Tour de France: Riis arrives in Anquetil's town to throw down Viking gauntlet

TOUR DE FRANCE: Champion the target for young guns as Britain's Boardman bids for early glory. Robin Nicholl reports from Rouen

Normandy has known a few conquerors and conflicts in its time. It began with a Viking called Rollon in 911, and this week the Vikings are biking in for more conquests. Notably there is Bjarne Riis, a Dane with designs on a second triumph in the Tour de France, which opens with a time-trial in Rouen.

Riis's performance today is likely to be hampered by yesterday's banning of the bike he planned to ride, under a ruling that forbids "anything that reduces resistance and offers artificial acceleration." One consolation is that Abraham Olano, the principal threat to the Dane, was also planning to use the same design.

Riis will not expect to take the race leader's yellow jersey in the manner which Rollon and his raiders were granted Normandy - a move to prevent them invading Paris and Chartres. Normans like their conquerors bold, but after Guillaume le Conquerant had given King Harold one in the eye at Hastings, they had to wait nearly 900 years to parade public respect for another victorious local lad.

Then, their hero was a cyclist. Jacques Anquetil made a winning Tour debut in 1957 when he was 23, and his first stage success was in his home city of Rouen.

When the Tour opened there 36 years ago, Anquetil wore the leader's colours from day one until the finish in Paris, and he continued to make his fellow Rouennais proud until he died from cancer, aged 52.

The Tour and Rouen have come together this week to remember "Master Jacques" 10 years after the death of a man who won five Tours, two Giros d'Italia, and one Vuelta a Espana.

On Wednesday a road on the banks of the Seine was renamed Quai Jacques Anquetil in the presence of his widow, Jeanine, and Anquetil's team-mates from the Tour of 1957. Today brings Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain to Quincampoix, a small village north of Rouen, to pay homage at the tomb of their fellow five-time winner of the Tour.

Five hours later, the 84th Tour opens at the junction of Quai Jacques Anquetil with a short time-trial for which the Norman would have been an odds-on favourite. His kind of dominance will not reign in this Tour. The Viking Riis was nine years older than Anquetil when he checked the six-in-a-row ambitions of Indurain last year.

Now he is the target, and Spain is providing some ammunition with Olano, who once upset his countrymen by having the effrontery to beat the revered, but now retired, Indurain. This time Olano is their man, and this season the Basque joined Indurain's former sponsors, the finance house of Banesto.

When a Dutch magazine polled other Tour winners for their top three, Indurain voted for Olano, the Frenchman Richard Virenque, and Riis. Merckx tipped Riis with Virenque and compatriot Laurent Jalabert second and third, while Hinault named Jalabert, Mikel Zarrabeitia and Olano.

Apart from Hinault's penchant for being different by naming another Basque, Zarrabeitia (second in the 1994 Vuelta), the big three are agreed on four contenders even if they each have a different finishing order.

There are 3,950 kilometres (2,468 miles) plus the Pyrenees and the Alps between Rouen and the finish in Paris, and ample scope for surprises.

Jan Ullrich, Riis's German team-mate, was last year's revelation, with second place and a stage win on his debut at 22. Even Walter Godefroot, as hard-boiled as managers come, was moved to predict that Ullrich could win the 1997 Tour. Indurain supported that sentiment, having felt the force when the German beat him by 56 seconds in a time-trial, Indurain's speciality, among the vineyards of St Emilion.

The ambitions of Riis, however, come first for Ullrich, but not for those lurking in the wings. With Alex Zulle riding with 12 pins in a collarbone fracture, Switzerland will look to Laurent Dufaux, fourth last year, rather than Tony Rominger, second in 1993, whose motivation is suspect.

New names are rising to the top mainly because of their ability to scale mountain passes. Dufaux's victory on the severe stage to Pamplona was the key to his 1996 success, and the Austrian Peter Luttenberger climbed to fifth on his Tour debut via two good days in the Alps.

Ivan Gotti comes to the Tour, where he was fifth in 1995, having given Italy their first Giro d'Italia in six years. Untimely crashes, though, have left Marco Pantani needing to re-establish his reputation as a climber.

Even Chris Boardman has a mountainous target. "I could be in with a shout in the mountain time-trial at St-Etienne," he said. "This is a potential stage win. The climbing is over after 40km, and the remaining 15km are over a twisting descent to the finish."

That test comes in 14 days,when British hopes are riding on Boardman to spend some time in the yellow jersey, as he did three years ago on his first Tour.

Boardman cannot shake off memories of his crash that broke his wrist and an ankle on the first day of a rain-soaked 1995 Tour. It was also a damp day last year in the Netherlands, when he lost by two seconds to Zulle.

"Even if it rains the course will be OK," he said of the 7.3km (five- mile) circuit which has only one serious corner on its route over the Seine and past the 12th Century cathedral. "It's not technical, and I am very happy."