The Tour de France is an annual men's multiple-stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally passing through nearby countries. Like the other Grand Tours, it consists of 21 stages, each a day long, over the course of 23 days, coinciding with the Bastille Day holiday. It is the oldest of the Grand Tours and generally considered the most prestigious.
The Tour of Britain is a multi-stage cycling race, conducted on British roads, in which participants race across Great Britain to complete the race in the fastest time.
Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held primarily on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common competition formats are mass start events, where riders start simultaneously and race to a set finish point; and time trials, where individual riders or teams race a course alone against the clock. Stage races or "tours" take multiple days, and consist of several mass-start or time-trial stages ridden consecutively.
Fabian Cancellara, nicknamed "Spartacus", is a Swiss cycling executive, businessman and former professional road racing cyclist who last rode for UCI ProTeam Trek–Segafredo. He was born in Wohlen bei Bern, Switzerland. Cancellara began road cycling after falling in love with an old bike at the age of thirteen. After that, he began to take the sport more seriously and won two consecutive World Junior Time Trial Championships in 1998 and 1999. At age nineteen he turned professional and signed with the Mapei–Quick-Step team, where he rode as a stagiaire. He is known for being a quality time trialist, a one-day classics specialist, and a workhorse for his teammates who have general classification aspirations.
Mark Simon Cavendish is a British professional road racing cyclist from the Isle of Man who rides for UCI WorldTeam Astana Qazaqstan Team. As a track cyclist he specialises in the madison, points race, and scratch race disciplines; as a road racer he is a sprinter. He is widely considered one of the greatest road sprinters of all time, and in 2021 was called "the greatest sprinter in the history of the Tour and of cycling" by Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France.
Philippe Gilbert is a Belgian former professional road bicycle racer, who is best known for winning the World Road Race Championships in 2012, and for being one of two riders, along with Davide Rebellin, to have won the three Ardennes classics – the Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège – in a single season, which he accomplished in 2011. Gilbert also finished the 2011 season as the overall winner of the UCI World Tour.
The ToyotaCare 250 is a NASCAR Xfinity Series race that takes place at Richmond Raceway in Richmond, Virginia. The race was first held during the inaugural season for the Xfinity Series in 1982 as a 150-lap event. The race was removed from the schedule after 1984. It returned to the series starting in 1990 as a 200 lap race. It was expanded to 250 lap distance in 1994. In 2016, as part of an overhauling of the Richmond spring race weekend, including the new Dash4Cash format, the total of 210-laps and had two 35-lap heat races and a 140-lap feature. In 2017, the heat races were discontinued, and the race returned to its 250-lap distance with the new stage format: stages 1 and 2 were 75 laps long, and stage 3 made up the remaining 100 laps.
Gregory Henderson is a New Zealand former professional track and road racing cyclist, who rode professionally between 2002 and 2017. His career includes winning the 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) scratch race at the 2004 world championships and, in road cycling, winning the points competition at the Tour de Georgia in 2005 and 2008.
Alberto Contador Velasco is a Spanish former professional cyclist. He is one of the most successful riders of his era, winning the Tour de France twice, the Giro d'Italia twice, and the Vuelta a España three times. He is one of only seven riders to have won all three Grand Tours of cycling, and one of only two riders to have won all three more than once. He has also won the Vélo d'Or a record 4 times.
The 2012 Tour de France was the 99th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It started in the Belgian city of Liège on 30 June and finished on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on 22 July. The Tour consisted of 21 stages, including an opening prologue, and covered a total distance of 3,496.9 km (2,173 mi). As well as the prologue, the first two stages took place in Belgium, and one stage finished in Switzerland. Bradley Wiggins won the overall general classification, and became the first British rider to win the Tour. Wiggins's teammate Chris Froome placed second, and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas–Cannondale) was third.
Michał Kwiatkowski is a Polish professional road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Ineos Grenadiers.
John Degenkolb is a German professional road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Team DSM. His biggest wins to date are the 2015 Milan–San Remo and the 2015 Paris–Roubaix, two of cycling's five monuments. He is a winner of stages in all three Grand Tours, with ten stages and the points classification at the Vuelta a España, one stage of the Giro d'Italia, and one stage in the Tour de France.
Primož Roglič is a Slovenian racing cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam Team Jumbo–Visma. He started as a ski jumper and switched to cycling several years after an accident suffered at Planica.
Julian Alaphilippe is a French professional road cyclist, former cyclo-cross racer and two-fold UCI World Road Champion, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Soudal–Quick-Step. He is the brother of racing cyclist Bryan Alaphilippe.
The 2014 Vuelta a España took place between 23 August and 14 September 2014 and was the 69th edition of the race. It featured eight mountain stages, five hill stages, five flat stages, and three time trials, two of which appeared at the beginning and end of the race. Jerez de la Frontera, on the Spanish south coast, hosted the opening stage. The Vuelta then went counterclockwise, through the south-east and east of the country before crossing the north and finishing in Santiago de Compostela. This was the first time in 21 years that the race has finished outside Madrid.
Wout van Aert is a Belgian professional road and cyclo-cross racer who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Team Jumbo–Visma. He won the men's elite race at the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in 2016, 2017 and 2018. He joined Team Jumbo–Visma in March 2019, on a three-year deal after terminating his contract with Vérandas Willems–Crelan in 2018. He is considered one of the most complete cyclists of his generation.
The 2015 Vuelta a España was a three-week Grand Tour cycling race. The race was the 70th edition of the Vuelta a España and took place principally in Spain, although two stages took place partly or wholly in Andorra, and was the 22nd race in the 2015 UCI World Tour. The 3,358.1-kilometre (2,086.6 mi) race included 21 stages, beginning in Marbella on 22 August 2015 and finishing in Madrid on 13 September. It was won by Fabio Aru, with Joaquim Rodríguez second and Rafał Majka (Tinkoff–Saxo) third.
The 2017 Vuelta a España was a three-week Grand Tour cycling stage race that took place in Spain between 19 August and 10 September 2017. The race was the 72nd edition of the Vuelta a España and the final Grand Tour of the 2017 cycling season. The race started in Nîmes, France, and finished in Madrid. It was the first time the race has started in France and only the third time it has started outside Spain, after 1997 (Portugal) and 2009 (Netherlands).
Tadej Pogačar is a Slovenian cyclist who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam UAE Team Emirates. He won the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Tour de France, winning three different jerseys during each Tour, a feat unseen in nearly four decades.
Remco Evenepoel is a Belgian cyclist, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Soudal–Quick-Step.
