History
The race was first run yearly from 1985 to 1988 and, after a break of 7 years, from 1995 onwards. The 2012 race is being run from 22 to 26 August. It attracts approximately half a million spectators on the road, and half the Danish population follow it in the media.
In 2004 it was won by Kurt Asle Arvesen, after his Team CSC team mate Jens Voigt let him win an intermediate sprint, so Arvesen finished 2 seconds ahead in the overall classification. In 2005 Ivan Basso of Team CSC, coming off the 2005 Tour de France as the overall runner-up, totally dominated the race, and won overall as well as 4 out of 6 stages. Since the race was run at the same time as the UCI ProTour race Eneco Tour of Benelux, only three UCI ProTour teams participated.
In 2006, the race was won by Fabian Cancellara of CSC ahead of Stuart O'Grady, also of CSC and in 2007 Kurt Asle Arvesen returned to win for the second time, being the first in history to do so, and giving Team CSC its 4th consecutive win. In 2008 Jakob Fuglsang from Team Designa Køkken became the first Dane to win since 2002 and in 2009 he became the first to win the race two years in a row. He won the race once again in 2010, being succeeded by Australian rider Simon Gerrans in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Danmark Rundt
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)