Mark Cavendish is gearing up to take the cycling gold at the upcoming 2012 Olympics in London!

The greatest cycling spectacle of the year with an encapsulating history is on the horizon with the Tour de France capturing the betting imagination not only in France itself but in the UK, Germany Spain and all over the world.

As the race covers more than 2,000 miles over three tortuous weeks, successful Tour de France betting is about picking the individuals and teams who have the history, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness to be there when the final places are determined on the Champs Elysee.

After the Olympics and football’s World Cup, the Tour de France is the world’s third-largest sporting event, broadcast in more than 140 countries. Until two years ago, however, the sport had been indelibly tainted by drugs’ dark spectre, which had invariably had an adverse impact upon cycling betting.

For too long, the list of drug cheats and widespread evidence of systematic team doping had been on a par with that of mid-70s East German athletes, an unfortunate scenario which meant that betting on cycling and the availability of cycling betting markets was severely limited