The 2004 Tour de France was a multiple stage bicycle race held from 3 to 25 July, and the 91st edition of the Tour de France. It has no overall winner—although American cyclist Lance Armstrong originally won the event, the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced in August 2012 that they had disqualified Armstrong from all his results since 1998, including his seven Tour de France wins from 1999 to 2005; the Union Cycliste Internationale confirmed the result.
The event consisted of 20 stages over . Armstrong had been favored to win, his competitors seen as being German Jan Ullrich, Spaniards Roberto Heras and Iban Mayo, and fellow Americans Levi Leipheimer and Tyler Hamilton. A major surprise in the Tour was the performance of French newcomer Thomas Voeckler, who unexpectedly won the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification in the fifth stage and held onto it for ten stages before finally losing it to Armstrong.
This Tour saw the mistreatment of Filippo Simeoni by Armstrong on Stage 18.
The route of the 2004 Tour was remarkable. With two individual time trials scheduled in the last week, one of them the climb of Alpe d'Huez, the directors were hoping for a close race until the end. For the first time in years, the mountains of the Massif Central made an appearance.
Teams
The first 14 teams in the UCI Road World Rankings at 31 January 2004 were automatically invited. Initially the organisers had an option for a 22nd team, which would be Kelme, but after Jesús Manzano exposed doping use in that team, Kelme was not invited, and the race started with 21 teams of nine cyclists.
The teams entering the race were:
Qualified teams
Invited teams
Domina Vacanze
Route and stages
The highest point of elevation in the race was at the summit of the Col de la Madeleine mountain pass on stage 17.
Race overview
During this Tour de France the men who were delivering the drugs to riders had names like Alibaba, Asterix, Obelix and Motoman.
Before the Tour started, British favourite David Millar was in Biarritz, France with David Brailsford, the head coach of Great Britain for the upcoming Athens Olympics, when French police entered the restaurant they were dining in and forced Millar back to his flat and then arrested him on suspicion of doping. He was left off the Olympic team because of the incident, would likely face termination from Team and was going to be brought before a French court to answer questions regarding doping in cycling. Team Cofidis had only begun riding again in May, after a self-imposed suspension to conduct an internal doping investigation of their own team.
Grand Depart in Belgium and the first week
The opening prologue was in Liège Belgium and was 6.1 kilometres long. Fabian Cancellara, riding the first stage of his first Tour, won the stage and therefore the first yellow jersey. Francesco Moser, Dietrich Thurau and Chris Boardman are among other riders to have done this to begin their career. Lance Armstrong finished in 2nd two seconds behind and was therefore the highest GC contender. The closest contenders to him were Levi Leipheimer and Jan Ullrich. The two riders who defeated Armstrong in the recently held 2004 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré were Iban Mayo and Tyler Hamilton, both of whom were considered potential challengers. Hamilton finished +0:16 behind Armstrong and Mayo was +0:19 slower. Gilberto Simoni of Team , who had won two of the previous four Giro's and podiumed five of the previous six had a tough day and finished +0:42 behind Cancellara. This Tour would end up being the best finish of his career, but in part due to this tough start he would not be a threat to the elite riders for the remainder of the race.