Tour begins in wake of doping scandals

The three-week Tour de France starts on Saturday with organisers hoping to win cycling's most prestigious race by reaching the finish line without any doping scandals.

Drug use and cheating in recent years have depleted the race of many of cycling's biggest names, giving a new crop of would-be stars a chance to make their names.

Cadel Evans, Alejandro Valverde, Carlos Sastre, Denis Menchov and Damiano Cunego are seen among the most likely contenders to win the three-week race that takes riders over more than 3,500 kilometres.

"I'd rate myself as a pretty good chance to win," said Evans, who has progressively improved from an eight place finish in 2005, to fourth the next year and runner-up in 2007. One sign of his potential star status? The Australian now has the same bodyguard that Lance Armstrong once had.

The race begins with a 197.5km flat ride through Brittany. For the first time since 1967, the Tour will begin without an opening-day prologue.

It also starts without a defending champion for the second straight year. The team of 2007 winner Alberto Contador - Astana - wasn't invited because of doping scandals it faced in the last two years. American Floyd Landis was stripped of his 2006 title after testing positive for synthetic testosterone.

Among other big names out this year are Kazakhstan's Alexandre Vinokourov - who was removed from the Tour last year for a positive test for a blood transfusion which led to the ouster of his entire Astana team - and Astana rider American Levi Leipheimer.

The 2006 Giro d'Italia winner and two-time Tour podium finisher Ivan Basso is also absent. The Italian is serving out the last few months of a two-year ban that he received after acknowledging involvement in the Spanish blood-doping probe known as Operation Puerto.

"People are talking about the ones who are absent, but once the race starts, people will stop talking about them and start talking about those who are here," said Patrice Leclerc, head of Tour organiser ASO.

Some are making a statement about drug use. Italy's Cunego, winner of the 2004 Giro d'Italia, has tattooed "I'm doping free" temporarily on his left arm, a Lampre team spokesman said.

Armstrong, in a published interview, admitted that the Tour is tricky to predict this year but said he liked Evans' chances, and ruled out Cunego as not a strong enough climber or time-trial racer.

"He'll never win the Tour ... And that's not a slap at him," the seven-time champion told cyclingnews.com. "He's a little guy. I just don't think he's a Tour rider."

Evans said he's most worried about Russia's Menchov, the Tour's best young rider in 2003 and the fifth-place finisher in 2006. Sastre, a Spaniard who has finished in the top 10 for five of the last six Tours, has a strong CSC team including the Schleck brothers - Andy and Frank.

Valverde, a 28-year-old Spaniard, is looking strong after winning the Spanish championship and the Dauphine Libere race last month. But due to crashes and other ailments, he only finished one of the four Tours he started - with a sixth-place finish last year.

Valverde, a strong all-around rider backed by a solid Caisse d'Epargne squad, said he expects that the field of pre-race favourites will be winnowed down to the true contenders during three days in the Alps in week 3.

"I am here really to fight for the podium. But from the moment that you're involved in fighting for one of the top three spots, it's clear - why not first?" Valverde said. "If in the end I'm second or third, I'll be satisfied too."

This year's 95th edition of the Tour takes riders from Brittany through the Massif Central range, then through the Pyrenees, across Provence to the Alps and up into Paris for the July 27 finish on the Champs-Elysees. Two time-trials await in Stage 4 and the penultimate Stage 20.

Race organisers hope fans will be able to focus on the sporting drama instead of doping scandals that overshadowed the 2007 race, which ended in the closest-ever finish: Contador beat Evans by 23 seconds and Leipheimer by 31.

"This race has never been as open as this year - so I'm convinced that this Tour has everything it needs to be a great Tour. It's up to the riders to give us the answer," Leclerc said.