The Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré is an annual cycling road race, run over eight stages in the Dauphiné region in France during the first half of June. It is organised by the "Le Dauphiné Libéré" newspaper. Along with the Tour de Suisse, the Dauphiné Libéré is an important race in the lead-up to the Tour de France in July.
Because the Dauphiné is a mountainous area, the winners are often climbing specialists. Many climbs that are famous from the Tour de France, like the Mont Ventoux, the Col du Galibier or "Col de la Chartreuse" appear often in the Dauphiné Libéré.
All cyclists who have won the Tour de France five times or more have also won the Dauphiné Libéré.
The first Dauphiné Libéré was held in 1947 when Eduard Klablinski from Poland was the winner. Nello Lauredi, Luis Ocaña, Charly Mottet and Bernard Hinault share the record of the most wins, with three each.
Iban Mayo won in 2004, when he climbed Mont Ventoux very quickly. In the 2005 Dauphiné the winner was Iñigo Landaluze, of the Euskaltel-Euskadi team.
1900 Summer Olympics
The 1900 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the II Olympiad, were held in Paris, France.
The games were part of the 1900 Exposition Universelle (Paris World's Fair). The sports events were not well planned; and the games were not thought to be a success.
A total of 24 nations sent athletes to compete at the Paris games.
1998 Winter Olympics
The 1998 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVIII Olympic Winter Games, were held in 1998 in Nagano, Japan. Other possible host cities were Aosta, Italy; Jaca, Spain; Östersund, Sweden; and Salt Lake City, USA. The selection was held in Birmingham, United Kingdom in 1991.
Mont Ventoux
Mont Ventoux is a mountain in the Provence region of southern France, about 20 km north-east of Carpentras, Vaucluse.
It is the largest mountain in the region and has the nicknames "Giant of Provence" and "The Bald Mountain".
Jean Buridan climbed the mountain early in the fourteenth century; Petrarch repeated the feat on April 26, 1336, and claimed to have been the first to climb a mountain since antiquity, which has been widely repeated since.
In the 15th century a chapel was built on the top. It was dedicated to the Holy Cross.
In 1882, a meteorological station was constructed on the summit, but it is not used now. In the 1960s a 50m-high telecommunications mast was built.
For road bicycle racing enthusiasts, the mountain can be climbed by three roads.
Every year there are amateur races to climb the mountain as quickly and often as possible in 24 hours. On May 16 2006, Jean-Pascal Roux from Bédoin broke the record of climbs in 24 hours, with eleven climbs, all of them from Bédoin.
Mont Ventoux is the one of the most gruelling climbs in the Tour de France. The Tour has visited the mountain thirteen times since 1951. The route is usually the Bédoin.
British cyclist Tom Simpson, who died here on July 13, 1967 from a combination of amphetamines, alcohol and heat exhaustion. He began to weave across the road before he fell down twice. He was delirious, but his last words were not "put me back on my bike", that was what a journalist wrote.
Amphetamines were found in his jersey and bloodstream. There is a memorial to Simpson near the summit which has become a shrine to fans of cycling, who often leave small tokens of remembrance there. In 1970, Eddy Merckx rode himself to the brink of collapse but won the stage. He received oxygen, recovered, and won the Tour. In 1994, Eros Poli, not known for his climbing ability, stole away at the beginning of the day's stage, built up a big time gap from the peloton, and was first over the Ventoux and was the stage winner despite. The last winner on the Ventoux was the French climber Richard Virenque.
Designated hitter
In baseball, a designated hitter (DH) is a person who bats in place of the pitcher in the American League of Major League Baseball. In the National League, the pitchers have to bat for themselves. The designated hitter is usually one of the best hitters on the team but is not a good defensive player.
The reason for the designated hitter is because many pitchers are not good hitters. Pitchers are chosen because they are good at pitching, not because they are good at hitting.
1968 Winter Olympics
The 1968 Winter Olympics, officially known as the X Olympic Winter Games, were held in 1968 in Grenoble, France and started on February 6. Thirty-seven countries took part. Norway won the most medals, the first time a country other than the USSR had done so since the USSR first entered the Winter Games in 1956.
Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy won three gold medals in all the alpine skiing events. In women's figure skating, Peggy Fleming won the only United States gold medal. The games have been credited with making the Winter Olympics more popular in the United States, largely because of ABC's coverage of Fleming and Killy, who became very popular among teenage girls.
1968 was the first year that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) let East and West Germany enter separately, and the first time the IOC ever ordered drug and gender testing of the athletes.
1964 Winter Olympics
The 1964 Winter Olympics, officially known as the IX Olympic Winter Games, were held in Innsbruck, Austria, from January 29 to February 9 1964. The games included 1091 athletes from 36 nations, and the Olympic Torch was carried by Joseph Rieder,
a former alpine skier who had participated in the 1956 Winter Olympics.
The games were affected by the deaths of Australian alpine skier Ross Milne and a British luge slider, during training, and by the deaths, 3 years earlier, of the entire US figure skating team and family members.
36 nations sent athletes to compete in Innsbruck. India, Mongolia, and North Korea participated in the Winter Games for the first time. Athletes from West Germany (FRG) and East Germany (GDR) competed together as the United Team of Germany from 1956 to 1964.
These are the top ten nations that won medals at these Games:
Counterculture
Counterculture is a term used in psychology and sociology. People use it to describe a set of views that are not of the "mainstream". These values are in contrast to what the mainstream people believe. An example of a counterculture that was started in the 1960s is the culture of the hippies. This counterculture focused on drug use, sexual freedom (freedom of choice), and women's rights.
Hippie
A hippie (sometimes spelled as hippy) is a label for a person of a particular counterculture that started in the United States and spread to other countries in the 1960s.
Hippies have their own opinions on drugs, sexual liberation, and women's rights.
The first people to be called "hippies" were young adults and teenagers in the 1960s who grew out of the beatnik movement. These people were supporters of civil rights for African-Americans in the Southern USA. They soon developed their own music scene in neighborhoods in New York City (Greenwich Village) and San Francisco (Haight-Ashbury). They were also strongly against the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, and what they called the "Establishment" (this was a word for mainstream society). They were also against the "military-industrial complex". This phrase was taken from a warning in the farewell speech of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961.