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While American pros have Philly in earlier in the month, the bulk of the professional peloton holds its national championships on the last Sunday of June. The UCI holds this weekend open for national championship races and those were held throughout Europe on Sunday. (The American race is granted the dual status of an invitational, allowing foreign riders the chance to participate and promoters to shift the date to accommodate that.) France: Rous wins ahead of VirenqueVeteran Didier Rous (Brioches) won ahead of Richard Virenque (Quick Step) in the hotly contested French national road race.

Could race founder Henri Desgrange have known when he decided to distinguish the Tour de France leader with a yellow-colored racing jersey that he was creating such an icon? The idea came to Desgrange during the 1919 Tour on the rest day in Luchon. It was the first Tour after the five-year hiatus caused by World War I, and on stage 7 of that race, July 10, Desgrange announced his decision in the sports paper that he owned and edited, L’Auto. It wasn’t until a week later, however, before the start of stage 11, in Grenoble, that the first maillot jaune was given at 2 a.m. to Frenchman Eugène

presented by A lot can happen over the course of 23 days in July, especially if you're talking about France and the world's biggest bike race. If you want to stay informed about the events surrounding the centenary edition of the Tour de France, check in with VeloNews.com and be sure to sign up to have our Tour Daily e-mailed to you every day from the evening before the prologue all the way to that final sprint down the Champs-Elysées. As always, we'll keep your name and address private and send you only the newsletter you're requesting.

Once a Tour de France racer himself, and then a journalist, Jean-Marie Leblanc has been the director of the Tour de France since 1989. In this interview, the distant heir to Tour founder Henri Desgrange’s legacy discusses the Tour and its future as it celebrates its centennial year. Q What significance does the centennial of the Tour de France have for you? A In the year of its 100th birthday, the Tour acts as a timely and ceremoniousevent. With the exception of the Olympic Games, there are no other large,100-year-old sporting events. The Tour de France is strongly rooted inthe culture of

When he sits down after dinner on a cool mid-May evening in Gerona, Spain, a relaxed Lance Armstrong is ready to answer questions from two journalists on a conference call. Behind him is another day in a meticulous training program that’s aimed at netting him a fifth Tour de France trophy in July. It begins with a hearty breakfast, to stock up for a multi-hour ride in the Catalan hills. Later, he watches live coverage of the Giro d’Italia, where some of his likely opponents are competing. “They go so slow there,” he says, “I think yesterday they finished almost at 6. So it works perfect. I’m

There’s only one favorite for the Tour de France, and everyone else isfighting for the podium. Or so goes conventional wisdom. We went aroundthe pro peloton this spring and asked people what they thought about Armstrong’schances.David Millar, Cofidis“Five he’ll get, but six is pretty difficult. There’s always somethingphysically or psychologically that seems to happen. That’s how it usuallyworks. We’ll wait to see. I think he’d be a big man if he walked away atfive, quit on top. I think it would almost be disrespectful if he tookthe sixth. Merckx, Anquetil, all those guys could have gotten

Theonly thing that came close to ending Gunn-Rita Dahle's World Cup winningstreak was one of the Mont-Sainte-Anne course's many tight, technical singletracksections. But Dahle (Merida) overcame a second-lap endo to crush the 87-riderfield, just like she'd done in the first two World Cup stops. The30-year-old Dahle led from the gun, gapping the field on the first of fivelaps, her closest pursuers were her own teammates Sabine Spitz and IrinaKalentieva. On the second lap, however, Dahle went over the bars and landedon her side in the dusty singletrack."Iwasn't worried about me," said Dahle, "I

The Hamiltonroad World's course has been tested, and passed with flying colors at theCanadian Road Nationals, grinding down a field of 121 men to just 17 finishers.Genevieve Jeanson (Rona-Esker) finally won the senior national road titlethat has eluded her, while Dominique Perras (Equipe Quebec) scooped themen's title despite Saturn and Navigator's sending up foreign riders tohelp their Canadian pros.Asexpected, the women's race came down to two riders - Genevieve Jeanson(Rona-Esker) and Lyne Bessette (Saturn). What wasn't expected was sprintfinish after nine laps and 18 trips up the Niagara

When Nico Vouilloz and Anne-Caroline Chausson bowed out of the mainstream gravity scene, the possibilities opened back up for riders who carried something other than a French passport. But, at Sunday's inaugural Jeep King of the Mountains event, which paired male and female racers into “national” teams, Cedric Gracia (Siemens-Cannondale) and Sabrina Jonnier (Intense) recaptured the glory of yesteryear for France, taking both the men’s and women’s titles and a commanding lead in the country standings. The made-for-TV event, held in Wintergreen, Virginia on June 29, was the first of a three

YELLOW JERSEY DOWN Luis Ocaña crashed out of the 1971 Tour while wearing the jersey

NEAR THE END Hinault abandoned while wearing yellow in 1980

THE FIRST Maurice Garin, the first winner, poses with his bicycle.

