Champion Armstrong wins Tour de France prologue

Three times winner and defending champion Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France prologue over seven kilometres on Saturday to earn the race leader's yellow jersey.

Riding last, the American, who also won the prelude to the world's biggest cycling race in 1999, clocked nine minutes and 8.78 seconds on a tricky, hilly course made treacherous by drizzle.

Frenchman Laurent Jalabert was second, two seconds behind, with Lithuania's Raimondas Rumsas third a further second back.

Armstrong rode the course, the opening 3kms of which were all downhill, at an average speed of 42 kilometres per hour.

It was the U.S. Postal leader's 12th stage victory in the Tour and his seventh in an individual time trial. The American also won the Dauphine Libere and Midi Libre races this season.

Colombia's Santiago Botero, the Kelme team leader, was fourth in 9:12, with Briton David Millar, the prologue winner in 2000, fifth in 9:13.

Last year's prologue winner Christophe Moreau of France could only manage 40th in a time of 9.32.

Millar, 25, will wear the white jersey for the best young rider in Sunday's first stage, while Jalabert, last year's King of the Mountains, has the green jersey.

Sunday's stage takes the riders around the Grand Duchy over a bumpy 192.5 kms course.