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The 2005 Tour de France was the 92nd Tour de France, taking place from July 2 to July 24, 2005. It comprised 21 stages over 3592.5 km, the winner's average speed was 41.654 km/h. The first stages were held in the département of the Vendée, for the third time in 12 years. The 2005 Tour was announced on October 28, 2004. It was a clockwise route, visiting the Alps before the Pyrenees. Lance Armstrong won this Tour, making it his seventh consecutive Tour victory. He was accompanied on the podium by Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, but in 2012 Ullrich's results were annulled. As of 11 February 2012, the Union Cycliste Internationale has not commented if the third place would remain empty, or fourth-place finisher Mancebo would be upgraded to third place. The points classification was won by Thor Hushovd, and the mountains classification by Michael Rasmussen.

On 24 August 2012, the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced that they had disqualified Armstrong from all his results since 1998, including his victory in the 2005 Tour de France. The Union Cycliste Internationale, responsible for the international cycling, did not immediately take over this verdict. Ultimately it did strip Armstrong of all his Tour titles on 22 October 2012.

Due to the fact that the top seven and ninth-placed GC riders either testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs during the race or in later years, the default top-three riders were Cadel Evans, Óscar Pereiro and Christophe Moreau.

The race was seen by 15 million spectators along the road, and by 2 billion viewers on TV.

Route
The traditional prologue on the first day was replaced by an individual time trial of more than twice the length of a standard prologue. This stage crossed from the mainland of France to the Île de Noirmoutier. The most famous route to this island is the Passage du Gois, a road that is under water at high tide. This road was included in the 1999 Tour. Several of the favorites crashed there that year, and ended that stage 7 minutes behind the peloton. This year they took the bridge to the island.

Later in the race, there was one more time trial, on the penultimate day. Also, there were just three uphill finishes (Courchevel, Ax-3 Domaines and Pla d'Adet), a lower number than in previous years. The finish line of the last stage was, as has been since 1975, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

The Tour commemorated the death of Fabio Casartelli. During the 15th stage the riders passed the Col du Portet d'Aspet, where Casartelli died exactly 10 years earlier, in the 1995 Tour de France. The Tour also commemorated the first time there was an official mountain climb in the Tour, the Ballon d'Alsace. During the 9th stage this mountain was passed again, exactly 100 years after the first ascent in the Tour.

Participants


In 2005, the UCI had started the ProTour: 20 teams were given a ProTour licence, and were required to start in all ProTour races, which included the Tour de France. The Tour de France organisation was not happy with this rule, as they wanted to be able to decide which teams would join their race. While negotiations were still ongoing, it was decided to use the UCI rule for the 2005 Tour, so all 20 ProTour teams were automatically invited. The Tour organisation could invite one extra team with a wildcard, and used this to invite the Ag2R team.

All teams were composed of nine cyclists, so 189 riders in 21 teams commenced the 2005 Tour de France. Of them, 155 riders finished.

Of the competitors in the 2005 Tour, the tallest rider was Johan Van Summeren at 1.98 metres and the shortest was Samuel Dumoulin at 1.58 metres. The heaviest rider was Magnus Bäckstedt at 95 kg, the lightest was Leonardo Piepoli at 57 kg. Christopher Horner and Laurent Lefevre shared the lowest resting heart rate, 35 beats per minute. The "average" rider in 2005 was 1.79 metres tall, weighed 71 kg, and had a resting heart rate of 50 beats per minute.

Favourites
The main favourite was six-time winner Armstrong. Armstrong had had doubts if he should start the 2005 Tour, but decided in February 2005 that he would race. His main rival Ullrich was happy with this decision, as he thought it would be a better race with Armstrong present.

In previous years, Ullrich never had the full support of his team to win the general classification, as his team was also aiming for stage victories. In 2005, Erik Zabel, who had won the points classification six times, was left out of the team, and Ullrich was supported by Klöden and Vinokourov, who both had already reached the podium on the Tour.

