When, earlier this week, the Tour de France directors Patrice Clerc and Christian Prudhomme embraced an initiative by the Union Cycliste Internationale and World Anti-Doping Agency to create a biological passport in the fight against doping, there was hope that three years of polemic were about to come to an end. Instead, in their presentation of the 2008 Tour at the Palais des Congrès in Paris on Thursday, Clerc and Prudhomme again spoke about their displeasure with the way cycling is being run.

Although an invitation to the glitzy presentation was extended to UCI president Pat McQuaid, the Irishman decided not to fly in from his Swiss base. “I told Patrice Clerc that I would be interested in coming,” McQuaid told VeloNews, “but I didn’t want to be embarrassed by listening to him say they would ignore what the UCI management committee had agreed upon in September, that the 18 ProTour teams have to be accepted at the Tour de France.

“Also, I knew that if I came to Paris the French press would be asking me what I thought about Clerc saying they couldn’t accept all the ProTour teams. And I didn’t want to re-open the polemic. I told Clerc this week that I am ready to sit down with him as soon as possible to talk about the future.”

While Clerc, the president of ASO, the company that owns and runs the Tour, did say in his speech Thursday that no one would tell him who could ride the Tour, and that no team was guaranteed a start next year’s race, he was more subdued in his remarks than he was at the past two Tour presentations. The words “union,” “cycliste” and “internationale” never passed his lips. But race director Prudhomme repeated remarks he made during the 2007 Tour that the “system” in cycling (i.e. the UCI ProTour) has to change.

Things are already beginning to change. The famous biological passport that is being introduced next year to combat doping in a more comprehensive way did bring together the UCI, ASO and WADA. And the prospect of a voluntary meeting between Clerc and McQuaid could go even further to healing cycling’s wounds.

After the formal presentation — in which the image of disgraced yellow jersey Michael Rasmussen was razed from the 2007 Tour video — Clerc talked about cycling’s problems, and how they can be resolved.

“I think this image problem — I’m talking about doping — is the No. 1 problem for cycling,” he said. “We must eradicate this stain, and then the sport can regain the place it never should have quit — that is to say, one of the greatest sports on the planet.

“Bicycle riding has never been as popular as it is to day. The sport is fully on the rise, and yet at the very top, we have this image problem. But this sport, because doping has taken it off course, is ready for what I call a renaissance at the elite level.

“Cycling is tackling the problem seriously. And that’s why we have to go as far as we possibly can. The [biological] passport, which all the different parties have agreed upon, represents a considerable advance that Dick Pound, the president of WADA, tells me is a sort of test for all sports.

“So now we have one solution that will allow us to say at the start of next year’s Tour de France that no event in the world, any discipline in the world, is doing as much to allow the event to take place with participants that are the most closely monitored in the history of sport.”

Others attending the presentation welcomed the all-encompassing passport proposal. This year’s Tour champion, Alberto Contador, said that “if this is a solution to overcome what has happened before then it’s a very good.” Contador’s runner-up, Cadel Evans, who also flew into Paris for the day, said, “It seems that blood doping and [similar methods] are still being used by riders, so if [the passport] is going to fight against that I’m all for it. It’s a step in the right direction.” Johnny Weltz, the Danish directeur sportif of Slipstream-Chipotle, which is hoping for a wild-card slot at the 2008 Tour, told VeloNews that the biological passport “will be a statement for the Tour, and then there’s this new union of [teams for an ethical cycling that Slipstream has joined]. I think that it’s the right way to go because … if we want to keep the sport going I think that’s the way we have to follow.”

No time bonuses, shorter transfers
Turning to the course for next year’s Tour, Weltz and his team manager, Jonathan Vaughters, concurred that it could be a good one for the newly strengthened American team — assuming they receive an invitation from ASO.

“With no prologue, and no time bonuses for the sprints, we could come into the time trial [on the fourth day] with everyone level,” said Vaughters. “That would give Davis, Millar or Zabriskie a good chance of taking the yellow jersey.”

The stage 4 TT on a 29km loop at Cholet is unusually short, and that could suit Slipstream recruit Zabriskie, but Team CSC’s world TT champ, Fabian Cancellara, will also have his say in such a time trial.

However, the time trialists and sprinters won’t have a lot of chances for glory at the 95th Tour de France. As has been known for many months, there is no prologue on July 5 at the start town of Brest, in western Brittany, and stage 1 finishes atop a steep hill. As for the first of four summit finishes, at Super-Besse in the Massif Central, it comes less than a week into the Tour.

Two mountain stages in the Pyrénées conclude the Tour’s opening phase before the first rest day at Pau on July 15. “It’s definitely a climbers’ Tour,” said Evans, who told VeloNews that he would have to ride the stages in the Alps because he wasn’t familiar with either the mountaintop at Italy’s Prato Nevoso, which sees the finish of stage 15, or the mighty Col de la Bonette (also known as the Restefond), which towers over stage 16 at 9,193 feet elevation — the highest point of any Tour and a climb that was last crossed by the Tour (from the opposite side) in 1993.

