2004 Tour de France
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
Race overview
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.Stage 1 was a flat stage that was run entirely in Belgium and not long into the stage it began to rain heavily which would eventually be responsible for many crashes. 37 year old elite sprinter Mario Cipollini went down and had a difficult time getting back to the main pack and was not among the riders fighting for the stage win. The final breakaway was caught with 4 km to go and the stage was won by Jaan Kirsipuu of ahead of Robbie McEwen of and Thor Hushovd of. During this stage Lance Armstrong wore the green jersey for the only time in his career, being placed 2nd in the points competition behind Cancellara. During stage 2 the weather wasn't as severe but there were still several crashes which resulted in the abandonment of a few riders. Marco Velo crashed violently, broke his collarbone and when he hit the ground landed on a glass bottle which cut his other shoulder open. He would continue the race but only survived a few more stages before calling it quits. A breakaway of five riders eventually went clear and Team tried controlling the escape in a manner similar to what they had done during the Giro a few months earlier where they were able to get sprinter Alessandro Petacchi in position to win an astonishing nine stages. They also were intent on protecting the yellow jersey of Cancellara as long as they could, however they were not able to control the Tour as they had done at the Giro and even though they were in good position as the end of the stage neared Cancellara had lost his yellow jersey and Petacchi finished 8th in the sprint. McEwen had won the sprint, attacking with 250 meters to go as Hushovd took 2nd place, but also moved into the yellow jersey as a result of the bonus seconds he won. This made him the first rider from Norway to lead the Tour de France.
Stage 3 would begin in Waterloo, Belgium and end just over the border in Wasquehal in Hauts-de-France. For the first time since the 1985 Tour de France a stage which included sections traversed during Paris–Roubaix was included. There were some sections of cobbles, but it was limited to only about four kilometres in two segments. A two rider breakaway of Jens Voigt of Team and Bram de Groot of Team eventually got a gap of nearly seven minutes before it started coming down. The pavé did cause some flat tires and crashes, including GC favorite Iban Mayo of, who crashed hard, shredding some of his uniform and costing him so much time he likely lost any chance of competing for victory. Christophe Moreau, GC rider for Team Credit Agricole who had finished in the top ten twice in recent years also got caught out in the peloton split and lost nearly four minutes. Thor Hushovd was stuck back in this group meaning he would likely lose his yellow and green jerseys. Roberto Heras of Team, who was an instrumental Lieutenant of Armstrong in previous Tour victories and himself a multi-time champion of the Vuelta a España, also had a tough time through the cobbles but he was able to fight his way back to the elite group. The two man breakaway was eventually caught but Jens Voight was able to finish in the group containing the GC riders. The stage was won by Jean-Patrick Nazon of Team AG2R who bested Erik Zabel of in the sprint. Robbie McEwen finished 3rd but moved into both the yellow and green jerseys.
Stage 4 was a team time trial but there were new rules written regarding how much time could be lost by riders. The most any team could lose to the winning team was +3:00. The most the 2nd place team could lose was +0:20 and 3rd place would only lose +0:30. Some riders complained that their teams had worked hard to master the TTT and felt that time losses should be just as severe as they can be during an ITT. The TTT was dominated by Team. George Hincapie rode at the front near the end and when the finish line approached and they knew the race had been won they pulled up and celebrated while crossing the line. Team of Tyler Hamilton finished 2nd +1:07 behind. Phonak, who was riding in their first Tour as a team had a tough start to the stage and had only five riders remaining, the amount required to finish, with 15 km still remaining. Despite this Hamilton rode a high pace at the front and the team still finished strongly having the best time when they crossed the line. Team finished 3rd at +1:15 and the T-Mobile team of Ullrich and Andreas Klöden finished 4th. Team CSC of Ivan Basso finished in 5th place, and even though Team started five minutes before Team CSC, they actually caught up to the FDJ riders, who finished in last place. As a result, the general classification shifted to Armstrong taking over the maillot jaune and the next places being taken by his teammates Hincapie, Landis, Azevedo and Chechu Rubiera making up the new top 5. The closest GC riders to Armstrong were Hamilton in 8th at +0:36 and Ullrich, Kloden and Bobby Julich of Team CSC about a minute behind. The green jersey was kept by McEwen, Paolo Bettini of Team kept the polka dot jersey and the white jersey of the best young rider was worn by Matthias Kessler of T-Mobile. Stage 5 was the 60th day Lance Armstrong had worn the yellow jersey, tying him with Miguel Induráin for the 3rd most all time. A five rider breakaway got a massive gap during this stage and the US Postal team of Armstrong did nothing to prevent or reduce their advantage during the escape. Stuart O'Grady of Team, Jakob Piil of Team CSC, Sandy Casar of Team FDJ, Thomas Voeckler of Team and Magnus Bäckstedt of Team eventually built a gap approaching +17:00. They would finish in that order about +12:30 ahead of the main field and all five of them would make up the new top 5 overall. Being as Voeckler was the highest placed among them he moved into the yellow jersey, +9:35 ahead of 6th place Armstrong.
