Tour de France 2018 to Visit the Basque Country in Stage 20
While the world is still focused on the FIFA World Cup wrapping up this week, allow me to bring your attention to a different sporting event going on right now, the Tour de France.
What is the Tour de France?
The Tour de France is a 21-stage cycling race spread over 23 days, one of the three Grand Tours of cycling, along with Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España.
It is the largest annual sporting event on the planet, not just the largest cycling race. It attracts the most live spectators of any sporting event in the world. That’s right, more than the FIFA World Cup and even the Olympic Games!
The magic of this event is that it is accessible to the public for free along the side of the roads traveled throughout the route.
So you could just be living in some small town that has nothing going on 364 days of the year, but for one day the biggest sporting event in the world comes right to your front door!
First organized in 1903 to increase sales of L’Auto, a French sports newspaper, the 2018 Tour de France is the 105th edition of the annual cycling race. (The event stopped for a few years because of the two World Wars.)
This year’s edition started just last Saturday, July 7th and is set to finish on Sunday, July 29th.
22 teams are competing with a total of 176 riders. That’s 8 riders per team, for the first time this year after the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) changed the rules from 9 maximum riders per team to 8 in an attempt to make the event safer.
While crashes may be exciting for spectators, they’re not so fun for the riders!
The route for the Tour de France changes every year, although some things stay the same:
– most of the race occurs within mainland France, although sections through neighboring countries are common
– several stages pass through the Alps and the Pyrenees
– the grand finish takes place on the Champs Elysées in Paris
This year’s edition covers 3,351km, or around 2,082 miles.
That’s roughly the distance between the Euzko Etxea in Brooklyn, New York to the Alkartasuna Basque Club in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
I know we have some fit Basques in the diaspora here… Any takers?
