Tour de Farce Trivia Quiz

Answer: They had skipped parts of the course by boarding a train.

Defending champion and original 1904 winner Maurice Garin was banned from racing for two years, others were handed a ban for life. The entire 1904 edition was marred by accusations of foul play, road blocks, slashed tires, and angry mobs (on two occasions the organisers had to fire revolver shots), convincing founder Henri Desgrange to shelve the idea of ever organising another Tour. Fortunately, he changed his mind.

Answer: "You are murderers!"

"Vous etes des assassins!" Lapize is credited for being the first to reach the summit, although other names have also been mentioned. At the col, a statue of Lapize commemorates this feat.

Before sending the riders over the Tourmalet (2,114m), Alphonse Steinès, a journalist of newspaper L'Auto, was sent to reconnaissance the climb by car. Even though heavy snow forced him to proceed on foot and he was rescued by a search party at 3am, his telegram to the race director was triumphant: "Tourmalet crossed. Stop. Very good road. Stop. Perfectly feasable. Stop."

Answer: Eugène Christophe

Since any outside help was forbidden, Christophe had to walk 10 kilometers to Sainte-Marie-de-Campan, wake up the local blacksmith, and, supervised by an official, set out to repair his bike. To make things worse, Christophe could not pump the bellows and forge at the same time.

At the cost of a time penalty, he had the blacksmith's seven-year old apprentice help him. Although Christophe would never win the race, in 1919 he became the first man ever to wear the yellow jersey of race leader, a novelty that year.

Answer: He collapsed. When he came round, he was so disillusioned that he started off in the wrong direction.

Over the years this story has become distorted and mystified. Legend has it that Zaaf grabbed a bottle of wine offered by a spectator. Unfortunately, being a muslim and given the extreme conditions, Zaaf was seriously affected by the alcohol and collapsed. Bystanders woke him up and gave him some more wine. He then took off in the wrong direction, but was taken to the hospital before he could run into the peloton.

That same day, half the peloton was fined by the organisers for taking a quick dip in the Mediterranean.

Answer: The day before Van Est had become the first Dutchman to wear the yellow jersey.

Besides being the first Dutchman in yellow, he was also the first Dutchman in the pink leader's jersey of the Giro d'Italia and two-time winner of monstrous classic Bordeaux-Paris (more than 550 km).

Van Est became even more famous by an advertisement of watchmaker Pontiac, in which Van Est was quoted: "I fell 70m, my heart stopped, but my Pontiac didn't."

Answer: Raymond Poulidor

A more often and more fondly used nickname for Poulidor was "Poupou". Commentators coined the term "poupoularité", as Poupou was the most popular French bike racer of his time (that's at least one contest he beat five time winner Anquetil in).

Although Joop Zoetemelk can match Poulidor's 11 top ten finishes (including a record 6 second places) in the Tour de France, he eventually won the race in 1980. Hennie Kuipers took two second places, in 1980 and previously in 1977 behind Bernard Thévenet who later admitted he had doped. Roger Rivière started the Tour of 1960 as one of the favorites, but crashed during the race which left him paralyzed from the neck down. He went bankrupt three times and died of throat cancer at 40.

Answer: Laurent Fignon

Just 1.5 km (1 mile) before the finish line, poor Laurent "Le Professeur" Fignon was still the virtual race winner, but lost out to Greg LeMond. LeMond used aerobars on his bike and wore an aerohelmet (both were more or less novelties at the time), while Fignon rode, bare-headed with his blonde ponytail exposed to the wind, a somewhat conventional bike. Fignon was inconsolable and blamed his defeat on saddle sores.

However, some insiders have indicated that it was really down to Fignon being overconfident, having actually congratulated LeMond with his second place some days before the time trial.

Answer: Alpe d'Huez

All ended well with Guerini winning and graciously accepting the apologies offered by the German supporter. This could not be said of the 1994 stage to Armentière, where a policeman (!) caused mayhem by leaning a few inches into the course to capture the bunch sprint. Looking through a camera easily distorts depth perspective and top sprinters Wilfried Nelissen and Laurent Jalabert were out for months with multiple bone fractures.

Answer: Tom Simpson (1967) and Fabio Casartelli (1995)

Briton Tom Simpson was in the lead when he collapsed three kilometres from the top of the infamous Mont Ventoux. He was helped back on his bike, rode another 300m before losing consciousness. He was declared dead in a hospital in Avignon. His collapse was attributed to a combination of exhaustion, alcohol, and amphetamines.

The 1992 Olympic champion Fabio Casartelli crashed against a concrete block in the descent of the Col de Porte d'Aspet and received massive head trauma. He died on his way to the hospital.

The other riders did in fact pass away, but not as participants in the Tour. Kazakh rider Kivilev crashed fatally in Paris-Nice, Spanish climber Jimenez succumbed to a heart attack in a psychiatric hospital, 1998 Tour and Giro winner Pantani died of a cocaine overdose in a hotel room in Rimini and two-times Paris-Roubaix winner Franco Ballerini was victim of a fatal car rally accident.

Answer: Floyd Landis

Landis was suspended from all racing. He claimed he was innocent and vowed to vindicate his name. In order to pay for all the legal costs, Landis published an autobiography, "Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France". In May 2010, Landis finally admitted to doping, after the Wall Street Journal laid its hands on some incriminating emails. In the process, he accused his former teammates Lance Armstrong and George Hincapie of similar activities.

On 20 september 2007, the international Cycling Union officially declared runner-up Óscar Pereiro Sio the winner of the 2006 Tour de France.