2013 Tour de France

The 2013 Tour de France was the 100th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It started on the island of Corsica on 30 June and finished on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on 21 July. The Tour consisted of twenty-one stages and covered a total distance of . The overall general classification was won by Chris Froome of . Second and third respectively were Nairo Quintana () and the rider Joaquim Rodríguez.

Marcel Kittel () was the first rider to wear the general classification leader's yellow jersey after winning stage one. He lost the lead the next day to Jan Bakelants of , who managed to obtain a one-second lead from a late solo attack. Simon Gerrans gained the race lead after his team, , won the stage four team time trial. Gerrans passed the lead on to teammate Daryl Impey after the fifth stage. Froome took the lead from Impey after a dominant performance in the eighth stage, the first classified as mountainous. Froome maintained his lead for the remainder of the race by consolidating his lead through solid performances in the individual time trials and another dominant win on Mont Ventoux, while defending his GC lead in the mountains of the final week from his nearest challenger, the white jersey and eventual King of the mountains, Nairo Quintana.

Froome became the second consecutive British cyclist to win the Tour de France, after Bradley Wiggins accomplished the feat the year before. In the race's other classifications, rider Quintana took the mountains classification with a summit victory in the final mountain stage edging out Froome, and also finished as the best young rider in the general classification, finishing in second place overall; Peter Sagan of the team was the winner of the points classification, with finishing as the winners of the team classification. Christophe Riblon () was given the award for the most combative rider. Kittel won the most stages, with four.

Teams

Twenty-two teams participated in the 2013 edition of the Tour de France. The race was the 18th of the 29 events in the UCI World Tour, and all of its nineteen UCI ProTeams were entitled, and obliged, to enter the race. On 27 April 2013, the organiser of the Tour, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), announced the three second-tier UCI Professional Continental teams given wildcard invitations, all of which were French-based. The presentation of the teams took place at the harbour of Porto-Vecchio on the island of Corsica on 27 June, two days before the opening stage held in the town. Each team arrived by boat to the stage, before being introduced to the crowd.

Each squad was allowed a maximum of nine riders, therefore the start list contained a total of 198 riders. Of these, 54 were riding the Tour de France for the first time. The riders came from 34 countries; France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Germany all had 10 or more riders in the race. Riders from ten countries won stages during the race; German riders won the largest number of stages, with six. The average age of riders in the race was 29.45 years, ranging from the 19-year-old Danny van Poppel () to the 41-year-old Jens Voigt (). Of the total average ages, was the youngest team and the oldest.

The teams entering the race were:

UCI ProTeams

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UCI Professional Continental teams

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Pre-race favourites

In the run up to the 2013 Tour de France, Chris Froome () was widely considered as the top pre-race favourite for the general classification, with his closest rivals thought to be Alberto Contador () and Joaquim Rodríguez (). 's Vincenzo Nibali was also a possible contender after getting his first Tour podium in 2012 but he had focused on the 2013 Giro d'Italia. The other riders considered contenders for the general classification were riders Cadel Evans and Tejay van Garderen, Richie Porte (), Jurgen Van den Broeck (), Thibaut Pinot (), Ryder Hesjedal (), Robert Gesink (), and riders Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana.

The 2012 Tour de France winner, Bradley Wiggins of , had focused on the Giro d'Italia, but retired early due to illness, subsequently pulling out because illness and injury had left him insufficient time to train for the Tour de France and chose not to ride. This left Froome, runner-up in 2012, the undisputed leader of . He had shown his form so far in 2013 season by winning four of the five stage races he had ridden: Tour of Oman, Critérium International, Tour de Romandie and Critérium du Dauphiné. Two-time Tour winner ( 2007 and 2009) Contador returned to the race having been suspended from the 2012 race; he had won the 2012 Vuelta a España and his best major result of the season was second in Oman. Rodríguez had podium finishes in both the Giro and Vuelta in 2012, as well as winning the UCI World Tour. He had top-ten placings in three major stage races in the season.

The sprinters considered favourites for the points classification and wins in bunch sprint finishes were Mark Cavendish (), Peter Sagan (), André Greipel (), Matthew Goss () and riders Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb. Cavendish won the points classification at the 2013 Giro and had shown his form with thirteen wins in the season. In the previous year's Tour, Sagan won the points classification and had won the same at the Tour de Suisse in the month preceding the Tour. Greipel, whose team manager Marc Sergeant claimed he had the best sprint train, came into the Tour with nine wins in the season, including three at the Tour Down Under. Goss only had one victory in the season, but had a team of strong and experienced riders. Kittel, as with Greipel, would arrive with a team dedicated for the sprints and he had accumulated eleven wins in the season. His teammate Degenkolb won five stages at the 2012 Vuelta and it was thought he was most likely to be used for the hillier stages.

Route and stages

On 24 November 2011, the ASO announced Corsica would host the 2013 edition's opening stages (known as the ''Grand Départ''), the first time the Tour has visited the island. The route of the race was unveiled on 24 October 2012 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. The Tour was the first to be completed entirely on French soil since 2003 and included ten new start or finish locations. The ''Grand Départ'' in Corsica consisted of three stages. The ASO chartered the '' Mega Smeralda'' cruiseferry in Porto-Vecchio to house members of the organisation, media and others who work on the Tour and to host press conferences. It featured a final set of stages which were described by journalist William Fotheringham as "brutal", including three Alpine stages in the last week along with a "viciously hard" time trial. As the 100th edition of the race, the race featured some of the famous climbs from the history of the race, Mont Ventoux and Alpe d'Huez, which was climbed twice in a stage for the first time.

The opening stage left Porto-Vecchio and ended in Bastia, with next two stages ending in Ajaccio and Calvi respectively. The race then moved to mainland France at Nice. Stages five to eight formed a four-stage journey that navigated westwards finishing at the Ax 3 Domaines ski resort in the Pyrenees. Stage nine took place between Saint-Girons to Bagnères-de-Bigorre, before a long transfer moved the race to the north-west of the country. Stage ten finished in the port city of Saint-Malo, with the next finishing at the Mont Saint-Michel island commune in Normandy. The following four stages, 11 to 15, crossed the centre of the country back to the south-east finishing atop Mont Ventoux. The next five stages took place in and around the Alps, before a second long transfer took the Tour to the finish with the Champs-Élysées stage in Paris.

There were 21 stages in the race, covering a total of , shorter than the 2012 Tour. The longest mass-start stage was the fourth at , and stage 20 was the shortest at . Eight stages were officially classified as flat, three medium mountain, seven high mountain, two individual time trial and one team time trial. There were four summit finishes: stage 8, to Ax 3 Domaines; stage 15, to Mont Ventoux; stage 18, to Alpe d'Huez; and stage 20, to Semnoz; The highest point of elevation in the race was the -high Port de Pailhères mountain pass on stage eight. It was among seven ''hors catégorie'' (English: beyond category) rated climbs in the race. The final stage ending on the Champs-Élysées was an evening finish for the first time. There were ten new stage start or finish locations. The rest days were after stage 9, in Saint-Nazaire, and 15, in Vaucluse

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