Didier Rous

Rous dedicated his win to his La Boulangère teammate Fabrice Salanson

Green in pursuit

Finishing third, Perras gets Canada's jersey

Spain's Miguel Indurain, the only rider to have won the Tour de France five times in a row (1991-95) believes Germany's Jan Ullrich has it in him to beat four-time winner Lance Armstrong. The 32-year-old Armstrong (U.S. Postal) will equal Indurain's achievement if he wins this year's centenary race, which is being held July 5-27. Ullrich has only recently returned to competition after a difficult year in which he sat out a ban for taking recreational drugs, left his long-time Telekom team, then joined Team Coast only to see the outfit collapse after a suspension because of its financial

In the middle of an interview a couple of days before winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Tyler Hamilton rolls up his left pant leg and points to a bandage on an infected bug bite. He says it had swollen to the size of a golf ball the previous week, three days after he finished second at the rain-soaked Tour of the Basque Country. Once healed, the injury would join a marbled patchwork of scarlet-colored scars that cover most of his left leg below the knee. “There was so much swelling it was almost hitting the crank,” Hamilton says. “It was disgusting. On the last day in Pays Basque we

Karsten Kroon, Thor Hushovd and Rubens Bertogliatti, all stage winners from the 2002 Tour de France. If you had them on your fantasy cycling roster, maybe you were patting yourself on the back for your shrewd judgement in riders and their potential. More likely, you were cursing them for their wildly uneven performances, and the potential points they cost your team. For a professional cyclist, a Tour de France stage win can make a career. But for the fantasy cycling player, the lure of a stage win can obscure some common-sense calls in filling out your roster. Riders like Kroon, Hushovd or

What’s it like to be at the Tour de France? More importantly, what is it like to be in the peloton and pursuing a shot at making the podium? Find out throughout the 2003 Tour de France, when VeloNews.com readers will hear directly from Tyler Hamilton, the leader of the CSC team and winner of this spring’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Tour de Romandie. Hamilton will be sending in regular diary entries throughout the Tour and giving you, the reader, a look into the workings of a team taking on the world’s greatest bike race.

For a reasonably flat island, Great Britain produces some fast downhill racers. British riders Steve Peat (Orange) and Fionn Griffiths (Foes) swept to victory in their respective downhill events today at the Mont -Ste-Anne World Cup. The new 1.2km course made for brief races and left little margin for error. Peat, who missed most of the early season with a wrist injury, scored his first win of 2003 with a scintillating final run that evicted South Africa’s Greg Minaar (Haro-Lee Dungarees) from the leader’s hot seat by a scant .06 second. “I’ve won here twice before so I definitely like

Racing on a course that favored the riders who could combine cunning and strength, Eric Carter (Mongoose-Hyundai) and Katrina Miller (Jamis) took Saturday’s World Cup four-cross event in Mont-Ste-Anne, Quebec. Despite racing with a broken hand, Carter continued his winning ways, adding to his mountain-cross win from last weekend’s NORBA event in Mount Snow, Vermont, and his win from the World Cup stop in France. “I was really struggling to figure out this course yesterday in practice, but I didn’t take any ibuprofen yesterday, and I did today,” said Carter, “That seemed to make a big

Saturn riders Chris Horner and Katie Mactier won the third and pivotal stage of the Fitchburg-Longsjo Classic. Contested over a hilly course culminating at the summit of Mt. Wachussett, the outcome cemented Saturn’s chances of repeating its overall sweep at Nature Valley just two weeks ago, where Mactier and Viktor Rapinski entered the final stage in the race lead. With only a criterium remaining to upset the standings, Mactier and either Horner (second overall, 25 seconds back) or Rapinski (overall GC leader) stand to walk away the race winner. In the women's 78-mile race, Sarah Ulmer of

Miguel Indurain: If Jan Ullrich believes in himself, he can beat Lance Armstrong.

Tyler tunes throughout Le Tour

Steve Peat likes the Mont-Ste-Anne course.

