The Tour de France lands in Ghent, Belgium today, and with the stage win going Gert Steegmans, and Tom Boonen gathering enough points to take the sprinter's jersey by one point, these two Belgians made for a crazy celebration in the already cycling crazy town. There is a museum of sorts at a local bike shop of the models of bicycles ridden during the Tour's long history. Take a look at this vintage racer:
Note the gear cassette on the back wheel: only one gear. Most bikes on the Tour today have either 20 or 30 gears. Racers back the early days of the tour would ride that one gear except for the climbs. When they got to the bottom of climb, they would stop, whip out the wrench they all carried in their back pocket, remove the gear, and reinstall it backwards for their "climbing" gear. They would have to do reverse the process once they got to the top of the mountain. There were no support cars back then either. The sport has evolved, to say the least.
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