10th July: The Tour de France

The Tour de France: now in France after its much publicised foray into England. 10 things you might not know about the world's most famous Bicycle race:

1. It was born out of the bitter rivalry between two French sports newspapers in 1903. A few years earlier, a soldier named Alfred Dreyfus was accused of selling military secrets to the Germans. Some people thought he'd done it, others thought he was innocent and arguments between the factions got quite heated. The editor of the best selling sports paper in France at the time, Le Vélo, thought Drefus was innocent. His report of a demo at a racecourse angered some of the Dreyfus-is-guilty camp so much that they started their own paper, L'Auto, hoping to drive Le Vélo out of business. When sales of L'Auto proved disappointing, they hit on the idea of holding a long distance cycling race to boost their sales. Cycling races were already popular but this new one was to be longer than any attempted before.
2. The first winner was Maurice Garin, who defeated the favourite, Josef Fischer, not to mention the many amateur adventurers who took part, including one who competed as "Samson".
3. The race alternates between clockwise and anticlockwise circuits of France, and sometimes includes stages in nearby countries, but it will always include at least two time trials and the route will always include the Pyrenees and the Alps, and the finish is always on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
4. Nobody is exactly sure when the tradition of the winners of the stages wearing a Yellow jersey took hold. In the 1903 race, it was a green armband. There are two theories as to why yellow was chosen: either because it was the colour of L'Auto newspaper, or because yellow was an unpopular colour and so it would be the easiest colour material to get at short notice.
5. The first person to wear one was Eugène Christophe, who actually hated wearing it because the spectators thought it made him look like a canary and would make canary noises as he went past.
6. As well as the main competition, there is a young rider contest which is scored the same way. It is open to riders under 26, and the leader wears a white jersey.
7. It is possible to win the entire contest without having worn a yellow jersey until the very last stage - although it has only happened twice, in 1947 and 1968.
8. The rider to wear the yellow jersey most times is Fabian Cancellara, but in spite of this, he has never actually won.
9. Bradley Wiggins is 34th in this list, with fourteen yellow jerseys to his name.
10. Thirty people have died during the Tour de France, four of which were actual competitors. In 1910, Adolphe Helière drowned while swimming in the French Riviera during a rest day; in 1935 Francisco Cepeda fell down a ravine; in 1967 Tom Simpson died of a heart attack during the ascent of Mont Ventou, and in 1995 Fabio Casartelli crashed at 88 km/h (55 mph) while descending the Col de Portet d'Aspet. Other deaths were spectators or people taking part in publicity activities. The worst accident was in 1964 when a van hit a bridge in the Dordogne, killing 20 spectators.