Tour De France Hoping to Avoid Scandal This Year

Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 9:08:20 am PST

After years of doping scandals, the Tour de France limped to a start today without a reigning champion: Tour de France looks to emerge from doping cloud.

The Lance Armstrong era of the Tour de France couldn’t be more over. After the mighty Texan went seven-for-seven from 1999 through 2005, there will be no returning champion for a third consecutive year and thus no presumptive favorite as the world’s most storied bike race makes its way for nearly 2,200 miles around the country.

Armstrong’s dynastic American team is gone, too, a victim of its sport’s doping troubles. But two new American teams have stepped in to replace - if only in physical presence - the disbanded U.S. Postal Service-Discovery Channel machine, which hogged eight of the last nine yellow jerseys.

Jonathan Vaughters, a support rider for Armstrong when the Texan began the greatest reign in the Tour’s 105-year history, returns to the scene as the director of the newly branded Garmin-Chipotle team.

Also, the team that used to be one of Discovery’s strongest rivals under the sponsorship of T-Mobile will be carrying the Columbia active-wear brand from Brittany to the Champs Élysées in Paris.

Here’s the official site: Tour de France 2008. The opening stage (there’s no time trial prologue this year) has been won by GCE’s Alejandro Valverde.