PARIS, Oct. 24 (UPI) -- Officials of the Tour de France announced Thursday next year's event will be conducted over a course that traces the route of the first race 100 years ago.
A galaxy of former champions, including five-time winner Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, American Greg Lemond, Marco Pantani and Jan Ullrich, joined four-time defending champion Lance Armstrong at the announcement ceremony.
"This is no ordinary Tour we have organized," Director Jean-Marie Leblanc said.
The 2003 race, from July 5-27, will involve 22 teams and cover 3,350 kilometers in 20 stages.
It will visit original Tour cities Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and Ville d'Avray as well as Sedan, Troyes and Bayonne.
For the first time in 50 years, the race will start in the heart of Paris with a seven-kilometer individual time trial on July 5 and end, in keeping with a century of tradition, on the Champs Elysees three weeks later.
On start day, the teams will mass in Stade de France before setting out from the cafe Reveil Matin just as the first Tour riders did.
The centenary race will have seven mountain stages -- three in the Alps, including ascents of the col du Galibier and Alpe d'Huez, plus four in the Pyrenees.
"This is the 100th anniversary of the most famous cycling race in the world, and we want to make it a fantastic and popular celebration for all cycling fans," Leblanc said.
Leblanc said all of the surviving winners will march down the Champs Elysees on July 27, and ceremonies will be organized at different points of the route to pay tribute to racing legends.
"We want it to be as similar as possible to the race in 1903, especially going in a clockwise direction and crossing the big cities of the 1903 Tour -- Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes," Leblanc said.
"We have to make it a memorable celebration. We want the magic of the competition to go on. This is a great privilege for us all to be part of history."
Lemond admitted to being moved by Thursday's ceremony. He became the first American to win the Tour in 1986, but was shot in a hunting accident a year later, suffering 60 shotgun pellet wounds.
Lemond took two years to fight his way back to full health and astonishingly won the Tour again in 1989 and 1990.
"This gathering of so many champions is fantastic and very moving," he said. "We have to pay tribute to them all as well as to the race itself. I feel emotional."
Fellow-American Armstrong beat testicular cancer in 1998 before his quartet of triumphs.
"Lance is one of the greatest champions the Tour has ever had," Lemond said.
