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The expulsion of race leader Michael Rasmussen for lying to his team about his whereabouts while training and pre-race favourite Alexander Vinokourov for apparently having an illegal blood transfusion have crushed race organizers' hopes for a fresh start to an increasingly scandal-plagued event.
Doping has been part of the sport from the beginning, most race historians agree, but only recently have public attitudes toward it hardened. In one notorious event, British rider Tommy Simpson collapsed and died in 1967 while racing up a brutal mountain in Provence -- his last words a demand to be put back on his bike. The autopsy found alcohol and amphetamines in his system. The drugs of choice have changed over the years and the blood-booster EPO began causing concerns in the late 1980s. It was more than a decade before a reliable test for EPO was developed and cheaters have now been forced to move on to other methods, reportedly including darpoetin, human growth hormone, synthetic testosterone and illicit blood packing.
Many fans note that cycling tests its riders with a vigour seen by few, if any, other sports and that positive tests are the inevitable result. Others say that the tour is simply too difficult to race clean -- a view backed in the 1960s by five-time winner Jacques Anquetil, who said: "You can't ride the Tour de France on mineral water."
A few of the other famous racers linked with doping over the years:
Lance Armstrong
The darkest shadow has always hung over this American rider, whose dominance of the event from 1999 to 2005 prompted intense fan speculation. Several former teammates have been caught doping or later admitted using banned substances but Armstrong has always denied using them. He has aggressively defended his reputation, launching numerous lawsuits against those who accuse him of cheating.
Jan Ullrich
A tour winner in 1997 and a perennial runner-up to Armstrong, the German rider was suspended immediately before the 2006 tour after allegations of involvement in a blood-doping ring operating from Spain. He was fired by his team that summer and retired this February, still proclaiming his innocence. Barely a month later German prosecutor Fred Apostel said there was no doubt the former rider's DNA matched nine bags of blood taken from the offices of Eufemiano Fuentes, a doctor the rider had claimed to have no ties with
Ivan Basso
An Italian who has performed well in the Tour and dominated the 2006 edition of the Giro d'Italia, he was seen as a potential winner in France until being caught up in the same blood-doping allegations as Ullrich. He missed that year's Tour and was dropped first by CSC and then Discovery, Armstrong's old squad. He admitted this past May what he characterized as "attempted doping." His ban will expire in Oct of next year.
Marco Pantani
A devastatingly aggressive mountain climber nicknamed Il Pirata by his adoring fans, Pantani is the last man to win the tours of France and Italy in the same year. That was in 1998, the next year he was dominating the Giro when a test showed his red blood cell count was suspiciously high. Tossed out of that event, he raced only sporadically for the next few years. Spiralling into depression, he died in 2004 of acute cocaine poisoning. Diary entries written by the 34-year-old decried the anti-doping fervour he felt was surrounding the sport. Some 20,000 mourners turned up at his funeral.
Floyd Landis
An American rider written off after cracking badly during the 2006 Tour, Landis bounced back the next day to crush his competition and fight his way back into contention. Tests of a urine sample taken that day showed an abnormal ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. He insists he is innocent and had a hearing this spring at the United States Anti-Doping Agency, whose decision is pending. He faces a two-year ban and could be stripped of his title.
Richard Virenque
A fan-favourite in his native France, he won the King of the Mountains jersey as best climber seven times. He was ejected along with his team from the 1998 tour after a team official was found with large quantities of doping material. The race barely struggled to Paris that year, with rider protests and police raids on hotels. In a French court later, a tearful Virenque admitted that he had used banned substances.
David Millar
Once seen as the clean future of a scandal-plagued sport, the Scot never tested positive but was caught by a police raid. He later confessed to having used EPO in 2001 and 2003. He was stripped of the time trial world championship he had won in 2003 and was banned for two years. Now a strong vocal opponent of doping, he reacted with shock to Vinokourov's expulsion, saying that the race might as well stop if a rider "of that class and stature" is caught doping.
Tyler Hamilton
The American is the first pro rider to have tested positive for transfusing someone else's blood. At the 2004 Olympics there was evidence of blood doping following his gold medal race in the time trial, but he was able to keep the medal because the lab had accidentally frozen his B sample, making a further test inconclusive. Only weeks after the Olympics, and before his test results from Athens were known, Hamilton was thrown out of the Spanish equivalent of the Tour for blood doping. At his hearing a genetic expert testified that blood cells from an unborn twin could possibly have transferred to his system. The doping authorities rejecting the defence and banned him for two years.
Bjarne Riis
A Danish rider who competed in the days when EPO couldn't be tested for, Riis picked up the nickname "Mr. 60 per cent" because of his allegedly abnormal red blood cell count. He won the tour in 1996 but admitted this spring that he had used the drug during that race. His admission cast a pall over the start of this year's event and Riis, who is now the head of Team CSC, decided not to join the team for the start of the race in London on July 7.
