Tour de l'Avenir
| 200px | |
| Race details | |
|---|---|
| Date | September |
| Region | France |
| English name | Tour of the Future |
| Local name(s) | Tour de l'Avenir (French) |
| Discipline | Road |
| Competition | UCI Nations Cup |
| Type | Stage race |
| Organiser | Amaury Sport Organisation |
| History | |
| First edition | 1961 |
| Editions | 51 (as of 2014) |
| First winner |  Guido De Rosso (ITA) |
| Most wins |  Serguei Soukhoroutchenkov (URS) (2 wins) |
| Most recent |  Marc Soler (ESP) |
Tour de l'Avenir (English: Tour of the Future) is a French road bicycle racing stage race, which started in 1961[1] as a race similar to the Tour de France and over much of the same course but for amateurs and for semi-professionals known as independents. Felice Gimondi, Joop Zoetemelk, Greg LeMond, Miguel Indurain and Laurent Fignon won the Tour de l'Avenir[2] and went on to win 12 Tours de France between them.
The race was created in 1961 by Jacques Marchand, the editor of L'Equipe,[3] to attract teams from the Soviet Union and other communist nations that had no professional riders to enter the Tour de France. Until 1967, it took place earlier the same day as some of the stages of the Tour de France and shared the latter part of each stage's route, but moved to September and a separate course from 1968 onwards.[4] It became the Grand Prix de l'Avenir in 1970, the Trophée Peugeot de l'Avenir from 1972 to 1979 and the Tour de la Communauté Européenne from 1986 to 1990. It was restricted to amateurs from 1961 to 1980, before opening to professionals in 1981. After 1992, it was open to all riders of less than 25[3] and is now for riders 23 or younger.[5][6]
Since 2007, the tour has been a national team competition with the 2013 edition involving the following countries:
France, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Slovenia, Great Britain, Italy, Kazakhstan, Denmark, Colombia, Australia, Russia, United States, Ukraine, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Latvia. The final team, Central Mondial du Cyclisme, contains nationals from Eritrea, Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, Panama and Peru.
Previous winners
References
- ↑ [1] Archived November 27, 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ [2][dead link]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Tour de l'Avenir: Un Costaricain premier leader
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
