Tour de France

Highlights

The Tour de France is the biggest annual sporting event on the planet that attracts the best male riders to battle it out for the yellow, green, polka dot, and white jerseys over three-weeks in the middle of the European summer. A rider's career and place in history can be made and broken in a single stage with the peloton tackling France in a clockwise, or counter clockwise loop.

In 2012, Bradley Wiggins become the first British winner of the race and since then, the race has belonged to Team Sky with Chris Froome taking the 2013, 2015 and 2016 victories. While the likes of Australia with Cadel Evans and Great Britain have enjoyed overall victories for the first time in recent years, after a prolonged absence from the podium, the French have inserted themselves back into contention for the overall with Jean-Christophe Péraud and Thibaut Pinot finishing second and third to Italian Vincenzo Nibali in 2014, and Romain Bardet continuing the charge with second place overall in 2016. Colombian Nairo Quintana has emerged as chief rival to Froome, finishing on the podium each time he has won the race, and looks to animate the Tour in the years to come alongside his compatriots.

Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain hold the record of the most Tour de France victories with five. Indurain is the last rider to join the club and is the only rider to have won five in consecutive years. In the current peloton, Chris Froome has won the most Tour's with three, while Alberto Contador has won the race on two occasions with a third title taken away from him after he was disqualified from the 2010 edition.