What is the Tour de France and how long is it?

The Tour de France is the world’s most famous professional cycling race, an annual 21 stage battle that tests the endurance of the planet’s top cyclists over about three weeks each year. Each July, around 170–180 riders line up to tackle a route that loops across France and sometimes into neighbouring countries. Over 21 stages they cover roughly 3,300-3,500 kilometres, riding the equivalent of a one-day classic nearly every afternoon. To understand how long the Tour really is, you have to look not only at the distance but at how its stages, speeds, and overall format have evolved for more than a century.

The race began in 1903 as a marketing gamble by L’Auto, a French sports paper hoping to outdo its rival Le Vélo. Editor Henri Desgrange, a former cyclist, pushed ahead with what many thought was folly: send lightly equipped riders around France on rough, often unpaved roads, and see who survived.

That first Tour, which began on 1 July 1903, had just six stages but those stages were vast, many running overnight. The 2,428-kilometre route was shorter in total than modern editions, yet each day averaged around 400 kilometres, which helps explain why only 21 of 60 starters reached the finish and why the last rider came in nearly 65 hours behind the winner. Maurice Garin triumphed in 94 hours, 33 minutes, and 14 seconds, nearly 3 hours ahead of Lucien Pothier in second.

Desgrange wanted the Tour to create legends. He imagined it producing “supermen” and believed that the perfect Tour would have only one rider finish, with the others having been defeated by the magnitude of the challenge. Early editions reflected this vision. Riders repaired punctures and broken parts themselves, found their own food, and rode through long stretches of countryside in the dark. In 1904, some riders took trains or received illicit help during night stages, causing such uproar that Desgrange briefly published “THE END” as if cancelling his own race.

Instead of abandoning it, organisers restructured the event. From 1905 onwards, they added more but shorter stages, confined racing to daylight, and expanded the route to 11 stages. It quickly proved the right balance: the spectacle grew, cheating became easier to police, and participation rose.

A turning point arrived in 1910 when the race entered the Pyrenees for the first time. Riders had minimal gearing and faced steep, rutted climbs. On one ascent, an exhausted Octave Lapize famously yelled at organisers: “You’re assassins! All of you!”

The Alps followed in 1911, securing mountain stages as defining features of the Tour’s character. Apart from wartime interruptions between 1915–1918 and 1940–1946, the Tour became a mainstay of French sporting culture. Through the 1920s and 1930s the race ventured into neighbouring countries and began drawing elite riders from across Europe. What began as a newspaper stunt evolved into cycling’s premier event and the first of the calendar’s Grand Tours.

While the route changes each year, the modern Tour’s structure is stable. It is typically 21 stages over 23 days with two rest days, usually in July. 23 teams of eight riders compete, and each stage is timed, with cumulative time deciding the overall winner in the yellow jersey. Most days are mass-start road stages. Flat and rolling stages often lead to high-speed bunch sprints, while mountain stages in the Alps and Pyrenees shape the general classification. Time trials, “TT” stages, add further complexity, asking riders to race alone against the clock over 20–40 kilometres.

Stage length varies dramatically. A typical flat stage runs 180–220 kilometres, while a time trial might be just 30 kilometres. Historically, the range has been much wider. Early Tours routinely included stages over 300 kilometres, and the longest in history, used in 1919, stretched 482 kilometres from Les Sables-d’Olonne to Bayonne. At the other extreme, the shortest stage in modern history came in 2018 on stage 17, at just 65km between Bagneres de Luchon to Col du Portet.

Another evolution concerns how stages are spread across the calendar. The all-night marathons of the early years have long gone. Since the 1920s the norm has been one stage per day, though mid-century editions sometimes packed in split stages, two races in a single day, to add mileage and drama. That practice faded by the late 1980s, replaced by a simpler rhythm of one stage per day plus two rest days. This daily structure helps the race unfold as a continuous narrative and gives riders a fighting chance at recovery.

Total distance is where the Tour’s evolution becomes most visible. Recent Tours generally measure 3,300–3,500 kilometres. The 2025 route, for instance, was 3,338, slightly shorter than the previous year’s 3,492 km. Spread across 21 stages, that means an average of around 150–170 kilometres per day. But earlier eras looked very different. The original Tours in 1903 and 1904 were roughly 2,400 kilometres, but that modest total hid their giant stages.

