1998 Tour de France

The 1998 Tour de France, also called the Tour du Dopage (Tour of Doping), was marred by doping scandals throughout known as the Festina affair, starting with the arrest of Willy Voet, a soigneur in the French Festina team. Voet was traveling into France when he was arrested and found with large quantities of doping products. As a result, repeated police raids found drugs in the rooms of the TVM team, and the riders staged a sit-down protest during stage 17 as a reaction to the treatment. Tour directors later nullified the results of the stage. The Spanish teams pulled out of the race at the urging of the ONCE-Eroski team, led by Laurent Jalabert, the French National Champion.

This 1998 edition of Tour de France was won by Marco Pantani, with podium placing of Jan Ullrich, the defending champion, and American Bobby Julich. Erik Zabel won his third consecutive green jersey in the points classification. Christophe Rinero claimed the polka dot jersey as the winner of the mountains classification.

Teams and riders
Because the 1997 Tour had seen many crashes in the first week, the organisation decided to reduce the number of teams from 22 to 21. 189 riders in 21 teams commenced the 1998 Tour de France, only 96 riders finished. The first round of teams that were invited were the sixteen teams of the UCI Rankings on 1 January 1998, provided that they were still in the top 2000 after transfers were factored into the calculation. All these sixteen teams fulfilled this requirement: Later, the organisation gave wildcards to four teams: One team was added with a special invitation:
 * Asics-CGA
 * Riso Scotti-MG Maglificio
 * Riso Scotti-MG Maglificio
 * Riso Scotti-MG Maglificio
 * BigMat-Auber 93

Classification leadership

 * Jersey wearers when one rider is leading two or more competitions:
 * In stage 1, Abraham Olano wore the green jersey.
 * Other notes
 * The white jersey wasn't actually awarded between 1989 and 1999 – the white column in this table represents the leader in the youth classification.

Results
There were several classifications in the 1998 Tour de France. The most important was the general classification, calculated by adding each cyclist's finishing times on each stage. The cyclist with the least accumulated time was the race leader, identified by the yellow jersey; the winner of this classification is considered the winner of the Tour.

Additionally, there was a points classification, which awarded a green jersey. In the points classification, cyclists got points for finishing among the best in a stage finish, or in intermediate sprints. The cyclist with the most points lead the classification, and was identified with a green jersey.

There was also a mountains classification. The organisation had categorized some climbs as either hors catégorie, first, second, third, or fourth-category; points for this classification were won by the first cyclists that reached the top of these climbs first, with more points available for the higher-categorized climbs. The cyclist with the most points lead the classification, and was identified with a polkadot jersey.

The fourth individual classification was the young rider classification, which was not marked by a jersey. This was decided the same way as the general classification, but only riders under 26 years were eligible.

For the team classification, the times of the best three cyclists per team on each stage were added; the leading team was the team with the lowest total time. The riders in the team that lead this classification wore yellow caps.

For the combativity classification, a jury gave points after each stage to the cyclists they considered most combative. The cyclist with the most votes in all stages lead the classification.