Cycling’s greatest race, the Tour de France, begins on Saturday, hoping to cast off the recent cloud of suspicion and scandal of doping with a celebration of its historic 100th edition.
A total of 198 riders from 22 teams will line up for the 212-kilometre (132-mile) first stage from Porto-Vecchio to Bastia on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.
Three weeks, 3,403.5 km and 20 stages later, only the very best — and most fortunate — will finish.
last year’s runner-up behind Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome, is favourite to win the race after successes in Oman, the Criterium International, Tour of Romandie and the Criterium du Dauphine. But the 28-year-old Team Sky rider is likely to face stiff competition from 2007 and 2009 Tour winner Alberto Contador of Spain, despite his lack of victories this season.
Challenging both men include Spain’s Joaquim Rodriguez, who was runner-up in the Giro d’Italia in May, and Australian outsider Cadel Evans, the 2011 winner, who could become the Tour’s oldest victor at 36.
This year’s race is the first to be held after the lance Armstrong doping scandal, which sent shockwaves through cycling and the world of sport. Tour organisers and today’s riders, however, maintain that doping is largely a problem of the past, despite two high-profile positive tests for EPO use on the recent Tour of Italy.
“Doping is the enemy, not the Tour, or cycling,” said Tour director Christian Prudhomme. “Cycling in 2013 is not the same as in the Armstrong years.”
As such, the Tour intends to mark its 100th running, with celebrations and commemorations of the race that first began in 1903 with just 60 riders and only six, mammoth stages.
The peloton will pass major tourist landmarks, including scenic Corsica for the first time, to UNESCO World Heritage Site Mont Saint-Michel in northern Normandy, the Pyrenees and the Alps, where there is a double, energy-sapping climb of the infamous Alpe d’Huez.
The race ends on July 21 in a first ever twilight finish on the sweeping Champs Elysees boulevard, with landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower lit up high above the surviving pack.