Bradley Wiggins has vowed to beat Mark Cavendish in the race to become the first Briton to wear the Tour de France leader's yellow jersey since David Millar in 2000.

The double Beijing track gold medallist is among the favourites to win the first stage - a 15.5km time trial through the streets of Monaco tomorrow.

And that, coupled with a team time trial three days later - for which Wiggins's Garmin team will be among the front-runners - has got the 29year-old's confidence sky high.

"Fabian Cancellara has tended to be in a league of his own in the time trial so you'd have to say stage one is his to lose," said Wiggins.

"But I'll be going out to win and I like the look of the course. The yellow jersey is bigger than Olympic gold. It's the pinnacle of the cycling world so to get into that would be fantastic. There will be nearly 200 other riders aiming to do just that, Cav included, so it's certainly not mine by right.

"But we've got a phenomenal team that should win the team time trial, which should put our leading rider in the general classification in yellow come Wednesday and hopefully at the time that will be me."

One rider bidding for overall glory is returning seven-time champion Lance Armstrong, who still believes he has the stamina to be the oldest winner in Tour history at the age of 37.

And Wiggins is among those who believes the Texan could do it.

"It'll be damn hard for him but you wouldn't write the guy off," he said. "People have done that in the past and he's proved them wrong every time."

Stage one: Tomorrow - Monaco, 15.5km. First rider starts at 3pm. Last rider 6.30pm. TV coverage on ITV4 and British Eurosport.