The Tour starts and Armstrong repeats: without doping you can't win it

The more the Tour wants to drive it out and forget it, the more doping reappears with its cumbersome shadows threatening new disturbing episodes: the Grande Boucle is ready to start from the white beaches of Portovecchio in Corsica, in one of the most beautiful natural settings in the Mediterranean, but the theme of the Epo, which has upset the roll of honor of the last three decades of the French race, takes center stage, almost overshadowing the competitive one of the foreseeable duel between Chris Froome and Alberto Contador. It is always Lance Armstrong who stokes the fire of the controversy, for seven years in a row the superman of the Tour, today the great traitor, who, interviewed by "Le Monde", reiterates that you cannot arrive in Paris in the yellow jersey without the help of the doping. A statement that triggered the indignant reaction of the president of the UCI, McQuaid and of riders like Cadel Evans who cited himself as an example of a winner of the Tour without resorting to doping practices. But it's not just Armstrong's perfidious game of massacre that disturbs the eve of the race: France is also shaken by the backdated positivity of a beloved champion like Laurent Jalabert, forced to resign as coach of the transalpine national team for this reason. That of the popular Jaja is just a preview of a swarm of burning revelations destined to shake up the cycling world again with the Tour still in progress: in fact, on 18 July the Senatorial Commission of Inquiry into the effectiveness of the fight against doping in France will announce the test results of urine samples taken during the 1998 Tour, the one won by Pantani and the Festina scandal. Back then it was not possible to intercept traces of erythropoietin. The general impression is that these retroactive tests turn out to be the last major roundup of cyclists from an era that we want to be outdated, in which taking on the epo was like filling water bottles with water. In this climate, the centenary Tour starts which sees Chris Froome, the former wingman of Bradley Wiggins, the great absentee who this year got lost in the rain of the Giro so much as to meditate a farewell to the great stage races. Bookmakers put the leader of Team Sky at 1,80 against Alberto Contador's 3,20. Behind them the void even if there are some good names like those of Joaquin Rodriguez (given at 20), Cadel Evans (at 33) and Andy Schleck (at 65). For the first yellow jersey, from Portovecchio to Bastia, 213 kilometers practically all flat, eyes focused on Mark Cavendish who in the predictable final sprint will however have to beware of uncomfortable customers such as the German Greipel and the Slovakian Sagan.