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With the Tour de France due to start, we run through the A-Z of cycling's greatest race.

A is for Astana

The 2007 Tour winner Alberto Contador cannot defend his title as, despite never having been found guilty of a doping offence and having been with a different team that season, his Astana Team were blocked from all racing in France for 2008.

The decision by French cycling authorities was made somewhat belatedly in February 2008 after former Astana rider Alexander Vinokourov was booted off the 2007 Tour - and in light of their involvement in the 2006 drug sting of Operacion Puerto.

If Spaniard Contador had known this would happen when he agreed to sign for Astana at the end of the 2007 season, perhaps he would have made a different decision - he only joined the team because his previous outfit, Discovery Channel, were disbanded after their sponsorship was revoked.

"Oops" is an understatement.

B is for Ballon d'Alsace

A relatively small mountain by modern Tour standards, Ballon d'Alsace's claim to fame lies not in the fact that it is big but because it was the first ever climb in Tour history.

Way back in 1905 it was added to the race, with Rene Pottier winning the stage. Pottier would go on to win the overall race in 1906, although he tragically committed suicide in 1907 after discovering that his wife had an affair while he was racing in Le Tour.

C is for Champs-Elysees

So this is where it all ends. Usually a relaxing day for those who hold the overall lead (they even down a glass of champers at the start), this is the stage the sprinters who have survived the mountains really want to win.

The race has finished on Champs since 1975, and in 1989 they held a time-trial there too, with the champagne kept on ice until Greg LeMond overcame a 50 second deficit to nick the Tour from Laurent Fignon by eight seconds.

That denied the French a first Tour win for four years. Poor chaps, that gap is now 22 years and unlikely to change this time around - although the cynics suggest that France's anti-doping drive may eventually end up removing all teams and cyclists bar their own!

D is for Desgrange

Henri Desgrange is credited as the man who founded the Tour de France. It was the newspaper he edited, "L'Auto", which did indeed set up the first Tour in 1903 to boost circulation, but it was actually a 23 year-old journalist called Geo Lefevre who blurted out the idea when he felt under pressure to say something at a meeting.

Desgrange, a champion cyclist himself, is the man that people remember though, and he played a key role in the Tour up until his death in 1940. Oh, and L'Auto's circulation would eventually rise from 25,000 to 854,000 - so mission accomplished!

E is for EPO

Ok let's be honest here, we could have had a whole A to Z just on drugs in Tour de France but that would depress us all and this list wants to be more of a celebration of the great race.

So let's leave EPO as our token drugs reference and move on shall we? Please?

F is for France

What else could F be for? The French have always had a love-hate relationship with the Tour, which usually corresponds to them loving when they are winning, and hating when they are not.

When Bernard Hinault won his fifth tour in 1985 it was the ninth time in 10 years that the Tour had gone to a Frenchman - they haven't won it since, and with all the drug scandals added to the mix the race has taken a bit of a battering in recent years.

There we go mentioning drugs again, we promise to stop. Soon.

G is for Garin (Maurice) first winner of the tour

The first winner of the Tour represented France, but was actually an Italian. Garin was given French citizenship in 1901 after having twice won the Paris-Roubaix, and then won the first Tour in 1903 as a Frenchman. He also defended the title in 1904 before being disqualified.

The reason was never officially revealed but apparently he used a train during part of the route. Cheeky.

H is for "hors categorie"

These are the backbreakers, the mountains that separate the wheat from the chaff, those climbs that are "without classification".

Stage 17 this year is the real toughie. It's the last big mountain day and comes off the back of an exhausting Stage 16, which features the (allegedly) highest paved road in Europe, Col de la Bonette.

The 17th has lesser climbs, although there are three biggies - Col du Galibier, Col de la Croix de Fer and the finish up Alpe d'Huez.

I is for Italian rivals - Bartali v Coppi

Before the emails come flooding in, we know we should really have five-time champion Miguel Indurain as our "I" but, to be honest, he was a bit boring wasn't he? Much more interesting was the great Italian rivalry between Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi, which lit up cycling before and after World War Two.

The older Bartali was from the South and deeply religious, while Coppi was the atheist hero of the North who was so naughty he even had a mistress.

Their races, particularly in the Giro and the Tour, used to split Italy - you were either part of the "coppiani" or the "bartaliani". Both won two Tours apiece.

J is for Jerseys

Yellow for race leader, green for top sprinters, polka dot for king of the mountains, white for best young rider.

Those are the jerseys in a nutshell. There also used to be a red jersey for the leader of non-stage-finish sprints but it was scrapped for being far too confusing and a bit irrelevant.

K is for Kraftwerk

So what have the influential experimental German electro group got to do with the Tour? Well in 1983 they released a single called "Tour de France" which reached number 22 in the UK Charts.

The record sleeve saw the band on racing bikes, and the track is said to use "mechanical sounds associated with cycling used to supplement a simple electro-percussion pattern".

Kraftwerk are great, although we would like to propose Hawkwind's similarly repetitive "Silver Machine" as a Tour Anthem.

L is for Landis (Floyd)

Well. The American stunned everyone when, with a seemingly impossible task to win, he tore Stage 17 of the 2006 race apart and ultimately took the overall victory.

But he tested positive for a hugely-elevated level of testosterone, was stripped of his title and banned for two years.

Landis has since made repeated challenges to both rulings, but in the week leading up to the 2008 Tour his final appeal was thrown out. We're not sure where we stand legally, but blatant drug cheats who won't just hold their hands up, cop the ban, and let it lie are really boring.

