Tour de France: Start of race for yellow jersey and redemption

The world's largest annual sporting event begins today aiming to regain credibility after years of damaging doping scandals. Alasdair Fotheringham reports from Brest

(JASPER JUINEN/GETTY IMAGES)

After the Tour de France rolls out of Brest at lunchtime today, for many the events's main interest will not reside in the slow emergence, over three weeks and 3,500 kilometres, of the overall winner.

Rather, the burning issue is this: can the Tour de France – and professional road-racing with it – regain the credibility blighted by seemingly endless successions of doping scandals?

Questioning the sport's long-term capacity to clear itself up has become a depressing norm among the Tour's media pack. But there are some encouraging signs. All the Tour 2008 teams have been subject to increasingly strict controls from the usual anti-doping authorities over the last six months – in the shape of the biological passport. The passport, which is essentially a record of riders' long-term physiological values, shows up any major, potentially suspect changes in those values. Any riders showing such changes are stopped from racing.

For the first time the Tour includes testing for human growth hormone and this year has seen the introduction of a "chaperone" system, in which riders due for testing are accompanied from the finish line to the mobile anti-doping lab.

Apart from these measures, three top-tier teams – CSC-Saxobank, Garmin-Chipotle and Columbia – are running sophisticated and far-ranging anti-doping programmes of their own, run by independent authorities. It is no coincidence that all three of these teams have recently succeeded in bringing in new, badly-needed sponsors to the sport. A Columbia representative stated yesterday that one of the reasons the company had decided to back the team was "because of its dedication to fair competition".

"Cycling has developed a much more human face this year," the Tour race director, Christian Prudhomme, said recently. "So far in 2008, the racing has been different." His implication was that the anti-doping battle, if by no means won, has at least caused some significant changes.

The Tour has drawn its own line in the sand as well. Last year's winner, Alberto Contador, is not taking part because his team, Astana, were entangled in the doping scandals of 2006 and 2007. Contador was not part of the team when the scandals broke. The Spaniard signed for Astana in January 2008.

But the precautionary measure has sent out the strongest of warnings to the teams involved this year, that not even winning the Tour is enough to guarantee a place in the race.

One hugely important indirect consequence of Contador's absence is to leave the fight for the yellow jersey wide open. The media spotlight has swung on to Cadel Evans, the Australian runner-up in last year's race. But as Evans's team manager at Silence-Lotto, Marc Sergeant, puts it: "With no Contador, everybody sees this as the chance of a lifetime to win. Not just Cadel."

The Tour has attempted to turn the uncertainty up to a maximum by cutting out the traditional opening prologue and time bonuses for stage wins. This means that the fight for stage wins and top placings, at least initially, will be much more intense than usual. As Britain's top sprinter, Mark Cavendish, pointed out yesterday: "The Tour is already a different event to all the others. With the overall contenders and guys looking for stage wins all trying to be in the front in the last 50km, it's normally five or six kilometres an hour faster than any other race."

The winner of 17 road races this year, Cavendish's best opportunities for glory in the Tour will be in the first week's bunch sprints. It is only Cavendish's second Tour de France but he refuses to be nervous about it.

"Why should I be?" he said. "I know I'm the fastest bike rider in the world. Technically I'm not so good, but I'm the fastest."

The Manxman's first opportunity to cut a dash in a bunch sprint will come tomorrow at Saint-Brieuc, but the overall contenders will not have to wait much longer before they are forced to show their hand. Tuesday's 29km time trial is the first real test of strength and on Thursday the race's first summit finish, at Super-Besse deep in the Massif Centrale mountains, will be another important challenge.

However, the battle for yellow will really come alight in the Alps in the third week. Tackling the Bonette-Restefond, France's highest mountain pass, which peaks at a lung-bursting 2,802m, will be one key moment. The infamous Alpe D'Huez climb, cycling's most prestigious ascent, will be another.

Predicting a winner, as the race enters uncharted waters in the fight against doping and given that there are so few clear favourites, is a risky business. But as Prudhomme told the French newspaper L'Equipe yesterday: "Whatever happens between now and Paris, we won't come out of this the same."

It can be taken for granted that Prudhomme was not only talking about the results from the racing. In the long-term, the results from the anti-doping labs will be far more important.

Alasdair Fotheringham writes for www.cyclingweekly.co.uk

Four aces and a wild card: Possible Tour winners... and the Briton to watch in the first week

*Cadel Evans

Nationality: Australian.

Team: Silence-Lotto.

Age: 32.

Goal: Overall victory.

Likely impact on the Tour Has the best chance of riding into Paris in yellow in three weeks.

Strength: Time-trialling.

Achilles heel: Doesn't do unpredictable race scenarios.

Off the bike: Sells Free Tibet T-shirts on his website.

*Alejandro Valverde

Nationality: Spanish.

Team: Caisse D'Epargne. Age: 28.

Goal: Overall victory.

Strength: Sprinting, climbing, short to medium time-trials

Achilles heel: Long time-trials. Off the bike: Inconsistent in three-week races.

Off the bike: Likes fast cars and big motorbikes.

*Denis Menchov

Nationality: Russian.

Team: Rabobank.

Age: 30.

Goal: Top three.

Strength: Blasts rivals in time-trials then sticks like glue to their back wheels in the mountains.

Achilles heel: Tends to come unstuck from back wheels in the third week.

Off the bike: Exudes an air of perpetual gloom.

*Carlos Sastre

Nationality: Spanish.

Team: CSC-Saxobank.

Goal: Overall victory.

Age: 33. Strength: Mr Consistency. Has completed 17 major Tours – but has won only four races and one Tour stage.

Achilles heel: Long in the tooth. Allergic to attacking – and this is going to be a wide-open Tour.

Off the bike: Keen charity worker.

*Mark Cavendish

Nationality: British.

Team: Columbia.

Age: 23. Goal: Not an overall contender – but Britain's first realistic chance of a winner in first week's bunch sprints in over two decades. Strength: Rated world's fastest in final 100 metres. Achilles heel: Big mountains. Off the bike: Former bank clerk and ballroom dancer.