2009 Tour de France

The 2009 Tour de France was the 96th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It started on 4 July in the principality of Monaco with a 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) individual time trial which included a section of the Circuit de Monaco. The race visited six countries: Monaco, France, Spain, Andorra, Switzerland and Italy, and finished on 26 July on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

The total length was 3,445 kilometres (2,141 mi), including 93 kilometres (58 mi) in time-trials. There were seven mountain stages, three of which had mountaintop finishes, and one medium-mountain stage. The race had a team time trial for the first time since 2005, the shortest distance in individual time trials since 1967, and the first penultimate-day mountain stage in the Tour's history.

2007 winner Alberto Contador won the race by a margin of 4′11″, having won both a mountain and time trial stage. His Astana team also took the team classification. and supplied the initial third-place finisher, Lance Armstrong. Armstrong's achievement was later voided by the UCI in October 2012 following his non-dispute of a doping accusation by USADA, and fourth place Bradley Wiggins was promoted to the podium. Andy Schleck, second overall, won the young riders' competition as he had the previous year. Franco Pellizotti originally won the polka dot jersey as the King of the Mountains, but had that result (along with all his 2009 results) stripped by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2011 due to his irregular values in the UCI's biological passport program detected in May 2010. Mark Cavendish won six stages, including the final stage on the Champs-Élysées, but was beaten in the points classification by Thor Hushovd, who consequently won the green jersey.