How Does One Qualify For the Tour De France?!?
Individuals do not qualify for the Tour de France. Teams qualify for the Tour de France based on overall rankings maintained by the International Cycling Union (the governing body for all forms fo cycling, commonly known as UCI). Each of the teams gets to enter nine cyclists. As far as who those nine cyclists are, it's like any other professional sport. The teams go out and hire cyclists and then choose which nine of their cyclists get to compete in the Tour de France. If the question is how does one get noticed, it is like with any other sport. You start competing in local and regional youth events. If you perform well, you get noticed by the smaller teams and start competing in the lesser professional events. If you do well in those events, the top teams notice you and sign you to ride with them.
Which one is more prestigious, the Tour de France or the Olympics?
I'm just a casual rider (longest ride is 276km and my group was rolling about half the speed of a professional) and a big fan, but I think it's an Apples to Oranges comparison. The Olympic program is mostly track cycling, with one road race of 250km (in the 2012 games in London). The road race is technically an individual event, although I believe the national teams work for their top rider. The Tour de France is a grand tour, with 3 weeks of racing that includes 16 or 17 days of stage racing similar to the 1 day of olympic road racing, and potentially a time trial and/or team trial, a prologue day, and generally 2 rest days. The Tour de France is a team race, so riders work on behalf of their team. There are multiple races happening at the same time in the Tour de France, the General Classification (GC) is the big one (Yellow Jersey), but you also have races for Sprint points, King of the Mountains, and Young Rider, and you have winners of individual stages who may not be placing in any of the big competitions. Winning a gold medal in the Olympics is a big deal, but as a fan, my guess is that for road cyclists, even a stage win at TdF is more prestigious than the Olympics. Wearing the Maillot Jaune into Paris? Definitely more prestigious than the Olympic road race. Heck, even wearing the yellow jersey for a portion of the race is a seriously big deal.
Tour de france - how many hours per day do they cycle?
this years race had 21 stages and Alberto Contador did it in 85 hours so on average, this works out at 4 hours racing a day on average they also do a warm up before the stage itself wwhich would be 1/2 hour about on the 2 rest days, the riders ride for about 1-2 hours each (this to keep their body knowing they are still racing) each day would involve a different amount of riding. time trial days would involve a warm up beforehand but also in the morning before racing, the riders go round the course to inspect it usually in a stage of another race, giro di italia (also 3 weeks long) the winner did the stage in 7 hours 10 minutes, last on the rode was 50 minutes back in 8 hours!!
On long courses of the tour de france, how do cyclists relieve themselves (go to the bathroom)?
yea they pull off to the side of the road, and side on their bike seat will facing off the road and the kind of lean against their seat and pee. its called "un besoin naturel". and riders will n ot attack if someone is peeing. most of the riders will stop in the general same area. i had a picture too but couldnt find it. not sure how they poop tho...