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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

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

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

Finishing third, Perras gets Canada's jersey

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

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.

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.

Numbers 1 - 10Numbers11 - 20Numbers21 - 30Numbers31 - 40Numbers41 - 50Numbers 51 - 53

FRANÇOIS FABER (Luxembourg) 1909

SYLVÈRE MAES (Belgium) 1936, 1939

JAN JANSSEN (Netherlands) 1968

OCTAVE LAPIZE (France) 1910

ROGER LAPÉBIE (France) 1937

EDDY MERCKX (Belgium) 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974

G. GARRIGOU (France) 1911

GINO BARTALI (Italy) 1938, 1948

LUIS OCAÑA (Spain) 1973

ODILE DEFRAYE (Belgium) 1912

JEAN ROBIC (France) 1947

B. THÉVENET (France) 1975, 1977

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

Cannondale: Custom is customary

PHILIPPE THYS (Belgium) 1913, 1914, 1920

FAUSTO COPPI (Italy) 1949, 1952

L. VAN IMPE (Belgium) 1976

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

Cannondale: Custom is customary

FIRMIN LAMBOT (Belgium) 1919, 1922

FERDI KUBLER (Switzerland) 1950

B. HINAULT (France) 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985

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

LÉON SCIEUR (Belgium) 1921

HUGO KOBLET (Switzerland) 1951

J. ZOETEMELK (Netherlands) 1980

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

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

HENRI PÉLISSIER (France) 1922

LOUISON BOBET (France) 1953, 1954, 1955

L. FIGNON (France) 1983, 1984

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

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

O. BOTTECCHIA (Italy) 1924, 1925

R. WALKOWIAK (France) 1956

GREG LEMOND (USA) 1986, 1989, 1990

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

Lyne Bessette didn't expect to win ...

LUCIEN BUYSSE (Belgium) 1926

J. ANQUETIL (France) 1957, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964

STEPHEN ROCHE (Ireland) 1987

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

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

NICOLAS FRANTZ (Luxembourg) 1927, 1928

CHARLY GAUL (Luxembourg) 1958

PEDRO DELGADO (Spain) 1988