* 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