The 2004 Tour de France was the 91st edition of Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The Tour began in Liège on 3 July and finished on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on 25 July. The first 14 teams in the at 31 January 2004 were automatically invited. These were: Wildcards were sent to a further seven teams. Initially the organisers had an option for a 22nd team, which would be Kelme, but after Jesús Manzano exposed doping use in that team, Kelme was not invited, and the race started with 21 teams of nine cyclists.