1998 Tour de France
Cycling race From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cycling race From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 1998 Tour de France was the 85th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The 3,875 km (2,408 mi) race was composed of 21 stages and a prologue. It started on 11 July in Ireland before taking an anti-clockwise route through France to finish in Paris on 2 August. Marco Pantani of Mercatone Uno–Bianchi won the overall general classification, with Team Telekom's Jan Ullrich, the defending champion, and Cofidis rider Bobby Julich finishing on the podium in second and third respectively.
Route of the 1998 Tour de France | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Dates | 11 July – 2 August 1998 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stages | 21 + Prologue | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Distance | 3,875 km (2,408 mi) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Winning time | 92h 49' 46" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Results | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The general classification leader's yellow jersey was first awarded to Chris Boardman of the GAN team, who won the prologue in Dublin. Following a crash by Boardman on stage 2 that caused his withdrawal, Ullrich's sprinter teammate Erik Zabel took the race lead. He lost it the next stage to Casino–Ag2r's Bo Hamburger, who took it after being in a breakaway. The day after, the yellow jersey switched to another rider from the same breakaway, Boardman's teammate Stuart O'Grady, who took vital seconds from time bonuses gained in intermediate sprints. He held it for a further three stages, until pre-race favourite Ullrich won stage 7's individual time trial, moving him into the overall lead. The next day, Laurent Desbiens of Cofidis finished in a breakaway with a large enough margin to put him in the yellow jersey. Ullrich regained the race lead two stages later as the Tour went into the Pyrenees. Following his poor showing in the opening week, Pantani placed second and first, respectively, on the two Pyreneean stages. He then won stage 15, the first in the Alps, to replace Ullrich in the yellow jersey, and kept it until the race's conclusion.
Zabel won his third consecutive Tour points classification and Julich's teammate Christophe Rinero, fourth overall, was the winner of the mountains classification. Ullrich was the best young rider and the most combative was Casino–Ag2r's Jacky Durand. The team classification was won by Cofidis. Tom Steels of Mapei–Bricobi won the most stages, with four.
The race was marred throughout by a doping scandal, known as the Festina affair. Before the Tour began, Willy Voet, an assistant of the Festina team, was arrested at the Franco-Belgian border when doping products were found in his car. The affair broadened and the team was expelled after top personnel admitted to widespread doping. Police raids on numerous teams during the course of the race led to two riders' strikes and the withdrawal of several teams and riders. Due to the controversy, the race became known by the nickname "Tour de Farce". In July 2013, retrospective tests for recombinant EPO made in 2004 were made public, revealing that 44 out of 60 samples returned positive tests.
The organisers of the Tour, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), cut the number of teams from 22 to 21 for the 1998 Tour, to reduce the number of crashes in the opening week of the race seen in recent editions, caused by the large number of riders.[1] The first round of squads that were invited were the first sixteen teams in the ranking system of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), cycling's governing body, on 1 January 1998, provided that they were still in the top twenty after transfers were factored into the calculation.[2] All these sixteen teams fulfilled this requirement.[3] On 19 June, the ASO gave wildcard invitations to Asics–CGA, Cofidis, Riso Scotti–MG Maglificio and Vitalicio Seguros, with BigMat–Auber 93 receiving a special invitation.[4] The presentation of the teams – where the members of each team's roster are introduced in front of the media and local dignitaries – took place outside the Front Gate of Trinity College Dublin in Ireland on the evening before the prologue stage, which began at the college.[5]
Each squad was allowed a maximum of nine riders, resulting in a start list total of 189 riders.[6] Of these, 51 were riding the Tour de France for the first time.[7] The riders came from 22 countries, with the majority of them coming from France, Italy and Spain.[6] Jörg Jaksche (Team Polti) was the youngest rider at 21 years and 353 days on the day of the prologue, and the oldest was Massimo Podenzana (Mercatone Uno–Bianchi) at 36 years and 347 days.[8] The Team Polti cyclists had the youngest average age while the riders on Mercatone Uno–Bianchi had the oldest.[9]
The teams entering the race were:[6]
Qualified teams
Invited teams
Jan Ullrich (Team Telekom) was the defending champion. He had won the 1997 edition's overall general classification by over nine minutes.[10] His Telekom team was considered as "clearly the squad to beat",[11] having won the previous two editions with Bjarne Riis and Ullrich respectively.[12] The 1997 Tour had seen a contest for leadership between Telekom's two captains, but for 1998 this had been resolved in Ullrich's favour.[13] During the winter break, Ullrich's training was impaired by the consequences of the fame and fortune that came with his Tour win,[14][15] and his weight had increased from 73 kg (161 lb) to 87 kg (192 lb).[13] In March 1998, El País headlined an article with "Ullrich is fat", which highlighted that he was still 8 kg (18 lb) over the weight he had during the previous Tour.[16] His preparation suffered further when he was forced to retire from Tirreno–Adriatico with a cold.[16] However, Ullrich performed well in both the Tour de Suisse and the Route du Sud directly before the start of the Tour, erasing doubts over his form.[17] He was therefore thought to be the clear favourite going into the 1998 Tour,[14][15][18][19] with El País going so far as to write that "we can no longer speak of an open Tour, of a deck of suitors. There is talk of Ullrich, and then of the others."[20] The route of the race was considered to be an advantage to Ullrich as well, with many time-trial kilometres and comparatively few mountain passes.[17] The veteran Riis, who had raced the 1997 Tour with a cold, was seen as a capable backup option for the team.[15]
The strongest challenge was expected to come from Festina–Lotus,[17] which led the UCI team ranking prior to the start of the Tour.[21] Their leading rider, Richard Virenque, had finished second to Ullrich the year before. The two long individual time trials were expected not to be in Virenque's favour, since he did not excel in the discipline.[17] He was however a very good climber, having won the mountains classification in the four previous Tours.[22] The team was further strengthened by the arrival of Alex Zülle in the 1998 season, winner of the two previous editions of the three-week Grand Tour of Spain, the Vuelta a España, who was considered to be a competitor for overall victory in his own right.[23]
