Game Groups > Le Tour de France licensees

This group includes all licensed games based on the Tour de France, an annual bicycle race founded in 1903, currently part of the UCI World Tour. Most titles pertaining to the group either task the players to manage a cycling team, such as the Pro Cycling Manager series, or control an individual cyclist, like Konami's Le Tour de France.

Background: In 2013, Tour de France reached its 100th edition, since there were no events organized during the World Wars. Early editions had fewer stages, but ran for about 400 km each. Gradually, the organizers introduced more stages, but with shorter distances. Nowadays, the Tour de France has 21 stages during a 23-day period (in July, usually). Most of them are placed in France, but detours into neighboring countries are common. For example in 2009 there were two stages in Spain and two in Switzerland, while the 1998 Tour started in Ireland. Road bicycle racing is a high-endurance sport, and as such it is not uncommon for 1/3 of the starting riders to drop out of the Tour.

There are three main types of stages: most of them are mass-start stages where all participants start and race together; every Tour has at least two individual time trial stages, while sporadically a team time trial may be included as well. Furthermore, the difficulty of a stage changes depending on weather conditions and relief.

The racers compete in different classifications. The general classification is determined by the racers' finish times, and the winner is awarded the yellow jersey. Difficult climbs, such as mountains, reward those who reach the top first with a number of points. The cyclist who earns the most points receives the polka dot jersey. A similar classification is awarded to sprinters on flat relief, and the prize is a green jersey. Finally, the riders under the age of 26 compete for the white jersey, based on their finish times.