I like the Tour de France. No, actually: I love the Tour De France. Growing up in the Netherlands, each year for three weeks this would be the main event on the Dutch television. We only had two channels at that time so, yes, there wasn’t much else on. But still. The "NOS", the Dutch public television organization, would broadcast it daily for the last hour or two before the stage finish.
The Tour de France is a multi-day bicycle race which ends in Paris on the Champs-Elysee, a very big street in the center of the city. It typically starts in different places each year and sometimes even starts in nearby countries. The most challenging and popular stages are typically in the mountainous regions of the Alps and the Pyrenees.

The length of the Tour de France varies each year but is typically over 2,000 miles. Or, according to Wolfram|Alpha, over 3,219 kilometers. Or 0.29 the length of the Moon’s equator. Or 0.82 the distance from New York to Los Angeles.
Biking such a long distance requires energy. A lot of energy. I was curious about how much and compare the energy to an amount of known food that I like. I like to eat a lot of things but one of my favorite staple foods is potatoes. Boiled, mashed, or in the form of french fries, it is all good. So, since we are talking about France, let’s use french fries. And yes, I should note here that french fries were most likely invented in Belgium and are also commonly known as pommes frites.

The amount of calories (1 "dietary calory" is the same as 1 kcal) burned by a cyclist in the Tour de France varies by stage, but it is usually estimated to be between 5,000 calories on an easy day to 7,000 calories on a hard day. According to Wolfram|Alpha, biking for one hour at 25 miles per hour burns about 2,000 calories.
So let take an "average day" of 6,000 calories. This year’s Tour de France lasts 23 days, but two of them are rest days, so 21 biking days. This gives us a whopping 126,000 calories.
Now let’s get the calories in a serving of french fries. There are a lot of different types of french fries, so I will use "restaurant-style" fries:

Dividing the total 126,000 calories by the calories for a single serving size gives us the number of servings, about 256. That’s quite a lot! Here is a picture showing 256 servings of french fries in a grid of 16×16:

The actual diet of a Tour de France competitor is likely to be a lot more varied and healthier, but it shows the massive quantities of calories that are needed to finish in Paris. And now I’m hungry. 🙂