NAME: Tour De France Winners (Can Lance Win Six?)

TYPE: Time series 
SIZE: 56 observations, 13 variables



DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT: 
Data are provided for the 56 Tour De France bicycle races since World 
War II. The year and dates of the event, the 
total number of stages, 
the total distance, the winning total time and average speed, the name 
and country of the winner, the birth 
date of the winner, and the 
winner's age at the time of victory are the variables in the dataset.

SOURCES:
Basic background on the Tour and 
the winner's names and countries 
were obtained from the BBC 
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/2064819.stm). 

These names 
were entered into a variety of search engines in order 
to find biographical data (such as birth dates) for the winners. 

Common sources were individual rider's Web pages, the Cycling Hall 
of Fame (http://www.cyclinghalloffame.com), the sports archives of 

L'Equipe (http://www.lequipe.fr/), and other sports history sites 
on the Web.

Other details of the races (such as locations and dates) were 

primarily obtained from a historical database 
(www.letour.fr/2002/us/multiCriteres_2002.html) and the Velo 
News (www.velonews.com).




DATASET LAYOUT: 

Each year's race is on a single line of a text file with line breaks. 
Values are delimited by spaces.


Columns         

Description
 
  
1-4           Year The year of the event.

  
6-9           Start-Town: The town the first stage started in (the last stage always finishes in Paris).

 
25-32          Start-Date: The day of the opening race.

 
34-41          End-Date: The day of the final stage.

 
43-44          Stages: The total number of stages in the race. Most years have a prologue that is counted as a stage. Further, some years 
have some stage split into two parts while 
counting it as a single stage. Therefore, these stage 
numbers are the officially stated number 
of stages and not 
                necessarily the exact number of separate races in a 
particular year.

 
46-49          Distance: The total distance of all stages, prologues, and 
                sub-stages in kilometers.

 
51-55          Speed: The average speed of the winner in kph.

 
57-62          Time: The total riding time of the winner in hours.

 
64-73          Winner: The name of the winner.

 
84-95          Country: The home country of the winner.

 
96-103         Birth-Date: The winner's date of birth.


105-106         Age-Year: The winner's age at the time of victory rounded 
to the nearest year.


108-111         Age-Tenth: The winner's age at the time of victory rounded 
to the nearest tenth of a year. 



NOTES: 
Obviously Speed, Distance, and Time can be used to cross-check each other.
In checking these numbers, several inconsistencies were 
found. First, 
two sources disagreed on the total distance of the 1999 race. One said 
3687 km and the other said 3870 km. Since 3870 was 
consistent with the 
Speed and Time values, it was selected for the dataset. Second, the 
Time and Speed values for 1947 and 1952 were 
only found from one source 
but were slightly inconsistent (about .5 hours off over the entire race).
Thus, the average speed was recalculated 
under the assumption that total 
Time and total distance were more likely to be accurate.



STORY BEHIND THE DATA: 
Started in 1903 as a newspaper publicity stunt, the Tour De France
has grown into one of the world's most viewed 
sporting events
(third behind the Olympics and World Cup Soccer). While there have been 
many repeat winners in the race's history, 
only four men have won it 
five times each. American Lance Armstrong's recent fourth victory has 
brought the Tour more attention in the U.S. 
and the question being 
hotly debated in the cycling community is whether or not he can be the 
first to win six times. The identity and 
birth date of all winners 
since World War II were researched on the Internet. Then each winner's 
age to the nearest year and nearest 
tenth of a year were computed.









SUBMITTED BY:
Thomas G. Groleau
Carthage College
314 Lentz Hall
Kenosha, WI 53140
tgroleau@carthage.edu

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