Fionn Griffiths scores her first World Cup win.

EC goes big at Mont-Ste-Anne.

Katrinia Miller's win gives her the lead in the World Cup standings.

Chris Carmichael is predicting Lance Armstrong will win his fifth consecutive Tour de France if the Texan arrives in the same form as years past. Carmichael – Armstrong’s longtime coach and trainer – said the four-time winner is on track to arrive in top condition. The Texan is currently training at altitude in Switzerland to hone his form and will leave Thursday for Paris for the start of the 2003 Tour. “I think if Lance is at the same condition as last year, barring incident, injury or illness, I believe he’ll win,” Carmichael told VeloNews. “I think if he’s back at that same level as

Italy's Federal Court of Appeal on Friday rejected Gianluca Bortolami's appeal against a six-month ban for failing a drug test earlier this year. The Vini Caldirola rider was suspended by the Italian Cycling Federation after anti-doping officials found traces of cortisone in his urine sample. The test was carried out during the Three Days of La Panne stage race in Belgium in which Bortolami won the first stage. The 34-year-old Italian cyclist wore the leader's jersey until the final time-trial when he was pushed into second place by Latvian Raivis Belohvosciks. Bortolami is a very

In its 100 years, the Tour has created countless pages of sports history. Some are astonishing (the first ascent of the Pyrénées in 1910) and some banal (first TV coverage, 1952). Here are some significant firsts of the Tour.1903 (July 1) – The first stageof the inaugural Tour de France, sponsored by the sports newspaper L’Auto,leaves Montgeron, just outside the Paris city limits, at precisely 3:16p.m. with Maurice Garin taking the monumental 467km opening stage to Lyonin 17:45:44. Note that this is an estimate, as Garin crossed the line beforeGéo Lefèvre, the race director, and the time

Last week’s column about the USPRO Championship drew a flood of e-mails. Sorry I couldn’t respond to everyone, but here’s a dip into the mailbag for some of the best, along with my take. It feels very unfulfilling to me to award the USPRO champ jersey to a guy who doesn't win the race. I am in favor of an all-U.S.-citizen race -- perhaps somewhere else than Philly, or just on another day. Your point about attracting riders like Fred Rodriguez is a good one. How do they do it in Europe? Surely there are similar cases. What about talented riders like Allan Davis or Jorg Jaksche, who are the

World champion Mario Cipollini's hopes of joining this year's Tour de France peloton were dashed Friday after an international arbitration body rejected an appeal by the Italian's Domina Vacanze team. Tour bosses did not award Cipollini's Italian outfit one of the four remaining wild-card invitations for this year's centenary race (July 5-27), causing uproar in Italian cycling. Domina Vacanze appealed, with lawyers saying that as world champion he should have been given an automatic entry. But a body set up by the Professional Cycling Council (CCP) to rule on the decision said Friday in

Jan Ullrich has pulled out of the German national road race championships because he wants to spend the few rest days he has remaining before the Tour de France with his pregnant girlfriend, he said Friday. Ullrich, the reigning Olympic road race champion, will return to the Tour after being absent last year due to injury. With the Tour starting Saturday July 5, the 29-year-old Bianchi rider feels that taking part in Sunday's national championships would be unfair to his pregnant girlfriend, Gaby Weis. The 1997 Tour winner and four-time runner-up said he was "aware a lot of people would be

With three teams in the Tour de France, Fausto Pinarello is very busy in the months leading up to the race, especially this season. Pinarello's company builds the bicycles for the Telekom, iBanesto.com and Fassa Bortolo teams, and the preparation details are almost too numerous to comprehend. Every single bike requires custom dimensions, and specific needs have to be addressed with each rider, particularly high-profile stars like Erik Zabel, Ivan Basso and Unai Osa. This year, the task has been particularly challenging because Pinarello planned to deliver a fully custom version of his

Ever since Mario Cipollini, adorned in the yellow jersey of the Tour de France leader, leaned into a television camera during a 1997 stage and said, “Cannondale is best bike,” it was clear that the Bedford, Pennsylvania, company could make bikes capable of scoring victories in the Tour. Cannondale paved the way for other American bike makers such as Trek, Specialized, Klein, GT and Litespeed into the European peloton. But then came the bankruptcy. Following an ill-fated decision to enter the motorsports market, Cannondale found itself deeply in debt with an unsalable motorcycle, struggling