On the day before the Tour started, Ullrich crashed into his team director's car, but was not seriously injured.

Race details
In Stage 1, David Zabriskie, a former team mate of Lance Armstrong, beat Armstrong by two seconds. In the team time trial of stage 4, Zabriskie fell in the last kilometers, and Armstrong took over the lead.

Armstrong initially refused to wear the yellow jersey in the fifth stage, but was forced by the Tour organisation, who threatened to remove him from the race.

In the tenth stage, the start was moved from Grenoble to Froges.

Before the 20th stage, an individual time trial, Michael Rasmussen occupied the third place in the general classification. During that stage, Rasmussen fell multiple times and changed bicycles multiple times, and lost so much time that he ended up at the seventh place in the general classification. The race jury invoked the 'rain rule' for the Champs-Élysées, meaning that Lance Armstrong became the winner of the General classification the first time the race passed the finish line, rather than the eighth time as normal. The time bonification for the winner of the stage was still given, and Alexandre Vinokourov profited from this as he won the stage after an escape in the last kilometer (the first time since 1994 that the final stage did not end in a sprint ), and passed Levi Leipheimer in the general classification to end fifth.

During the final ceremonies in Paris, Armstrong was allowed to talk to the crowds, the first time in the Tour's history that a winner was given this chance. It has since become a regular occurrence.

Stages
The 2005 Tour de France was divided into 21 stages. These stages belong to different categories: 8 were flat stages, 5 were medium mountain stages, 5 were high mountain stages, 2 were individual time trials and 1 was a team time trial. The distinction between flat stage, medium mountain stage and high mountain stage is important for the points classification. There were two rest days, in Grenoble and in Pau. In the stages that were not time trials, there were intermediate sprints. Cyclist who crossed the intermediate sprints first received points for the points classification, and bonification seconds for the general classification. Until stage 8, there were three intermediate sprints, and from stage 9 on there were two.

Classification leadership

 * Jersey wearers when one rider is leading two or more competitions:
 * In stage 1, Lance Armstrong wore the green jersey.

General classification
Óscar Pereiro was given the combativity award by the jury who chose him as the most attacking cyclist.

Doping cases
During the race, 143 urine tests and 21 blood tests were conducted. None of them returned positive. Still, there were fears that banned substances were being used; the boss of the team (not racing in the 2005 Tour) questioned the increase in velocities.

In 2010, Hans Michael Holczer, the team boss of Gerolsteiner in 2005, said that the UCI had informed him that Leipheimer had shown blood values just under the doping limit, and that Holczer suspected that Leipheimer was using doping. The UCI advised Gerolsteiner to find a reason to remove Leipheimer from the race, but Holczer refused, because his team was still facing bad publicity from a previous doping case.

The top five of the general classification of 2005 would not compete the 2006 edition. Armstrong had retired after the 2005 Tour, and a few days before the 2006 edition, after it became public that (among others) Basso, Ullrich and Mancebo were under investigation in the Operacion Puerto doping case, the Tour organisation and team leaders decided to exclude all cyclists under investigation from joining the Tour. Vinokourov, fifth-placed in 2005, was not under investigation, but his team was reduced to five cyclists, below the minimal required amount of six, so he could also not compete.

In February 2012, the Court of Arbitration for Sport found Ullrich guilty of being engaged in Fuentes' doping program, and decided that Ullrich's results since May 2005, including his results from the 2005 Tour de France, would be disqualified.

Subsequent to the Armstrong's statement to withdraw his fight against USADA's charges, on August 24, 2012, the USADA said it would ban Armstrong for life and stripped him of his record seven Tour de France titles. Later that day it was confirmed in a USADA statement that Armstrong was banned for life and would be disqualified from any and all competitive results obtained on and subsequent to August 1, 1998, including forfeiture of any medals, titles, winnings, finishes, points and prizes. Whether the USADA has the legal authority to enforce their ruling, remains in question.