Hundred years on, convicts of the road still rewriting history

IT has survived world wars, terrorists, strikes and the biggest drugs scandals known to sport, but it has made it to its 100th edition.

IT has survived two world wars, terrorist action, strikes and the biggest drugs scandals known to sport, but it has made it to its 100th edition.

The Tour de France will add to its colourful history tonight when it leaves Porto-Vecchio in the south of Corsica, where it has never been before, and will do so with a British favourite born in Africa.

This amazing race continues to write itself into the history books as the most fabled sports event in the world.

In 1903 an Italian-born French chain-smoking chimney sweep called Maurice Garin won by almost threes hours after a journey around France that lasted three weeks and covered the 2428km at an average of 400km a day.

It was done on a bicycle one would no longer consider suitable even to ride to the shops. This was some achievement.

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The following year on November 30, 1904, four months after it had finished, the Tour began to court the controversy that has remained with it ever since when the first four riders, including winner again Garin, were disqualified for a number of rule violations.

This left Henri Cornet - who finished in fifth place - the winner.

At 20 years of age, he remains the youngest ever and is likely to remain so in a race that really is now for mature men.

Nowadays, the 198 riders have only to eat, be massaged and cover the route inside a daily time limit.

Gone are the days when monks passed up bottles of beer from their monastic breweries or riders were forced to stop by the roadside to pull tacks from their tyres.

No longer are they referred to as "convicts of the road", an identity bestowed upon them after the snatching of food and drink as they passed through villages during the first 50 years of the race.

A support team of managers, doctors, psychiatrists, mechanics and masseurs (or masseuses) ensures each rider is in a position to give the race the best his body is capable of.

Every professional cyclist wants to ride in the Tour de France but rarely in any year are there more than half a dozen who are in a position to win it.

Talent is indefinable, but for the gifted handful they will be able to climb the high mountains which can reach 2500m; they will be able to time-trial at 50km/ h and they will be able to handle the inevitable pain of their efforts if success on the Champs d'Elysees on July 21 is to become reality.

Today Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean that measures 183km by 83km, will at last get its chance to welcome the massive entourage for the first three days of racing.

It has been preparing for five years, and life for the island that became part of France in 1769, will never be quite the same again.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island, also in 1769, and his birth town of Ajaccio will host the finish of stage two.

It is the most mountainous of the islands, with the volcanoes shaping its future so, as this is the most rugged Tour for many years, the riders will feel the pressure of this 100th race from the start.

The main players of this annual three-week soap opera are Chris Froome (second to his teammate Bradley Wiggins last year) Alberto Contador, the winner in 2007 and 2009 and disqualified for drug abuse in 2010, Andy Schleck, who benefited from the win in 2010 after Contador's demise, and Cadel Evans, who brought the country to a standstill in 2011 with the first Australian victory.

There are a couple more Spaniards and a certain young Colombian, Nairo Quintana, who will add interest to the battle, but it is unlikely they will upset the reputations of the few who have done it all before.

In all, 36 Australians have crossed the finish line in Paris since Don Kirkham pioneered the way in 1914, and the likes of newcomers Cameron Meyer, Simon Clarke and Rohan Dennis will hope to increase this number to 39.

The Pyrenees are reached as the second week begins, but it is as the third week begins that the favourites will look to gain the time to win in Paris. This assumes, of course, that they have not lost too much already in the 3350km race.

The climb to the top of the Giant of Provence, Mont Ventoux, where Britain's Tom Simpson died in 1967, will be the start of a dour battle, which will be resumed after the race's second rest day in Gap.

Stage 18 will climb the revered Alpe d'Huez, not once, but twice, guaranteeing an audience on the slopes of more than 1 million people.

There will not be the late opportunity to snatch victory, as Evans did in 2011, as this Tour will be all about climbing and the man who can suffer the most.