The Tour de France is a mammoth and multiform animal that is constantly evolving. Every edition is the mirror of an era. Originally, the most important cycling race in the world expressed the idea that start and finish should take place in the same place – Paris, the capital of France – and that the race route should strictly follow national contours. Tour is French for revolution, a term that contains the meanings of circularity and return. At the beginning, the Tour de France - the first ever took place in 1903 - was a genuine geography challenge and a test for the not yet well developed French road network. The main effort on the part of the organisers was to find new routes every year that traced the national borders as closely as possible. Looking at the routes of the Tour de France of the 1920s, it is striking to see how the route reproduced the hexagonal shape of the country almost perfectly.
The total length of the original Tour de France was much longer than it is today and often exceeded five thousand kilometres overall, an enormity. Even the stages had lengths that seem unthinkable and absurd for a bicycle competition today. The average length of the stages was easily over 300 kilometres, and were frequently over 400 kilometres even. The concept of adventurous cycling and riding through every French département, in those early editions, remained the competition's concept.
The idea that the Tour de France should be a way of representing a country and its culture, rather than a route to be covered, only subsequently came to the organisers' minds.
The Fifties are the decade in which the Tour de France made the leap towards Europe and internationalisation: 1952 saw the introduction of the summit finishes, which had not existed up to that point. In that revolutionary edition, the relationship between the Tour de France and the spectacularisation of fatigue was born, with the summit finishes forming a significant innovation which to this day represents the most spectacular competition format in stage races.
The other decisive innovation that made the Tour de France an international event in 1954, also from a geographical perspective, and which projected it into the modern era, was the invention of the Grand Départ, namely the idea that the race could start in a foreign country. This initial phase, lasting three days, can be described as a kind of cameo of the competition that draws great media attention and audience to the event.z
Between 1954 and today, the Tour de France has started in a foreign country on 25 different occasions, and this year Italy will be hosting the Grand Départ for the first time. With three stages in Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont dedicated to three legendary Italian riders – Ottavio Bottecchia, the first Italian cyclist to win the Tour de France a century ago, Il Pirata Marco Pantani and Top Champion Fausto Coppi – the Tour de France will kick off from Florence and celebrate Italy, as well as Italians' passion for cycling. This is a unique opportunity, perhaps not unrepeatable in this century but certainly one not to be missed.
