Tour de France

The Tour de France gets the same complaint as Test cricket: three weeks, and most days end with the same peloton crossing the line together looking like nothing happened. But a Grand Tour is really three or four different competitions running at once inside the same race — sprinters fighting for stage wins that barely touch the overall standings, a handful of general-classification riders quietly managing gaps of a few seconds through weeks of stages that don't matter to them at all, until a mountain stage or a time trial reshuffles everything in one afternoon.

The widget below steps through a single 21-stage race — illustrative, not a real Tour — tracking the gap between the overall leader and the closest rival stage by stage, with each stage's terrain marked along the way. Drag the slider to jump around, or just let it play.

An illustrative three-week race — the shape of a Grand Tour and the terrain behind each swing in the gap, not a real Tour de France.

1. Stage 1 (Flat): gap +0:04 — a bunch sprint decides the opener.
2. Stage 5 (Mountain): gap +1:25 — the high mountains blow the gap wide open.
3. Stage 9 (Time trial): gap −0:35 — a specialist flips the race lead in one afternoon.
4. Stage 12 (Mountain): gap +0:25 — a dominant summit finish swings the lead back.
5. Stage 13 (Mountain): gap +1:35 — the queen stage balloons the gap past a minute and a half.
6. Stage 19 (Mountain): gap +2:10 — the final mountain stage puts the result beyond doubt.
7. Stage 21 (Flat): gap +2:20 (final) — the ceremonial ride into Paris.