There follows a formidable stage 17, over the Galibier and Croix de Fer passes before a finish at L’Alpe d’Huez, and a closing time trial of 53km from Cérilly to St. Amand-Montrond the day before the July 27 finish in Paris.

Discussing the excellent course, which includes no long transfers, Clerc explained: “We wanted a very rhythmical course from the first day, with no prologue, but a real stage with a real climb at the end, followed by a succession of difficulties during the first week, including a relatively short time trial and then some medium mountain stages. In this way, the race will never be asleep; we’ll never go back to having a long procession [of flat stages] through the first 10 days.”

Turning to the final week, the ASO president said: “With the finish at L’Alpe d’Huez and the final time trial so close to the finish, everything can change up to the last minute. And that’s what we wanted. It’s perhaps a race that offers fewer big difficulties on one day, but offers lots of difficulties spaced throughout the whole event.”

Let’s hope that all of the difficulties will be topographical ones, and not the slew of doping and associated problems that scarred this year’s Tour.

Tour de France 2008

Stage 1	Saturday 5 July	Brest to Plumelec	195km	Flat
Stage 2	Sunday 6 July	Auray to Saint-Brieuc	165km	Flat
Stage 3	Monday 7 July	Saint-Maloto Nantes	195km	Flat
Stage 4	Tuesday 8 July	Cholet to Cholet	29km	I.T.T.
Stage 5	Wednesday 9 July	Cholet to Châteauroux	230km	Flat
Stage 6	Thursday 10 July	Aigurande to Super-Besse Sancy	195km	Hilly
Stage 7	Friday 11 July	Brioude to Aurillac	158km	Hilly
Stage 8	Saturday 12 July	Figeac to Toulouse	174km	Flat
Stage 9	Sunday 13 July	Toulouse to Bagnères-de-Bigorre	222km	Mtn.
Stage 10	Monday 14 July	Pau to Hautacam	154km	Mtn.
Rest Day	Tuesday 15 July	Pau	-	-
Stage 11	Wednesday 16 July	Lannemezan to Foix	166km	Hilly
Stage 12	Thursday 17 July	Lavelanet to Narbonne	168km	Flat
Stage 13	Friday 18 July	Narbonne to Nîmes	182 km	Flat
Stage 14	Saturday 19 July	Nîmes to Digne-les-Bains	182km	Flat
Stage 15	Sunday 20 July	Digne-les-Bains to Prato Nevoso	216km	Mtn.
Rest Day	Monday 21 July	Cueno	-	-
Stage 16	Tuesday 22 July	Cuneo to Jausiers	157km	Mtn.
Stage 17	Wednesday 23 July	Embrun to L'Alpe-d'Huez	210km	Mtn.
Stage 18	Thursday 24 July	Bourg-d'Oisans to Saint-Étienne	197km	Hilly
Stage 19	Friday 25 July	Roanne to Montluçon	163km	Flat
Stage 20	Saturday 26 July	Cérilly to Saint-Amand-Montrond	53km	I.T.T.
Stage 21	Sunday 27 July	Étampes to Paris (Champs-Élysées)	143km	Flat

The Climbs of the 2008 Tour de FranceStage 6(Aigurande - Super-Besse, 195km)Col de la Croix-Morand, 8km at 5.1 percent average gradientSuper-Besse climb, 11km at 4.7 percent
Stage 7(Brioude - Aurillac, 158km):Col d'Entremont, 6.5km at 4.7 percentCol du Pas de Peyrol (Puy Mary), 7.8km at 6.2 percent
Stage 9(Toulouse - Bagneres-de-Bigorre, 222km):Col de Peyresourde, 13.2km at 7.1 percent (1569 meters )Col d'Aspin, 12.1km at 6.6 percent (1489 m)
Stage 10(Pau - Hautacam, 154km)Col du Tourmalet, 17.7km at 7.5 percent (2115 m )Climb to Hautacam, 14.2km at 7.2 percent (1520 m)
Stage 11(Lannemezan - Foix, 166km)Col de la Crouzette, 11.6km at 7.1 percent
Stage 15(Digne-les-Bains - Prato Nevoso, Italy, 216km)Col de Larche, 16.1km at 4 percent (1948 m )Climb to Prato Nevoso, 11.1km at 7.1 percent (1440 m)
Stage 16(Cuneo - Jausiers, 157km)Col de la Lombarde, 21.2km at 7 percent (2351 m )Col de Restefond - La Bonette, 26.7km at 6.2 percent (2802 m)
Stage 17(Embrun - Alpe-d'Huez, 210km)Col du Galibier, 20.9km at 5.6 percent (2645 m )Col de la Croix-de-Fer, 29.2km at 5.2 percent (2067 m)Climb to Alpe d'Huez, 13.3km at 8.6 percent (1860 m)
Stage 18(Bourg-d'Oisans - Saint-Etienne, 197km)Col de Parmenie, 5.3km at 7 percentLa Croix de Montvieux, 13.7km at 5.5 percent
SummaryTotal Distance: 3500km10 flat stages5 mountain stages4 medium mountain stages2 Individual Time-trialsNo Team Time Trial4 mountain-top finishes2 rest days82 kilometers of individual time-trialsA total of 19 Category 1, Category 2 or hors categorie climbs