As the race grew, organisers inflated the distance to increase difficulty and spectacle. The 1926 edition remains the longest ever at roughly 5,745 kilometres across just 17 stages, which was won by Lucien Buysse. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the Tour regularly exceeded 5,000 kilometres, and even after World War II many editions were still in the 4,000–4,500 kilometre range.

From the 1980s onwards, organisers steadily reduced the course length to improve rider welfare and encourage more dynamic racing. By the 1980s and 1990s, most Tours fell within 3,500–4,000 kilometres. In the 21st century the event has tightened further into the mid-3,000s, with the shortest modern edition coming in 2002 at roughly 3,278 kilometres.

Speed provides another lens on the Tour’s length. Modern flat stages are raced at 40–45 km/h, so a 200-kilometre day often finishes in four and a half to five hours. Mountain days are slower, sometimes averaging close to 30 km/h, but still usually end within a similar window because the distance is shorter. Today, overall winners typically complete the Tour at an average near 40 km/h.

The 2022 edition reached about 42 km/h, the fastest at the time. Contrast that with Maurice Garin’s pace in 1903 or the 1919 winner’s average of around 24 km/h over 5,560 kilometres. A century of technological, nutritional, and tactical improvements, along with darker periods influenced by doping, has dramatically lifted speeds. In fact, in 2025, the average speed was 42.8km/h (26.6mph), which is eye-watering for mere mortals.

On particularly rapid days with supportive winds, the peloton has exceeded 50 km/h for an entire road stage. The record sits at around 50.4 km/h in a 1999 sprint stage. On gruelling climbs such as Alpe d’Huez, however, speeds drop to roughly 23 km/h, half of what riders achieve on flat terrain.

Despite reductions in overall distance, the Tour remains exhausting. Most stages last four to six hours. Riders start late morning and are often racing into late afternoon. Weather can shape the rhythm: tailwinds accelerate stages dramatically, while heat or climbing can slow them down. The cumulative effect of these hours, repeated for 21 stages, is what truly defines the Tour’s severity.

Over time, the Tour has transitioned from a near-impossible ordeal to a refined sporting spectacle. Early editions featured minimal assistance and even restrictions on drafting and team tactics, with Desgrange insisting on a contest of individuals. Now the race is a choreographed blend of teamwork, equipment, sports science, and strategy. Team cars follow with spare bikes, mechanics, doctors, and soigneurs. Roads are paved and closed to traffic. In 1913, a rider famously had to solder his broken frame at a village blacksmith before continuing; today, a mechanic simply hands over a new bike in seconds.

The number of stages grew from six in 1903 to around 15 by 1910 and stabilised at 20–24 after World War II. Since the 1980s, 21 stages has been the standard. Rest days are planned, and the variety of stage types has increased. The move away from ultra-long distances and split stages has allowed organisers to shape more tactical, spectator-friendly racing, without stripping away the Tour’s defining difficulty.

Even with these refinements, the Tour remains by a distance the world’s biggest bike race. Covering roughly 3,500 kilometres across 21 days is still one of the harshest tests in world sport. Only complete riders, climbers who can time trial, sprinters who can survive mountains, and all-rounders who can stay sharp for three weeks, have any chance of winning in July.

Desgrange’s fantasy of a race so hard that the perfect Tour would have only one rider finish remains an echo from the past rather than a real target. Today, the focus is on creating drama rather than complete destruction. Still, the essence of his idea survives: the Tour is designed to push the world’s best cyclists to their limits. Those who reach Paris have not only mastered mountains, speed, distance, and tactics, they have endured one of sport’s most relentless journeys.

The first Tour ran in 1903, created by L’Auto to boost newspaper sales.

It covered 2,428 km across six massive stages.

The Pyrenees arrived in 1910, and the Alps followed in 1911.

Usually 21 stages over 23 days, mixing flat, mountain, hilly, and “TT” time-trial stages.

Recent editions are 3,300–3,500 km: the 2025 route was 3,338 km, and next year's route will be 3,333km.

Flat stages often hit 40-45 km/h, with recent overall averages near 40 km/h.

Distances shrank, support improved, and stages shortened, from 300+ km epics to 130-200 km days, shifting the race from pure survival to controlled intensity.