2008 Tour de France Route Unveiled

When, earlier this week, the Tour de France directors Patrice Clerc and Christian Prudhomme embraced an initiative by the Union Cycliste Internationale and World Anti-Doping Agency to create a biological passport in the fight against doping, there was hope that three years of polemic were about to come to an end. Instead, in their presentation of the 2008 Tour at the Palais des Congrès in Paris on Thursday, Clerc and Prudhomme again spoke about their displeasure with the way cycling is being run.

Although an invitation to the glitzy presentation was extended to UCI president Pat McQuaid, the Irishman decided not to fly in from his Swiss base. "I told Patrice Clerc that I would be interested in coming," McQuaid told VeloNews, "but I didn't want to be embarrassed by listening to him say they would ignore what the UCI management committee had agreed upon in September, that the 18 ProTour teams have to be accepted at the Tour de France.

"Also, I knew that if I came to Paris the French press would be asking me what I thought about Clerc saying they couldn't accept all the ProTour teams. And I didn't want to re-open the polemic. I told Clerc this week that I am ready to sit down with him as soon as possible to talk about the future."

While Clerc, the president of ASO, the company that owns and runs the Tour, did say in his speech Thursday that no one would tell him who could ride the Tour, and that no team was guaranteed a start next year's race, he was more subdued in his remarks than he was at the past two Tour presentations. The words "union," "cycliste" and "internationale" never passed his lips. But race director Prudhomme repeated remarks he made during the 2007 Tour that the "system" in cycling (i.e. the UCI ProTour) has to change.

Things are already beginning to change. The famous biological passport that is being introduced next year to combat doping in a more comprehensive way did bring together the UCI, ASO and WADA. And the prospect of a voluntary meeting between Clerc and McQuaid could go even further to healing cycling's wounds.