Tour de France’s Motorcycles from Bikes in the Fast Lane

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Tour de France’s Motorcycles

July
2005

  File under Kawasaki Racing France
  Author: Mike Werner
  Location: Normandy, France

The Tour de France is without any doubt the most widely accepted biggest and toughest bicycle race in the world (and it's organized by the same organizers -ASO- who run world's toughest motorcycle rally, the Dakar). It is also the most watched bicycle race.

Like it's motorcycle homologue, the Dakar, it's a race people dream about.

But this is not a bicycle new website, so instead of having a look at Lance Armstrong (a motorcyclist BTW), let's have a closer look at the motorcycles following this race.

The official motorcycle of the Tour de France and a full partner since 1978 is Japanese manufacturer: Kawasaki Motorcycles !

All the officials', organizers', support, medical and logistics motorcycles are donated by Kawasaki.

Here's what is used:

Motorcycle	#	Used for
KLV 1000	3	Regulators. Used to position service vehicles behind the riders
ZRX 1200	3	Information. Used within the group of bicycles to take the timings and give the information to race control.
KLV 1000	1	Info Board. Used to inform break away groups of the advance they have.
ZRX 1200	2	Arrival Judges. Used to judge intermediate sprint results during the stage.
KLV 1000	6	Stewards. Used to make sure nothing illegal happens during the race.
ZRX 1200	2	Drinks. Serve drinks to racers who have not been able to get drinks from alongside the road.
ZRX 1200	1	Medical. Used to for following the break away groups.
KLV 1000	3	Photographers. Used to carry the official photographers.
KLV 1000	3	Journalists. Used to carry by rotate, the official written press.
ZRX 1200	3	Caravan Regulators. Used to regulate traffic behind the race of all the publicity caravans.

The 27 Kawasaki motorcycles all have spare motorcycles, just in case...

Drinks Motorcycles

Info Board

TV Crew (c) Fotoreporter Sirotti

Those are the official motorcycles. Then there are all the motorcycles belong to the accredited press (TV and Radio) and special followers.

They usually ride BMW R1150RT and even one BMW R1150GS. Predominant are the France Television and Europa Radio motorcycles.