• Five Tour de France teams racing on Continental tires
  • Special race tires made in our Korbach factory for top pro cyclists

Hanover, June 27, 2014.
With success comes responsibility - but it also brings rewards: After British riders won the past two editions of the Tour de France (Bradley Wiggins took the yellow jersey in 2012, and Chris Froome won in 2013), this year's Tour de France will pay homage by starting the world's biggest bike race in England. Following the Tour's successful start in London in 2007, the world's best professional cyclists are again heading to Great Britain for the start of Le Tour. But this time the riders are heading further north, to Yorkshire, for a "Grand Départ" that sees the race starting from the city of Leeds.

Even as sports fans around the world are still gripped by football's FIFA World Cup in Brazil, the Tour de France will soon be upon us. And we will be entering a new century of Tour history. This year will be the 101st edition of the Tour de France, the world's biggest sporting event after the Olympic games and the FIFA World Cup. A new era for a sporting event that for the French nation is unrivalled in terms of size, pride and drama.

22 teams will line up for the start in Leeds on Saturday 5th July, with 198 riders participating in the race. The three-week Tour features 21 stages, and will cover 3656 kilometres (or 2271 miles, since we are starting in England!). There will be two rest days, and the race finishes on Sunday 27th July with the traditional final stage on the Champs Elysées in Paris .

18 of these teams are ProTour teams, the highest category of professional cycling team. The other four teams were handed wildcard invitations in January by ASO, the race organisers .

For Continental's tire specialists, the Tour de France is a worldwide showcase, an annual opportunity to demonstrate our products' resilience at the very highest level and under the toughest conditions .

Which is why five out of the 22 teams are again choosing to use Continental equipment as they tackle the very special challenges that the "grand boucle" presents. The BMC Racing Team, Lotto-Belisol, Lampre Merida, and Orica-GreenEdge teams were already riding on tires made by our tire experts in Korbach in last year's Tour de France. But in 2014, they are joined by the Spanish Movistar Team .

Like the Tour de France itself, Continental can look back at a proud tradition of over 100 years' experience in making bike tires. That's how long Conti have been producing hand-made racing tires for top cyclists at their factory in Korbach, Germany. Tires that are capable of withstanding a wide range of challenges, that are suitable for every conceivable road surface, and that can cope with even the most extreme weather conditions. Balancing speed and safety on the one hand, and safety and reliability on the other is a challenge that the specialist tire engineers in our R&D team skilfully respond to time and time again .

And the results aren't reserved just for top professional riders, the best of the best. Ordinary amateur cyclists also benefit from our research, skills and experience in the cycling sector. Our experience with the high-tech top level of the sport feeds through to production of race tires for amateurs and sports cyclists, too. These developments include tubular tires made with liquid crystal polymer fibers, tried and tested in the Tour. That makes the tires extremely cut-resistant, which helps prevent sharp objects from piercing the tire and causing punctures.

For big international competitions, Continental's tire experts always supply the teams with tubular tires, or "tubs". These are different to the tires used by everyday cyclists. Whereas conventional clincher tires used by most amateur cyclists fit over a separate inner tube, the tubular tires that the professionals in the Tour de France teams use have a round profile and are enclosed, one-piece tires with a single stitched seam. This makes for a lighter tire, but it also makes the tires more flexible. Tubular tires are able to adapt to a wide range of conditions .

Air pressure is another area where there are differences between the tires used by sports cyclists and those used by top professionals. Tubular tires are designed to withstand very high pressures. Amateur cyclists generally inflate their tires to no more than six bar. For the top-class professionals riding for the ProTeams, tire pressures of 15 bar are not at all unusual.

Tubular tires offer two benefits: The first is that higher pressures reduce the rolling resistance, so a rider needs to expend less energy. And with some stages being more than 200 km (or 125 miles) in length, with steep mountain passes and rough cobbles, every ounce of energy is worth saving. It all adds up. What they call "marginal gains". And then we come to the second benefit that tubs offer, when compared with conventional tires used by everyday cyclists: Because tubular tires are glued to the rim of the wheel, they can't come off if a rider punctures.

Continental will be supplying three sorts of tires to their five Tour de France teams. The first will be a reliable, high-performance all-round tire, suitable for use on flat stages and in the mountains - provided the weather doesn't turn ugly. But bike racing follows the same basic principles as motor sport: You can't use slicks in the wet. When heavy rain makes the road surfaces greasy and slippery, the pro cycling teams use special wet-weather tires. And to make sure they know what the weather has in store for them during the three-week race, the teams all have the latest communication equipment in order to get accurate weather forecasts .

Then there are special tires for time trials, for "the race against the clock". Whether it is an individual time trial or a contre la montre par équipes (or team team time trial), the tires need to be as light as possible. Time trials are the high-tech area of cycle racing, with ultra-light bikes, aerodynamic helmets and thin, figure-hugging clothing. And of course, with the right tires. For time trials, every gram counts. Every gram that is saved can have an impact on the result. The best illustration of this point came during last year's Tour de France. After twenty five minutes of racing, the Australian Orica-GreenEdge team, riding on Continental tires, won the team time trial in Nice by just one second .

This approach to our high-tech equipment explains why Continental's cycle racing tire specialists can look back not just at a century of tradition, but also at a long list of successes in the world's biggest bike race. Many Tour de France winners have benefited from Continental's top-level tires, the most recent being Australia's Cadel Evans (BMC) three years ago. The 5th July will see 45 pro cyclists from 5 teams join Continental in riding into a new era. The start of the 101st Tour de France will be a moving event - in every sense of the word!

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