Lance Armstrong returns to the Tour De France, as our Parisian sports correspondent reports…

PARIS—He’s baaaaaaaaaack.

Four years after he last wore the Maillot Jaune on the Champs Elysees – 2005 was his seventh consecutive Tour de France victory – Lance Armstrong, or as I like to call him, The Wristbanded One, is back on French soil. And tomorrow, July 4th, the 37-year-old American sporting icon will celebrate his country’s Independence Day by hopping on a bicycle and setting out with 179 other riders representing 20 teams on a 21-stage, 23-day cycling journey across a country whose general public has never really warmed to the audacious Texan.

The French press has been whipping itself into a decent lather over Monsieur Armstrong’s participation in the 96th edition of Le Tour for the past, oh, forever or so. Technically, though, Lance is not in France yet, and neither are any of his competitors. This year’s Tour kicks off in Monaco with a 15-kilometre time trial, and will pass through five other countries – France, Spain, Andorra, Switzerland and Italy – before a champion is crowned on July 26 at Paris’s Place de la Concorde.

It’s that last country on the list that caused last year’s pre-race favourite, Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, all sorts of problems. Valverde, who was banned from competing in Italy by the Italian Olympic Committee in May on a doping charge, will not be racing in this year’s Tour. The event has been marred in recent years by accusations – and convictions – of cheating. Last year’s crop of disgraced riders included the winner of both individual time trials (Stefan Schumacher), the winner of two mountain stages (Riccardo Ricco) and the winner of the Polka Dot jersey for best climber (Bernhard Kohl) – none of whom will be defending their accomplishments, obviously. And, sadly, this year will not likely be much different. Already a Dutch cyclist, Thomas Dekker, was forced to withdraw three days before the departure due to a doping violation.

Still, those who love The Tour (including French journalist Béatrice Houchard, whose new book Faut-il Arrêter le Tour de France? I picked up at the bookstore this afternoon) will tell you that the labs are slowly winning the battle against the dopers. My television set will certainly be tuned to France 2/3/4 for hours on end, not only because I like sports but because I like France – cycling broadcasts, by their nature, feature many hours of coverage where not much happens, and the announcers on France’s public television stations do a masterful job of filling the time with excellent geography lessons, illuminating many of the country’s small towns through which the tour passes over its 3,445 kilometres.

If you’re not into learning every last silly fact about La Grande-Motte, Saint-Fargeau and Bourgoin-Jallieu, here are the stages you’re going to want to tune in for, judging from a purely competitive standpoint: Stage 1 (Saturday July 4th), the time trial in Monaco, should produce some spectacular downtown views and an early read of the most on-form athletes; Stage 7 (Friday the 10th) features the first big mountains of the Pyrenees and a deadly uphill finish into Andorra; Stage 16 (Tuesday the 21st) begins in Switzerland and covers two tough mountains, the Grand-St-Bernard and the Petit-St-Bernard (although all Saint Bernards are pretty massive, if you ask me. Have you ever seen the Beethoven movies? Poor Charles Grodin, that dog’s huge!); and the penultimate Stage 20 (Saturday the 25th), with a final, rubber-legged sprint up the Mont Ventoux, only the most difficult climb of the entire Tour. Save the best for last, I guess.

Two other big names are back in action along with Lance, and they both also happen to be his Team Astana colleagues: American Levi Leipheimer, who’s finished in the top ten of the Tour four times, and Spaniard Alberto Contador, who won the event in 2007 but whose scandal-ridden team was not invited to compete in the Tour in 2008. The big story heading into the weekend is whether Lance and Contador will be able to work together as co-team-leaders. And I still haven’t mentioned last year’s defending champion, or last year’s runner-up, or the winner of last month’s Giro d’Italia. Or even the lone Canadian in the field! Here are some of the riders to follow over the next three weeks:

The Favourites

Alberto Contador (Astana), 26 years old, Spain, even-money betting odds

He’s the class of the field, a great climber and a tough time trial rider, but can he avoid self-destructive intra-team sniping with his equally ambitious teammates? Well, his nickname is “El Pistolero,” so my rudimentary Spanish skills tell me that we’ll just have to wait and see.

Lance Armstrong (Astana), 37, USA, 5/1 odds

The French planted drugs in this guy’s urine samples, but the tests were inconclusive. They gave him cancer, and he beat it. They secretly hired some joker to steal his bicycle, but the hapless thief was caught. If you really don’t want him to win, I would suggest slashing Lance’s tires, but I’m sure they’d just magically re-inflate themselves. Face it, France. You might have to spend another summer pretending to respect this guy.

The Contenders

Cadel Evans (Silence Lotto), 32, Australia, 9/1

He was the best rider on last year’s Tour, but he lacked the team support needed to survive three weeks of attacks, and in the end, Sastre and the Schleck Bros (great band name, by the way) and the rest of Bjarne Riis’s CSC Saxo Bank team basically took turns beating the crap out of him on the Alpe d’Huez. Silence Lotto tried to recruit some support this year. Whoops. That didn’t turn out very well, now did it?

Andy and Franck Schleck (Saxo Bank), 24 and 29, Luxembourg, 7/1 and 40/1

Everyone says that little brother Andy (who finished 12th last year) has more talent than Franck (who held the overall lead with five stages to go), but you never want to count the wily older brother out. Because isn’t that what they said about Willie Wilde and his little brother Oscar ? OK, bad example. How about Mike Maddux and little brother Greg? No, that doesn’t work either. Eric Roberts and his little sister Julia? I’ll stop now.

Carlos Sastre (Cervélo Test Team), 34, Spain, 16/1

The 2008 champ and most consistent rider in the field broke up the band and left the Saxo Bank team. He’s got decent support on his new squad, but I bet he’s going to miss having the Schleck Bros on bass and drums.

Denis Menchov (Rabobank), 31, Russia, 12/1

Menchov won the Giro d’Italia in June, and has already won the Vuelta a España twice, but he’s never won the most prestigious of cycling’s Big Three tours (they call them the Grande Boucle in French). Might he have peaked too early this year in winning Italy? The last Giro champion to follow up with a win in France was Pantani in 1988, and that dude was superhuman. If Menchov crashes and burns in week three, I vote we give him a new nickname. How do you say “Maculay Culkin” in Russian?

Levi Leipheimer (Astana), 35, USA, 25/1

He’s fast, he’s old, he’s American, and he’s been accused of doping. Are we sure Team Astana isn’t just cloning Lance Armstrong? I’m pretty sure Dick Pound and the doping police at WADA would look down on something like that …

The Dark Horses

Roman Kreuziger (Liquigas), 23, Czech Republic, 40/1

Kim Kirchen (Columbia-HTC), 31, Luxembourg, 66/1

Michael Rogers (Columbia-HTC), 29, Australia, 40/1

Luis León Sánchez (Caisse d’Epargne), 25, Spain, 50/1

Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Slipstream), 33, USA, 50/1

I like Vande Velde. He might be my favourite cyclist in this year’s Tour. He really flew under the radar last year, when he finished fifth overall. He won a stage in this year’s Paris-Nice – shockingly, his first ever professional stage win – and pantomimed rocking a baby as he crossed the finish line (his daughter was born one month earlier). And one of his support riders is Victoria, BC–native Ryder Hesjedal, the only Canadian in the field. Ryder’s had a pretty successful 2009 so far. So has Vande Velde. I’m making him the official Sportstrotter Favourite for this year’s edition of the Tour. I’m sure he’s honoured.