Le Tour de France: Your 7-Point Guide to the Most Prestigious Cycling Event

Intro

The Tour de France was first organized in 1903 by the French newspaper L'Auto as a means to boost its circulation. The race quickly gained popularity and has since become a significant event in the sporting calendar, attracting professional cyclists and teams from around the globe.

The race passes through various regions of France, and sometimes neighboring countries, showcasing the beautiful landscapes and challenging terrain.

The winner of the Tour de France is determined by the cumulative time taken to complete all stages. The cyclist with the lowest overall time wears the iconic yellow jersey, or "maillot jaune," indicating the race leader.

Goal of the Project

The goal of this project was to create an infographic-style visual to educate new viewers, highlight the magnitude of the event, and build anticipation for this year's Tour de France. It tests your ability to glean data from 109 editions of the Tour de France and present them in a way that will create excitement and attract new fans to the sport.

Process

Understanding the data

Four .csv files were provided: (tdf_finishers, tdf_stages, tdf_tours, tdf_winners). After going through the four files, I decided to use Power BI to clean and analyze the data.

I uploaded each file to Power BI and cleaned them one by one.

Data Cleaning

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were countries that were marked by different names/initials. For example, Russia (RUS) was marked as URS (Soviet Union). South Africa for some reason was designated with both SAF and RSA. Some countries also had full names instead of initials and so I had to change that. I also had to split columns in all four files to get distinct columns for country, stage distances, rider names, stages and so on.

Data Modeling

I loaded my cleaned files into the Power BI and created relationships to allow for analysis.

Data Analysis

I created DAX measures to help get insights into the Tour.

Some of the interesting insights that I noted were:

1. From 1905 to 1912, the race was decided by points rather than time to make it easier to supervise.

2. The race has only been stopped twice, 1915-1918 (World War I) and 1940-1946 (World War II).

3. There's no winner on record between 1999 and 2005 as a result of doping scandals that rocked the sport during this period.

4. Only twice has a stage winner not been declared.

• In 1995, stage 16 was raced non-competitively due to the death of Fabio Casartelli in the previous stage.

• In 1998, stage 17 was cancelled and did not count as the riders held a strike due to the developing Festina affair.

• Coincidentally, both races were 149km.

5. The percentage of finishers has been steadily increasing ever since the first Tour.

Final Presentation

I used Canva to present some interesting numbers that I felt would be interesting and exciting to new fans.