YELLOW JERSEYThe yellow jersey — or maillot jaune — is worn by the overall race leader, the rider who has covered the overall distance in the least amount of cumulative time. Time bonuses (12 seconds for winning a road stage, six seconds for winning an intermediate sprint) are deducted, and time penalties (for infractions like dangerous riding or accepting pushes from spectators on the climbs) are added to riders’ stage times before calculating their GC (general classification) times. 2002 winner: Lance Armstrong, U.S. Postal Service   POINTS LEADERThe green points-leader’s jersey is awarded

Italian Vincenzo Di Falco, who rides for the Mercatone Uno team, has been banned from competing for a year by the Italian cycling federation's disciplinary commission, the panel announced on Friday. The 22-year-old Di Falco, a teammate of former Tour de France and Giro d'Italia winner Marco Pantani, tested positive for Nesp, a banned endurance-enhancer similar to EPO (erythropoetin) during a stage of the Lombardy International week race on May 10. His compatriot Giampaolo Caruso, a 22-year-old with the Spanish ONCE-Eroski team, was handed a six-month ban for testing positive for nandrolone

With each passing year, winning the Tour de France gets more and more difficult for Lance Armstrong. To win, Lance has to be prepared to handle every racing strategy devised to defeat him. One of my jobs as his coach is to work with him in collecting and analyzing data each year. Some of our most useful information came two years ago during Lance’s victory in stage 10. Before the Tour that year, Lance selected the Alpe d’Huez stage as one he really wanted to win. As someone with a true appreciation for cycling history, Lance saw winning on the Alpe as a way to honor the race and the great

They rode 2922 miles, climbed more than 82,000 feet, and crossed 14 states to get from San Diego to Atlantic City. Some sped across, fighting to be first. Others crawled across, battling simply to finish. A few withdrew, their bodies failing their intentions. One lost his life on a desolate stretch of New Mexico highway. They were drenched by rain, slowed by wind, and torched by the desert sun. But everyone who crossed the finish line of the 2003 Insight Race Across America on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City shared a victory for even completing what Outside magazine once called the world’s

If you’re reading this, you’d probably give anything to be in France this July. For most of us, however, jobs, family and budgets don’t allow for a month of tromping around the Alps and the Pyrénées, sleeping on the sides of mountains or snapping a photograph of the peloton as it speeds through fields of sunflowers. But if you can’t make it to the Tour, at least keep track of it on VeloNews.com. This year, VeloNews.com continues its tradition of providing live up-to-the-minute coverage of each stage throughout the Tour. Keeping track of events will be even easier this year, with clear

Saturn made it a double on the first day of the Canadian nationalchampionships, with Eric Wohlberg and Lyne Bessette taking the men's and women's national time-trial titles. The event is being held in Hamilton, Ontario, on the same course planned for the road world’s in October, so in addition to the numerous titles on the line, the organization was trying out its plan to close down the center of a city of more than 600,000 people for the first time. Overall, the indications are that the test was successful. The 21km course that the elite men and women raced (two laps and one lap,

It was hot, hot, hot at the second stage of the Fitchburg-Longsjo Classic – so hot, in fact, that the officials clipped three laps from the women’s race and one from the men’s as temperatures boiled past the 100-degree mark. Despite the trimmings, the racing would get even hotter on the 3.1-mile course, with its sharp finishing climb. The 74-mile men’s race saw attacks from the gun, though nothing stuck until Mike Sayers (Health Net) and Chris Horner (Saturn) got away. The twosome opened a gap of about a minute on a chase group containing race leader Chris Baldwin (Navigators), until

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Cannondale: Custom is customary

Cannondale: Custom is customary

WINNING AND LEARNING Armstrong won on Alpe d’Huez, but still needed to adjust his strategy and training

Chris Carmichael says Lance Armstrong has prepared more intensely for this Tour than for any other.

Lyne Bessette didn't expect to win ...

... but Eric Wohlberg surely couldn't have been surprised by his eighth maple-leaf jersey.

MAURICE GARIN(France)1903

HENRI CORNET(France)1904

L. TROUSSELIER (France) 1905

RENÉ POTTIER (France) 1906

L. PETIT-BRETON (France) 1907, 1908

FRANÇOIS FABER (Luxembourg) 1909

OCTAVE LAPIZE (France) 1910

G. GARRIGOU (France) 1911

ODILE DEFRAYE (Belgium) 1912

PHILIPPE THYS (Belgium) 1913, 1914, 1920