2009 Tour de France participant Lance Armstrong
Pre-race favourites
Favourites for the race included 2008 winner Carlos Sastre, 2007 winner Alberto Contador, 2009 Giro d'Italia winner Denis Menchov and two time runner-up Cadel Evans. Lance Armstrong came out of retirement and competed in the race on the same team as Contador. Menchov and Evans performed far below the levels expected of them, finishing 51st and 30th respectively, and Sastre only showed briefly among the leaders on the mountain stages that would have provided his best chance of making a bid for victory, coming 17th overall.
Alejandro Valverde, the team leader of Caisse d'Epargne, was not selected by his team for the Tour de France, because the race travelled through Italy on stage 16 and he had received a ban in May 2009 from the Italian Olympic Committee, prohibiting him from competing in Italy. He had finished in the top ten of the general classification of the Tour in the two previous years and was considered one of the favourites for overall victory.
News about a positive retest of a 2007 out-of-competition control concerning Thomas Dekker broke three days before the start; his team Silence–Lotto immediately withdrew him from the starting list.
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