When the Tour de France starts next weekend, it will not just look for a winner, it will also be looking for some kind of credibility as a sporting event. And it will be looking hard. For some, as usual, it is all the media's fault that this sorry state of affairs has come about. Ken Livingstone has stated that if the British public read the newspapers about the Tour's 48 hours in England, they will not realise it was the same event they had just seen.
It's a fair point. Police estimate that half a million spectators will come to watch the prologue in central London on Saturday. The glamour and glitz of the Tour, as well as its accessibility, will entrance more than a few of them. It is not only the biggest annual sporting event on the planet, it is the only one where you can still come to within metres of its stars for free. How easy would it be to do that with David Beckham?
So far, so wonderful. But sadly, the big news beyond London for the Tour (which is where the scandal-hungry sections of the media get blamed) will be whether cycling can drag itself out of the doping mire in which it has been immersed for far too long. The biggest hurdles are interminable delays to doping cases already open, which mean, for example, that there is still no official Tour winner for 2006.
The American Floyd Landis, who wore the winner's yellow jersey in Paris last year, is still waiting to hear if his alleged positive tests for synthetic testosterone from the race will end in his being cleared or banned for two years. If he goes down, he will appeal; cue more delays.
A massive Spanish anti-doping probe in May 2006, codenamed Operacion Puerto, led to the publication of a list of potentially implicated riders. Some, such as the 2006 Giro d'Italia winner Ivan Basso and 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich, have been linked to the case, and retired or been banned. But they are the exceptions. As the case, officially archived by one judge, grinds its way through the Spanish appeal courts, 50 more riders are said to be under suspicion. But since it is not proven either way, they are in a legal limbo, perpetually suspect.
Fearful of even the slightest whiff of a new scandal, cycling's governing body, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), banned all of them from the Tour de France via an "anti-doping charter", which all race starters must sign. They state they have no links to Puerto and that they will, on request, hand over their DNA to prove it. If involved in a new scandal, they will be fined a year's wages. Other stratagems are in place to beat the cheats, with increasingly strict internal controls brought in by top teams such as CSC and T-Mobile.
All this gives grounds for limited optimism, even if the race director, Christian Prudhomme, says he cannot guarantee a 100 per cent clean Tour. "Things are getting better," David Millar says. "Maybe as little as five years ago you couldn't have won the Tour clean. Now you can."
The gradual levelling of the playing field, combined with the absence of any former Tour winners, makes picking favourites difficult. "It will be a seriously open race," said last year's runner-up, Oscar Pereiro of Spain. "There are no reference points." None of the five British riders due to take part - the most in the Tour since 1987 - are major contenders, but are expected to shine at certain points.
While Millar and the Olympic medallist Bradley Wiggins have made the prologue their main goal, the one looking to make an impact in the first week is the youngest, the 22-year-old Mark Cavendish. The sprinter from the Isle of Man has already bagged six victories this season and, encouragingly, he is a dedicated campaigner against banned drugs.
This is hardly surprising given that Cavendish cut his sporting teeth with British Cycling's World Class Performance Programme where, as he puts it, "there's an incredibly strong anti-doping culture". He was also one of the first riders to sign the UCI's charter, guaranteeing his Tour start.
For a clean race the Tour needs 200 riders like Cavendish, and it is still not certain it has them.
