ON THE giant screen in the Palais des Congrès, the image of Floyd Landis, clad in the yellow jersey and smiling and waving to fans as he celebrated victory in last July’s Tour de France, froze and then shattered into a thousand pieces. This was how the Tour de France organisation yesterday presented the route for next year’s race, which begins in London, in July.

There will no longer be any doubts at London’s City Hall as to the extent of the battle for hearts and minds that must be won if next year’s visit of the Tour is to be deemed a success. Condemned by many as a morally bankrupt event of little sporting credibility, yesterday’s presentation in Paris portrayed the Tour as courageous and ground-breaking, willing to take the toughest decisions, no matter how painful.

The 2007 Tour will accentuate these positives, even if that means more of the blood-letting that characterised the lead-up to this year’s race. After the scandals of the 2006 Tour, which marred both the Grand Départ in Strasbourg and Landis’s victory, few would bet against more of the same in eight months’ time.

“I hope that the start in London will be a lot more peaceful than this year,” Patrice Clerc, the Tour president, said, “but if we have to do the same again, we will do it. It’s not bad for cycling’s image. It’s courageous and it’s for the good of the sport.”

Both Clerc and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, maintained yesterday that, in different ways, they are ready for the fight to restore cycling’s tainted reputation. While Clerc spoke of this year’s “broken dream” of a Tour, he also emphasised that “nobody can doubt our determination to combat doping”. “The public expect a clean sport and we must regain lost terrain on the slopes of credibility,” he said.

Livingstone’s response, during which he spoke of “learning more about cycling”, seemed a little disingenuous, as one suspects that he has undergone a crash course in sporting ethics since the events of last July. Yet, while acknowledging that doping was a threat to cycling as a sport, the mayor was keen to emphasise the environmental, educational and health benefits of two wheels. “I want London to become a true cycling city,” he said. “The Tour will inspire more Londoners to get on their bikes.”

The Tour convoy will roll into London on July 4 and take over much of the West End on the evening of July 6, for the team presentation in Trafalgar Square. The next afternoon, the spectacular prologue time-trial, which starts in Whitehall and finishes in The Mall, by way of Westminster, Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park, takes place.

The next morning the peloton will leave The Mall and race through the Kent countryside before finishing in Canterbury, close to the cathedral. Faced with an evening transfer to France for the next day’s start in Dunkirk, the convoy will make a quick exit and cross to France.

After a brief sortie across the Belgian border, the race heads south towards the Alps before the first mountain stage, on Bastille Day, from Bourg-en-Bresse to Le Grand Bornand. Two further Alpine stages precede the longest stage, south through Provence, to the Mediterranean coast and a finish in Marseilles.

The first time-trial comes after two weeks of racing, at Albi, and is sandwiched between the Alps and the Pyrenees, where two summit finishes are likely to resolve any outstanding issues in the race hierarchy. A final time-trial in Cognac, 24 hours before the finish in Paris, will settle the final standings.

It is an inventive course, yet London apart, there is something underwhelming about the 2007 route. That is reflected in a series of mountain stages, which although difficult, fall well short of the brutality of recent years.

It may be that the Tour, fearful of being accused of encouraging doping with overly hard stages, is homogenising the Tour. If that is the case, then the century-old tradition of intense suffering and sacrifice that has contributed so much to the universal appeal of the race, may be another casualty of the war on doping.

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