1998 Tour de France

The 1998 Tour de France was the 85th edition, 3,875 km in 21 stages and a prologue, starting on 11 July in Ireland and running anti-clockwise round France to finish in Paris on 2 August. Marco Pantani won the general classification, with defending champion Jan Ullrich second and Bobby Julich third. Chris Boardman won the prologue in Dublin and the first yellow jersey, crashed out on stage 2 and handed the lead to Erik Zabel, then Bo Hamburger and Stuart O'Grady, who gathered bonus seconds from a breakaway and held it for three stages; Ullrich took over by winning the stage 7 time trial, lost it for a day to Laurent Desbiens, and regained it as the race entered the Pyrenees, where Pantani, poor in the opening week, began his comeback. The race was run in the shadow of the Festina affair, the doping scandal in which Richard Virenque was a central figure.