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, the Tour de France is a worldwide showcase, an annual opportunity to demonstrate its products’ resilience at the very highest level and under the toughest conditions.

Five 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.