The Tour de France (French pronunciation: [tuʁ də fʁɑ̃s]) is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than 3,600 kilometres (2,200 mi) and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The race is broken into day-long segments, called stages. Individual times to finish each stage are aggregated to determine the overall winner at the end of the race. The rider with the lowest aggregate time at the end of each day wears the leader's yellow jersey on the next day of racing. The course changes every year, but the race has always finished in Paris. Since 1975, the climax of the final stage has been along the Champs-Élysées.

The tour typically has 21 days of racing and covers 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi). The shortest Tour was in 1904 at 2,420 kilometres (1,500 mi), the longest in 1926 at 5,745 kilometres (3,570 mi). The three weeks usually include two rest days, sometimes used to transport riders from a finish in one town to the start in another. The race alternates between clockwise and anticlockwise circuits of France. The first anticlockwise circuit was in 1913. The New York Times said the "Tour de France is arguably the most physiologically demanding of athletic events." The effort was compared to "running a marathon several days a week for nearly three weeks", while the total elevation of the climbs was compared to "climbing three Everests."

France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).

Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.

Christophe Riblon (born January 17, 1981 in Tremblay-en-France, Seine-Saint-Denis) is a French professional road and track racing cyclist for UCI ProTour team Ag2r-La Mondiale. He won stage 14 of the 2010 Tour de France with a mountain-top finish at the ski resort of Ax-3 Domaines in the Pyrenees.

Jan Ullrich (born 2 December 1973 in Rostock, Germany) is a German former professional road bicycle racer. In 1997, he was the first German to win the Tour de France. He went on to take five second places and a fourth in 2004 as well as 3rd in 2005 (the latter result being declared void in 2012 following his doping ban). He is considered the best time-trialist in the history of the sport. In 2006, Ullrich was barred from the Tour amid speculation of having doped. He retired in late February 2007.

Ullrich won a gold and a silver in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. He also won the 1999 Vuelta a España. Although not a one-day specialist, he won the HEW Cyclassics in front of a home crowd in Hamburg in 1997, and had podium finishes in the hilly classic Clásica de San Sebastián. His victorious ride in the 1997 Tour de France led to a bicycle boom in Germany.

In February 2012, Ullrich was found guilty of a doping offence by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He was retroactively banned from August 22, 2011, and all results gained since May 2005 were also removed from his Palmares.

Lance Edward Armstrong (born Lance Edward Gunderson on September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road racing cyclist who won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times after having survived testicular cancer. He is also the founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research and support. He last rode for UCI ProTeam Team RadioShack, a team he helped found.

In October 1996 he was diagnosed as having testicular cancer with a tumor that had metastasized to his brain and lungs. His cancer treatments included brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy, and his prognosis was originally poor. He went on to win the Tour de France each year from 1999 to 2005, and is the only person to win seven times having broken the previous record of five wins shared by Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, and Jacques Anquetil.

In 1999, he was named the ABC Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. In 2000 he won the Prince of Asturias Award in Sports. In 2002, Sports Illustrated magazine named him Sportsman of the Year. He was also named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year for the years 2002–2005. He received ESPN's ESPY Award for Best Male Athlete in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award in 2003. Armstrong announced his retirement from racing on July 24, 2005, at the end of the 2005 Tour de France but returned to competitive cycling in January 2009 and finished third in the 2009 Tour de France. He confirmed he had retired from competitive cycling for good on February 16, 2011.