Tour de l'Avenir ( en, Tour of the Future) is a French
road bicycle racing
Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held primarily on Road surface, paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional sport, professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and ...
stage race
A race stage, leg, or heat is a unit of a race that has been divided in several parts for the reason such as length of the distance to be covered, as in a multi-day event. Usually, such a race consists of "ordinary" stages, but sometimes stages ...
, which started in 1961 as a race similar to the
Tour de France
The Tour de France () is an annual men's multiple-stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally passing through nearby countries. Like the other Grand Tours (the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España), it consists ...
and over much of the same course but for amateurs and for semi-professionals known as independents.
Felice Gimondi
Felice Gimondi (; 29 September 1942 – 16 August 2019) was an Italian professional racing cyclist. With his 1968 victory at the Vuelta a España, only three years after becoming a professional cyclist, Gimondi, nicknamed "The Phoenix", was the ...
,
Joop Zoetemelk
Hendrik Gerardus Joseph "Joop" Zoetemelk (; born 3 December 1946) is a Dutch former professional racing cyclist. He started and finished the Tour de France 16 times, which were both records when he retired. He also holds the distance record in T ...
,
Greg LeMond
Gregory James LeMond (born June 26, 1961) is an American former professional road racing cyclist, entrepreneur, and anti-doping advocate. A two-time winner of the Road Race World Championship (1983 and 1989) and a three-time winner of the Tou ...
,
Miguel Indurain,
Laurent Fignon
Laurent Patrick Fignon (; 12 August 1960 – 31 August 2010) was a French professional road bicycle racer who won the Tour de France in 1983 and 1984 and the Giro d'Italia in 1989. He is former FICP World No. 1 in 1989. He nearly captured ...
,
Egan Bernal
Egan Arley Bernal Gómez (born 13 January 1997) is a Colombian cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam . In 2019 he won the Tour de France, becoming the first Latin American rider to do so, and the youngest winner since 1909. At the 2021 Giro d'Ita ...
, and
Tadej Pogačar
Tadej Pogačar (; born 21 September 1998) is a Slovenian cyclist who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam . He won the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Tour de France, winning three different jerseys during each Tour, a feat unseen in nearly four deca ...
won the Tour de l'Avenir and went on to win 15 Tours de France, with an additional 10 podium placings between them.
The race was created in 1961 by Jacques Marchand, the editor of ''
L'Équipe
''L'Équipe'' (, French for "the team") is a French nationwide daily newspaper devoted to sport, owned by Éditions Philippe Amaury. The paper is noted for coverage of association football, rugby football, rugby, motorsport, and cycle sport, ...
'',
to attract teams from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
and other communist nations that had no professional riders to enter the
Tour de France
The Tour de France () is an annual men's multiple-stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally passing through nearby countries. Like the other Grand Tours (the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España), it consists ...
. 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. 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 who were less than 25 years old.
Since 2007 it is for riders 23 or younger.
Since 2007, the tour has been a national team competition.
Winners
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tour De L'avenir
Cycle races in France
Men's road bicycle races
Recurring sporting events established in 1961
1961 establishments in France
Super Prestige Pernod races