33 drug tests were conducted following the stage. Every rider tested produced a negative result, meaning all 33 riders would be cleared to sign in and start stage 6. Earlier in the year the book L.A. Confidentiel was released which claimed there was doping going on at the highest levels. Emma O'Reilly was a primary source for this book. She was paid a reasonable fee and confessed to some of the relatively minor things she had seen while working for Team US Postal, because she was worried some younger riders elsewhere in the sport may have died as a result of doping gone wrong.
Prior to the start of stage 6 Alessandro Petacchi, Bradley McGee and Mario Cipollini abandoned the Tour. Crashes earlier in the tour hindered them and the flat stages were all but over in this year's edition. 2004 was the eighth Tour de France Cipollini entered in his career and he abandoned every single one of them. He did however, win a total of twelve stages. During stage 6 riders formed a breakaway but never extended their gap much beyond +5:00 and weren't expected to survive to the finish. Impressively with 10 km to go they still had a gap but Credit Agricole, Team Lotto and Team were pulling at the front to make sure it would be a sprint finish. With about 5 km to Antonio Flecha of Team Fassa Bortolo, who had been in the breakaway for nearly 170 km, attacked shortly before the peloton caught them and built a bit of a gap. 1 km before the line he too was caught, and he shot back through the ranks as the sprint trains came by. A crash inside the flamme rouge caused McEwen to miss the sprint as Tom Boonen of Team Quick Step defeated O'Grady, who would maintain his narrow lead over the four closest opponents in the points competition. Danilo Hondo of Gerolsteiner and Baden Cooke of FDJ rounded out the top 5. This would be the last stage without a categorized climb for the remainder of the Tour with the exception of stage 14 and the semi-neutralized stage on the Champs-Élysées. Throughout this Tour there would be many crashes and GC favorite Tyler Hamilton went down in stage 6. He didn't lose time but he suffered a lower back injury that would likely cause pain in the coming days. Adding briefly to the psychological stress, he also found out his dog, Tugboat, died.
By stage 7 there had already been 100 riders who had gone down in crashes including most GC contenders. The stage saw a two rider breakaway remain out front until there were about 30 km to go. After that some elements of the peloton were trying to keep the race together while others tried breaking away for the stage win. Towards the end of the stage the powerful riding of Francisco Mancebo of Team Illes Balears was enough open a small gap ahead of the yellow jersey group. Filippo Pozzato of Fassa Bortolo, the youngest rider in the Tour at 22, and Iker Flores of Team Euskaltel were able to hold his wheel until the line where Pozzato pulled around an exhausted Mancebo for the win. In the GC Voekler's lead of +9:35 over Armstrong had not yet begun to come down. Armstrong led by +0:36 over Hamilton, the next closest contender not riding for US Postal. Mancebo jumped ahead of Ullrich and Julich with his late attack and was +0:43 behind Armstrong with Ullrich and Julich being the only other elites within a minute as Basso and Heras were within +2:00.