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What should we expect at this year's Tour? Hopefully a much different atmosphere than last year.

The 2007 Tour de France was marred with too many scandals. There was Christian Moreni, an Italian at the back of the race, who got caught and then subsequently got his entire Cofidis team thrown out. Alexandre Vinokourov organized and arranged for financing for his Kazakstan based Astana team.

But he was having a really bad race until winning the Stage 13 Time Trial. But it turned out he’d doped so he and his team were tossed out.

And who can forget “The Rasmussen Affair” which was absolutely dismal. Michael Rasmussen got on the podium day after day looking dour while whispered details of his doping were overshadowing the race. The media pressure was intense and the organization eventually sacked him after confirming additional details. The guapo (that's handsome in Spanish) Alberto Contador stepped on the podium. What a breath of fresh air! He won the race but some journalists couldn't stop grumbling about doping and refused to believe any winners could be clean.

There has been a lot of activity to combat the doping this past year. Slipstream is a new team run by Jonathan Vaughters and based in Colorado. He instituted some new doping controls that have become a model program. Dave Zabriske, Christian Vandevelde, Danny Pate, David Millar, Magnus Backstedt, Julian Dean, Tom Danielson and Christophe Laurent are some of the new team. It will be interesting to see how they do, especially Dave Zabriske who seems to be an expert in crashing out of big races the first week!

The 2008 Teams

The backers of Astana offered Lance Armstrong’s mentor, Yohann Bruyneel, a job after his Discovery team folded. The new Astana team is basically the old Discovery team, now headquartered in Spain. Yohann instituted a similar doping program costing 460,000 euros a year. The organizers of the three "grand" Tours decided to not invite Astana to any of its events in 2008 even though the current team has nothing to do with the sins of the previous Astana team. Contador was invited to the Giro d’Italia just 8 days before the start of the race and ended up winning. If he'd been in a program of doping, they should have caught him but there's no evidence of that. But he’s still not invited to the Tour de France this season.
High Road was originally T-Mobile from Germany but is now US-based. George Hincapie, Michael Barry, Mark Cavendish, Bert Grabsch, Bradley Wiggins, Marco Pinotti and Michael Rogers are part of this new team.

The 2008 Contenders

But who is going to win? First and third place (Contador and Leipheimer) won't be there. The Paris podium could be Cadel Evans, Carlos Sastre, Yaroslav Popovych, Haimar Zubeldia, Vladimir Karpets, Mikel Astarloza, Alejandro Valverde or maybe one of the Italians? My pick for best climber is Juan Mauricio Soler-Hernandez from Colombia. Tom Boonen recently got caught with some cocaine in his system, so he’s out this year as a sprint favorite. (Don’t ask!). The guys still contending could be Thor Hushovd, Robbie Hunter, Robbie McEwen or Daniele Bennati.

There have been stories of various people who tried to cheat in the Tour. The very first winner of the 1903 Tour got caught taking the train the following year. Tom Simpson died on a mountain after taking amphetamines. I’ve heard arguments that drugs alone cannot win the Tour. The athlete still has to have the innate talent, drive, training, perseverance and mental toughness.

No matter what happens, the Tour is always exciting!