{"id":8770,"date":"2013-06-29T07:54:54","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T07:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/100th-tour-de-france-flags-off\/"},"modified":"2013-06-29T07:56:35","modified_gmt":"2013-06-29T07:56:35","slug":"100th-tour-de-france-flags-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/100th-tour-de-france-flags-off\/","title":{"rendered":"100th Tour de France Flags off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{{If the Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange could have magically transported himself forward to the100th edition and discovered that the hot favorite was Kenyan-born Briton Chris Froome, with not a French contender in sight, then he might have abandoned the idea altogether.}}<\/p>\n<p>Desgrange and his editorial colleagues on the newspaper L&#8217;Auto came up with the idea of a cycle race around France to boost its flagging circulation and a non-French winner was the last thing they would have wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Maurice Garin duly obliged in the 1903 edition, but more importantly the &#8220;Grand Boucle&#8221; had successfully captured the French public&#8217;s imagination and with the exception of two world wars has been raced every year since.<\/p>\n<p>Despite a raft of doping scandals &#8212; this year&#8217;s Tour is the first since Lance Armstrong confessed to cheating and was stripped of his seven titles &#8212; and the tragic deaths of leading riders such as Tommy Simpson and Fabio Casartelli &#8212; its popularity as the greatest free sporting spectacle in the world has endured.<\/p>\n<p>For a race conceived by a journalist, it has undoubtedly provided rich material to fill countless column inches, not to mention ample opportunities for their photographic colleagues to capture the drama of the moment and France&#8217;s stunning scenery.<\/p>\n<p>Mapping Le Tour, published in conjunction with the centenary race, chronicles the history of the race in images and route maps of each year, plus a stage-by-stage preview of the 2013 edition.<\/p>\n<p>It reveals that the Tour has visited every region of France apart from Corsica &#8212; so fittingly, and to mark the special anniversary, this year&#8217;s race will start Saturday with three road stages on the hilly Mediterranean island.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-3101 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/ddw.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>{Above; In 1903, Riders tackle the stage from Toulouse to Bordeaux in the first ever edition of the Tour de France.}<\/p>\n<p>{Tour de France 2013 below}<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-3102 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/ccvb-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-3103 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/tdf.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{{If the Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange could have magically transported himself forward to the100th edition and discovered that the hot favorite was Kenyan-born Briton Chris Froome, with not a French contender in sight, then he might have abandoned the idea altogether.}} Desgrange and his editorial colleagues on the newspaper L&#8217;Auto came up with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8770"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8770"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}