This book analyses the Tour de France over its long history both as France's most prestigious and famous sporting event and as a European and, increasingly, a world cycling competition. This study provides interdisciplinary and varied perspectives on the sporting, cultural, social, economic and political significance of the Tour within and outside France, giving a comprehensive and authoritative investigation of up-to-the minute thinking on what the Tour means, now and in the past, to competitors, to France, to the French public, to the cultural history of sport, and the sport of cycling itself.