Along with the Pirate’s Blog, we’ll be watching the Tour de France:

Here are some factiods they were happy to share with us:

Calories consumed by a rider per day: 5,900 average, 9,000 max
Calories burned by a rider in the course of the Tour: 123,900 (based on 5900-per day average at 21 days of racing)
Number of pedal strokes taken per rider for the three weeks: 324,000 (at 60rpm); 486,000 (at 90rpm)
Number (or miles) of barricades erected and torn down for the race: 217 miles
Number of gendarmes on stage routes: 250 per day
Number of chains worn out by a single rider: 3 (Armstrong goes through a chain a week)
Total number of tires used by the peloton: 792 (estimate: USPS and Domo both use three sets of wheels on regular race bikes, plus TT wheels)
Number of finishers, worst-ever year: 10, 1919 (out of 69 starters)
Most stages won by a single rider, career total: 34, Eddy Merckx (1969: six stages and overall; 1970: eight stages and overall; 1971: four stages and overall; 1972: six stages and overall; 1974: eight stages and overall; 1975: two stages)
Most number of stages won on single Tour: 8–Charles Pelissier (1930), Eddy Merckx (1970, 1974) and Freddy Maertens (1976)
Most riders to wear yellow jersey in one Tour: 8 in 1987
Most days spent in yellow jersey: 96–Eddy Merckx (in 7 participations)
Biggest winning margin (since 1947): 28 min 27 sec (Fausto Coppi –Stan Ockers in 1952)
Smallest winning margin: 8 sec (Greg LeMond –Laurent Fignon in 1989)
Longest solo breakaway: 253 km by Albert Bourlon in 1947
Biggest winning margin on stage win: 22 min 50 sec –Jose Luis Viejo in 1976
Fastest prologue: 55.152 kph–Chris Boardman in 1994 over 7.2km
Highest total number of “King of the Mountains” victories: 7 by Richard Virenque
Fastest individual time trial: 54.545 kph–Greg LeMond in 1989 over 24.5km
Fastest team time trial: 54.930 kp/h by Gewiss in 1995 over 67km
Fastest average over a flat stage: 50.355 kp/h–Mario Cipollini in 1999 over 194.5km (Laval-Blois)
Fastest average over whole Tour: 40.276 kph by Lance Armstrong in 1999
Oldest race winner: Firmin Lambot (36) in 1922
Youngest winner: Henri Cornet (20) in 1904
Most times participated by one rider: 16–Joop Zoetemelk, between 1970 and 1986 (finished all).

For additional Independent Sources TdF posts click here.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 at 5:31 am by Insider and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.