The Tour originally ran round the perimeter of France. Cycling was an endurance sport and the organisers realised the sales they would achieve

The Tour originally ran round the perimeter of France. Cycling was an endurance sport and the organisers realised the sales they would achieve by creating supermen of their competitors. Night riding was dropped after the second Tour in 1904, when there had been persistent cheating when judges couldn't see riders. That reduced the daily and overall distance but the emphasis remained on endurance. Desgrange said his ideal race would be so hard that only one rider would make it to Paris.

A succession of doping scandals in the 1960s, culminating in the death of Tom Simpson in 1967, led the Union Cycliste Internationale to limit daily and overall distances and to impose rest days. It was then impossible to follow the frontiers and the Tour more and more zig-zagged across the country, sometimes with unconnected days' races linked by train, while still maintaining some sort of loop. The modern Tour typically has around 20 daily stages and a total of 3,000 to 4,000 kilometres (1,800 to 2,500 mi). The shortest Tour was in 1904 at 2,420 km, the longest in 1926 at 5,745km. The 2007 Tour was 3,569.9 km long.


Early rules
Desgrange and his Tour invented bicycle stage racing. Desgrange experimented with judging by elapsed time and then by points for placings each day. He stood out against multiple gears and for many years insisted riders use wooden rims, fearing the heat of braking while coming down mountains would melt the glue that held the tyres.

His dream was a race of individuals. He invited teams but forbade their members to pace each other. He then went the other way and briefly ran the Tour as a giant team time-trial, teams starting separately with members pacing each other. He demanded riders mend their bicycles without help. He demanded they use the same bicycle from start to end. He at first allowed riders who dropped out one day to continue the next for daily prizes but not the overall prize. He allowed teams who lost members in the team time-trial years to recruit fresh replacements.

Above all, he conducted a campaign against the sponsors, bicycle factories, he was sure were undermining the spirit of a Tour de France of individuals.


National teams
The first Tours were for individuals and members of sponsored teams. There were two classes of race, one for the aces, the other for the rest, with different rules. By the end of the 1920s, however, Desgrange believed he could not beat what he believed were the underhand tactics of bike factories. When the Alcyon team contrived to get Maurice De Waele to win even though he was sick, he said "My race has been won by a corpse" and in 1930 admitted only teams representing their country or region.

National teams contested the Tour until 1961. The teams were of different sizes. Some nations had more than one team and some were mixed in with others to make up the number. National teams caught the public imagination but had a snag: that riders might normally have been in rival trade teams the rest of the season. The loyalty of riders was sometimes questionable, within and between teams.


Touriste-routiers and regionals
The first Tours were open to whoever wanted to compete. Most riders were in teams who looked after them. The private entrants were called touriste-routiers - tourists of the road - and were allowed to take part provided they make no demands on the organisers. Some of the Tour's most colourful characters have been touriste-routiers. One finished each day's race and then performed acrobatic tricks in the street to raise the price of a hotel.

There was no place for individuals in the post-1930s teams and so Desgrange created regional teams, generally from France, to take in riders who would not otherwise have qualified. The original touriste-routiers mostly disappeared but some were absorbed into regional teams.