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Dutch TV but Beppu is interviewed in English
DPA: Contador, Armstrong, Japanese winners of Tour de France
Among the many winners of this year's Tour de France, an argument could be made that the race's biggest winners finished 112th and 130th in the standings. But when Fumiyuki Beppu and Yukiya Arashiro return to their native Japan they will no doubt be welcomed as heroes, because they are the first riders from their country ever to have finished the Tour de France. Before this year only two Japanese riders - Kisso Kamawuro, in 1926 and 1927, and Daisuke Imanaka, in 1996 - rode in the Tour de France, but neither made it to the Champs Elysees in Paris. Beppu and Arashiro both placed in the top 10 in several stages and lured thousands of their compatriots to travel to France to watch the closing stages. "Our good results motivated us," Beppu told the daily L'Equipe. "When I suffer in the mountains I think of (Arashiro) and tell myself, I can't give up because both of us have to finish."