The 98th Tour de France begins on Saturday and promises to be an exciting battle. The Tour, which is the event with the 3rd biggest television audience worldwide after the Olympics and the World Cup, will cover 2132 miles and will reach a peak of 2645m, the highest point that a stage has ever finished in the 108 years since the Tour began.

The race favourites are the men that crossed the line numbers 1 and 2 last year, Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck. Contandor was subsequently banned from cycling after testing positive in a drugs test and Schleck handed the trophy. Contador’s ban ended in February and he has since returned to racing looking particularly strong.

The sport has been plagued by doping, especially in the 1998 Tour de France which was dubbed the ‘Tour de Dopage’. The sport has lost a lot of credibility and fans as there appears to be doping scandals every year and the audience, especially in Britain, has dropped in recent years. However British interest has risen since the Isle of Man produced Mark Cavendish. ‘Cav’ has been nicknamed ‘the fastest man on two wheels’ having won an incredible 15 stages in the last 3 years. Although he struggles on the mountains, which categorically rules him out of the overall title and the chance to wear the famous Yellow Jersey, Cavendish is now also targeting the intermediate stages to add to the sprint stages he often wins so easily. This would put him in with a chance of winning the Green Jersey, the second most coveted Jersey awarded.

On the 24th July, the Tour ends with the traditional run in to the Champs-Elysées. betinternet.com will be updated throughout the race on this News section.