the writer Louis Aragon put it.

The man who dreamed up the Tour was Geo Lefevre, rugby and cycling writer at L 'Auto, but the editor Desgrange coined the name. At a meeting to discuss ways to boost circulation, which was flagging, Lefevre suggested "a race that lasts several days, longer than anything else. Like the SIX-DAYS on the track but on the road." Desgrange answered "If I understand you right, pet.i.t Geo, you're proposing a Tour de France?" The term was not a new one: the Compagnons du Tour de France were apprentice craftsmen who took three years to go around the country. France had been circ.u.mnavigated several times by bike and the French daily Le Matin had run a Tour de France car race in 1899.

Tour Records =.

Most overall wins: Lance Armstrong (US) 19992005, 7 Most green jersey wins: Erik Zabel (Ger) 19962001, 6 Most King of Mountains wins: Richard Virenque (Fra), 6 Most stage wins: Eddy Merckx (Bel), 35 Most stage wins in one Tour: 8: Merckx 1970, 1974; Charles Pelissier (Fr) 1930; Freddy Maertens (Bel) 1976 Youngest winner: Henri Cornet (Fr) 1904, 20 Oldest winner: Firmin Lambot (Bel) 1922, 35 Most Tours ridden and finished: Joop Zoetemelk (Hol) 16-19703; 197586 Smallest winning margin: Greg LeMond (US), 1989, 8 seconds Largest postwar winning margin: Fausto Coppi (Ita), 1952, 28 minutes 17 seconds The race was announced in the paper on January 19, 1903; the plan was for an event that would take 35 days, but after protests from the professional cyclists who would make up the field this was amended to a six-stage event taking 19 days. Initially there was little interest from professional cyclists: Desgrange upped the prize money, halved the entry fee, and allocated five francs expenses per day. There were 78 entries.

Desgrange was not confident of the race's success and stayed away from the first Tour when it began on July 1, 1903, at the Reveil-Matin Cafe in the Paris suburb of Montgeron (the first road stage of the centenary Tour of 2003 began from the Reveil-Matin, still in situ but now a Wild West themed restaurant).

It was Lefevre who followed the race from start to finish, traveling by train and bike, and providing a page of reports every day. His son described his role like this: "lost all alone in the night, he would stand on the edge of the road, a storm lantern in his hand, searching the shadows for riders who surged out of the dark from time to time, yelled their name and disappeared into the distance. He alone was the 'organisation' of the Tour de France."

The early Tours were marred by cheating: in the first race won by Maurice Garin several riders were thrown out, and in the second, Garin and the next three riders overall were disqualified (for more details, see GARIN). The winner was the man placed fifth, Henri Cornet, who at 20 remains the Tour's youngest winner. It was estimated, however, that 125 kg of tacks were strewn on the route the following year, and the same thing happened in 1906, when only 14 riders finished.

Tour Landmarks =.

1903- first Tour won by Maurice Garin 1910- race pa.s.ses through Pyrenees for first time 1911- the race goes over Col du Galibier in the Alps 1919- first yellow jersey, worn by Eugene Christophe 1920- Philippe Thys is first man to win the Tour three times 1930- publicity caravan appears 1933- first King of the Mountains prize awarded to Vicente Trueba (Spain) 1937- derailleur GEARS permitted 1947- first stage finish outside France (Brussels) 1949- Fausto Coppi is first man to win Tour and Giro in same year 1950- elimination for finishing outside stage time limit brought in 1952- first mountain top stage finish: l'Alpe d'Huez 1953- green jersey for points prize introduced, won by Fritz Schaer (Switz) 1954- first Tour start outside France, Amsterdam 1964- JACQUES ANQUETIL is first man to win the Tour five times 1967- first time-trial prologue 1968- regular drug tests introduced, last Tour contested by national teams 1971- first air transfer between stages 1974- first cross-Channel transfer for stage in Plymouth 1975- Tour finishes on Champs-Elysees for first time 1983- Tour goes "open," including Colombian amateurs 1984- women's Tour de France begins, won by Marianne Martin (US); it ends in 1989 1995- MIGUEL INDURAIN is first man to win Tour five times in a row 1998- Festina doping scandal 2005- Lance Armstrong takes seventh win in a row The Tours of the HEROIC ERA were slogs that called for superhuman levels of willpower and endurance, along appalling roads that made ma.s.sive demands on poorly built bikes. In the first Tour, some partic.i.p.ants took up to 35 hours to complete the stages. There were countless episodes in which cyclists broke frames or wheels and had to carry out roadside repairs; most celebrated is the episode in 1913 when Eugene Christophe broke his forks and had to repair them in a blacksmith's.

Early on, the Tour flirted with various formats. Initially there was a rest day after each stage, and it was decided on points from 1906 to 1911. Later, team time trials became a main feature as Desgrange tried to prevent the riders forming alliances on the road. But it gradually moved to a format similar to that of today's race: daily stages with the occasional rest day. Desgrange took the race outside France's borders in 1905, when it visited Alsace-Lorraine. He held time trials, both individual and for teams. There have been modifications, but only relatively minor ones.

The biggest innovation came in 1910, when the race was taken into the PYRENeES. The move was proposed to Desgrange by his a.s.sistant, Alphonse Steines, who reconnoitred the Col du Tourmalet in January, when it was blocked by snow. He walked over the pa.s.s and telegrammed his boss to say the road was perfectly usable, although he had barely seen it. The Tour's first major mountain stage, from Luchon to Bayonne, included the four legendary pa.s.ses of the Peyresourde, Aspin, Tourmalet, and Aubisque. As he pushed his bike up the Aubisque, the eventual race winner Octave Lapize looked at Lefevre and company-Desgrange was absent-and spat out the word "a.s.sa.s.sins." The ALPS were included in the route a year later. On the Col du Galibier, that year's winner Gustave Garrigou shoved his bike through ma.s.sive snowdrifts on a road that was little more than a mud track.

For many years, the Tour's appeal lay in the fact that the public could relate to the effort involved in bike racing, as pretty much everyone could ride a bike. They could admire the Tourmen's ability to achieve feats beyond mere mortals, be it winning a sprint at 50 kph, climbing a mountain, or whizzing downhill at 100 kph: "industry mixed with heroism" as Aragon put it.

Today, that has changed a little. Few people ride bikes to work any more, but cycling enthusiasts can ride the race's great mountains in any number of leisure events, and many ride up and down before the race comes. It's rare in any sport for spectators to be able to emulate their heroes in this way. The inception of the eTAPE DU TOUR in 1993 enabled ordinary mortals to ride one leg of the race under the same conditions as the Tourmen, a.s.suming they were fit enough, and led to a huge increase in semi-compet.i.tive endurance events.

The Tour is more than a mere sports event. Fans of GINO BARTALI claim that his 1948 win saved Italy from revolution. Desgrange believed that the sacrifice embodied by the Tour riders could serve as a moral example, and Jean-Marie Leblanc, who ran the race from 1989 to 2004, believed the event had a social mission: bringing good cheer to forsaken parts of France. It was under Leblanc that the race began traveling to the center of the country rather than keeping to the periphery.