This year’s Tour de France will cover 3,600 kilometres [2,236 miles], including some of the most fearsome climbs in the Alps and the Pyrenees. It’s one of the toughest Tours in years, and yet perhaps the moment the peloton has been fearing most will arrive at about 4.30pm today, in between one bleak post-industrial town in southern Belgium and another in northern France. This is when the Tour hits the cobbles. Lance Armstrong predicted last week that there would be carnage and he wasn’t exaggerating. Â
Riding on cobbles might not sound as difficult as all that, but these are far from the perfectly ordered rows of neatly carved elongated ovals you might find in any city centre seeking to give itself an olde-worlde air. Rather they will  … Details
Italy’s Alessandro Petacchi won the first stage of the Tour de France, a 223.5-km ride from Rotterdam on Sunday.
Australia’s Mark Renshaw was second and Norway’s Thor Hushovd came home third.
Swiss Fabian Cancellara retained the overall lead … Details
Lance Armstrong returned to the Tour de France in 2009 after four years away from cycling’s most prestigious race. At the age of 37, Armstrong rode his way to a third-place finish. And though it was one of the great athletic performances of our time, it paled in comparison to Armstrong’s seven consecutive victories in what could be the world’s most grueling sporting event.Â
Entering the 2010 cycling season, Armstrong was focused on improving his position in this year’s Tour as he tried to dethrone Alberto Contador, the rival and former teammate who won last year’s race. That commitment filtered down to one of Armstrong’s sponsors, an outfit named Giro Helmets. The Santa Cruz, California, company had recently … Details
* Swiss takes prologue ahead of German Tony Martin
* Armstrong fourth, five seconds in front of Contador
The Tour de France began on Saturday in a near carbon copy of last year’s edition, with the victory of Fabian Cancellara in the prologue and the promise of a showdown between Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong.
Switzerland’s Cancellara is the time-trial world and Olympic champion—the best active prologue specialist in the peloton — and he made a point of clocking a perfect time of 10 minutes on the 8.9-km of slippery roads in Rotterdam.
German Tony Martin, who opted for an early start to avoid intermittent rain, led the race for hours before bowing to the rider known as ‘Spartacus’ by 10 seconds.
Briton David Millar was third, 20 seconds off the pace, 10 years after his prologue win near the Futuroscope theme park.
“This victory really gets us going,†said Cancellara who started … Details