Jan who? Voeckler fever

Turn back the clock to 1953 and you have the last time when the entire previous year's podium was missing from the start of the Tour de France. In fact, not since before World War II has the Tour kicked off without the previous year's top five riders.

2006 >>>> previous year Armstrong (1st) Basso (2nd) Ullrich (3rd) Mancebo (4th) Vinokourov (5th)
1999 >>>> previous year Pantani (1st) Ullrich (2nd)
1987 >>>>previous year Lemond (1st) Hinault (2nd)
1973 >>>>previous year Merckx (1st) Gimondi (2nd)
1953 >>>> previous year Coppi (1st) Ockers (2nd) Ruiz (3rd)

"There's genuine excitement over the fact that the race really is wide open for the first time in years and every team is going to go for it," said eurosport.fr's Vincent Bregevin on the finish line in Strasbourg Saturday.

"Seen from inside the race, you don't have the impression that riders have been expelled. You only feel Tour fever here," added Bregevin: "they love their cycling in Alsace, especially with Thomas Voeckler [who wore yellow on the 1994 Tour] being from Schiltigheim, a stone's throw away from Strasbourg."

While Voeckler spent most of his youth in the French Carribean island of Martinique and now resides near the Atlantic coast, housewives up and down the French side of the Rhine Valley know one of their own when they see one:

"He's definitely the darling of the local crowds."

OK, so the pullout of the favourites leaves Alejandro Valverde as favourite to win the Tour, but here's a question for the bookmakers:

What do Eddy Merckx, Luis Ocaña, Bernard Thevenet, and Bernard Hinault all have in common? They won the Tour de France starting the race with bib number 51. With the field wide open, that distinction this year belongs to Rabobank team leader Denis Menchov. And in view of the Russian's win atop the Mont Ventoux in the recent Dauphiné Libéré, it's not such a far-fetched notion.

The Tour is a huge operation and each host city wants to show itself off in its best light. Strasbourg is no different and the operative word at the Village du Tour [hospitality village] Saturday was wine, lots of Alsatian wine.

"At precisely 12 noon when it opened, there was instantly a huge queue for the wine and the choucroute [sauerkraut] that goes with it," noted our reporter on the scene Vincent Bregevin. Bregevin, whose mother might be reading this, hastened to add that with the heat, "the fruit salad stand - with the local cherries - was equally popular." Sure, Vince.

Play newspaper editor! Tell us what to put below Francisco Mancebo's picture.

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