Blog - Tour de France 2012

The Tour 2012 yellow jersey for Brad Wiggins, did you know the first to wear it was Eugène Christophe?

A little bit over a week now, the British rider Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) won the Tour de France 2012, with a 3'21" gap on his team mate and fellow countryman Christopher Froome (and 6'19" on the Italian rider Vincenzo Nibali of the Liquigas-Cannondale team). But did you known that the first rider to wear the yellow jersey was Eugène Christophe, on 19 July 1919 at the stage start in Grenoble?

Bradley Wiggins' victory

PowerBar feeds the riders of the Tour de France 2012 - interview

Maybe you didn't know this, but in the start zone of each of the stages of the Tour de France 2012, a van from Powerbar is present with a full display of energy rich products which are available to the riders before they start the stage.

Energy bars and gels which the riders can take as many as they wish ... Joël explains how this works!

Yesterday at the individual time trial between Arc-et-Senans and Besançon I went to see Joël, who manages together with Stéphanie the Powerbar stand at the start, to ask him to explain what the riders take before they start.

Feeding in the race (from the cars of the directeurs sportifs) is allowed only after the first 50 first kilometers in the stages in line (except if the commissaires decide otherwise) and in a time trial like yesterday, the rider has to wait for the feeding zone mid-stage in order to find something to eat and to drink. It's thus quite logi ...

In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert: a Cavendish/Greipel duel in Saint-Quentin?

After a one day absence due to unexpected circumstances, Stéphane Goubert is back on velowire.com in this new edition of In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert at the end of the 4th stage between Abbeville and Rouen.

André Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) wins this stage after a sprint which was disturbed by a crash and we're already looking forward to stage number 5 which will most probably also end in a bunch sprint.

The 4th stage between Abbeville and Rouen over a distance of 214.5 kilometers saw a breakaway right from the start but everyone knew it would end in a sprint. After a crash in the last 3 kilometers which involved riders like Mark Cavendish (Team Sky) and Robbie Hunter (Garmin-Sharp), André Greipel, nicknamed the gorilla, won the stage.

This crash thus prevented Greipel and Cavendish to fight the sprint in a man-to-man race and Stéphane Goubert thinks this duo fight will be what we'll see in the sprint of the 5th stage, which starts in Rouen, at t ...

In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert: Sylvain Chavanel again in Boulogne-sur-Mer?

In this 4th edition of In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert, we analyse together that Stéphane was right again with his prediction for the day for the stage between Visé and Tournai with Mark Cavendish (Team Sky) as the winner. For the 3rd stage between Orchies and Boulogne-sur-Mer the former rider of the AG2R team takes a bit more risk ...

It all seemed to be planned like that: Mark Cavendish (Team Sky), who seemed to have missed the right sprinters train (since he doesn't have his dedicated sprinters train with Sky he needed to get on the wheel of someone else), won the second stage of the Tour de France 2012 between Visé and Tournai.

Behind the British world champion we found other sprinters, such as André Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) and Matthew Goss (Orica-GreenEDGE) on second and third place.

Concerning the third stage, Orchies > Boulogne-sur-Mer over 197 kilometers and w ...

In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert: Mark Cavendish in the sprint?

In this 3rd edition of In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert the former rider of the AG2R team comes back on the first stage between Liège and Seraing and than analyses today's stage, between Visé and Tournai.

Concerning the 198 kilometer long stage between Liège and Seraing with a slightly uphill finish, we observe together that Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) kept his promises, there where Fabian Cancellara (Radioshack-Nissan) shows a good form and manages to keep the yellow jersey quite easily. The local rider, Philippe Gilbert (BMC Racing Team) didn't manage to step up the highest step of the stage's podium and thus shows he's no longer able to reproduce the magical formula which he seemed to have last season.

For today's stage, 207.5 kilometers between Visé and Tournai (click here for all de ...

In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert: Peter Sagan in Seraing?

In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert first looks back at the 6.4 kilometer long time trial in the streets of Liège, which was won today - like in 2004 - by Fabian Cancellara (Radioshack-Nissan) and than looks forward to the first stage between Liège and Seraing over 198 kilometers tomorrow (see here for the race route of this first stage of the Tour de France 2012).

Concerning the prologue in the streets of Liège, Fabian Cancellara repeated his success story of 2004 on a race route which was almost completely the same as in 2004 and Stéphane Goubert therefore explains that the 300 extra meters were not enough for the competitors of the Swiss rider to win it from him, even though we saw a good time trial by Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) and most of all a great time trial by Sylvain Chavanel (Omega Pharma-QuickSt ...

In the Tour with Stéphane Goubert: Peter Sagan might be the surprise winner

In a few hours, the Tour de France 2012 will start in Liège in Belgium with a 6.4 kilometer long prologue in the streets of the center of Liège.

Stéphane Goubert, usually directeur sportif for the AG2R La Mondiale team and regular speaker in the "Les rois de la pédale" show on Eurosport works for Vittel in this Tour de France as a "pilote RP" (Relations Publiques - the programme for invitees of the Vittel brand). For velowire.com Stéphane kindly accepted to deliver his analysis of the past stage and of the stage to come every day*.

Of course, we start with the analysis before the Grand Départ in which Stéphane Goubert of course mentions Fabian Cancellara (Radioshack-Nissan) as a potential winner because the Swiss rider already won the prologue of the Tour de France 2004 on a race route which was, except for a ...

You're going to the Tour de France 2012 ? Alcatel One Touch shows you around!

You must have noticed that velowire.com has recently changed colours (early June)! After the pink for the Giro d'Italia, you could have expected the site to adopt the colours of the Critérium du Dauphiné or of the Tour of Switzerland, but that's not the case. Indeed, instead of the ochre colour of the Dauphiné or the red colour of the Tour of Switzerland, velowire.com has adopted a bleu colour ... Alcatel One Touch's blue colour!

In this article you'll find out why!

Alcatel, le Tour en One Touch

Tour de France 2012: the race route on Google Maps/Google Earth, the profiles and time schedules

Tour de France 2012: Brad Wiggins' gets ready in Châtel and on Majorca

... and all details about Châtel's candidature for the Tour de France!