M is for Merckx (Eddy)

Not in reference to football defender Rio Ferdinand's favourite pastime. In his first Tour, Belgian rider Eddy Merckx won the yellow, the green, and the polka dot jersey - a feat that still has not been equalled (he even would have won the white jersey if it was around in those days).

By the time he retired he could look back on five Tour victories, 34 stages wins, as well as countless records and achievements in other races.

N is for National teams

It is a bit hard to feel any real affinity to teams with the names of huge multinational corporations (Team CSC Saxo Bank, Credit Agricole) or ones that sound like obscure Glaswegian art-noise bands (Quickstep, Gerolsteiner), but the Tour wasn't always a flea-market for sponsors.

Between 1930 and 1961, and again in 1967 and 1968, the Tour was raced by national teams, even though commercial teams had become commonplace elsewhere.

Having said that, we're sure Mark Cavendish was happier to be racing for Team Columbia than for the "Isle of Man", like he had to at the Commonwealth Games in 2006. Methinks the American team might be a little bit stronger.

O is for Ocana (Luis)

Perhaps Merckx's greatest ever rival, many feel Ocana would have beaten him in the 1971 tour had he not got tangled up with the falling Belgian during a descent.

Merckx got up and won the Tour but Ocana's bid was over.

In 1972 Merckx was going to take a break from the Tour but decided to race to prove he could beat Ocana on fair terms, which he did when the Spaniard was forced to withdraw with heart problems on stage 15.

He finally did win the Tour in 1973 when Merckx finally took a well earned break. Despite being Spanish, Ocana was very popular with the French spectators - mainly because he wasn't Merckx.

P is Peloton

Resisting the temptation to whip out the Pot Belge (final drug reference! honest!), the most spectacular visual for spectators at the Tour and the only one that lasts more than a second is the sight of the passing peloton.

Peloton - which means "the main group of riders" - was also named number seven in the Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary's top 10 most looked-up words of 2004. Obviously that was the year that the highest number of confused Yanks jumped on the Lance Armstrong bandwagon.

For the record "blog" was the most looked up word that year. I repeat, "blog".

Q is quitters

Give me the guy who finishes 107th in the overall classification ahead of the sprinter who wins a few stages and then quits when the mountains come along.

Mario Cipollini - 12 stage victories - but he never finished a Tour. Boooo! Hiss!

R is for runner-up

Or, more specifically, Raymond Poulidor - who is known in Tour's circles as the "eternal second" and in the Eurosport office as "the Jimmy White of cycling".

Poupou (ha ha ha ha) finished the Tour in second three times and third five times and was a heroic loveable loser to the French people, much like snooker's favourite son is over here.

Amazingly he never wore the yellow jersey once despite competing in 14 Tours. Jacques Anquetil was his Stephen Hendry, and often used time-trials to get the crucial edge on poor Poupou.

S is for spectators

The Tour certainly has had some colourful characters by its roadside. From the early days when crazed fans used to throw nails on the road when rival riders approached, to Didi Senft - better know as that guy in the devil costume you see every year poking people with his pitchfork.

What's wrong with just having a nice picnic and watching the race go by folks?

T is for three thousand, five hundred and fifty kilometres

That's the length of this year's race - you feel tired just looking at it don't you?

U is for urinating

It has to be done, and it has to be done on the move! They have to be careful too though - they can be fined if they do it in too public a spot.

During one race Jerome Pineau had to delay the call of nature when he approached a school full of children waiting to see the Tour pass. Uncomfortable in lycras.

V is for Vietto (Rene)

Oh how we love our Tour de France tear-jerkers. The year is 1934 and 20-year-old Rene Vietto is set to take the overall race lead during stage 16 when his team leader Antonin Magne crashes out.

Vietto is eventually told that his team-mate is stuck along the side of the road though and climbs back up a mountain he had just descended to give Magne his bike.

His team captain recovered and went on to win the Tour, a feat that Vietto would never achieve, although his act of generosity made him a Tour legend.

W is for Women

They have tried to turn the "Grande Boucle" into the Tour de France for women but the once highly-respected event has hit hard times after numerous problems over the years.

The real killer came in the mid-90's when the organisers of the actual Tour objected to the Boucle's then name of "Tour Cycliste Feminin" on trademark grounds. Spoilsports!

So while the female tennis players now get equal prize money at Roland Garros, women cyclists are left with a stripped-down race of five stages, with peanuts as the prize.

X is for X-rays

Well come on what else could we use? Until a xylophone, or a Xavier, plays a significant enough role in the Tour this will just have to do as our "X".

We'll use it as an umbrella term for all those spectacular crashes that make you gasp "how terrible", but that you also secretly enjoy watching again once you know nobody was seriously hurt.

Y is for youngest winner

Remember we told you that Maurice Garin was disqualified after winning the 1904 Tour for using a train? So they awarded it to second place finisher Lucien Pothier, right? Nope - he cheated too. Third placed Cesar Garin? Nah, Maurice's brother was equally sneaky. So fourth placed Hippolyte Aucouturier was the winner? With a name like that you got to be kidding!

So when the dodgy geezers were weeded out, it was fifth-placed Henri Cornet who was left as the winner.

At 20 years of age he remains the youngest ever victor of the Tour, although at three hours behind the actual winner his career never really pushed on afterwards.

Z is for Zabel (Erik)

Now here is a sprinter that we can celebrate - the winner of a record six green jerseys, Zabel also had 12 stage victories and most importantly finished the Tour 10 times.

No matter that his best place was 59th - this is a true cyclist. What's that you say? He took drugs? Oh no say it 'aint so! Ah, but it was in the 90's - so that's okay then.

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