In 1999, Lance Armstrong proved that he could win the Tour de France. The question in 2000's edition of the Tour was "Could he do it again?" The returning champion was the strong favorite, but there were two other past winners in the field this year to mix things up: Telekom's Jan Ullrich and Mercatone Uno's Marco Pantani. Kelme's combination of Roberto Heras and Fernando Escartín, makes this team a serious contender in the mountains, and Banesto's Alex Zülle is no slouch either. While Abraham Olano gave ONCE a disappointing performance in the 1999 Tour, he's back in this edition with the talented and always classy Laurent Jalabert alongside him.

What's the course like? The 2000 Tour route includes only one individual time trial, apart from the short prologue, but it does re-introduce the team time trial after a four-year hiatus. The mountain stages include a total of sixteen mountains for the riders to climb, though only three mountain-top finishes. This year the race enters the Pyrenees first for a single day (Stage 10) that includes the climbs of the Col de Marie-Blanque, the Col d'Aubisque, and the final climb of the day, the Hautacam.

World Cycling Productions' coverage of the 2000 Tour de France offers a solid presentation of the early stages of the race; the sprint stages are covered well, showing how the tactics of the teams and the individual riders play out in the final kilometer and the eventual sprint finish. The stages in which a breakaway manages to stay clear aren't handled as well, though; the coverage tends to pick up after the winning move has already been made, which isn't as exciting as seeing how things develop. The time trials (both the individual and team time trials) could also have benefited from more time spent on them.

The mountains, of course, are where the Tour gets decided; in particular, the 2000 Tour gets decided on the very first day in the mountains. "It's not over till it's over," of course, and Jan Ullrich and Marco Pantani put on a fight through all the major climbs, but there's still a pervasive sense that once Armstrong dons the yellow jersey, all that remains for the other riders is to try to get the second and third spots on the podium.

As in other years, the battle for the green points jersey offers an entertaining (and more hotly contested) counterpoint to the battle for the overall win. Telekom's Erik Zabel is eager to win the jersey for a record fifth time, but Australian sprinter Robby McEwen is determined to make things difficult for him, and Tom Steels is certainly worth keeping an eye on as well.

Commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen do a great job as always in presenting the race; Sherwen provides interesting background information on the race and selected riders. We also get a few interviews, such as Lance Armstrong discussing his main rivals and David Millar commenting on the experience of climbing Mont Ventoux. These segments would be better off in a "special features" section rather than incorporated into the race coverage itself, but they are informative and will particularly be appreciated by newcomers to cycle racing, as they help lay out the main contenders and provide useful context for appreciating the action.

The extended edition

WCP has produced two different DVD programs of the 2000 Tour de France; the earlier release (Lance Armstrong Back to Back) was slightly under four hours in length, and was only available in a bundle with the 1999 Tour. This version of the 2000 Tour, packaged separately, takes that coverage and expands on it.

The eight-hour version of the 2000 Tour de France offers extended coverage of four key stages. (Note that in the 2000 Tour, the beginning day with its short individual time trial was called "Stage 1" instead of the traditional "Prologue," which is why there's a Stage 21).

On the whole, the extended coverage allows for a more complete presentation of the key mountain stages, generally starting with the first climb of the day and continuing from there, with editing of flat sections and downhills done as needed. That's not to say that all of the extended footage is completely necessary. Stage 10, for instance, could have benefited from more editing in the first half of the stage, before the really interesting action starts with the Hautacam climb. Similarly, Stage 15 has a good thirty minutes or so before anything of moment really starts happening. The overall race coverage would also have benefited from a more even distribution of the extra time: Stage 16, with its attacks by Pantani early in the day followed by Armstrong's one moment of real weakness in this year's Tour, could have been much more interesting with more than the 24 minutes that it has here.

Here's the breakdown of the stages. The stages that have extended footage are in bold.

The 2000 Tour de France is a four-DVD set, attractively packaged in a wide plastic keepcase. Each of the DVDs is conveniently labeled with which stages appear on that disc.

Video

The image quality for this edition of the Tour is quite good. It's presented in its original television aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and overall looks clean and sharp, with nicely bright and clear colors. A few instances of picture break-up occur, particularly in the mountains, but this is entirely due to the difficulties of transmitting the original broadcast footage, and isn't a problem of the DVD transfer. All in all, viewers will be pleased with how this looks.

Audio

The Dolby 2.0 audio is also quite pleasing. The commentary from Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen is always clear and easy to understand, and there's no music in the soundtrack to distract from the "live" feeling of the program. Race ambiance is included in the background and is always kept balanced with the rest of the track.

Extras

There are no special features included. However, I was pleased to note that WCP has re-done the menus for this extended version of the 2000 Tour: they are now very user-friendly text titles that list the starting and ending points of each stage, with no spoiler images.

Final thoughts

If you enjoy following the Tour de France, then you'll want to own the 2000 edition, and the extended 8-hour version offers a more satisfying experience of the race than the shorter earlier release. Considered among the five Tours won by Lance Armstrong, the 2000 Tour rates reasonably well. It doesn't match up to the stellar 2003 Tour (which would be hard to do!), but it's on a par with the solid 1999 Tour and 2001 Tour, and it's definitely more entertaining than the 2002 Tour. This isn't a race that I'd advice newcomers to cycling to start with (the four-hour 2003 Tour is a better option) but I'll give it a strong "recommended" for cycling fans.