The cycling race that Donald Trump created to beat the Tour de France
Cycling
This Tuesday, November 5, 2024, is a big day in the USA. It is election day, and Donald Trump is playing for the presidency of the country with Kamala Harris. A few will remember that back in the 80's, the presidential candidate financed his own race to try and contest with the Tour de France.
Trump's name is on everyone's lips as usual. For this reason we remember the year when the American tycoon wanted to create a cycling race that would leave behind the Tour de France as a great reference of the sport. This came during the golden years of Greg LeMond, a time in which the sport was hitting big numbers in the USA.
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In an interview with NBC in 1989, Donald Trump presented his ambitious project to overthrow the dominance of the Grande Boucle in the cycling season: the 'Tour de Trump'. "I put my name in the race because I always look to the future and I think the Tour de Trump is going to be as important as the Tour de France," the man now fighting for his second U.S. presidency (the first was from 2017 to 2021) said at the time.
The race was intended to be the most important in the world. To this end, it was presented as a race that was going to cross more U.S. states than any other, in addition to having a prize of $250,000 for the winner of the race. A greater financial reward than any other race in the world, with the exception of the Tour de France itself.
The Tour de Trump had two years of life as such. It was disputed in 1989 and 1990. The first winner was the Norwegian Dag-Otto Lauritzen, and the following year the race was won by the Mexican Raúl Alcalá. Due to financial problems, the race was renamed Tour de DuPont due to the main investment of the chemical company DuPont. Under this name, it had up to 6 editions before its demise with the 1996 edition, which was won by Lance Armstrong (he also won the 1995 edition) - whilst Greg Lemond was also part of the winner list.
Giving this person an article on this site is akin to giving LA Doper a voice! Keep these frauds off this site1
On the contrary, it is important to warn of frauds. The guy is the ultimate pyramid scheme, especially since he now has a huge fanbase eating out of his hand, the question any business or investor SHOULD be asking is how can someone who had so much dough and access to credit, made such a noise about himself and has such a huge fanbase never have really made serious gains? He puts his name to everything, sells whatever comes to his mind (not much of any use, in both senses of interpretation) and the end result is zilch, barely break-even over a lifetime. The worrying thing now is his partnership with the other loonie, who despite also behaving like someone after a lobotomy, has been far better at wealth creation (for himself, not humanity obviously). It only takes half a brain to get half the voters but two brain halves with slightly different fanbases puts you past the post. Anyway, we’re stuck with him/them and their power trip for the time being (strangely(?) no chance either will volunteer for a trip to Mars) and they will be even more impossible to ignore but we paid the price (actually the US didn’t, they kind of took advantage) for ignoring Hitler, even though it’s not the best comparison, Mussolini is far better, passionate and totally naïve as opposed to frustrated and disciplined, although they all probably endured a damaging education as children and no doubt more are now raising theirs in this way in the hope of emulation. There should be a compulsory school course called consequences, or at least in history, instead of teaching it as a bunch of facts, it should be taught as a string of events leading to those facts so people can get a feel for how dangerous « innocent » little steps in a direction are.
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- This from the man that almost destroyed the “essence” of cycling.Djs01-04-2025
- Regarding one point in the article: Vingegaard and Pogacar raced against each other at Monuments in the past - Il Lombardia and Liege, twice each from 2020 to 2022. Pogacar's results are 3, 1, 1, and 1, while Vingegaard's are 84, 28, 14, and 16, respectively in the same races. But Vingegaard hasn't raced a Monument since 2022.RidesHills01-04-2025
- What, no Jay, Jonas. Remco, Primoz, etc.? Hope Cras doesn’t need an H this year.Mistermaumau01-04-2025
- Interesting, now’s the chance for all those who were grumpy about or against paying for subscriptions. But, if the pay is half decent one of girls from the women’s peloton might beat you to it ;-)Mistermaumau01-04-2025
- In those days the Tour was like Paris-Roubaix 3 weeks running :-)tMistermaumau01-04-2025
- The Dutch are a popular sporting target for foreign criticismMistermaumau01-04-2025
- Completely agree, and that’s in cases where the team even reaches the rider before he/she decides to get up by themself and start chasing. No protocol or rule will solve this perfectly, this is not a sport with a referee putting everything on hold whilst checks are made.Mistermaumau01-04-2025
- Is it just me or are the opinions of retired pros from certain parts of Northern Europe becoming increasingly Pythonesque? “In our day we had sandpaper chamois and barbed wire for bar tape when we rode Paris Roubaix, it used to be a proper race”……..I’m not even that big a Pogacar fan and I hope he does it just to shut them up.Jezla01-04-2025
- True, but then we've always known that real safety isn’t an objective, just enough for the facade not to crumble.Mistermaumau01-04-2025
- Oh, this sounds more spicy than I thought. I didn't watch the event.
KerisVroom01-04-2025