The 1998 Tour de France was the 85th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The 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 won the overall general classification, with 's Jan Ullrich, the defending champion, and rider Bobby Julich finishing on the podium in second and third respectively.
The general classification leader's yellow jersey was first awarded to Chris Boardman of the 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 '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 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 's Jacky Durand. The team classification was won by . Tom Steels of 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.
Teams
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. 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. All these sixteen teams fulfilled this requirement. On 19 June, the ASO gave wildcard invitations to , , and , with receiving a special invitation. 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.
Each squad was allowed a maximum of nine riders, resulting in a start list total of 189 riders. Of these, 51 were riding the Tour de France for the first time. The riders came from 22 countries, with the majority of them coming from France, Italy and Spain. Jörg Jaksche () was the youngest rider at 21 years and 353 days on the day of the prologue, and the oldest was Massimo Podenzana () at 36 years and 347 days. The cyclists had the youngest average age while the riders on had the oldest.
The teams entering the race were:
Qualified teams
Invited teams
Pre-race favourites
Jan Ullrich () was the defending champion. He had won the 1997 edition's overall general classification by over nine minutes. His Telekom team was considered as "clearly the squad to beat", having won the previous two editions with Bjarne Riis and Ullrich respectively. 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. During the winter break, Ullrich's training was impaired by the consequences of the fame and fortune that came with his Tour win, and his weight had increased from to . In March 1998, El País headlined an article with "Ullrich is fat", which highlighted that he was still over the weight he had during the previous Tour. His preparation suffered further when he was forced to retire from Tirreno–Adriatico with a cold. 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. He was therefore thought to be the clear favourite going into the 1998 Tour, 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." 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. The veteran Riis, who had raced the 1997 Tour with a cold, was seen as a capable backup option for the team.
The strongest challenge was expected to come from , which led the UCI team ranking prior to the start of the Tour. 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. He was however a very good climber, having won the mountains classification in the four previous Tours. 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. He was a leading pre-race favourite at Italy's Grand Tour, the Giro d'Italia, one month earlier, winning two of the three time trial stages and leading the race before he faltered badly in the final mountain stages to end the race in 14th overall. Another possible contender from Festina was Laurent Dufaux, who had finished fourth overall in 1996 and ninth in 1997.
Marco Pantani () was considered the "dominant climber in the sport" at the time. In June, he had taken an "exceptionally impressive" overall victory at the Giro. Of his three appearances in the Tour up to that point, he had finished third in two of them, including in 1997. When the Tour's route was announced in October 1997, Pantani expressed dissatisfaction with the number of time trials and the fact that the race featured only two mountain-top finishes. Since the route was not to his liking, he originally had shown no interest in riding the race. Following his victory at the Giro, Pantani raced only once, a criterium race in Bologna. His decision to ride the Tour was not made until Luciano Pezzi, his closest confidant and an important figure at Mercatone Uno, died suddenly in late June. Pantani decided to go to the Tour in honour of Pezzi, but had done very little training beforehand. A further disadvantage to Pantani was his lack of a strong domestique, unlike Ullrich and Virenque.
A returning pre-race favourite from the 1997 Tour was time trialist Abraham Olano; in that race, he won the final time trial stage and placed fourth overall. He led the experienced team, who took Miguel Induráin to his five straight Tour wins between 1991 and 1995, and had been seen as his successor. His weakness was thought to be his lack of strength on steep climbs. In his final race leading up to the Tour, the Volta a Catalunya, he performed poorly in the high mountains, and as a result was only seen as a podium contender. Banesto also fielded José María Jiménez, who as a strong mountain rider was considered a "major threat".
The final rider noted as a leading contender, named "the outsider", was the team leader Laurent Jalabert, a complete all-rounder who excelled in all road cycling disciplines. Although he was the reigning time trial world champion and the clear first in the UCI individual ranking before the Tour, he had only aimed to match his overall placing of fourth in 1995. The riders also named as outside favourites for overall victory were Michael Boogerd (), riders Francesco Casagrande and Bobby Julich, Evgeni Berzin (), Fernando Escartín (), and Chris Boardman ().
Route and stages
The route of the 1998 Tour de France was officially announced during a presentation at the Palais des congrès in Paris on 23 October 1997. First negotiations about a potential start of the race in Ireland took place in October 1996, with the Irish government securing funding of IR£2 million to host the event. The opening stages (known as the Grand Départ) in Ireland were confirmed in early April 1997. Irish officials expected the race to bring in IR£30 million to the local economy. It was the first and so far only time that the Tour has visited Ireland. The race paid tribute to two famous former Irish professional cyclists: on the day before the prologue, a commemoration service was held in Kilmacanogue for Shay Elliott, the first Irish rider to ride the Tour and win a stage, and during stage 2 of the race, the route went through Carrick-on-Suir, the hometown of Sean Kelly, four-time winner of the Tour's points classification. Stage 2 also commemorated the 200th anniversary of French troops landing at Killala Bay during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
The 1998 Tour was pushed back one week from its original start date, so as not to overlap too much with the 1998 FIFA World Cup, also held in France, which ended on 12 July, one day after the prologue. The -race lasted 23 days, including the rest day, and ended on 2 August. The longest mass-start stage was the fourth at , and stage 20 was the shortest at . The race contained three individual time trials, one of which was the prologue, totalling . Of the remaining stages, twelve were officially classified as flat, two as mountain and five as high mountain. There were only two summit finishes, which were both at ski resorts, one at Plateau de Beille on stage 11 and another on stage 15 at Les Deux Alpes. The highest point of elevation in the race was at the summit of the Col du Galibier mountain pass on stage 15. It was among five hors catégorie (beyond category) rated climbs in the race. Cycling journalist Samuel Abt considered the route easier than the 1997 edition. Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc countered criticism by Virenque and Pantani that the race was not mountainous enough, saying: "The course is tough enough with 23 mountains. That is eight more than last year."