EDITO of Patrice Clerc and Jean-Marie Leblanc


This year it is not an ordinary Tour de France that we are preparing, but this rare and significant event, the Centenary edition of the greatest cycling competition in the world.

This has been in our thoughts for the last few years. In order to celebrate this event we have already set up important operations with the Paris Mint, and with the Post Office, for the fabrication of a commemorative medal and stamp. The magnificent book from our friends at L'Equipe recounting the 100 years of the Tour has just appeared, and, on the television and the radio, retrospectives, documentaries, series, will see the day over the next few months. Along with exhibitions, and special animations for young people, and celebrations.

Many more ideas will appear before next July. We ourselves have already glorified in our own way these hundred years of the Tour de France with the Centenary poster, which idealises our competition's past, and which will be reproduced on the route by the Centenary caravan; along with a new logo, a new personality, open to modernity, to the future, to the youth of today, because we would like to see the values of the Tour perpetuated for a long time to come.

But the race in all that, you may say?

The race, we cannot -the rules are what they are- and nor do we want to, change it, to break its balance and its logic which give it its credibility: there will be no more mountain stages than usual, no less time trials than usual; no excessively long distances or untimely difficulties. All is measure and reason. This is what we expect of the Tour de France today, in the straight line of sporting ethics, that should not be provoked in favour of the attraction of the show alone.

Yet, we will have a very pretty Tour route, via the emphatic and symbolic allusion that we wanted to make to 1903. For, just as in 1903, we will set off from Paris and the l'Ile de France area- the famous Réveil-Matin in Montgeron still exists - and just as in 1903, we will pass through Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes; and even Ville d'Avray, on the last day.

And, diverging from the route of the first Tour de France, we will pay tribute to the memory of its forefathers, Géo Lefèvre, Henri Desgrange and Jacques Goddet; we will visit its symbolic places, the Galibier, the Alpe d'Huez, the Izoard, the Tourmalet, Luz-Ardiden; we will remain faithful to those who have been faithful to us, Bordeaux and Pau, but also Morzine, Ariège, the Hautes-Pyrénées… And we will also innovate, by exploring Cap'Découverte, in the Tarn region, or the Cité de l'Espace in Toulouse: nine new towns in total will figure on our route.

One hundred years later, without moving away from its fundamental points of reference, the Tour de France wants to retain its pioneering spirit.

Patrice Clerc, President of Amaury Sport Organisation
Jean-Marie Leblanc, Tour de France Manager