There was only one topic of conversation at the 2008 Tour de France launch in central Paris: how to set about restoring the credibility of a race that has been chronically undermined by 10 years of doping scandals.

The Tour organisation chastened by the events of July this year when, after a jubilant London start, the race was yet again overshadowed by doping, is determined to end the pharmaceuticals arms race that has characterised their event for more than a decade.

However in doing so, they are in danger of creating a "Tour-Lite", a soulless event bereft of the drama, grandeur and sheer brutality that made it so appealing in the first place. Next year's race will have only 82 kilometres of time trialling. For the first time since 1967, there will be no prologue time trial. The spectacular team time trial is also again absent and the mountain stages are less daunting than in the past.

In bending over backwards to avoid accusations of inciting doping, as has been the case in the past, the Tour is in danger of becoming anodyne -- like a heavyweight bout without any blood. Yet many former professionals, such as Chris Boardman and Greg Lemond, believe that it is not the terrain that makes the Tour so brutal but the average speed - an average that has climbed year on year as blood doping became increasingly prevalent. It is not the mountains or time trials that make the Tour so cruel, they argue, but the relentlessly increasing speed.

Early this week, International Cycling Union (UCI) president, Pat McQuaid, and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president, Dick Pound, set aside their differences to agree on a new system of drug testing, based around a "blood passport". This will enable the sports governing body and WADA to spot any anomalies through long-term monitoring of the riders. Between now and June next year, 600 riders - those that make up professional cycling's leading teams - are likely to face six new tests, a programme that will cost the sport the best part of two million euros. Sanctions will be taken against those who are proven offenders although it remains unclear exactly what those sanctions might be.

It is certain, however, that any rider under a cloud will not be allowed to start the 2008 Tour. "No teams are guaranteed being on the start line," Tour director, Christian Prudhomme said. "All of the riders at the Tour will have to have complied with the concept of the blood passports."

So what is different about this fresh start, the latest in a long series of supposed new dawns for an event that has become synonymous with drugs in sport? Well, for the first time the UCI and WADA are working together as the blood passport programme will be administered by a commission of experts from both bodies.

In addition, it has the support of the Tour organisation, the top teams and seemingly, the key race promoters across Europe. It is also clearly the best funded attempt to regain the ethical high ground by a sport that WADA president Pound famously described as languishing "in the toilet".

But this may prove to be the honeymoon period. Can the blood passport eradicate what has become a deep-seated culture of doping? As British professional and reformed doper David Millar suggested, could it really take 10 years of clean Tours before the event regains its reputation?

Anne Gripper, the UCI's own anti-doping tsar, believes that "it will look bad for two or three years".

"We're going to get more positive cases and we're going to have more high profile media issues," Gripper said. "We've got to steel ourselves to get through this period and then ultimately come out the other end towards a cleaner sport."

Professional cycling's elite can lay claim to be the most tested athletes on the planet, but will audiences really want to watch riders who have been so monitored that they exist in semi-permanent laboratory conditions? And what happened to that old-fashioned ideal of not cheating, simply because it is wrong?

At the Tour de France that romantic notion of fair play and altruism, appears to have died a long time ago.

Tour de France 2008:

Total distance : 3,500 kilometres
10 flat stages
5 mountain stages
4 medium mountain stages
2 individual time trials totalling 82 kilometres
No team time trial
No prologue
Four mountain top finishes
Two rest days
19 Category 1 or Category 2 climbs

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