The 1988 Tour de France was the 75th Tour de France, taking place from July 4 to July 24, 1988. It consisted of 22 stages over 3281 km, ridden at an average speed of 38.909 km/h. The race was won by Pedro Delgado with the top three positions at the end of the race being occupied by specialist climbers.

Months before the start of the Tour, director Jean-François Naquet-Radiguet was replaced by Xavier Louy.

The Union Cycliste International (UCI) introduced the rule that a cycling race could not span three weekends. The Tour de France could therefore only start on Monday 4 July, and the prologue was removed. The Tour organisers were not happy with this, and they extended the Tour by adding a 'prelude' or 'preface' to the race, circumventing the rule by making it unofficial. Each team would ride for 3.8 kilometres (2.4 mi), and one cyclist per team would then finish one kilometer on his own. The recorded times were not used for the rest of the Tour, but the cyclist with the fastest time would wear the yellow jersey in the next stage.

The Tour de France (French pronunciation: [tuʁ də fʁɑ̃s]) is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than 3,600 kilometres (2,200 mi) and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The race is broken into day-long segments, called stages. Individual times to finish each stage are aggregated to determine the overall winner at the end of the race. The rider with the lowest aggregate time at the end of each day wears the leader's yellow jersey on the next day of racing. The course changes every year, but the race has always finished in Paris. Since 1975, the climax of the final stage has been along the Champs-Élysées.

The tour typically has 21 days of racing and covers 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi). The shortest Tour was in 1904 at 2,420 kilometres (1,500 mi), the longest in 1926 at 5,745 kilometres (3,570 mi). The three weeks usually include two rest days, sometimes used to transport riders from a finish in one town to the start in another. The race alternates between clockwise and anticlockwise circuits of France. The first anticlockwise circuit was in 1913. The New York Times said the "Tour de France is arguably the most physiologically demanding of athletic events." The effort was compared to "running a marathon several days a week for nearly three weeks", while the total elevation of the climbs was compared to "climbing three Everests."

France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).

Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.

Pedro Delgado Robledo (born April 15, 1960 in Segovia), also known as Perico, is a Spanish former professional road bicycle racer. He won the 1988 Tour de France, as well as the Vuelta a España in 1985 and 1989.

Delgado is 171 centimetres tall (5 ft 7-1/2 in) and used to weigh 64 kilograms (141 lb). He was a good climber, with an aggressive style, making cycling a spectacle, which gained him fans. On one hand, there were days when he was extremely successful attacking. On the other, he occasionally suffered from big losses of time due to mistakes or strokes of bad luck. He was also a good time-trialist until the nineties, when it became difficult for him to adapt to technical changes in the time-trial bicycles.

The ending of the 1987 Tour de France and the 1985 Vuelta a España and the whole 1989 Tour are among his most memorable participations in major competitions.

He works now as a sports commentator for Televisión Española during important cycling events.

Delgado took part in the Tour de France eleven times. During his first participation, when he was 23, he rose to second place in the overall classification after the 17th stage, before falling back later in the event. Since then, Delgado was determined to achieve victory in this competition.

Massimo Ghirotto (born June 25, 1961 in Boara Pisani) is an Italian former road bicycle racer.